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"I'm watching my roommate," I say.

"Okay."

"Moretti told me to keep him out of trouble."

"Okay."

"That's all it is."

"Okay, Cap," Webb says, gently, the way you'd talk to a horse that's about to kick. "That's all it is."

He picks his beer back up. He doesn't say anything else. He doesn't have to.

I get up. My knee catches, and I grab the edge of the bar.

"Where are you going?" Webb says.

"Bathroom."

The bathroom's one of those single-person rooms with a lock on the door and graffiti on every inch of the walls. I lock it behind me. I turn on the cold water and put my hands under it and stand there looking at myself in a mirror somebody's written YOU LOOK GREAT, BABE across in red Sharpie.

I don't look great. I look like a thirty-five-year-old man in a bar he doesn't belong in, with a bad knee and a divorce and a wedding ring he keeps meaning to take off.

You never looked at her the way you've been looking at that dance floor.

He's wrong. Webb is wrong. Webb's been married to a woman who reads gossip sites for fifteen years and he thinks everything's a love story. I was looking at the dance floor because it's my job. Because I'm the captain. Because a kid on my team is a target, and I'm the only guy who'll stand between him and whatever's coming.

That's not the same as⁠—

That's not what this is.

I put my wet hands over my face and hold them there until the cold is gone.

When I come back out, the music's still pounding and Webb's still on his stool. Castel's off the dance floor. He's standing next to Webb, flushed and sweating, drinking a glass of water in one long pull.

"There you are," he says when he sees me. He puts the glass down. "I thought you left."

"I was in the bathroom."

"For twenty minutes?"

"It was a long line."

"It's a single-person bathroom. I watched the door." He grins. "You don't have to lie. I know it's past your bedtime."

"It's not past my bedtime."

"It's after midnight. You turn into a pumpkin at eleven-thirty."

"That's the rule for you, not me."

"Oh." He tilts his head. "So you're allowed to stay out late, but I'm not."

"I'm thirty-five."

"You're a hypocrite." He's still grinning. He's close enough that I can smell his sweat and whatever he's been drinking, something sweet with lime in it. "It's okay. I like it. It's very human."

Webb gets up. He drops a twenty on the bar and says, "I'm getting a cab. You two are on your own," and walks out before I can tell him to wait.