The parking lot outside the United Center smelled like exhaust and spilled beer. The crowd was still filtering out in loud, disorganized waves, and Emil had planted himself on the hood of a stranger's car — a thing he did constantly and without shame — with his ring light clamped to a selfie stick and his phone angled up at his face.
He held up one finger without looking at her.
Dani crossed her arms and looked at the sky. It was the particular look of someone who had been holding up one finger's worth of patience for the last twenty minutes and was running out.
He didn't look up.
He still didn't look up.
A chorus of comments flooded the screen. Emil angled the phone around her with the practiced desperation of someone who had done this before.
Dani uncrossed her arms and leaned against the car beside him, dropping her voice so the mic wouldn't catch it as easily.
Emil's jaw tightened slightly.
She looked at him for a moment. Then, quieter:
She paused.
He blinked.
Emil opened his mouth. Closed it. He genuinely didn't remember doing that. He'd been so caught up in the energy of the room — the lights, the crowd turning, the jumbotron scrolling those files — it had felt like watching something enormous happen and being one of the only people who understood what it meant. He hadn't realised his face had done anything at all.
The word landed between them. Emil looked at the phone in his hand, where the chat was still moving, little messages stacking up faster than he could read them.
She said his name flatly, the way she did when she was done having the conversation but was giving him one last chance anyway.
Emil didn't answer.
Dani picked up her bag from the ground and slung it over her shoulder.
His phone buzzed. Not a comment notification. An Instagram alert.
He looked down.
Emil slid off the hood of the car so fast he nearly dropped the ring light.
But he was already walking, phone up, ring light bouncing, moving toward the edge of the parking lot where the signal was better, his sister standing behind him in the exhaust-thick air with her bag on her shoulder and her Uber three minutes away.
Dani watched him go. She thought about calling after him. She thought about a lot of things.
Then she opened the app herself, just for a second, just to see — and there they were. The Fighter and Elena, no lights, no makeup, in what looked like a very small and very ugly room. The Fighter was staring at the floor. Elena looked like she hadn't blinked in an hour.
Dani locked her phone and put it in her pocket.
Her Uber arrived in two minutes. She got in without texting Emil the address.