Jack waved off Whitney’s gratitude but didn’t move to leave yet.
“Fly safe, then, huh?” Will said.
Jack snorted—message received. He adjusted his bag on his shoulder and started toward the door. Will could tell that all of a sudden Jack maybe hated him.
“And you have my email and Will’s email?” Whitney said. “I’m dead serious about you being in touch about ideas and scripts and—”
Will snorted this time and looked at the floor to conceal his grin.
Jack adjusted his bag again, and his eyes drifted toward the stairs in the hallway.
“Yes, thank you, I really appreciate that,” Jack said, smiling stiffly at Whitney. “It was really nice getting to hang. And please look me up if you’re ever in—”
“Before you go,” Will said, cutting him off, his smile wiped away. “Just one final thing for you, JJ. I don’t want you to think about your answer, I just want you to hear my question and respond—”
“Will,” Whitney said.
“—There’s nothing you can say that will change anything here, I promise, I just want your unvarnished opinion on something.”
“Will…” Whitney said.
“Okay. Shoot,” Jack said.
Will squinted and shot: “Did you two fuck last night?”
Will leaned in toward Jack the instant he said it, running his eyes across his mouth and forehead and cheeks, his pure lineless face. Will examined his jaw, his throat—he waited for tics. What he registered instead, though, was wounded-ness and pure contempt. Jack did hate him. Now Will knew for sure. “Of course not,” Jack said. “No. Jesus.”
Whitney received a look from Jack with all the pity it possessed, pity for her having to deal with Will and his accusations for even a moment longer.
Will watched them watch each other, and then he shook his head, as though he were disappointed in both.
“That’s not what she said,” Will said.
Jack’s head snapped back to Will. “What?”
“What the fuck are you doing?!” Whitney said, practically lurching for him.
“She told me already,” Will said. “She confessed. Just please confirm it so that we can end this. It’s not a big deal. We have this game we’re—”
“What the actual fuck—?!” Whitney was moving toward Will now. She had a half-full water glass in her hand and looked prepared to hurl it at his head.
Will put his hands up, innocent, as though everyone was taking things too seriously all of a sudden, as though he hadn’t meant to elicit such a grand overreaction. “All right. All right. I believe you. I believe you both, I was just trying to, I needed to—”
“What is wrong with you two?” Jack said, mouth gaping. “This is about that experiment of yours? Is that what you’re talking about? Jesus Christ. Leave me the fuck out of it, okay? I don’t want any part of it.”
Will turned on Whitney now, smiling, satisfied as a prosecutor by the new revelation. Whitney’s eyes bore right back into Will’s. So what, they said. She’d told Jack what they’d done.
No one was paying attention to Jack anymore. But he hadn’t noticed, and so he kept going: “Or is directing all this shit at me just a way to make you feel better about what happened with you and Jenna last night? She—”
Whitney flipped back to Jack: “What do you know?”
“He doesn’t know anything because there’s nothing to know,” Will said.
A window opened through which Jack might submit the next evidence. He looked ready to say something, to stab them both, but then he swallowed his tongue. He shook his head, seething, and reached for the door handle instead, ready to march out, but still not all the way ready yet.
“You two are fucked up.” Jack was cracking, his eyes were wide. He whipped to Whitney one last time—with an apology in his face, it seemed, as well as an offer to get her out of there.
She was stone still. “Thank you for everything,” she said coolly. “Thank you for bringing me my stuff, okay?”
Jack looked stunned, hot in the cheeks, the initial accusation still branded onto his forehead. “Whatever,” he said. “If you’re into this, you two deserve each other. I hope it ends up great!” He was out the door and down a couple stairs, but he couldn’t stop himself; it just kept coming, the exasperation flowing like a gusher that might take days to cap. “Best of luck with it! Get home safe!”
Jack pounded the stairs. Whitney didn’t say anything as he descended and neither did Will.
Will shut the door with a gentle click. He was shaking his head and rubbing his temples, but Whitney could see in his jaw that he wasn’t wound tight. She was the one who was shaking, shaking there silently. Will rubbed his eyes, but she was wider awake now than she’d been in days. They were both still drunk from the morning, and the night before, and the night before that.
“I don’t even…I don’t have a clue who you are right now,” Whitney said.
“He was lying,” Will said. “He obviously just made something up about Jenna because he was offended. Or maybe she made it up and said something—who knows? I don’t know what to believe about anything right now.”
“You don’t know what to believe? You?”
“Nothing happened with her,” he said. “He was fighting back. He was throwing sand in my eyes because I’d offended him. I’d accused him of lying and doing the most dishonorable thing there is. I don’t blame him. If nothing really happened between you two, I get why he was offended.”
He was so plain about it. He yawned. Their limited stores of energy were reducing back to zero.
“You’re telling me that was completely baseless.”
“I don’t know how many times I can say it. I had my chances last month. I took two. I played by the rules that you established. I did what you told me to do. I told you about it. And
