Ask Janice if this was a fun date

John finished buttoning his shirt, the fabric feeling stiff and foreign after the intimacy they'd shared. He glanced over and saw the look on her face, a complicated mix of disgust and a strange, distant fascination, as she stared down at her phone.

He tried for a lighthearted tone, a way to bridge the sudden, awkward gap that had formed between them. "So," he started, jamming his hands in his pockets. "Was this a fun date?"

Janice's head snapped up, her eyes wide for a second as if she'd forgotten he was there. She quickly clicked the screen off, plunging the phone back into darkness. A faint blush colored her cheeks, though whether it was from embarrassment or something else, he couldn't tell.

"What? Oh. Yeah," she said, her voice a little too bright. "Yeah, it was... fun. Really fun."

The words felt hollow. He could see she was distracted, her mind clearly still on whatever had been on that screen.

"Fun," he repeated, the word tasting like ash in his mouth. He looked from her guarded expression to the dark stain on the blanket where the wine had spilled. It felt like a metaphor. Something sweet that had soured, a mess left behind in the aftermath. The memory of their bodies moving together, the raw connection, was already starting to feel fragile, tainted by the specter of Terry's text.

The walk to the bus stop was quiet, their earlier easy conversation replaced by a heavy, unspoken tension. Every now and then, he'd catch her glancing down at her purse, where her phone was hidden, her brow furrowed in thought.

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