Chapter Fifteen How Well Do You Know Your Girlfriend?
Chapter Fifteen
How Well Do You Know Your Girlfriend?
Amy
The relationship quiz was scheduled for Wednesday, July twenty-third, at seven.
By Tuesday evening, I had prepared forty-six questions divided into preferences, habits, history, family, work, and romantic expectations.
This was not cheating. The competition packet did not prohibit studying.
Dani sat across from me at the kitchen table while Tessa read on the sofa with suspicious stillness.
“You cannot study a relationship,” Dani said.
“You can study anything.”
“You can memorize facts. The interesting part is what someone does when she is tired, what she orders when upset, and the face she makes when she wants to laugh but thinks it would encourage you.”
“Those are observable facts.”
“Feelings are not a spreadsheet.”
“They create patterns.”
We moved through coffee, movies, food, work, and family. Dani stole my pen when I objected to her adding questions without review. She wrote beneath the blank romantic category:
What does Amy need when she is upset?
The card waited.
“That is subjective.”
“Answer.”
“Information.”
“No.”
“A plan.”
I searched through every category I had built for her. Dani waited, the pen motionless in her hand.
“No.”
“Time.”
“Sometimes.”
“What is the answer?”
Dani set down the pen.
“To know the other person is staying.”
Tessa lowered the book. Dani had gone completely still—no teasing, no performance. Her answer reached the same place as the six-mile run. Stay with me. Dani had remembered.
“You do not know that,” I said.
“I do.”
“Based on what?”
“You ask for plans when you’re scared. You ask for facts when you’re angry. But when you’re really upset, you ask whether someone is still there.”
I touched the silver watch. Dani’s eyes moved to the gesture. Tessa stood.
“I’m going to make tea.”
“We have tea,” I said.
“In another room.”
She left. Dani looked at the page.
“My turn,” she said.
I should have redirected to preferences.
Instead, I asked, “What do you need when you are upset?”
“A joke.”
“No.”
She smiled faintly.
“Food.”
“No.”
“Space.”
“Sometimes.”
The pattern was becoming familiar.
“You need to know you can stop talking and I will not make you turn the silence into a joke,” I said.
Dani’s smile disappeared. I knew from the way she got louder when frightened and quiet only after exhaustion made performance impossible. Her thigh-tapping stopped.
“Okay,” she said. No joke followed.
I wrote the answer beneath hers. For several minutes, neither of us returned to the quiz.
The event took place in Studio A. Blake had arranged two rows of chairs facing a small stage. Each couple sat back-to-back with dry-erase boards and markers. The audience occupied folding chairs along the walls. Rose sat beside Tessa in the front row. Gloria had work. Lola sent a video message.
“Good luck, Aunt Dani and Amy. Don’t lie because lying makes quizzes harder.”
Dani played the message twice before facing me.
“She has become hostile.”
“She is accurate.”
We took our seats. Dani wore a fitted black shirt and dark green trousers.
I wore the burgundy sweater from dinner because Dani had said the color made my eyes look warmer.
This was not a recognized quality of brown eyes.
I wore it anyway. Blake stood at the center of the stage with a stack of cards.
“Tonight’s challenge is simple,” they said. “We are testing how well each couple truly knows one another.”
A screen behind them displayed:
PREFERENCES. HABITS. HISTORY. HEART.
The final category concerned me. The audience applauded. Blake continued.
“Each correct match earns one point. The final five questions are worth two points each because emotional knowledge should be rewarded more aggressively.”
“That is an arbitrary scoring decision,” I said.
Dani leaned toward me.
“Save energy.”
“I am pointing out structural bias.”
“You love structure.”
“I do not love biased structure.”
Blake handed us boards. The first three categories moved quickly.
We matched coffee orders, breakfast, music, family details, sleep habits, backup hair ties, and the small routines neither of us had meant to reveal.
We failed one question each: I did not know Dani feared realistic dolls, and she underestimated how often I reorganized things when unable to sleep.
The audience laughed at the easy mismatches and quieted for the accurate ones. By the end of personal history, we were tied with Evelyn and Vanessa for first. Dani noticed my attention move toward them and said only, “Next question.”
The emotional category began.
“What does your partner consider a successful day?”
I wrote:
HELPING SOMEONE FEEL STRONGER THAN WHEN THEY ARRIVED.
Dani wrote:
FINISHING WHAT SHE PLANNED WITHOUT HAVING TO HURT HERSELF TO DO IT.
I stopped. I would not have written that answer, which was why it was better.
“What compliment does your partner have the hardest time believing?”
Dani wrote:
brAVE.
I wrote:
THAT SHE IS ENOUGH WITHOUT BEING USEFUL.
Dani’s board remained visible for several seconds after Blake called time.
She looked down at my answer. The audience became quiet.
Rose’s clinical reserve eased. I wanted to take the words back.
Not because they were wrong. Because they exposed something Dani had not given me permission to name publicly.
“I’m sorry,” I said quietly.
She shook her head.
“Don’t be.”
The next question asked what each partner wanted most from the future. I wrote:
TO BUILD AN INCLUSIVE BEGINNER RUNNING PROGRAM.
Dani wrote:
TO BE CHOSEN WITHOUT HAVING TO BECOME A DIFFERENT PERSON.
I tightened my grip on the marker. Her answer came too close to the desire I had never said aloud. Dani met my eyes over her shoulder. She knew. Not from a spreadsheet. From listening. The final question arrived.
“What is your partner most afraid to ask you?”
I stared at the blank board while markers moved around us. Dani’s answer was obvious. It was also the conversation scheduled for tomorrow. I wrote:
WILL YOU SEE ME DIFFERENTLY AFTER THURSDAY?
When time ended, Dani held up her board.
WILL YOU STAY AFTER THE CHALLENGE ENDS?
The room disappeared. Those were my words, not hers. At Blake’s cue, I lifted my board. Dani read it and lost her public smile. The audience remained silent. For once, Blake did not turn the moment into entertainment.
“Both answers correct?” they asked gently.
Dani held my gaze.
“Yes,” she said.
I made myself accept the answer. “Yes.”
We received four points. It moved us into first place.
No one celebrated immediately. Then Tessa began clapping.
The room followed. Dani smiled at me. It was not her public smile.
It was smaller. Almost frightened. We won the quiz by two points.
Blake handed us matching medals made from plastic hearts. Dani put mine around my neck.
“Relationship expert,” she said.
“You forgot your greatest fear.”
“One error.”
“Statistically significant.”
She smiled. Then her gaze moved to my board, still resting on the chair.
“Tomorrow,” she said.
“Tomorrow.”
After the event, people crowded around the stage. Tessa hugged me. Rose hugged Dani. Evelyn and Vanessa remained near the exit. I expected Evelyn to approach. She did not. That felt like progress. Blake asked Dani and me to film a short reaction clip. We declined. They looked physically injured.
“We need privacy,” Dani said.
Blake glanced at the quiz boards. For once, they agreed. We left through the side door. The night air was cool. Dani walked beside me toward the corner. Neither of us spoke until we reached the crosswalk.
“I was wrong about your fear,” I said.
“You were right about the important one.”
“Realistic dolls are important.”
“They know too much.”
“That is not an explanation.”
She smiled. The walk signal changed. We crossed. At the far side, Dani stopped.
“Can we do Thursday now?”
“It is Wednesday.”
“I know.”
“You want to tell me tonight?”
“If I wait, I’ll spend twenty-four hours inventing reasons not to.”
Fear made the honesty more credible. I agreed.
“Where?”
“My apartment.”
The location created a different kind of awareness. Dani caught it.
“Conversation only.”
“I know.”
“Rose knows where I live.”
“So does Blake.”
“Less reassuring.”
We took the bus.
Dani’s apartment was warm, messy, and alive: running shoes by the door, Lola’s drawings on the refrigerator, unopened mail beside a bowl of safety pins and energy gels.
She moved laundry from the sofa, brought two untouched glasses of water, paced once between the kitchen and window, then sat at the opposite end of the couch.
Every movement delayed the same sentence.
“The first marathon,” she said. Then stopped. Her foot pressed hard into the floor. “I keep trying to give you the clean version.”
“I did not request a clean version.”
“No. You requested Thursday.”
Dani picked up the water, set it down untouched, and stared at the ring it left on the table. “There was a paper cup at mile twenty-two. White with blue printing. I crushed it without noticing. My fingers went numb around it.”
I waited.
“The crowd got far away. Then too close. A volunteer asked my name three times. I could see her mouth. I could not make the words become language.” Dani rubbed her palms against her trousers. “I thought I was dying. Then I thought I was making dying embarrassing for everyone.”
A joke shape. No laugh.
“What happened?” I asked.
“I sat against a barricade. Threw up. Medical staff removed me. Later someone used the words panic attack.”
Her fingers began tapping against her thigh. I placed my hand over them. Not because a rule classified the contact. Because she was here and I was asking her to remain.
“Is this okay?”
“Yes.” Her fingers turned beneath mine and held on.
“Treatment?”
“Eventually. Rose found the first therapist. I stayed until I could function without feeling watched by my own body, then decided functioning meant finished.”
“Do symptoms still occur while running?”
“Early ones—tingling, sound distortion, the route narrowing.”
“With me?”
“The day I changed the route near mile twenty-two.”
“You said traffic.”
“I used traffic because it was technically true somewhere in the city.” Her mouth twisted. “That is how I lie while pretending I’m honest.”
The room seemed to narrow around the admission. I kept holding her hand, though every instinct wanted more distance and more information at once.
“You let me believe—” I could not finish. “Were you unsafe to coach me?”
“No. I could read you. I could not admit I needed to read myself.”
“The second race?”
Dani’s breath changed. “I did not tell Gloria this part.”
I waited.
“I thought a finish would make the first one smaller. I trained through pain. On the course, the noise started again. I pushed harder. My knee failed before I reached the place.”
“You wanted a different ending so badly that you accepted a different kind of damage.”
“Yes.”
The neighbor’s television laughed through the wall. A bus braked outside. Dani stared at our joined hands.
“Professional facts,” I said. “Two starts. No finishes. One panic-related medical removal. One injury after training through pain. Current treatment status?”
“Back in therapy. Rose knows the symptoms. No current injury.”
“Current training?”
“Six to eight miles once or twice a week, plus client miles. No race plan.”
“Considering a marathon?”
“Yes.”
Dani’s thumb rubbed once across my knuckles, then stopped when she noticed the movement.
“Do you know why?”
“No.”
“Then say that before offering safer substitutes.”
“I will.”
I withdrew my hand only long enough to reach for the notepad on her table. “We need one behavioral rule.”
Dani gave a weak smile. “Of course we do.”
“If a choice could change your race status, your training risk, or a shared plan, you tell me before acting. Not because I approve it. I do not possess your race choice.”
Her attention sharpened.
“I do possess my decision about whether to build intimacy around accurate information,” I continued. “You may choose a race I dislike. You may not manipulate the facts so I remain available while you choose it.”
Dani looked down. “Yes.”
“And you give Rose the same information you give me about mileage and symptoms.”
“Yes.”
“What will you do tomorrow?”
“Send her the actual mileage. Ask for a plan that does not assume a race.”
It was behavioral and verifiable—better than a promise to become a different person.
“I am angry you waited,” I said. “I am angry you changed the route and lied.”
“I know.”
“But I do not respect you less because you had a panic attack.”
Dani’s face folded. She looked away. “I do not know how to believe that.”
“You do not have to believe it tonight.”
Her breath shook. “You are staying?”
“I am staying for this conversation. Tomorrow will still exist. So will the questions.”
She accepted that. Not the reassurance she wanted; the accurate one.
After a long silence, Dani said, “I hate being seen.”
“I do.”
“Do not make it sound romantic.”
“I did not.”
We sat together. No kiss. No performance. Just the quiet after truth.
Eventually, Dani asked, “Do I still get the real date?”
Warmth moved through me despite the anger. “After the half marathon.”
“Why after?”
“Because I do not want the race affected by an emotionally complicated evening.”
“You say romance like it causes inflammation.”
“It can affect sleep.”
“Food, conversation, no sponsor camera?”
“Public location. Clear menu.”
“No kissing?”
“We decide at the time.”
Her fingers locked around mine. “After the half.”
“After the half.”
Dani lifted our joined hands.
“Can I hug you?”
“Yes.”
We moved toward each other. Her arms closed around me.
This hug was not celebration. It was relief.
Dani held me with her face against my shoulder.
I held her back. Neither of us counted the time.
When we separated, our faces were close.
A kiss would have been easy. I wanted it.
Dani did too. I could see it. She leaned forward slightly, then stopped.
“After the half,” she whispered.
“After the half.”
I left her apartment at midnight. On the bus home, Tessa texted.
Alive?
Yes.
Truth told?
The city lights blurred beyond the glass.
Yes.
And?
I thought of Dani’s panic. Her shame. The real date waiting after the race.
Complicated.
Tessa replied:
That is not a no.
It was not. Three days remained until the half marathon. For the first time, I wanted a finish line to arrive faster.