The Fifteen-Dollar Settlement

The phone buzzed against the glass coffee table at 6:47 in the morning, and I already knew who it was before I opened my eyes. Derek had a way of calling when the world was still dark, as if urgency were a personality trait he could weaponize. I let it ring four times. Then five. On the sixth, I answered. "You're awake, right? You have to be awake." His voice cracked with something I had never heard from him before. Excitement, maybe. Or greed wearing excitement's clothes. "I am now." "Listen. Listen to me. The ticket. The one from Tuesday. Marisol's Gas and Go on Ventura." He was breathing hard, like he had run up the stairs to his apartment instead of taking the elevator. "It hit. It actually hit." I sat up in bed, the sheets pooling around my waist. Outside my window, the December fog had turned the streetlights into soft orange halos. "What do you mean it hit?" "The jackpot, Nina. Two million dollars. The numbers matched. All six of them." He laughed, a wild, unhinged sound. "We're rich. We're actually rich." I remembered the ticket. Of course I remembered it. I had paid for it with my debit card while Derek stood behind me, scrolling through his phone, barely looking up when I handed him his half. It was a Wednesday ritual for us, this lottery thing. Four dollars a week, two dollars each, a shared delusion we had been nursing for eleven months. "That's incredible," I said, and I meant it. Two million dollars would change his life. It would change mine too, if he meant what I thought he meant. "I'm going to take care of you," he said. The words tumbled out fast, like he had rehearsed them. "I'm going to take care of everything. You know that, right? You and me, we're a team." "A team," I repeated. "I'm going to send you your share right now. I don't want you to worry about anything." I heard the click of his laptop opening. The tap of keys. He was doing it in real time, this grand gesture, narrating it like a sports announcer calling a play. "Just sent it," he said. "Check your phone." I pulled the phone away from my ear and opened my banking app. A notification sat at the top of the screen: Deposit received. Fifteen dollars. The memo line read: Lottery ticket reimbursement. Paid in full. I stared at the number for a long moment. Then I looked at the lock screen photo of Derek and me at his cousin's wedding last summer, his arm draped over my shoulder, both of us squinting into the sun. Fifteen dollars. "Nina? You there?" "I'm here," I said. "Got it? Everything's square now." I could picture him on the other end of the line, leaning back in that beat-up leather chair he refused to replace, feet propped on his desk, watching the number in his account grow from six figures to seven. He had probably already started planning. A car. A down payment on a condo in that building near the marina he was always pointing out. A trip to Cabo. I thought about the other ticket, the one in my wallet right now, tucked behind my driver's license. The one I had bought alone last Saturday while Derek was at his brother's bachelor party in Temecula. I had stopped at a different gas station, a Chevron two exits north, because I had been low on fuel and because something had made me pull in, something I could not name then and certainly could not name now. That ticket had matched all six numbers too. Sixty million dollars. The jackpot had been split between two winners. Derek had claimed his half without ever knowing I had the other. "Square," I said. "Yeah. We're square." I hung up before he could say anything else. Then I set the phone face-down on my nightstand and poured myself a glass of water from the carafe I kept by the bed. The water was room temperature and tasted faintly of copper, and I drank all of it, slowly, watching the fog press against the window like it wanted in. Fifteen dollars. I laughed, and the sound bounced off the bare walls of my studio apartment. Derek had never been inside this apartment. He had never asked to be. In eleven months of dating, he had picked me up at the curb outside, or met me at restaurants, or complained about the drive from his place in the hills. He had never seen where I lived. I opened my banking app again and transferred the fifteen dollars to my savings account. Then I opened my email and searched for the message from the California Lottery, the one that had arrived four days ago and that I had been too stunned to respond to. Congratulations, it said. Your claim is ready for processing. I typed a reply. I will be there Monday morning. Then I got dressed, made coffee, and went to work like nothing had happened. Because nothing had. Not yet. But I was beginning to understand something about Derek, something I had probably known for a long time, something I had just been unwilling to name. He had called me a team. Then he had paid me off for less than the price of a sandwich. The fog never lifted that day. It hung over the city like a held breath, and I moved through it, and I said nothing, and I waited.