Free Admission by Travis Thrasher

you’d realize I’m very different from you.”
    “Don’t they say opposites attract?”
    “Sometimes. But not this time.”
    Jake looked at her and nodded. For the next moment, he didn’t say anything, just looked at her and tried to find the right words to utter. For once, he couldn’t be sarcastic and funny. He suddenly felt very sad, and he wasn’t sure why.
    They didn’t order dessert. When the check came andAlyssa demanded that she let him accept her money, Jake told her he’d leave it for the waiter.
    On the drive home, the heater going full blast and the silence awkward, Alyssa tried to make some sort of amends. “I’m sorry, Jake.”
    “It’s fine, really. This was a bad idea.”
    “It’s not you.”
    He let out a cynical laugh. “It’s entirely me.”
    When he reached the campus, he drove around to her dorm and stopped the car.
    “Sorry this wasn’t the dream date you had hoped it would be,” Jake said.
    “It was better than I expected it to be.”
    He nodded. Alyssa looked at him, the windows in the car shielding them from the cold and the outside world.
    “Jake.”
    “Yeah?”
    “You were right.”
    “About what?”
    “About something being on the other end of that kiss.”
    He looked into her eyes, then looked away and asked, “What’s that mean?”
    “It means … it means you’re not a bad guy. Thank you for dinner.”
    With that, she opened the door and left. No kiss good night, no small tug on his hand, no mesmerizing glance. Just a polite smile and a departure.

TWELVE
          June 2005
    SHANE MARCUS AND HIS WIFE , Tracy, were sickeningly perfect but impossible to dislike.
    He picked Bruce and me up from the Jacksonville airport with surprise and elation when he saw there were two of us. “No way. Where’d you find this guy?”
    Shane was shorter than us and trim. He gave us hugs and patted Bruce on the back. “You’ve gotten taller and skinnier. Why can’t I do that?”
    “Before there was Atkins, there was Atkinson.”
    “You don’t want that diet,” I said as we followed Shane outside toward the parking lot.
    “So you guys flew out together from San Francisco?”
    “I decided to tag along,” Bruce said.
    He glanced at me, and we both knew the truth. It was probably good for him to pack a suitcase and get out of town. Someone was looking for him. Maybe Bruce held some secrets he still hadn’t told me. But he didn’t hold any special ties to California. Not anymore.
    “I can’t believe both of you guys are here. Good thing you’re packing light.”
    “How come?” I asked.
    We arrived at his car and saw how come. He had a red MiniCooper that Bruce was really going to have an interesting time fitting inside.
    “They’re bigger than they look,” Shane said. “Bruce, get in the front.”
    Coasting down the highway toward his home, blasting the new U2 album, Shane talking a mile a minute, the sun out and the wind whipping in through the sunroof, I realized that sometimes people don’t change. And sometimes that’s a good thing.
    Shane’s house sat in the woods in a private development off St. John’s Lake. We pulled up to the sweeping driveway and stopped. The three-car garage and two-story house looked impressive even in the fading light of day.
    “Here we are.”
    “This looks just like my place,” Bruce said with a grin as we entered their house.
    We met Tracy, Shane’s cute and friendly blonde wife. They were perfect hosts in an ideal home. Their house was modern with unique framed paintings hanging throughout.
    “Like these?” Shane asked, giving me a glass of wine.
    “Very cool.”
    “Tracy painted them.”
    Of course she did. The wine probably came from grapes they personally trampled from their vineyard in the backyard.
    Bruce had already helped himself to a few drinks on the plane, so he welcomed wine. We sat in the large, open living room, light background music piping in.
    “You should have come down here a long time ago,