Losing the Bet: One Point

I lost the bet by one point, and Elena smiled the way she does when she has a long list.

How it works: read, then choose what you do. Only the right choices earn the happy ending.

I’m Mark, I’m thirty-four, and I lost the bet by one point. Twenty to nineteen, on the very last question, with a bottle of red open on the coffee table and Elena sitting cross-legged on the sofa like a cat that has already eaten the canary.

“Which river flows through Baghdad?” she’d asked.

“The Euphrates,” I said, with total confidence.

“The Tigris.” She put down the card and smiled, slow and wide. “Oh, Mark.”

The bet had been my idea, to be fair. Loser does whatever the winner says, for one night. I’d pictured making her do the washing up. Elena is thirty, runs a team of forty without ever raising her voice, and has a streak I’ve only glimpsed from the corner of my eye. She’d said yes far too quickly.

She fetched a notepad from the drawer. We’d talked limits weeks ago over a curry, half joking, so she read them out like terms and conditions. Nothing that leaves marks where anyone can see. Nothing filmed. Nothing outside this flat. Either of us can say no at any time.

“And the word is marmalade,” she said. “Say it and everything stops. Instantly. No questions, no sulking.”

“Why marmalade?”

“Because you’d never say it by accident.” She tucked the page under the wine bottle. “Now. Strip to your boxers and get on your knees.”

My heart was going like a drum. The carpet looked a very long way down.

→ I get on my knees and tell her I’m all hers

→ I hold up a hand and try to bargain first