“A club?” Marissa pronounced out loud what he had said, just to be sure that she had not heard him wrong.

“Yeah, is there any issue with that?” Bernard replied over the phone; Marissa could sense the hint of a smile in his voice, and she rolled her eyes.

“As in the wriggling bodies, fast drinks, neon lights, and head-pumping fast music kind of club?” she asked again.

“Is there any other fun type? I sure wasn’t referring to country clubs or the kind that my father joined these days, which has been driving my mother crazy. A golf club,” he replied, laughing outright this time.

Marissa pictured herself in...