Ever the one for a good gamble, I looked over at her.

"Why not?" I asked. I gave Thomas our address. She raised a doubtful eyebrow, but kind of grinned in a way that I knew meant she was having fun with it already. I could hear her laughing inside at how silly all of it seemed, making bets about travel times as if we could control what the traffic routes ahead of us would be like.

Then I looked back out the window, and surprisingly, we were in front of the apartments. Like: that fast. Instantaneously, it seemed.

"Wait a second," I said, and Thomas interrupted.

"I can do that, too. But it will cost you extra."

"How’d you do that?" She leaned forward and looked out the front of the car, investigating the console for some sort of clue or device that could have been used to make the usual half hour trip occur almost instantaneously.

"You know what they say about a good magician!" Thomas exclaimed.

"Would you like to come inside?" she asked, a little bit to my surprise. I just handed Thomas my wallet, dumbly.

"Take it," I said. "Take however much it is."

I didn’t understand at the time that I'd given him everything he needed to know about me. I was far more concerned with the time I'd lost and where I'd lost it.