3. Chapter 3
Three
Word of the day: Garrulous
Definition: excessively talkative, especially on trivial matters
What does one wear to a trivia night with a group of strangers held in a hole-in-the-wall bar that happens to serve chili dogs?
I started to ask my roommate before I realized I can’t, because then I’ll sound like someone who never gets invited to trivia night.
For the record, I am totally not someone who gets invited to trivia nights.
So, I consulted my closet and came up with this: a pastel yellow sweater—that makes me look like a banana Laffy Taffy—and straight jeans with tennis shoes.
It’s mid-September, and the heat of the summer is packed away neatly, but the cool breeze of autumn is still in the distance.
Nights are colder, but not enough where I feel the need to unpack the thick winter coats resting in their marked cardboard box on my closet floor.
I grab my lightest jacket, so I’ll be slightly hot walking to wherever this place is, but I won’t freeze on the way back.
Maybe I should have asked Lennon what to wear, because when she finally steps out of her room to meet me at the front door where I wait anxiously, she changed into a simple pair of black leggings and a sweatshirt so large it droops to her knees, even on her tall frame.
She doesn’t say I’m overdressed, but she doesn’t have to.
I feel it in the flicker of confusion in her brows and the slow blink of her midnight blue eyes.
I point to my sweater. “I got this at the secondhand shop down on 63rd. They have a lot of vintage wear.” I feel like I’m lying somehow, so I tack on, “Well, this isn’t vintage.
I mean, depending on what you imagine being vintage.
But, they have a lot of vintage hats and purses. Not ones that I’ve bought, though.”
She did not ask for any of that information, but here we are.
Distressed brick walls surround the bar we slip into.
It looks like one of those places that would have a secret password that changes every weekend, and you can only enter if you have at least ten-thousand followers on social media.
To my surprise, no one asks to see such verification as Lennon waves a hand to the hostess, who winks at me in passing, her pink bob bouncing as she tilts her head to the side.
“The rest are already here at the usual table.”
Lennon nods, and I follow her long strides. Turns out ‘the rest’ are four twenty-something-year-olds sitting at a round corner booth who all stare back and forth between the two of us.
Lennon approaches a blonde man with bushy eyebrows and a slanted smile sitting on one side of the booth. He immediately stands up when he sees her, grabs her hand, and plants a tiny kiss on the inside of her wrist like she’s royalty—I am smitten. This is Stephan?
He’s shorter than I expected, and a bit smile-ier than I expected, too.
For the first time since I moved in, I watch as Lennon’s shoulders fully relax into a crouched position under her boyfriend's arm, tucking herself in like a child.
Beside him is a very cute girl with big blue-green eyes and wild blonde curls almost as big as mine. And beside her is—let me say this with the utmost clarity—the most attractive man I have made eye contact with in at least ten years. Let’s say fifteen to be safe.
Under a navy NYFD hat is a handsome face with all these smooth lines and a soft, kind smile just below a very firefighter-looking mustache without a hint of stubble surrounding it.
If I were ever to be stuck in an elevator and there was only one man that could lift me through the tiny slot and carry me down ten flights of stairs, it would be this man.
Stephan quickly introduces himself with a firm handshake reminiscent of a linebacker before pointing to the two people beside him.
“This is Margot, and that’s Noah.” They both wave, but it’s just Noah's that I am stuck on.
He has very veiny forearms blocking the view of literally anything else around me.
“And that,” Stephan says, his finger pointing to the opposite side of the table toward a man I hadn’t noticed before—solely due to Mr. Firefighter—“is Fletcher.”
Let me run you through the next thirty seconds as I experience it:
Déjà vu, as I meet eyes held in an angular face with a strong, Roman nose, and scruffy facial hair, which contrasts the other two men at the table.
Shock, that I could recognize one other person in this heavily populated city.
Anger, that the man I am looking at across the table is the same one who stole my muffin this morning.
And rage, that he clearly doesn’t recognize me.
Who in their right mind steals someone's breakfast, only eats half of it, and when they run back into said someone doesn’t even remember their face?
I understand I am not the most outstanding person in a population of eight million, but come on.
There is a flicker of hesitation on his face that says he knows I recognize him, but he can’t piece together where he would know me from. Which riles me up further.
Lennon says something over my shoulder, the sexy fireman lifts his glass and his forearm flexes, a bell dings by the bar, and a crowd sings happy birthday to an older woman—but it’s all just white noise.
By the time the birthday song is over and the uncomfortable silence registers, I realize I have not said a word. I am also the only one standing.
My whole mission could be split into two large categories: Make friends that are my own—friends that someone cannot swipe out from underneath me—and land a successful career in illustrating.
To accomplish the first one, I would think first impressions are probably important.
But, I just can’t do it. He stole my muffin, and I can’t not say something, right?
There are a handful of things I could offer in this scenario. But the two words that fly out of my, mind you, very extensive vocabulary, are “Muffin Man?” said with the utmost fury.
“Excuse me?”
“Muffin man.”
“Muffin man?” Stephan asks.
“Who lives on Drury Lane?” Margot smiles.
“Can you…be more specific?”
“You,” I point, “stole my muffin this morning."
“That was you?”
“How often are you stealing someone's breakfast that you don’t recognize me?”
He shrugs, which says more than I think most words would.
“You stole her muffin?” Noah, my knight in navy armor, asks.
“I paid for it.”
“Then stole it, only ate half, and threw the rest away.”
“I was full.”
All chins at the table are bouncing back and forth between us, like they’re witnessing a tennis match and have to keep their eyes on the ball.
“Fletcher,” Stephan sighs. “I really don’t think that’s the best approach to—”
“Why?” my roommate asks, finally adding something to this.
“Why, what?”
“Why did you eat only half of the muffin?”
Fletcher—I note his name this time—lifts one shoulder in a half shrug. “I felt like it.”
And that was that. I was right earlier that first impressions are important, because mine of Fletcher is that he is a narcissist who has no ability to think of anyone but himself.
And in the span of the next hour, I am proven that tenfold.
With some coaxing, mostly from Lennon’s boyfriend and the lovely fireman, I am convinced to squish my butt into the tail-end of the circle booth, leaving me directly across from that guy over there.
Handheld whiteboards and multi-color expo markers have been passed to all participating tables, an announcer standing at the front of the bar while doing a little ‘tap, tap’ on the microphone.
“Welcome to trivia night, everyone!” he shouts, with the energy and command of a cruise director, his shoulder-length hair swinging with his frantic waving. The surrounding crowd of tables gives a collective ‘whoop, whoop.’
“We are back tonight with an oldie but a goodie—Literary night!” There is another ‘whoop, whoop,’ though a tad less enthusiastic.
Literary night? As in the one topic where I had a possibility of adding something to this table?
I leaned to my right, where Lennon sits. “You didn’t mention it was literary themed.”
When she lifted her eyes up to mine, they looked right through me. “Why do you think I invited you?”
It was equally off-putting and flattering that she knew I loved to read. Or, maybe she saw my printed schedule at the bookstore on the fridge and took note of the part-time job. I took it as a stepping stone in our inevitable friendship, either way.
We have since gone through the first ten rounds of questions, bumping us up to the next ‘level.’ I’ve lost track of the other tables’ wins and losses, but I have fully kept up with mine and Fletcher’s.
We’re tied: five for him, five for me.
I like to think it would be ten for me if some of these questions weren’t totally futile.
“In which 1920 play did the word “robot” first appear, and what language does the word originate from?”
Who knows that? Fletcher, apparently.
Then, “Which 50,000-word novel, written in 1939, contains no instances of the letter ‘E’?”
Also, Fletcher.
But, they weren’t all questions he knew the answers to.
I think if he had, I might have gotten up and left the table.
His hand never even flinched when the surfer-looking announcer asked, “Which Regency-era romance novel was written by Georgette Heyer and is credited with creating the blueprint for modern historical romance?” Or, when my fingers already itched for the board at the words, “Which romance author was inducted into the Romance Writers of America Hall of Fame for having three of her books win RITA Awards?”
A picked-at boat of bacon cheese fries and several ‘deconstructed chili dogs’—which are just hot dogs with chili on the side in a fancy ramekin—sit on the table.
The rising smell of leather seats and fried food surrounds me, and the little slices of foam resting on top of our beer glasses lower with each sip we all take, condensation dripping down the side.
Lennon’s still tucked under Stephan’s arm with her blue eyes closed, chest drifting into a steady rhythm—like a child whose parents took them out for dinner too late.
Stephan is deathly still, like the thought of waking his girlfriend is unfathomable.
Noah and Margot both challenge each other to which is the faster way to eat deconstructed chili dogs—she swears it’s by dumping the chili on the hot dog like a normal person, and he swears by drinking the chili out of the ramekin then eating the hot dog in two bites.
In case you are wondering, yes, my attraction to him went down a few notches after witnessing that.
Which leaves Fletcher just sitting there. He looks…uncomfortably tall, with his legs stretched out under the small expanse of the table, shoulders hunched over. Like Gumby or something.
The second round of questions with our winning trivia group, ‘Which is not a lot,’ goes by just as easily as the first one.
When I asked earlier why they named the group that, Margot explained it was because whenever they call out points, they would say the other team name, their point count, then our team name, so it sounds like they’re saying ten points, which is not a lot.
It gets a laugh a quarter of the time.
“Do you usually not go for the board?” I turn to those at the table I find to be delightful and not, how to put it, a complete jackass. “Am I taking all the answers?”
Stephan barks a laugh and leans back on the cushion, my roommate falling back with him. “No one ever answers except Fletcher. We just come along for the happy hour and the gift cards at the end of the night.”
Noah nods. “Last time, we all got pedicures.”
“And the time before that, it was a free pottery class,” Margot adds, checking her teeth for lipstick in the reflection of a soup spoon.
“So, you guys really never answer the questions?”
“Sometimes I do,” Stephen says with a smile. “Just to make Fletcher mad.”
I temporarily allow my eyes to settle on Fletcher, and he dips his chin. “It works.”
“One time he threw popcorn at me because of it.”
“You answered the question of who was the first man on the moon with ‘Louis Armstrong.’”
“We still won.”
“Barely, and only due to me.”
The announcer taps on his microphone again, his free hand holding a fried mozzarella stick between his middle and pointer finger like a cigarette. “Alright, everyone ready for round three?”
The remaining tables cheer, including ours.
Well, except for Lennon and Fletcher. The announcer flips over a new page in his binder on the bar counter and leans into the mic to ask the next question.
Fletcher reaches for the board before he can even ask it, which makes my fingers reach out at the same time.
It’s a dead heat, but the board is leaning on my side, so I grab it first, pulling it to my chest.
I promise, had this been anyone else at this table, I would not care about this kind of thing. Or maybe I’d care a little less. Mom used to say I have no enemies except those who I played Monopoly with. Then, it’s me against the world.
But it’s just this man, with his little scoffs at the questions that are clearly not about his manly-man literature. I feel like I owe it to feminism to prove him wrong.
“Give me the board,” he demands.
“No.”
“Why?”
“Because I will know the answer faster.” So long as it is a normal question, and not something like What is Stephen King's preferred toilet paper brand?
His brow lowers, brief lines of crow's feet stretching the corners of his eyes. “All you have known the answers to are useless questions about women's fiction or romance.”
My gasp is palpable. “So, women's fiction and romance are useless?”
“Not women's fiction.”
“And romance?”
He looks to the others at the table like Am I right? But they’re all suddenly very interested in the dessert menu or the venue's light fixtures.
“Do you need me to answer that?”
“What about it is useless, exactly?”
“It’s…incomprehensible.”
“You’re such a,” I search for the right word, and my brain fails me.
“A what?”
“Lothario.” Did I even use that right?
Fletcher mouths the word Lothario like it’s bitter—a battery touching the tip of his tongue, sending a shiver down his spine.
“That’s the worst thing I’ve ever heard, and I don’t even know what it means.”
I’m suddenly thinking I don’t know what it means either, so I just skirt right past that.
“I can’t believe you think romance is incomprehensible. That is so not true, you can’t just—” Before I can finish the sentence, the announcer taps the mic again.
“Alright, everyone, next question!”