Chapter 13 #2
So, I light too many of the candles, I pick a record at random from that haphazard stack to play even though the turntable could really use a dusting, I sit cross-legged on the floor in my living room, back against the couch, two-day-old Thai food containers spread out on the coffee table in front of me, and start sorting through a stack of papers on coelacanth fossil preservation.
I don’t get very far with that either.
My phone vibrates against the worn wood surface of the coffee table, and when I look away from the paper I was reading and the noodles I was carelessly bringing to my mouth, my fingers slip against the chopsticks, sending the food everywhere.
“Shit,” I mutter, cringing down at the oil stain spreading across the paper, blurring all the words about possible latent causes of pyrite decay.
Frowning, I drop my chopsticks and glance back to my phone.
It’s from Miller. But it’s not a text.
It’s a link to a website for a bar in the East End that hosts a weekly movie trivia night, and judging by the calendar, tonight is all about Jurassic Park.
Number one on Ren’s Reasons to Be Ren.
Something stutters in my chest when I chew my lip, blinking down at the page and the name of the bar spelled out like the sign above the gates in Jurassic Park, in the titular font that became recognizable for one thing.
A real text comes in.
Miller: Guy on my team told me about this on the plane home.
Followed by another.
Miller: I just got back to my place. But I don’t have to be at the stadium until tomorrow afternoon, if you were up for ticking the first thing off your list.
And another.
Miller: Looks like it’s just about the movies though. Sorry, you’ll have to save the real dinosaur knowledge for another night.
I hesitate, fingers hovering over the screen. This isn’t just a Scott thing. It was something he took from me, but he’s not the sole reason it hurts. And as much as I wrote this down as the first thing on my list, it feels different when I’m confronted with it.
Ren: Aren’t you tired?
Miller: Nah. If you’re game, I am. If you’re worried, going to the grocery store wasn’t so bad.
Miller: Not when you were there.
That stuttering thing turns into a blooming feeling. Like bravery, I think. His and mine. And like this feeling I haven’t had in so very long—when someone sees something valuable in you that, maybe, you can’t see in yourself.
Sniffing, I glance down at the spilled noodles. At the mess of papers, the winking lights of scattered candles, and all these pieces of me everywhere in the apartment.
They’re a bit messy, chaotic and frayed around the edges. And maybe I am too.
But that’s no reason not to be me.
Ren: Okay. I can meet you there at eight?
I don’t like to be late, but I usually am. Not so much that people tell me an early start time to try to get me somewhere on time. But ten to fifteen minutes, usually.
It’s another piece of that mess Scott hated so much I’ve tried and tried to clean up. It’s not intentional and it’s never nefarious. I leave the house with good intentions, but sometimes, things stop me on the way.
Today, it was a display of fresh peonies for sale outside the subway. They were beautiful, and I wanted to let the florist know.
It only cost me five minutes, but Miller’s already there—leaning up against the brick, one foot kicked up, which just pops all the muscles in his legs, the linen shorts he’s wearing pulling taut across his quads.
“I’m so sorry, I didn’t mean to be late, I—” I start, but he lifts up a piece of paper between two fingers in greeting.
“All good. Already got one of the trivia sheets. Couldn’t come up with a good team name though, so we’ll have to be known as Team Miller and Ren. Hope that’s okay.” A grin kicks his mouth to the side, and he rolls up the sleeves of his sweater when he pushes off the wall.
My shoulders fall, a bit in relief. It’s a worry I still carry around—that even though Miller has given me no indication he considers punctuality to be of the utmost importance, I might somehow disappoint him, too.
He holds the sheet out to me, and a smile stretches, burning my cheeks when I see our names on the team line in his untidy scrawl, and beneath that, empty space for us to answer ten questions over ten rounds.
Lifting my eyes to him, I quirk a brow. “Look at you, a second public appearance outside a game in what, two weeks? And you’re not even using a fake name?”
Miller laughs, and it sounds almost like the way it did at the gala—hoarse and unused—but the lines of his shoulders and the lift of his mouth tell me he’s not uncomfortable with the sound.
He gives his head a slow shake. “Told you at the grocery store. I don’t cheat.
I win. And when we win tonight—it looks like there’s a shitty dinosaur trophy up for grabs—it’s a victory I’d like to add to the shelf. ”
“Oh! Which dinosaur?” I ask brightly, before my brows snap together, my eye roll barely contained. “Let me guess, it’s probably a tyrannosaur.”
“I’m no expert, but it looked like a raptor to me,” he offers, the picture of casual, but the oceans in his eyes lighten, and even though he doesn’t really know me, not yet anyway, he knows enough to know that’s going to make me happy.
It does.
My smile splits with my excited shriek, and my grip tightens on the paper. “We need to win. No other option.”
“Glad we’re on the same page,” he says with another easy grin before he tips his chin towards the door. “Don’t want to lose out on a premium seat. Could be a good strategic advantage.”
“I’m not sure that’s how pub trivia works,” I tell him, but I follow and duck under his arm when he holds the door open for me.
Miller lifts his brows. “Nothing wrong with a little strategy.”
The bar’s more crowded than I’d have thought for themed trivia night. Teams are spread out at almost every table, and people are propped up on almost any available surface.
And they all seem happy to be here. Utterly at ease. Laughing in dinosaur T-shirts or hats or sweaters that don’t make them feel embarrassed.
It makes me feel stupid for letting Scott make me think it was stupid.
Miller reaches out a hand, angling his head towards the back of the bar where a singular high-top sits empty. I nod, but when I thread my fingers through his and let him weave through the crowd, I think some of those lingering feelings of stupidity get squashed under his hands.
I think people stop mid-conversation to stare when he walks too close to their tables. They hit their friends across the chest, right on the horns of triceratopses or the bony plates lining a stegosaurus’s back.
Someone shouts at him, turning their hat forward to point at the TMLB emblem embroidered in gold. “Great game last night, CB!”
Miller raises a hand in acknowledgement, mouth in a taut line until he stops us in front of the empty table. He lets go of my hand, knocking on the scratched wood. “This okay?”
“Sure.” I rub my thumb across my palm.
I haven’t held anyone’s hand in over four years, probably longer because Scott stopped with the displays of affection before that, and I thought I remembered what it felt like.
But I don’t think I did.
Not at all.
It certainly didn’t feel like that.
Warm. A calloused palm sliding against mine in this way that just spelled out a word I don’t recognize anymore, but it might have been safe. The determined tug of large fingers that aren’t pulling you. They’re not leading you. They’re guiding, but they’d change direction at any moment if you asked.
Miller drags one of the chairs away from the table, throwing a pointed look between me and the seat. I give him a weak smile, hopping up and clutching the trivia sheet to my chest.
When he deems I’m perched well enough, his hands roll down on either side of the seat, brushing the edges of my thighs, and he shoves the chair back towards the table, asking, “What do you want to drink? I’ll grab it from the bar before everything starts.”
“Whatever you’re having.” I shrug, smoothing the paper down on the surface and grabbing two of the pencils sitting in the jar at the edge of the table where it meets the wall.
“Well, I want whatever you’re having.” He flashes me another tight smile. “So, you pick.”
“What?” I blink.
He takes a slow, measured exhale. “Your list, your night.”
When I don’t answer, he adds, “And I doubt you’ve made a habit of picking things you want for yourself, so, drinks are all yours.”
“Oh,” I answer, and for some reason, the corners of my eyes prickle. But I smile, saying softly, “Cider. I’d say champagne, but I think I’ve had my fair share of that this month.”
The lines at the corners of his eyes crinkle, and he taps a thumb against the table. “Cider. All yours. I’ll be right back.”
He moves back through the crowd, and I might be imagining it—but he does seem more comfortable than he did at the grocery store, and certainly more than when he was at the museum or the gala.
People stop him, some going as far as to clap him on the back, and it seems like it’s going well until one of the strangers leans forward, their mouths turned down in sympathy when they give a slow shake of their head.
Whatever they say slumps Miller’s shoulders, all of him turning inward, and he doesn’t talk to anyone else while he waits for our drinks.
“Everything okay?” I ask, smiling, when he sets the too-full pint glasses down, cider sloshing over the rims and spilling on the already-sticky table.
“Yeah.” He nods through a grin that doesn’t meet his eyes. They’re dark again.
The Mariana Trench of Miller, where he goes when he’s sad.
He takes a long sip of his cider, and I watch, waiting for his nose to wrinkle, his eyes to scrunch at the taste. But his throat works in a swallow and then he looks up at me, another grin that doesn’t really go anywhere, asking, “You ready for the first question?”
Pressing my palms into the table, I lean forward. “Obviously.”
And I am ready. It’s so simple it’s almost laughable.
What dinosaur killed Dennis Nedry in the first film?
“Pfft. Easy.” I tip my chin up, making a show of marking down our answer on our sheet. “Dilophosaurus.”
Miller smiles again, and this one does go somewhere—stretching like the first rays of sun towards the churning surface of the ocean. He raises his glass to meet mine. “Trophy’s ours.”