Chapter 14
Miller
“Smile! Put your arm around her!” The bartender waves an impatient hand at me, barely glancing away from the screen of Ren’s phone as she puts way too much effort into framing the photo properly.
Ren throws me a sideways glance, teeth finding her bottom lip when she hides a laugh. Her eyes widen, cutting to her shoulder, and she smiles at me expectantly. “Come on, they want a good picture of their champions. Not everyone gets a perfect score at Jurassic Park trivia night, you know.”
“Not everyone has a knower of fossils and all things dinosaur on their team.” I grin, tossing my arm over her shoulder, looking back at the camera.
“Say champions!” the bartender demands.
I think Ren’s nose wrinkles, and she gives a half-hearted echo of the word, but she’s still smiling, holding up the raptor trophy proudly.
I do the same, and I lift a finger off her shoulder like the number one, which the bartender seems to love, judging by her loud shriek when she starts clicking rapidly to capture as many photos as she can.
“All done!” She throws a thumbs-up before handing Ren her phone back. “Whenever you post, we’d love it if you tagged the bar. Great publicity.”
The bartender gives me a hopeful—and knowing—look before she disappears back into the crowd.
Ren leans towards me, like she’s about to rest against my chest. The low lights of the bar suddenly feel like spotlights beating down on me.
My grip tenses against her shoulder where my palm engulfs the whole thing, but she holds out the phone in front of me, laughing lightly. “Oh, these are actually kind of funny!”
“Yeah?” Swallowing, I look down at the phone.
They aren’t bad pictures. Not at all.
Ren, hair tumbling around her shoulders, curling inward at the ends.
Eyes the brightest word for blue you’d find in a dictionary somewhere.
And her mouth—full lips split in a smile so wide it rounds her cheeks, flushed from the warmth of the bar, and her slim, fossil-dusting hands wrapped around the tiny raptor like it’s the Commissioner’s Trophy.
Me, hair curling around my ears, waves flopping down on my forehead carelessly. Grinning more than I have in months, one hand splayed against my knee, the tattooed one hidden and protected by its spot on her shoulder.
My throat dries out when, glancing sideways, I see she looks the same. Hair spilling across her shoulders, cheeks pink, but her teeth come down on her bottom lip and I—
“Do you like this one?” She turns to me, blinking expectantly.
“Uh,” I mumble, eyes snapping back up to hers, and I try to grin through whatever feeling that’s currently clawing its way through my chest. “Yeah. Yeah, send it to me.”
Ren’s fingers move across her screen, and when the text vibrates my phone in my pocket, I finally let go of her shoulder. I give my head a shake, clearing my throat. “Here, I’ll knock something off my list.” Bringing up Instagram, I hold the phone out to her. “I’ll tag you?”
“Look at you! Two things in one night? A public appearance and a social media post? Who is he?” she laughs before spelling out her handle.
I make a big show of hitting the follow button. She rolls her eyes, unamused, but her cheeks pink.
Ren, @renjacobsattheroyal, mostly posts photos of the fossil collection, with the occasional photo of a cocktail and her friend from the game. Imani—the dropper.
She’s even got a dinosaur emoji in her bio.
My heart beats funny at that. “Cute. Notice you didn’t use the T. rex one though.”
Ren purses her lips. “The T. rex gets too much attention as it is.”
“Totally agree.” I nod while I bring up the photo and type out a caption.
Her chin lifts. “Do you really?”
“Well—” I hit post, silencing my phone so the onslaught of notifications I’ll get won’t break the speaker.
I haven’t posted since an obligatory back-on-the-field photo at the start of the season.
I turn to her, shrugging. “You raise some good points. How many questions were about the T. rex tonight? Probably more than any other dinosaur.”
Her eyes light up. “Miller—this is exactly what I’m talking about. You get it.” She points at me, bringing up the tagged photo on her own phone.
Her gaze skates over the picture, the likes already accumulating, but she pauses when it drops to the caption.
big trivia champions—guess who’s smarter?
(i’ll give you three, but you’ll only need one)
Her smile tilts into a frown, and a crease sketches between her brows. She chews the inside of her cheek. “You shouldn’t do that.”
“What?”
“Talk down to yourself.” She points at the screen, finger tapping the caption. “There are all different kinds of intelligence.”
“You think my ability to read a play on the field is on the same level as knowing what kind of chemicals and whatever are found in fossils?” I try for a laugh, but she gives me a flat look. “I was just—” I scrub my jaw. “It was a joke, at my own expense, but uh, maybe not a very nice one.”
“It wasn’t. You should consider not making them anymore,” she says softly, tapping the photo with a like, typing something out in the comments, and hitting the Follow button before shoving her phone into the pocket of her sweater.
She smiles again, holding up the trophy. “What should we do to celebrate?”
I exhale, nodding. She might be onto something. Other people might say I’m stupid, but I don’t have to repeat it. I give her a smile, half apologetic, half earnest. “I’m, uh, starving actually. Haven’t eaten since the plane. Any chance you want to grab something to eat?”
“In a city with some of the best food in the country, literally, the Danforth is right there”—Ren throws a hand behind her, waving the trophy—“you pick a cart and street meat, outside the GO station? This isn’t even a desirable location for hot dogs, Miller.”
I cut her a look, cocking a brow. “So you don’t want one?”
She folds her arms across her chest, chin lifting. “I didn’t say that.”
“In case you were wondering, the best location for hot dogs is outside the stadium,” I tell her, shoving my hands in my pockets, waiting for the line to move forward.
“You’re kidding,” she says flatly.
I shake my head. “Nope. Best hot dogs, swear to god. If I’m low on protein for the day, I’ll run out and grab a few before games sometimes.”
“A few? How does that not make you sick? Wait—I forgot. Twenty-seven-year-old metabolism.” She shakes her head, slow and exaggerated, before she pats me on the shoulder. “Enjoy it while it lasts, it’s all downhill after thirty.”
Doubt it. Not when thirty-two-year-old Ren Jacobs stands there looking like that, I think.
I snort. “I’ll keep that in mind.” The line ahead of us clears, and the man behind the counter peers down at us expectantly. I glance sideways at Ren. “You first.”
For someone who passed judgement on my hot-dog stand selection, she knows exactly what to order.
It’s a sight—Ren Jacobs standing tall, asking for what she wants with no hesitation. Shoulders straight, hair down her back, a spill of red wine under the night sky.
She tries to pay, and we get in some sort of childlike fight over the machine, and she threatens to stab me with the tail of the velociraptor until I take a step back, hands raised in concession.
Neither of us says anything, but we smile through the silence, dropping down on the nearby curb to eat.
But she sets the trophy carefully between us, like it’s ours and we’ve got shared custody.
She studies the stars hanging in the sky. I study her.
“So.” I ball up my napkins in my fist when I’m done, tossing them haphazardly towards the trash.
I don’t need to look; I know they went in.
But Ren does. Her gaze follows the balled-up napkin when it travels through the air, and she gives a dry laugh when it lands.
I grin, shrugging. “We marked the first thing off your list. We won trivia. We started working on another one of mine. But we didn’t do the other thing you said we had to. ”
“What other thing?” She tilts her head in question, folding her napkin into a triangle and tucking it into the cardboard box she put her hot dog in.
“Tell each other something,” I toss out, asking the first thing I can think of. “Why dinosaurs?”
She sniffs, but she doesn’t hesitate, murmuring, “My dad.”
“Is he—” I start, but the way her face collapses—not entirely, just quietly, like it’s something that still hurts even though she’s used to it now—tells me her father isn’t an is. He’s a was. I try again. “Was he . . . into dinosaurs?”
“He’s a geologist.” She smiles, sort of wistful. A small noise comes from the back of her throat. It sounds like it’s trying to be a laugh, but it can’t quite form. “At least, he was. I have no idea what he does now. He left when I was eight.”
“Why?” I ask, even though I know what it’s like for a parent to just . . . stop choosing you. I just can’t imagine a world where someone would ever stop choosing her.
“No idea. He just . . . did.” She picks at the edge of the cardboard container still in her hands before she sets it down on the steps beside her.
“One day he was there, and the next day he wasn’t.
But he left behind his National Geographic collection.
And as an eight-year-old, I thought that was some sort of message.
If I could just learn enough—know enough—it might be enough for him.
” She scoffs before she turns to me, lifting her brows.
“Trust me, I know. I’ve spent the last four years trying to unpack that one in therapy.
Turns out forming those kinds of pathways and connections as a child really influences your self-image later in life. ”