Chapter 12 #3
She needed to pull out her inner Meryl Streep and give a performance of a lifetime. This man was a stranger. He meant nothing to her. No-thing. He did not make her entire body light up with just a look, a word, a touch.
She had not spent the better part of the last eighteen months reliving the eight or so hours she’d spent with him, replaying them over and over and over in her head. Or imagined a million times what she would do if she ever saw him again.
No, he was a stranger. Strange-er.
Niko glanced around the room. “Yeah, they do seem to take the game pretty seriously.”
"JT's Trivia Night is not a game, it's a blood sport," Jenna corrected him.
Her voice sounded a little better but not great.
She pushed on and motioned towards Lana and her cohorts.
"The reigning champs The Quizney Princesses haven't lost in five months.
We almost beat them the last three times, and I would not be surprised if they poisoned Kiki and Robbie.
They're monsters. Actual monsters. I think one of them is a medical examiner.”
Better. That was better. She was doing better.
"So, it’s high stakes, then," Niko stated flatly.
“Okay, welcome to JT’s. My name is Shelby Dorsey, and I am your host for the evening.”
Oh, thank god. Shelby started the quiz. It was now a countdown until it was over. Sixty minutes. Jenna could do anything for sixty minutes. Even pretend the man across from her had zero power over her.
“Tonight our teams are, You Can’t Sip With Us, The Quiz Khalifas, Let’s Get Quizzical, Bar Flies, We Thought This Was Speed Dating, Quiztopher Walkens, The Smartinis, The Quiz Lebowskis, Risky Quizness, The Drunken Know-it-Alls, The Brewsual Suspects, Tequila Mockingbirds, The Winnerz, Trivial Newton Johns, The Fellowship of the Quiz, The In-Quizitors, and the reigning champions, The Quizney Princesses! ”
Shelby was going through the rules when Niko leaned forward and dropped yet another bomb, “Oh, and Deacon’s a ringer since he went to MIT.”
“Deacon?” Jenna repeated as her heart dropped to the ground.
No. It wasn’t. It couldn’t be. She looked over at “Deacon,” who was staring at her in the same disbelief that she was staring back at him.
Niko motioned to D. “Oh, yeah, didn’t I… sorry, this is Deacon St. Claire.”
Deacon St. Claire. D was Deacon St. Claire. Jenna saw the look in his eye. It was almost…apologetic. Just like his grin was when she’d said fancy car and fancy hotel and he’d told her the room was comped if it made her feel any better.
Her brain started replaying all of their conversations through a Deacon St. Claire filter, and in all scenarios she was coming out the idiot.
Of course he was Deacon St. Claire. The private entrance.
Him interrupting people before they said his name.
James knew who he was. James texting: of course you’re at the st. claire.
Him telling her to block James when he texted that.
Oh god, she’d said she always wanted to stay at a St. Claire hotel and asked if he stayed at them often. How stupid. And then the clothes he had sent up. She hadn’t even known that St. Claire hotels all have boutiques in them. She checked online later. What an idiot she must have looked like.
Sixty minutes. She just had to get through sixty minutes.
The first round began. It was general knowledge. Deacon and Tiana answered all the questions. She wasn’t sure why Niko stayed silent, she’d been too busy feeling humiliated.
The second round was “Movie Quotes.” By then, Jenna, who was moving through the stages of grief, shock—or whatever it was—quickly, had moved past embarrassment to anger, and she used that to fuel her competitive drive.
She and Niko crushed it in all genres, from rom-coms to ’80s and ’90s horror and sci-fi.
When Shelby read out that We Thought This Was Speed Dating was in the lead after the second round, Jenna took it back into a celebratory old-school Arsenio Hall fist pump and nearly knocked over her water glass.
Deacon reached across the table and grabbed it, saving her from getting a lap full of water and looking like she peed herself the rest of the night.
As much as Jenna didn’t want to admit it, even his quick ninja reflexes were hot.
Was there anything about this man that wasn’t hot?
Oh yeah, he lied. By omission, but still.
The third round was general knowledge, which they all contributed to and did well. During the fourth round, Science and Nature, while Tiana and Deacon debated the atomic number of manganese, it dawned on Jenna that D, er Deacon, had been living in Hope Falls for months.
Months. That time that she walked into Sue Ann’s to pick up takeout for her and Peanut, he probably had just been there. All those times she’d listened to women, and a handful of men, gush about Deacon St. Claire, they were talking about him. Her D. Well, not her D, but her D.
How was that possible?
Hope Falls was not that big.
Deacon St. Claire was D. D was Deacon St. Claire.
Wait, that meant that D was Poppy and Liam’s half-brother.
How was that possible?
Her brain hurt and she hadn’t had one glass of wine or a drop of alcohol.
Round four was sports, and it went by in a blur. The final round was rapid-fire pop culture, only thirty seconds to answer instead of one minute. Jenna pulled herself together to focus. This was her last trivia night and if she was ever going to de-crown those Quizney bitches, this was her chance.
Jenna was able to cover the Friends, K-Pop, and Social Media trend questions thanks to Blake.
Deacon covered Star Wars, Paw Patrol, and Miss Rachel because, right, he had a now, she would be five.
Actually, she knew he had a five-year-old named Tabitha who had long curly brown hair, big blue eyes and was adorable.
“Okay, so our final question is in three parts with a bonus point available. These three phrases or words have become popularized on Love Island. I need you to tell me which islander originally coined them: The Ick, Fanny Flutters, and DBS and a bonus question: What does DBS stand for?” Shelby read out.
Jenna leaned into Tiana and threw out a few LI names because she didn’t watch Love Island since seeing young hot people fall in love made her sad, although from what she’d heard, not that many of them fell in love.
Tiana didn’t seem to know either. They wrote down what they thought, but Niko grabbed the board, erased it, and wrote different answers on the board, then handed it back to Jenna.
She stared down at the answers, which were as good as the ones they’d come up with.
Shelby read out the answers. “Okay, this is it, we have The Ick, which was coined by Olivia Attwood.”
Jenna looked down at the board. It was right. She glanced back at Tiana, who was giving Niko heart eyes. Yeah, Jenna had a feeling that relationship wasn’t going to be “fake” for very long, if it ever really was.
“Fanny Flutters was coined by Maura Higgins.”
Jenna smiled at Tiana, whose face lit up. He was two for two.
“And DBS was created by Wes Nelson, and it stands for the Do Bits Society.”
Jenna stood, holding her board up with all the correct answers in triumph. They won. She won. The last night of Trivia Night they’d won.
“And we have our winners. For the first time in six months, We Thought This Was Speed Dating is our new Quiz Night Champion!”
The room erupted in applause. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Tiana hug Niko and then he kissed her.
She was still cheering and clapping thinking, the kiss would be just that, a kiss.
Oh no, it was not that. It was a burn-the-house-down, ovary tingling, get someone pregnant kiss.
Cat calls and whistles came from around the room.
“Get a room!”
“Turn on the sprinklers!”
“Hose ‘em down!”
Finally, Niko pulled away and rested his forehead on Tiana’s as he practically growled, “Let’s go home.”
Tiana nodded. Niko didn’t waste a second, he picked up her purse and jacket. Looked at Deacon, “Thanks for stepping in,” then Jenna, “Nice meeting you, Jenna,” and they were gone.
His arm was around Tiana’s back and they practically floated out of that room. When they did, Jenna noticed Tiana’s ex was sitting three tables away.
Oh shit. That’s what that show was about. Had Brock Bartlett been there the entire time? Of course he had. Jenna hadn’t even noticed that her best friend’s asshole ex was at the bar because she’d been too busy freaking out over D, er, Deacon St. Claire.
“Jenna?”
Hearing him say her name was such a… it spread through her like a shot of whiskey.
Tingles from her head to her toe. She closed her eyes and let herself marinate in the sensation…
just for a moment… because she knew when she opened them it was back to reality, and the reality was, D was Deacon St. Claire and she was leaving.