Chapter 8 #2
I miss the next two because I’m telling her off for talking through the clips. We exchange a look of profound shared despair.
‘That was definitely music,’ she says, after clip four.
‘Definitely. Of some kind.’
‘I’ll write music,’ she says. ‘Best we can do.’
Clip seven is the opening three seconds of ‘Dancing Queen’. I can tell because it’s ‘Dancing Queen’ and I have ears. Nina writes something, crosses it out, writes something else, crosses that out harder.
‘That’s ABBA,’ I say.
‘I know it’s ABBA. I’m trying to remember which ABBA.’
‘Nina. It’s “Dancing Queen”.’
‘They all sound identical under pressure.’
‘“Dancing Queen” is not identical to anything. “Dancing Queen” is singular.’
She writes it down, glaring at me.
Clip nine I get – four seconds of something from a 1983 film soundtrack that I have no business knowing – and the entire table turns to stare at me.
‘How,’ Jude says.
‘My mum had the video.’
‘That’s not a normal thing to have in your head.’
‘I contain multitudes.’
Nina is already writing it down with great reluctance, bangles sliding. ‘You are a genuinely strange person,’ she informs me.
‘You just wrote it down.’
‘Under protest.’
Her shoulder stays pressed against mine. We lose points on three clips that defeat us both entirely – sounds that might be music or might be a distressed kettle – but we lose them together, which is the only acceptable way and she passes the pen to me, shaking out her hand.
‘You write, I’ve got a cramp from the pressure.’
I snort an undignified laugh and take the pen.
Somewhere during the geography round, her knee presses against mine under the table and stays there, and I stop trying to concentrate on the questions and start just writing whatever comes to mind, which is how I accidentally write ‘Nina’ instead of ‘Nile’ for the longest river in Africa and have to cross it out so thoroughly the paper tears.
She doesn’t notice. Brynn, sitting across from us, glances at the torn paper and then at me and then back at her pint. I ignore her.
We’re neck and neck with the Treloars going into the final round, and the entire pub feels it.
‘Picture round,’ Ayo announces, and the groan is universal.
‘I hate the picture round,’ Nina mutters.
‘Everyone hates the picture round.’
‘Why do we keep doing this?’
‘Because we’re competitive and emotionally damaged.’
‘Fair.’
The pictures go up on the screen – blurry celebrities, obscure landmarks, things that might be animals or might be weather formations. Nina squints at them like she can intimidate them into making sense.
‘That’s definitely a ferret,’ I say, pointing at picture six.
‘That’s not a ferret. That’s a stoat.’ Her gaze narrows.
‘It’s a ferret. Look at the tail.’
‘I’m looking at the tail. It’s a stoat tail.’
‘There’s no such thing as a distinct stoat tail.’
‘There absolutely is. Stoats have black tips.’
‘So do some ferrets.’
‘Name one ferret with a black-tipped tail.’
‘Gerald.’
She stares at me blankly. ‘Gerald the rabbit?’
‘Gerald the ferret. Different Gerald. I’m a vet, Nina. I know ferrets.’
‘You’re a vet who’s currently lying about ferrets to win a pub quiz.’
‘Write stoat if you want. But when we lose by one point, remember this moment.’
She writes ferret, glaring at me the whole time. Her mouth is doing what it does when she’s trying not to smile – pressed flat, corners twitching, the effort of suppression making it worse. I try not to look triumphant and fail.
The results come in. We’ve won by two points. Nina shrieks – actually shrieks, the sound cutting through the pub noise like a gull through fog – and throws her arms around me before I have time to do anything about my face.
She’s warm and close and laughing against my shoulder, and I can feel her ribs moving under my hands and the press of her collarbone against my chest and the smell of her – coffee and flowers, coconut in her hair – and my arms have come up around her automatically, muscle memory, the shape of her so familiar that my body knows it without my permission.
I hold her the way I always hold her. Not too tight. Not too long.
She pulls back.
Not far. Just far enough to look at me, her face inches from mine, her eyes bright with victory. Her hands are still on my shoulders. My hands are still on her waist. The pub noise has gone somewhere far away and unhelpful.
And I think I’m crumbling inside.
‘We won,’ she says, slightly breathless.
‘We won.’
‘The ferret was right.’
‘The ferret was right.’
She’s looking at me. I’m looking at her.
Her lips are parted. There’s a flush across her cheeks and her fingers have tightened on my shoulders.
I can feel each one separately, five points of pressure through my T-shirt.
The distance between us is nothing; it’s mere centimetres; it’s the smallest movement I’d ever have to make.
One lean. That’s all. One lean and years of discipline would be gone in a second.
I don’t lean.
I never lean.
‘Drinks!’ Brynn appears at the edge of the table, proffering a tray with impeccable timing. ‘Victory drinks. Tom, you’re buying the next round because you got the Saturn question right and you were far too smug about it.’
Nina pulls back. Her hands leave my shoulders and the five points of pressure vanish and I can breathe again, which is not actually an improvement.
‘I wasn’t smug,’ I say, and my voice sounds normal, which is the greatest performance of my life because there isn’t a molecule in my body that isn’t on fire.
‘You were incredibly smug. Jude, back me up.’ Brynn clunks the tray down, slopping beer.
‘You were pretty smug,’ Jude agrees.
‘I was appropriately confident. There’s a difference.’
Nina has slid back to her side of the booth.
She’s picking up her white wine, looking at Brynn, looking anywhere but at me.
Her cheeks are still flushed. The space where she was is warm against my leg.
She pushes her dark curls behind her ear, a quick nervous gesture I’ve seen a thousand times but not usually directed at me, and for a second her fingers hesitate at her jaw, like she’s lost the thread of what she was doing.