Chapter 14
DARCY
Trivia night at the local pub is one of my few sacred institutions, and Annie treats it accordingly.
By the time I arrive she's claimed our usual table by the front window and is dealing out answer sheets and stubby pencils like a Vegas croupier.
Jules has a basket of fries she's guarding with her elbows, and Cathy comes straight from the clinic with her hair still in its work knot and a hint of antiseptic on her clothes.
"Les Quizerables," Annie says, writing our name across the top of the sheet with a flourish. She names the team every season, and it wouldn’t be an Annie team name if it wasn’t a bigger groaner than the last one. "Two seasons undefeated, ladies. Tonight we go for the three-peat."
"You say that like we're athletes," Cathy says.
"We are athletes of the mind." Annie slides a beer in front of me and points at it. "Drink. Get ready to slay like the trivia queens we are. And nobody sulks through the music round."
"I don't sulk."
"You've been sulking since Sunday and don't pretend I haven't noticed."
I let that go, because she's not entirely wrong, and because the beer is cold and the pub is warm and golden and full of people I've known my whole life. For the first time in days, the ache behind my sternum starts to loosen.
This is what I need. Questions with answers. My friends, a normal Thursday night, the comfort of being very good at something small. By the time the host starts testing his microphone, I'm laughing at Jules's impression of her recital moms and feeling almost like myself again.
Then the door opens, and Evan Bardot swings through it on his crutches.
My first thought is a friendly one, honestly. It's hard not to like Evan. Seeing Annie beam in his direction is its own form of entertainment too.
Next through the door is Colton Bardot, whose appearance in town, on a weeknight, must be some kind of miracle. He holds the door and scans the room like he's calculating the fastest route back out of it.
Then I see the man walking in behind the two brothers.
Finn.
Finn, who I'd assumed was back in Manhattan by now. Gone home to his real life, a fact I had finally come to accept after nearly a week with no sign of him anywhere in Mattichogue.
Except he isn't in Manhattan. He's standing in the doorway of my pub with his sleeves rolled up over his forearms, his tousled hair pushed back, and a blue shirt that has turned his eyes impossibly green, and my heart does not consult me at all.
It lifts. That's the terrible truth of it.
Before the shock, before the scramble for composure, there's one clean second of pure, unwilling gladness, because he's here, and I have missed him more than I've been willing to admit to anyone, including myself.
Then he sees me, and he goes still.
He does that around me. I noticed it during the weekend I spent torturing him and told myself it meant nothing.
The man is constant motion, all day, every day, drumming his fingers and talking with his hands—a storm of kinetic energy barely caged inside his all-too-gorgeous body.
Then he looks at me and all of it stops.
It stops now, right there in the doorway, long enough that Colton has to step around him.
I am suddenly, painfully aware that I'm wearing my favorite old cardigan and a pair of comfortably baggy jeans.
Ten minutes ago my outfit was perfectly fine for a night of trivia at the pub.
Now, I wish I'd taken a little time to put on some mascara or to wear the dark denim that hugs my curves a bit more.
Though why I should care what Finn Bardot thinks of me, I don't know.
Except I do know, and all I'm doing right now is pretending the man has no effect on me.
"Champions!" Evan arrives at our table, giving Annie a mysterious smile I'm tempted to call conspiratorial. "We've heard the legends. We're here to challenge the reigning trivia dynasty."
"It's more of a dictatorship," Cathy says. "Darcy doesn't allow wrong answers."
"Even better." Evan grins around the table and his smile lands on Annie again. "Are you ladies up for the challenge?"
"You'd like to formally lose to us, is what you're saying.
" Annie is trying to sound bored and failing, because she's smiling too much for boredom, and she's aiming all of it at Evan.
I notice it, and I fully intend to revisit it with her later, because right now Finn has crossed the room toward us.
He stops at the edge of our table, and every thought I was having scatters.
"Ms. Gable."
"Finn." I'm relieved to hear my voice come out steady. "What are you doing still in town? I assumed you were back in Manhattan."
"Manhattan's overrated." He shrugs, easy as anything. "The trivia scene there is totally soft. No dynasties worth toppling."
Why did you stay? The question is right there, pressing against my teeth.
But it's not something I can ask in a crowded bar with an audience.
He knows it, and I know it, so instead we just look at each other for a second too long, the way we've been doing around each other since the auction.
Two weeks ago I would have called it hostility.
I no longer have any idea what to call it.
He pulls a chair out from the next table, spins it around, and sits facing us with his forearms stacked across the back of it. My gaze drifts to his left forearm. The one I touched in the library parking lot on Sunday. I can still feel his warmth, his pulse jumping under my hand.
I came here tonight carrying a lot of guilt and an apology I'm still not sure how to deliver. Part of me wants to say something about all of it now, to break the ice between us. Instead I hear myself say, "Loser buys the table's round."
His expression lifts in surprise. His grin changes. It's real, and I hate that I can tell the difference now, and I hate even more how much I like being the one who causes it. Especially after the way we left things between us.
"Both rounds," he says. "And the winner gets the crown."
"You're going to regret the coronation ceremony," I warn.
"Not if we win."
I laugh at his overblown confidence. He clearly has no idea who he's dealing with. Not that I should be surprised. Finn Bardot has always underestimated me.
Even though I still feel bad about how I've treated him since he's been back in Mattichogue—not the least of which being my unwitting role in what happened Sunday—I'm going to enjoy knocking him on his ass tonight.
The early rounds go in our favor, just like always.
We take literature, obviously, and history, and Cathy carries science while the Bardot table—now known as their chosen team name, The Long Shots—argues in whispers loud enough to hear across the room.
But when the host reads the scores, they're right behind us, and they stay there.
We hit the geography round, and my stomach sinks a little. One of my few weak subjects.
"What's the highest mountain outside of Asia?" the host asks.
Cathy guesses Denali for our table, but I know it's just a guess.
When the host reads the answer, Aconcagua, Finn holds his sheet up for the whole bar to see. "Lovely this time of year," he announces. "Terrible place to lose a glove, though. I speak from experience."
I roll my eyes, happy to see him having fun. "Nobody asked," I call over.
He shoots a grin at me. "The people deserve context."
The people laugh, damn them. The whole pub is warming to him, table by table, the way rooms always warm to him.
Two weeks ago I would have watched it happen with my arms crossed, thinking, there he goes, performing again. I know better now. I know what the performance was built to cover, and how much work it takes, and how long he's been doing that work alone.
So I sit there with my pen in my hand, watching the town fall for Finn Bardot, and instead of the old bitterness there's an ache in my chest I don't have a name for yet. Deep down, in a place I don't want to acknowledge, I hope they laugh at every joke he's got.
Missing him was supposed to stop at some point.
Definitely, it should have stopped when he walked into the pub.
It hasn't. He's twenty feet away and I miss him anyway, because everything I actually need to say to him requires a room with no audience in it, and this town on a Thursday night doesn't have one.
He laughs at something Colton mutters, his head tipping back, and I lose my place on the answer sheet.
I once got thirty freshmen through a fire drill in the middle of a final exam without breaking stride, and one laugh from this man and I can't find question six.
I should be annoyed with myself. I should be annoyed with him, but I'm not.
His laugh has become my favorite sound in this bar, and there's no use pretending otherwise.
Annie snaps her fingers in front of my face. "Darce. Focus. We're only up two points now."
Round five is words and language. The host clears his throat into the microphone like he's about to announce a royal birth.
"For three points. What is the only common English word that ends in the letters M, T?"
Half the room groans. The Bardot brothers go into a huddle. I don't move. I know this one the way I know my own name. When the host calls for answers, I stand up.
"Dreamt," I say. And then, looking straight at Finn, I spell it out.
"D, R, E, A, M, T." Letter by letter, nice and slow, the way I used to practice for the regional spelling bee, back when a certain boy made sure the whole school found that hilarious.
I raise my glass to him. "They don't call me Dictionary Darcy for nothing. "
The bar laughs and one of my friends whoops a loud cheer. None of it matters, because I'm only watching Finn. His pen stops moving. All of him goes quiet, and the grin that spreads across his face is slow and real and not the one he gives the room.
"Touché," he says, and lifts his glass to me. "Point to the dynasty."