My moment of levity appeared to encourage Darius. “You won’t name any names?”
“Oh, of course not.” Shocked that he would even ask that, I felt my eyes widen.
He tapped his note cards on the desk. “So, in this series, we obviously like to find out all we can about the subjects’ jobs, but also how those careers affect the rest of your life.” He flashed his megawatt smile again, along with a quick wink. “I’d like to go back to the social life thing. Are you married?”
“No,” I said.
“Dating anyone?”
I shook my head.
“Is it safe to assume that it’s pretty tough to date when you’re on call so much of the time?”
“Well, yes,” I said. “And also it’s hard to find a guy who understands that my job and my patients come first. I worked hard to get to where I am, and I need to find someone who’s okay with—”
My phone buzzed, and I glanced down.
“‘Okay with…’” Darius prompted me.
“I’m sorry.” I snatched my phone off the desk, holding it close to my chest, shielding the screen from his eyes as well as the looming camera lens. One of my patients was contacting me with an urgent question of a very private persuasion. “I need to return this call.”
“Ironic that we were just talking about how your job affects the rest of your life.”
“Just how it goes.” I stood, and Jen rushed over to remove the microphone from my shirt collar. “I’m so sorry that we have to cut our interview short, but you wanted to know what being a concierge doctor was like.” I grinned, shrugging.
“You’re right. I did want to know all about your career.” Darius glanced at his watch. “And I think I want to know more. I need to know more. I know our time is almost up today, but can I come back early next week?”
Shit. And here I thought I’d escaped. “I’ll have to check my schedule.”
“Fine,” he said. “Do that and get back to me.” My phone buzzed again. This time it was Darius sending me his contact information.
“Okay,” I said. “Will do.”
Darius held out his well-manicured hand again, and I shook it. “Nice to make your acquaintance, Annie. We’ll talk again soon.” The overhead lights glinted off his teeth, and again my knees buckled slightly. I didn’t normally go gaga over celebrities, but I actually watched Darius on the news, and he was just as impressive in person.
Sending a quick text back to my patient, I headed toward the door. “It was really nice talking to you.”
“Next time, I want to dig deeper into your need to find someone who understands the rigors of your career.”
I turned around.
He shrugged, looking vulnerable for the first time today. “That really hit home with me.” He flashed a smile. “Call me to set up a time to talk again.”
“I will.” Swallowing the knot that had developed in my throat, I held up my phone. “I really have to handle this, though. Goodbye.” Then I pulled open the door, stepped into the lobby, tripped on the rug, and nearly fell flat on my face.
Chapter Six
The One With All the Trivia
After a long day of regular work stuff on top of the Darius interview—after which Tina kept reminding me about how I face-planted onto the floor by saying over and over again that this was a life lesson for her that she should always keep her phone camera on, always—I wanted nothing more than to head home, put on sweatpants, and curl up in front of the TV. But Kelly, who’d been fairly absent all week, had insisted that I meet her for trivia tonight, for, as she put it, “old times’ sake.”
Since I got to O’Leary’s Barn a little early, I grabbed us a table, pulled out my phone, and settled in. Kelly’d said she’d be here around six fifteen, and it was only about six now.
Dax the bartender came over and wiped down my table. “What can I get you?”
“You’re waiting tables now?”
He nodded back toward the bar. “There’s a new guy. Our boss wants him to train behind the bar tonight. One of our usual waitresses called in sick, so here I am.” He smiled and held up his order pad and pen. I ignored the whiff of a butterfly in my stomach. It had only popped up because he was wearing a Talking Heads T-shirt. Nothing Dax-specific. People who appreciated David Byrne were my kind of people, generally. It wasn’t like I’d ever be interested in a way-too-young guy who’d ma’amed me.
“How’s your leg?” I asked.
He tapped on his thigh with his pen. “Good as new.”
“I’ll have an old-fashioned, thanks,” I said.
“You got it.” He turned on his heel and went back to the bar.
I played around on my phone for a few minutes—returning some emails and texts—until Dax came back with my drink. I checked the clock. Six sixteen. Still no Kelly.
“Thanks,” I said as Dax set the drink in front of me.
“Where’s your partner in crime?” he asked, dimples flashing. Where Darius, the superstar news guy, was all polish and sheen, Dax was more rugged and unkempt. He had what appeared to be a perpetual five o’clock shadow, unrelenting bedhead, and that scar bisecting one of his eyebrows. But all that was just me objectively noticing people’s physical characteristics. As a doctor, it was my job to pay attention to details.
“You’re being extra chatty today.”
“You left me a thirty-dollar tip last week,” he said. “Your bill was ten.”
“Ah.” I sipped my drink. “So this friendliness is economic.”
“Sure.”
“Kelly’s on her way,” I said. “We’re doing trivia tonight.”
“Well, good luck.” Solemnly, he nodded toward the spot near the front of the bar where the quiz master was setting up his trivia paraphernalia. “No one beats the Very Stable Geniuses.”
“The who?” I narrowed my eyes.
“The front table. They’re the reigning champs.”
I followed his finger to where he was pointing and found a table of younger white guys, probably in their twenties, who’d come to the bar dressed in button-down shirts and ties. “They’re babies. They won’t be able to compete with Kelly and me.” I could feel my competitive spirit rising. The Very Stable Geniuses hadn’t met me yet.
My entire life, I’d never been the hottest girl in the room, but I’d always managed to shine in this kind of environment—whether quiz night at a bar or Academic Bowl in high school. The Very Stable Geniuses wouldn’t know what hit them. I knew shit. Lots and lots of random shit.
Dax glanced at his watch. “They may be competing against just you, if your friend doesn’t make it.”
“Oh, she’s on her way.” I checked the phone again. Six twenty. No Kelly. No texts. “This was her idea.”
Dax leaned down, and I drew in his scent of spice and hops. “I know, no cheating, but if you need help on any of the questions, I’m pretty good at trivia.”
“Is this about the tip again?”
“Yes,” he said, “but I also know a shocking amount of useless info.” He smirked. “I can pretend to be delivering you a fresh drink or a bowl of nuts…”
“I’ll be fine, thanks.” Blushing, I picked up my phone and pretended to check a very important text. I couldn’t tell what his angle was yet, beyond the tip thing, but I knew somehow he was messing with me. And I, Dr. Annie Kyle, would not be messed with.
Dax took the hint and went back to the bar.
I scrolled through Facebook for a few minutes, getting into a quick fight with my cousin, who believed everything he saw on whatever his preferred confirmation-bias news source was at the moment. When I sensed the door to the bar opening, I glanced up eagerly. Kelly. It had to be. We were going to kick ass and take names tonight.
But it wasn’t her. A woman with thick, curly, brown hair up in a knot on top of her head and a cheeky chipmunk smi
le on her freckled face stepped in and glanced around.
“Yessi! Oh my goodness!” I jumped up and ran to my friend, pulling her into a hug, her chin hitting my collarbone. “What are you doing here?” I released her from my clutches.
“Kelly invited me.” Yessi glanced around, searching for our mutual bestie. “Where is she?”
“Not here yet.” I gestured toward one of the chairs, and Yessi took a seat. I couldn’t suppress my smile. “This is so fun!”
Yessi narrowed her serious dark brown eyes. “This isn’t going to end in you and me yanking each other’s hair out during the sixth round again?”
I laughed. “No! This time we have a mutual enemy.” I nodded toward the table at the front. “The Very Stable Geniuses.”
Yessi appraised them and turned back to me. “Oh, screw those guys. They won’t know what hit them.”
I beamed. “I’m so glad you’re here.” My heart swelled in my chest. Kelly had put this together—a fun evening, just the three of us girls, like back in our twenties. Excitement and joy pumped through me. I hadn’t realized just how much I needed a night like this.
I rose from my seat. “Let me get you something to drink.”
“A beer,” Yessi said. “They say it’s good for milk production or something.” She cupped her hands around her heavy breasts.
“How’s Olivia doing, by the way?” Yessi had texted me after the emergency room. Olivia just had an earache.
“Back to her old self,” Yessi said. “Complaining about everything, but she’s fever free.”
“You want a Green Line?” I asked. “I think they have it on draft.”
She smiled. “You know me too well.”
Taking a few deep breaths, I pushed through the crowd and up to the bar. Dax was on the other side, talking to some other woman—some pretty young thing with reddish-blond hair and an eager smile. He leaned across the bar, resting on one elbow, eyes wide. He was chatting her up. It only proved that whatever he was doing talking to me a few moments ago wasn’t flirting or anything more than acting as a waiter looking for a good tip. I was—and always would be—way too old for him. There was power in recognizing that.
With each step I took toward forty, I became more and more invisible. Dax had probably offered to help me with trivia as part of a Boy Scout’s instinct to practice kindness to one’s elders.
“A-hem,” I said impatiently. I would not wait around for whatever…this…was.
A few seconds later, he slowly turned and beamed when he saw it was me. “Annie, what can I get you?”
“Green Line,” I said. “Draft, please.”
He grabbed a glass.
“It’s for my friend Yessi.”
As he poured the beer, he looked over at my table.
“Kelly’s still on her way. She invited Yessi to come do trivia tonight, like we used to do back in our twenties.” I didn’t normally ramble on like this to strangers, but since I now understood Dax saw me less as a person and more as a well-tipping patron, I really didn’t care if I literally talked his ear off. “Yessi and I haven’t hung out for real in months. She’s married and has a new baby.”
He set the glass down in front of me.
“And she’s a big-shot lawyer, so she’s always super busy. I’m so excited she’s here.”
His bisected eyebrow arched. “You want me to put this on your tab?”
“Just so you know, I won’t need your trivia services tonight,” I said, ignoring his question. I’d spent the past three months talking to essentially no one other than my patients and my mother, so I was in it to win it. “Yessi’s just as competitive as I am, and we complement each other’s weaknesses. Like, I’m really good at geography, pop culture, history, and biology, but Yessi knows sports, music, and literature, which are my biggest blind spots.”
He blinked.
“Kelly doesn’t quite have the breadth of knowledge Yessi and I do, but every so often she’ll come in with an answer about something really specific that happened to the Kardashians.”
“Tab?” he said.
“Yeah, tab.” He turned to add the beer to my bill.
“You know what?” I said. “I’ll take a sparkling rosé, too. Kelly should be here any minute.”
He grabbed the bottle and wineglass, too.
“Don’t break that one on your leg,” I said.
He chuckled as a gust of hot wind hit us. My eyes traveled to the door just in time to see Kelly flouncing in, blond hair bouncing around her shoulders. She waited in the doorway for someone coming in behind her—a man, probably in his mid- to late-forties, with graying brown hair, tortoiseshell glasses, and a polo shirt. The milky white band of skin from his ankle down to where he wore his boat shoes with no socks suggested a golf tan.
Kelly grabbed the dude’s hand and kissed it playfully—intimately.
My eyes bugged out at Dax, but he’d seen an out from my conversational clutches and had moved on to wiping down glasses and chatting with the young strawberry-blond woman across the way.
“Annie!” Kelly yelled to me with a wave. Then she dashed over to the bar, still clutching the guy’s hand. “Yessi, you too! Come here quick.”
Yessi ran over, and Kelly thrust out her left hand, which now sported a massive diamond solitaire on the ring finger. “Yessi and Annie, this is Mark. The two of us are getting married!”
Chapter Seven
Marky Mark and the Trivia Bunch
Mark was bringing our team down.
I kept trying to send silent signals to Yessi to say something—she was never the type to worry about feelings when victory was on the line—but she kept laughing and joking with Mark and Kelly like the Very Stable Geniuses weren’t about to beat us.
I smiled along as I tried to answer as many questions as I could on my own without soliciting the help of the group.
But during the fourth round, Ronald, the quiz master, asked, “What was the largest contiguous empire in the history of the world?”
The four of us put our heads together, keeping our voices down so the other teams couldn’t hear our debate.
“Not Rome,” Yessi said.
“Definitely not Rome,” I said, recording my answer on the sheet. I always liked to confer with my friends to keep up the veneer of being a good, collaborative teammate, but when I knew something, I knew it. “I’m pretty sure it’s the Mongol Empire. In fact, I’m positive it is.”
“Or is it the British Empire?” Mark asked, brows furrowed under his thick-framed glasses.
“Contiguous,” I said, putting my fingers together. “Touching. The British Empire may have been the largest overall, but it was pretty spread out. Genghis Khan kept his conquests confined to Asia.” I pushed my own glasses up on my nose. I knew my history.
Mark squinted. “I think this is a trick question. I’m pretty sure I heard something about the British Empire being the biggest.”
I looked with frustration at Kelly, who was watching her new fiancé with big doe eyes. “Kel?” We’d been competing in trivia competitions together for years. She knew better than to oppose me when a question about maps was on the line.
“Let’s go with Mark’s answer,” she said, squeezing her beau’s hand.
“I agree with Kelly,” Yessi said. “Let’s give Mark this one. He seems pretty sure.”
My jaw dropped. Yessi was supposed to be on my side. Did she actually expect me to go with a wrong answer simply to coddle a grown man’s feelings? I didn’t like thinking it, but motherhood had changed her.
Still, I caved to peer pressure and begrudgingly went along with the group. I erased my absolutely correct answer from the line and wrote “British Empire” next to number five, knowing full well this was one answer our new team—Wine O’Clock (Mark’s idea, since he owned a wine shop in Galena)—would be getting wrong.
Sipping his wine, he grinned. “Nah,” he said, “but you know, sometimes you just hear something and remember it.” He tapped on his temple.
Or, you know, you hear something and remember it completely incorrectly.
Stop it, Annie. It was just one itsy-bitsy question out of a hundred.
I leaned back in my chair and sipped my drink, watching Kelly and Mark together—playing with each other’s fingers, making goo-goo eyes. Kelly had always been the romantic among us. Before she moved in with me five years ago, she’d lived with three different serious boyfriends, but she hadn’t introduced us to anyone in years. I knew she dated casually and had been on a number of first dates, but nothing more than that. How had she gone from the odd fling to engagement without telling anyone about it?
I glanced at Yessi, trying to read her reaction to the situation. My no-nonsense lawyer friend had to have strong opinions about this, but she was leaning toward Mark, eyes as big and rapt as Kelly’s, hanging on his every word.
After the quiz master’s assistant, Meghan, had collected all the papers, Ronald started going through the answers for this round. Wine O’Clock got the first four right, boom, boom, boom, boom. “Number five,” Ronald said dramatically, “the largest contiguous empire in history?”
“The Mongol Empire,” shouted one of the Very Stable Geniuses up near the front.
Of course they knew it.
“That is correct.” Ronald made a note on his paper.
Mark smiled sheepishly. “Sorry, Ann,” he said. “Looks like you were right.”
Ann. He called me “Ann.” I checked Kelly’s reaction to see if she was messing with me—if she’d told her fiancé to call me “Ann” as a joke, since she knew how much I loathed my formal first name. That was certainly the kind of prank we’d play on each other. But no, she was too focused on lacing her small, thin fingers between Mark’s broader ones.
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