Chapter Forty-Eight
Oops…I Quizzed It Again
“Welcome, ladies and gentlemen, to the final round of the Second Annual Windy City Trivia Championship tournament!” Ronald held the microphone out toward the crowd, catching the roar of excitement and blasting it through the speakers. “This year, we have four great teams competing for the grand prize, but first let me introduce our illustrious guest emcee—Darius Carver, former Man on Main Street and current evening news anchor!”
Yes, Mr. Man on Main Street got Gayle Gale’s old job. Though he still had dreams of being the entertainment guru of Chicago, for the moment, he liked the stability and predictability of being an anchor.
Darius, waving like a monarch and flashing his megawatt grin, stepped onto the stage. I couldn’t help smiling. He was in his element. “Good evening!” Darius said. “For the past year or so, I’ve been confined to the newsroom, but it’s delightful to be back on the street again with all you wonderful people.” He cupped a hand around his ear. “Now, do you want to meet the teams?”
The crowd erupted in applause. Yessi, at my table, stomped her feet on the floor and whistled with her fingers.
Kelly clamped a hand over her ear. “Yessi. That’s enough.”
Mark wrapped a protective arm around his wife’s shoulders.
Yessi rolled her eyes at Polly, who laughed.
I leaned back in my seat, happy and content and ready to kick some trivia butt.
“We have…” Darius read a name off a cue card. “Last year’s second-place team, the Very Stable Geniuses!”
Brad and his buddies paraded around their table, clutching their hands above their heads in premature victory.
“Boo!” I shouted, playfully flashing a thumbs-down signal. My teammates joined me.
Darius shot me a grin, and I waved. “And, of course, we have last year’s reigning champions, the first winners of the Windy City Trivia Championship, previously known as Dorothy and the Tin Man, but you know them better this year as Marky Mark and the Trivia Bunch!”
My teammates and I shot up and raised our hands in victory, imitating Brad and the Very Stable Geniuses. I offered my palm for high fives from Rob and Lily, which they returned. With a potential romance no longer on the table, Rob and I really did become good friends after the whole engagement fiasco. He even got me to start watching the Cubs…sometimes. Lily and I bonded initially over Joanne but soon discovered we had a lot in common, like love of TV and movies and, well, her brother.
Once, not long after Dax left on tour, Lily mentioned she and Travis had a leaky pipe in their bathroom, and I put her in touch with Rob. Now the two of them were engaged to be married. I was more than willing to take full credit for that romance.
“Before we get started…” Darius’s eyes twinkled. “I have a little surprise for the founding member of Marky Mark and the Trivia Bunch, Dr. Annie Kyle.” He leaned in closer to the mic. “What you may not realize is, it’s Annie’s birthday today.”
“How old is she?” Brad shouted teasingly.
I flipped him the bird. “I’m forty-one!” I fist-bumped Yessi and Kelly.
Darius waited for the crowd to die down a little. “For Annie’s birthday surprise, we have a special person here to serenade her—”
My heart skipped a beat. “What the hell?”
“Fresh off the plane from a grueling tour around the world—”
My palms started sweating. I locked eyes with Kelly, who had gritted her teeth in excitement.
“I’d like to present to you…” Darius held out an arm toward the front door of O’Leary’s Barn. “My personal favorite musician, my wife and the mother of my future child, Ms. Monica Feathers.”
The door pushed open, and in swanned Monica Feathers, a basketball-shaped lump under a tight pink dress. On five-inch heels, she hobbled up onstage, grabbed the mic, and performed a rendition of “Happy Birthday” that would’ve made Marilyn Monroe blush.
“Oh my god!” As she left the stage, I widened my eyes at my friends, trying to tamp down any lingering disappointment. “Monica Feathers just sang to me.”
“She did!” Kelly squeezed my hand, and the underlying sympathy did not go unnoticed.
“If Monica’s back,” Yessi said, looking pointedly at Lily. “Does that mean…?”
“Oh!” Lily looked surprised for a moment, then glanced over at me. “Are you wondering about Dax?”
I shrugged, shaking my head and taking a peek at the inactive front door to the bar. “No,” I said. “The last time we talked, it sounded like he wasn’t sure where he would end up after the tour. I wasn’t expecting him.”
True to our word, Dax and I hadn’t put any pressure on the other person to stay in touch. There were no set conversations and no expectations. He seemed to be doing great on the road, and I was enjoying my new, less pressurized life with my friends, my mom, and Joanne. Dax and I would text once in a while when something funny occurred to us, and we’d share pictures—him of life on the road, and me of Joanne, a short video of my terrible piano playing, or shots of my new, not-quite-dead-yet houseplants.
I had lived up to my promise to meet him in Prague at Christmas, which was wonderful. Dax and I hadn’t missed a beat. Even his bandmates, whom I worried would see me as old and out of touch, were lovely to me. When I got back from the trip, I basically spent the next week and a half in bed crying and listening to sad love songs on repeat.
The trip had solidified it for me: I wanted to be with Dax; yet, here we were.
I knew the score, and I was fine with it. I had a very full life now and wasn’t sitting home thinking about him—much. I even tried dating other people, and I suspected he did, too, though I didn’t ask. For my part, I never met anyone who warranted even a second date.
Though we were careful not to get too serious and emotional in our texts, I could tell Dax felt the same way. After our meetup in Europe, his messages came in faster and more regularly. He’d keep me posted on the little things that happened almost every day, and I’d do the same.
But we never discussed the future, and I held no expectations that he’d be coming home to me anytime soon. I was sad, but I would deal with it. Annie 2.0 was alone, and she was doing great.
I’d come to realize that I couldn’t formally tether someone to me with a marriage contract, and even if I could, it wouldn’t give me the sense of peace, joy, and satisfaction that came from spending time—however much we could scrape together—with the people who truly mattered to me.
Lily said, “I think my mom talked to Dax last week, and he told her he’d gotten an offer to collaborate with”—she clamped her mouth shut—“I shouldn’t say.”
“Who?” Polly leaned forward.
Lily shook her head furiously and sought Rob’s eyes for help.
“We’re not allowed to talk about it yet.” Rob patted his fiancée’s hand. “But you’ll know soon enough.”
“I’ll give you a clue.” Lily’s eyes darted from side to side. “Cardigan.” She clamped her mouth shut.
Holy frick. I had full faith that Dax would succeed, but working with Taylor Swift would be beyond my—and probably his—wildest dreams. As much as part of me had been holding out hope all this time that maybe, just maybe, after a year of recording and touring, he’d be up for taking at least an extended break back home in Chicago with me, I could not deny that this was a huge, amazing, life-changing development for him.
Not that I wasn’t bummed. Of course it’d be nice to have him around, but only if his career allowed.
I reached for my phone, not to check for work messages (Kim was on call Tuesday nights for trivia purposes) but to look in on the security cameras I’d placed inside the house. Joanne was lying peacefully on her dog bed in the family room. I’d put up baby gates to block off the stairs and had closed all the doors to the rest of the house. She was still hanging in there, but steps had gotten tough for her. I had to help her up and down whenever she needed to go outside. She was a trouper, though, and always a sweetheart.
I’d also started taking in foster dogs, which was something Polly had suggested. She was impressed by how diligent I was about caring for Joanne and asked if I’d be willing to look after some needier rescues who came through her office. Right now, I was fostering Boo, who we were nursing back to health after being found abandoned and severely underweight. She and Joanne got along like gangbusters.
In fact, if we ended up winning tonight, the team agreed to give the money to Polly’s favorite local canine rescue foundation.
So, we had to win. I couldn’t allow myself to be distracted by whatever Dax might or might not be doing now that Monica Feathers was back in town. I had my life here. Maybe one day he’d be back and a part of it, but for now, my focus was on crushing this tournament.
During the breaks between rounds, my teammates and I talked about all the exciting things happening in our lives—Rob sold his mom’s place after she passed, and he and Lily were renovating a house in…wait for it…the suburbs, even though he’d long ago vowed never to leave Edison Park.
Kelly and Mark were loving life in Galena and were currently starting their first round of in vitro. I was fielding so many calls from her day and night for medical advice, I jokingly sent her a bill for services rendered. She, in response, sent me a case of wine from Rob’s store, which I gladly accepted.
Yessi and Polly had decided, once Olivia turned one, that they really needed to focus more on their own social lives, so they made standing dates each week to hang out with me at trivia and with Polly’s friends for Sunday brunch.
Darius and Monica Feathers stopped by after the eighth round. I stood and gave him a hug. “Congratulations, dad-to-be!” I said.
He beamed and pulled out a chair for his extra-famous wife, and she gracefully glided onto it.
The crowd at our table grew silent, unsure how to behave with a certified diva in our midst.
She spoke quietly, barely above a whisper. “Do you mind if I join your team for the next few rounds?”
My mouth dropped open. “Yes,” I said. “I mean, no. Of course we don’t mind.”
“I heard the next round is music,” she purred. “I think I know quite a bit about that.”
Our team chuckled, and Kelly nudged me hard in the ribs.
She hissed in my ear, “If Monica Feathers thinks the answer is the British Empire, you write down ‘British Empire,’ got it?”
“Got it.” I pecked her on the cheek.
I didn’t get to spend much—if any—time with Monica when I was in Prague visiting Dax, as the two of us kept each other a bit busy. I wasn’t even sure Monica remembered who I was, but after the ninth round, she looked right at me and said, “Dax spoke about you often.”
“Oh really?” I focused on my glass of water, feeling a blush creeping up my neck.
“He said many nice things about you.” She frowned. “He and I spoke one night, and I said, ‘Dax, when are you going to realize you should be with this woman, as I realized I was meant to be with Darius?’” She rubbed her belly. “But he said, ‘I have to go where the music is.’”
“That sounds like him.” I flashed a smile at Lily, showing her I held no hard feelings about her brother. We were fine. We just wanted different things. He was becoming a world-famous musician; I was happily becoming a dog lady, and I’d learned how to play “Für Elise” on the piano…in theory.
“I told Dax,” Monica continued, “the music can be wherever you want it to be. I said, I’m going back to Chicago to have my child and be with my love. Come home with me, I begged him.” She shook her head. “But he said he needed to be free.”
Smiling hard, trying to deny the sour feeling in my gut, I tossed my pen to the table. I knew the next round was about to start, but I couldn’t sit there and listen to this. I had to get up, move around, and settle my head. God, it was fine if Dax wanted to travel around, pursuing his dreams. It was what he was supposed to do. It was what I wanted him to do, for him, for his career. But did everyone have to rub it in my face?
I marched up to the bar. “Hey,” I said to Peter, “can you—”
A head popped up from below the counter. Smiling blue eyes flashed at me, and I nearly fell backward.
“What took you so long to get mad enough to come over here?” he asked. “My sister was supposed to tell you I was planning on traveling around with Taylor Swift, and Monica was supposed to—”
My mouth opened and closed like a fish’s. “What are you doing here?” I asked. “Are you—?” My eyes watered.
“I’m back,” he said.
“You’re back?” My knees wobbled. I didn’t dare believe it. “I… What does that mean?”
“It means that when Monica found out she was pregnant, she started talking about moving back here and working on some projects together in our home base, and I thought that sounded like a great idea.” He flashed me a hopeful smile. “Annie, I’ve missed you so much.”
I was still stuck on logistics. My brain and my heart wouldn’t allow me to fully accept this news. Not yet. “How long have you known about this?”
“Officially, not that long. Unofficially, I started thinking about moving back as soon as you left me in Prague.”
Tears welled up behind my eyelids.
“I should’ve said something,” Dax said nervously. “I shouldn’t have assumed. You’ve probably met someone or moved on.”
“Oh my god, no.” I shook my head. “I’m just wondering what’s taking you so long to come over here and kiss me.”
He ducked out from under the bar, rushed over, and planted a huge kiss on my mouth. My entire body relaxed into his arms. I had been doing fine without Dax, and I would’ve continued to happily enjoy my time with my friends and family, but life would be so much sweeter with him around. We’d never be certain we wouldn’t eventually—boom!—flame out, and there was still a lot we had to discuss, but we’d get to it.
We’d deal with it. Together.
But for now…
“Let’s get out of here,” I said just as Ronald announced the start of the final round of trivia.
“Don’t you want to see this through?” he asked. “You’re about to win the Windy City Championship for the second time in a row. It’s not like you to leave your trivia fate up to everyone else.”
“I trust them.” I grabbed Dax’s hand and pulled him toward the door, imagining the two of us back at home together, watching rom-coms, cuddling on the couch with Joanne (and now Boo), our bodies entwined beneath the sheets, me listening to him playing the piano at night before bed.
I took one last look back at my friends, heads huddled together as Ronald started the round: musical instruments. “First question,” he said, “what is the name for the part of the piano that covers the keys?”
“Fallboard,” I hissed, trying to telepathically send that answer to my teammates.
Over the din of the crowd, I heard Mark say, loudly, “I think it’s called a drop sheath.”
“Damn it, Mark,” I said through clenched teeth.
“You want to go back there?” Dax asked. “Is your legendary competitive spirit getting fired up?”
I gazed up into his laughing blue eyes. “No,” I said, dragging him out of the bar and away from the competition before I could change my mind. Even if they lost, I’d make sure the rescue organization got the money. Dax was back, and I wasn’t sure what that meant yet, how we’d fit into each other’s lives, or whether or not we’d actually work as a couple. But none of that mattered, not now. We’d take it day by day, until maybe one morning we’d wake up and realize we’d made it to happily ever after.
I smiled up at him. “I’m sure they’ve got it handled.”
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