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.
I wouldn’t let this get under my skin. I barely knew Mark. If Kelly loved him, it probably meant he was a good guy. I was the asshole who hated to lose. “Are you a big history buff, Mark?” I asked.
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.
So, he just honestly didn’t know. My roommate and very best friend in the whole world had told her fiancé so little about me that he didn’t even know my preferred name. I felt my throat starting to close up with tears.
“I go by Annie, actually,” I said brightly, forcing my tone to stay light. “And don’t worry about the wrong answer. It happens. Everyone flubs one once in a while.”
“Next time, I will defer to you.” Mark stood and glanced around the table. “Allow me to atone for my sins.” He winked at Kelly, who beamed. “Another round of drinks?”
“Thanks, honey!” Kelly blew him an air kiss as he headed up to the bar.
“I love him,” Yessi said when Mark was out of earshot.
“Me too.” Kelly grinned.
“How did you two meet?” I popped a fry into my mouth. My best course of action was to keep my mouth full at all times—whether with food or drink—to numb the sad, wistful feelings that had started creeping up and to keep myself from saying anything that might rub Kelly the wrong way. She was currently seeing the world through the lenses of someone who was about to marry a dude who owned a wine shop.
“It’s really cute, actually.” She examined her ring, watching the light play off the substantial diamond. “I’d just had the most frustrating day with my parents—” She raised her eyebrows, and Yessi and I understood the shorthand. As much as she loved her mom and dad, the three of them didn’t see eye to eye on much. Living with them for a few months had to have been tough on her.
So that’s what this was. Mark had gotten her through a tough time. Their relationship was like Keanu and Sandra Bullock at the end of Speed—based on an intense experience. Kelly was now back to her real life in Chicago, far away from Galena. Soon she’d no longer need Mark. Suddenly I pitied the guy. He was about to be cast aside, and he had no idea.
“I had to get out of my mom and dad’s house for a little while,” Kelly said, “so I drove into town and found this adorable little wine shop, and I started chatting up the owner.” She gestured toward Mark at the bar, and I turned to find him laughing with Dax, just two guys enjoying each other’s company. I frowned. Poor Mark. I gave their engagement a month, tops.
Kelly kept going. “I told Mark all about my family situation, and he helped me pick out the perfect wine to get through the night with my parents. Then he told me to come find him if I needed someone to talk to later.” She grinned. “I took him up on that.”
“How long ago was this?” I asked. “I mean, did you guys get to spend a lot of time together in Galena?”
“You met him right away, didn’t you?”
My mouth fell open as my eyes traveled to Yessi, who was tapping away, unbothered, on her phone. “You knew about this?”
She looked up at me, wide-eyed. “I… No.” She clamped her mouth shut.
“You did,” I said, my chest about to cave in on itself. I’d assumed Kelly had kept Mark a secret from everyone, but nope. Just from me.
“Annie.” Kelly reached for me, but I pulled my arm away and shoved four fries into my mouth. Three months. She’d been seeing this guy—seriously, as there was a ring involved—for three months and had not said one word about him to me, though she’d told Yessi all about it, apparently. The lack of balance in our relationship turned the crispy potatoes to glue on my tongue.
Yessi squeezed my hand. “I haven’t known that long,” she promised. “Mark had been looking for some legal advice, and Kelly came to me.”
I nodded slowly, taking that in.
“She was kind of forced to tell me about their relationship.” Yessi laughed. “She couldn’t call me up and be like, ‘Hey, Yess, here’s a random guy from the street who has a question about a rental lease.’”
“Sure.” I supposed that made sense, but it still didn’t explain why no one, over the course of three months, had ever let it slip that Kelly was seeing someone. And the fact that both Kelly and Yessi knew while I didn’t made it sting even worse. It was one thing for Kelly to have a secret on her own. She was allowed to have her private life. But two of us should not hide information from the third one—unless for the express purposes of a surprise party.
Yessi grabbed one of my fries. “I think what we need to talk about now is getting Annie to join the club.”
“What club?”
“You’re next.” Yessi’s eyes glinted mischievously, and she pointed to the wedding ring on her left hand.
“Ha-ha.” Since when had my dating life become an acceptable topic of discussion? First my mom and Kelly, then Darius today, and now Yessi. “You both know I’m fine on my own.” Besides, I wouldn’t be “on my own” for long. This thing between Kelly and Mark would play out, and then our lives would go back to normal.
“We know you are, Annie,” Kelly said, glancing at Yessi, “but wouldn’t it be fun for all of us to be able to get together with our significant others? You all can come out to Galena—”
I held up a hand to stop her. “Wait, what?”
Kelly’s face grew pale. “Galena,” she said. “I’m…well, I mean, I’m moving there, of course. It just makes sense. Mark’s business is really taking off, and my mom and dad will need me around more and more as they get older. I can do real estate from anywhere.” She grinned. “It will actually be great. You guys can come stay for the weekend. Mark has this huge, beautiful house in the Galena Territory.”
I stared at Yessi. “I suppose you knew about this, too.”
She squirmed under my gaze and pretended to check her phone.
I chewed another tasteless fry as Mark came back to the table with a bottle of wine and four glasses. “This is an excellent vintage,” he said.
“None for me,” I said, shaking my empty cocktail vessel. “I’m one and done.” Probably another tidbit of information about me Kelly hadn’t yet shared with him.
An urge to bolt hit me, but I fought it. And I blinked back tears that stung my eyes. My friends had been keeping two huge secrets from me, and as much as I wanted to believe this Mark thing was a phase, Kelly was moving to Galena for him. She was packing up her life and leaving me.
I tried to drum up some happiness for her, but any sympathetic joy I felt was muted by my own fear, sadness, and uncertainty.
For more than twenty years, ever since we met on day one of our freshman year of college, Kelly and I had been there for each other. We’d watched boyfriends come and go, together. But now she’d gone and met someone, and, though she’d opened up to Yessi, she had kept him a secret from me for three whole months.
The walls of certainty about my own life crumbled around me.
I started to rise, ready to make a break for it, but Ronald announced the next category: movies. I had to stick around for that. I knew even more about movies than I did about history and geography. I had a duty to my team and to the honor of quiz night itself, and I would not let them down.
“Make sure you have your sheets for the fifth round.” After a brief pause while we gathered our things, Ronald said, “Question number one: Which two twenty-first century Best Director Oscar winners each won twice for movies that did not win Best Picture?” Ronald paused. “Bonus points if you can also name the movies.”
I tapped my pencil against my teeth, thinking, running through the last twenty or so years of Oscar nominees and winners. At least this was a good distraction from the sinking pit of despair growing in my stomach.
“I know this!” Mark whispered. “Steven Spielberg and Martin Scorsese!”
“Yay, Mark,” Kelly said, clapping her hands.
“Wrong.” With authority, I wrote the correct answer on the line. They would not pressure me into throwing Mark a bone this time. Not on a movie question. “Martin Scorsese won for The Departed, which also won Best Picture. He’s out. Spielberg won for Saving Private Ryan, which famously did not win Best Picture, but his only other win was for Schindler’s List, which obviously did. And both of those movies were made in the nineties, anyway, so he’s automatically disqualified.” I showed my team the paper. “The correct answer is Ang Lee—Brokeback Mountain and Life of Pi—and Alfonso Cuarón for Gravity and Roma.”
Mark grinned. “Wow, Annie. You really know your stuff.”
“I do.” I waved off his praise and listened hard for the next question, ready to crush the competition and show everyone in this room who was boss.