Let’s Get Quizzical
“I should be the Tin Man,” Yessi said, dipping a cheese curd in some kind of sauce. “You know I don’t have a heart.”
“That’s not true, and you know it. Besides, Dax is the Tin Man,” I told her, writing our team name across the top of the answer sheet. I’d brought Yessi along for trivia tonight. The idea had occurred to me a few hours ago. Dax and I needed a sex buffer, and there was no better buffer than my very opinionated, very dynamic best friend. “He’s been my trivia partner for the entire tournament so far.”
“Yeah, well, I’ve been your best friend for twenty years.” She grabbed the pen from me. “At least give me a name. Let me feel like less of a third wheel.” She wrote “plus the Mother of Dragons” at the top with a flourish.
My cheeks flushed, even though I knew she hadn’t meant “third wheel” like “third wheel on a date.”
“You have someone new on your team.” Brad the Very Stable Genius sidled up to us.
“This is my friend Yessi.”
He looked her up and down. “Is this legal? The tournament is already in its third week. I don’t think it’s right to be bringing in new talent.”
“You know it’s legal, Brad.” I looked at Yessi. “He’s full of crap. His team swaps out members all the time. The rules state each team may have up to eight players on any given week.”
Yessi shrugged. “If the rules state it, Brad.”
He backed away. “I’ve got my eye on you.”
“What a wiener,” Yessi said when he was out of earshot.
“He’s not that bad. He’s one of your people, actually.”
“A hottie with a body and an ass that won’t quit?” She made a muscle and kissed her biceps.
“A lawyer.”
She dropped her arm. “Then I stand by my original assessment.” Yessi glanced around. “Where is this Dax?”
“He’ll be here,” I said, suppressing the automatic smile at the mention of my recent bang buddy. I changed the subject. “Have you talked to Kelly lately?”
She shook her head. “I’ve called her a bunch, and she hasn’t called me back.”
“I’m worried about her,” I said. “She obviously has reasons to be annoyed with me, but I can’t believe she’s ‘cut you out of my life’ pissed off.”
Yessi and I had cleared the air quickly after the shower incident. She’d been a little hurt by my not telling her about certain things in my life, but we both realized that we needed to do more to prioritize our friendship, even when it wasn’t convenient. That was part of the reason she agreed to come tonight. Kelly, however, seemed determined to keep pushing us both away.
“It has to be wedding stress,” Yessi said.
“I don’t know. I think there must be more going on.”
“More what going on?” I glanced up to find Dax—dark jeans, black tee, scruffy beard, and messy hair—standing next to me. My heart skipped a beat.
“Hey…” I beamed at him, resisting the urge to jump up and hug him. Instead I shot him a little wave, which he acknowledged with a quick wink that sent the butterflies in my gut soaring. “Dax, this is my friend Yessi. Yessi, this is Dax.”
“Nice to meet you officially.” Dax shook Yessi’s hand. “I’m gonna grab a drink. Can I get you both anything?” His eyes narrowed at Yessi. “You’re…Green Line?”
“Good memory. Yeah, I can have one.” She waited until Dax was up at the bar. “I like him.”
“What?” My ears burned.
She tapped her head. “Good recall. He must be solid at trivia.”
“Oh.” I sipped my water. “Yeah.” I watched him at the bar, his elbows on the counter and his gaze on one of the TVs, while a trio of young women nearby giggled and gawked at him. He didn’t give them a first or a second glance. I couldn’t help smiling.
“How are things with you and Rob?” Yessi asked.
She snapped me out of my little daydream about what had…gone down…between Dax and me earlier this morning. “Oh,” I said. “Fine. Whatever.”
Dax set Yessi’s beer in front of her.
She sipped the foam off her Green Line. “Dax, what do you think about this whole Rob thing?”
He took a seat adjacent to me and across from Yessi. “Rob is…?”
“The guy Annie’s seeing? The one she grew up with?”
“Oh, he’s one of those guys.” Dax was checking out the score on the TV. “I don’t know anything about him.”
Yessi’s wide eyes snapped to me. “One of what guys?”
“You know,” Dax said. “One of the guys she’s going to settle down with.”
I turned to him. “Thank you,” I deadpanned.
His eyes met mine. “What?” Then he looked from me to Yessi. “She didn’t know? I just figured. She’s your best friend…”
No, I hadn’t told either of my best friends about this, only the random dude in my basement with whom I was now hooking up. Why was that so hard to fathom?
Yessi rested her chin on her hand. “Tell me more, Dax.”
I shrugged. “Go ahead.”
“You should tell her,” Dax said.
He was right. I probably should. Yessi and I had vowed to keep each other in the loop better, hadn’t we?
I swung around to face Yessi, who I knew would not approve of any of this, but we were trying to be more open and honest with each other. I would trust her not to eviscerate me tonight in a bar full of people, one of whom I had just had sex with three times this morning. “Okay…the night I found out about Mark, I got a little drunk—”
“Wait wait wait wait wait wait wait.” Yessi held up a hand to stop me. “You got drunk?”
“Yes, I got drunk, and I sent a text to several—”
“Thirty-nine—”
I shifted my narrow gaze to Dax for a moment. What the heck, man? “Sure. Thirty-nine.” And then I was back to Yessi. “I sent a text to thirty-nine men that I was ready to settle down and…in the light of day, I realized I truly was. In vino veritas, right? So, I contacted Rob and”—before Dax could drop another truth bomb, I got out ahead of the story—“Darius Carver—”
“The Man on Main Street?” she squealed.
“Shhh! Yes, the Man on Main Street,” I said. “The two of them are both serious about getting out of the dating rat race and…getting married.” I whispered those last two words.
Yessi’s inscrutable eyes watched me for a few moments before turning to Dax. “What do you think about this?”
I opened my mouth to stop him from answering but quickly closed it. I actually wanted to hear this answer. I glanced over at him.
He’d fixed his eyes on Yessi. “I think it’s a terrible fucking idea,” he said. “I think marriage, if that’s truly what she wants, should be for love, and I think she’s selling herself short thinking that she’ll never find that.”
My mind bounced between the idea that Dax could be talking about himself and the reality that I knew he’d never be able to give me what I wanted. He was a young musician, and he’d just gotten divorced. He wasn’t ready for the kind of commitment I needed. I’d be knee-deep in my Bunco phase by the time Dax was ready to settle down.
Yessi sat quietly for a few seconds. “I agree with Dax.” She reached over and patted my hand. “Hon, we both know people who stayed together out of convenience. It never works out. I don’t know, maybe you could love Rob or Darius, but if you don’t and you go through with a marriage, it’s going to end in disaster.”
Everything was always black and white with Yessi. She was as analytical as I was, but she always saw things as right or wrong, good or bad. There was no gray area. She just so happened to fall in love with someone who was in the same mental, physical, and emotional space she was, and since it all worked out for her, she had no reason the question the magic of love—no reason not to believe that if it happened for her, it would happen for everyone.
Meanwhile, I was pushing forty, and I’d never even come close to having what she and Polly had. “Forgive me for being a realist,” I said. “You’ve been with Polly for a long time now. You don’t know what it’s like to be out here, with all your friends pairing off and moving away.” My lip trembled. “All I know for sure is that I don’t want to be alone.” I puffed up my chest. “This is me solving that problem.”
Dax reached for my hand and squeezed. “Hey.” My eyes met his sad, serious ones. “There is nothing lonelier than a loveless marriage. I speak from experience.”
“Time to start the tournament!” Ronald’s voice boomed from the stage.
I wrested my hand from Dax’s. “Your marriage started with love and passion, and those things faded. I’m talking about doing the opposite: starting from a place of similar goals and mutual respect. Maybe the other stuff will come later.”
I positioned my pencil over the answer sheet, visibly ready to crush the competition. But my mind kept flitting to thoughts of Rob’s brotherly, passionless kiss, to Darius beaming at Monica Feathers, to Dax holding me this morning like we’d been together for years. I snuck a glance at him, and his eyes were on me. I felt a tug behind my belly button.
Just as Ronald announced question number one, Dax said, “You deserve the other stuff now.” His bisected eyebrow flickered.
My stomach in knots, I pulled my eyes away from his and wrote the correct answer: Thomas Jefferson and John Adams. “Yeah, well,” I said, “we can’t have everything, can we?”