Page 26 of Fate, Interrupted

“That’s because I’m a songwriter.” She appears in the doorway with a black leather bomber slung over one arm and the expression of someone who is already second-guessing their decision.

“Some of us have a craft,” she says.

“Some of us are also going to win fifty dollars and a paid bar tab up to a hundred,” I say.

“You don’t know that.”

“I know that. I’ve been saving questions about literary history for two weeks. Nobody in that bar is going to know who wrote the first English language novel and I’m going to destroy them with it.”

“Someone is going to say the Bible and that’s going to start a war.”

I guffaw. “I can’t wait to see who does that. My bet’s on that red-headed dude from Abernathy’s Men’s Clothing. What’s his name? Chad?”

Jewell studies me with the focused attention she reserves for lyrics that aren’t working and friends who are being slightly transparent. “This isn’t about the trivia, is it?”

“It’s entirely about the trivia.”

“Uh huh,” she says, and pulls the door shut behind her.

We walk to Hannigan’s in thick heat. Along the way, tables spill onto sidewalks, and music pours from deep in a restaurant two doors down. People linger over drinks and late dinners as if Monday can wait another hour. Jewell bumps her shoulder into mine about a block in.

“So what’s actually going on?”

“I told you. Trivia.”

“You told me trivia,” she says. “You didn’t tell me why you’ve been walking around your living room for a week like you’re working something out. The walls are thin, doll. I can hear you.”

“I narrate internally. It’s a process.”

“That’s my line.”

“It’s a good line.”

She huffs out a laugh and lets it go—one of Jewell’s better qualities. She knows when to push and when to walk beside you and let the thing work itself out on its own timeline. The information I have been organizing for ten days is not ready to be shared. Organized information is the only kind I share.

The bar is already loud when we reach it, with voices layered over each other and someone near the back telling a joke that earns a collective groan. It smells like beer, fried food, and warm chaos.

Jewell pauses beside me on the threshold. “We can still leave,” she says.

“We’re not leaving.”

“You’re very committed to this.”

“I’m committed to winning. There’s a difference.”

She nods with the expression of a woman who has accepted her fate. “All right. Let’s make a mistake.”

I scan the room for an open table. Then I see him at the bar.

I push the door all the way open and step inside.

The sound hits all at once, and I let it break around me, scanning the room. Tables are pushed together for teams, answer sheets scattered between glasses and baskets of food. The host is at the front setting up his microphone with the focused energy of a man who takes trivia very seriously. I respect that completely.

He’s leaning forward with one elbow braced against the wood, a bottle held loosely in his other hand, laughing at something the man beside him has said, low and real, the laugh that doesn’t match the rest of him. His ubiquitous white T-shirt fits clean across his shoulders. His thick, dark hair has a slightly-too-long look, falling forward when he tilts his head, and I immediately remember how close his mouth was to mine Thursday night.

Then Silas looks at me, and the humor disappears from his face.

Not dramatically. Not in a way anyone around me would notice—it’s more a change in my awareness, the same way the weather changes when the barometric pressure drops before a storm. I know it before I turn toward it.