And Bubba?
He might look like a country bumpkin in a faded T-shirt and overalls, but he’s wily and willing to fight dirty if necessary.
Bubba blinks first. “How you want ’em?”
“Two of however Zo takes them.”
He’s claiming me, whether he means to or not, making him persona non-grata too. My heart flutters and a zing shoots through my core, both of which are really bad omens and my neon flashing signals to get out of here.
For both our own good.
Blake crosses his hands on the table, looking like a lawyer ready to argue his case. “Whatever you’re thinking, stop. It’s a beer, dinner. Not a marriage proposal. After all, we’re getting fries, not rings.”
He smiles at his own joke, and it’s a good one. But I can still feel the blood rush out of my face and know that if it weren’t dim in here, Blake would worry about the degree of paleness I’m currently sporting.
“And paperwork,” I add, bringing us back to the true reason for this meeting. “We should get that out of the way first.” I pull my phone out of my bag, intending to log in to the county website and do the forms I should’ve done days ago.
“No rush,” Blake tells me. His lazy smirk should make it easy to get through the few screens to get started, but I cannot seem to remember my username and password.
Hell, or my own name.
I click at the screen, entering gibberish, unless I changed my username to asdfjkl;mmmm, and I’m reasonably sure I didn’t do that in a fugue state or while sleep-working. It’s a real thing—sometimes, I work out details of questionable cases while snoring away in the middle of the night when I’m not limited by rational thinking.
When my phone beeps its displeasure at my holding down the M button, Blake’s lips lift into a full, white-toothed grin as he slouches, throwing one arm casually along the back of the booth. Humor dances in his eyes as though he’s in no rush for me to do the paperwork that he came all the way out to Williamson County to badger me about.
“The smallest bones in the human body are in the middle ear. The ossicles—malleus, incus, and stapes.”
My fingers curl into the super-protective, hard plastic case of my phone. It usually keeps it from a fate worse than death, aka a blue screen of inoperability, but though it guards against gravity, I don’t think it’s strong enough to fight off being squeezed like a toothpaste tube.
Why did I say that?
Normal people, ones not like me, obviously, would ask questions and make small talk, but do I do that? No, I throw out useless factoids because he said he’s on a barroom trivia team thirty minutes ago while listing off hobbies and interests.
It’s not even conversationally relevant now.
His head tilts to the right the slightest bit and then he volleys back, “The stapes is roughly the size of a grain of rice.”
Holy shit! Is he trying to out-trivia me? Or trivia-flirting? Flirtriva? It’s like nerd-sexy to the max. He probably knows the answers to random game show questions, but anatomy and physiology? This is my wheelhouse.
“Everyone knows the adult human body has 206 bones.” I wait for his nod before continuing, “But did you know infants have almost 300? They slowly ossify and fuse together to get to the 206 everyone learns in school.” My words speed up until they’re rushing out under the weight of his stare.
My breath hitches when he leans forward and says quietly, “Except when there are 207 bones in a human body.”
It takes me a solid heartbeat to figure out that he’s making a dirty joke because he says it so utterly seriously that I start singing the bone song to double-check that I haven’t miscounted. I want to recoil in disgust or tell him he’s shocking and filthy. I want to get up and walk out, leaving him wondering what just happened.
But before I can do any of that, I laugh . . . loud and hard. I cover my mouth with my hand, knowing that I’ll draw unwanted attention and gossip from the people at the bar.
“Well, for half of us, at least.”
Blake laughs with me, blissfully unaware that anything might be amiss.
It’s refreshing, something I haven’t felt in a long time.
“Does that kind of line usually work for you?” I intend for it to be a small dig, but he shrugs it off, showing no sign of offense.
If anything, his lips twitch as though he’s enjoying the battle of words. “Shockingly, yes. Trivia humor might be my smoothest move.”
“If that’s true, you must be rough as sandpaper.”
He scrubs at his cheeks, not making even a slight scratching sound on the smooth skin, as rebuttal. “Wanna check for yourself?”
I’m tempted, but before I can do anything, Bubba sets down burger baskets on the literal edge of the table as if he doesn’t want to get any closer to me or Blake and then scurries away quickly.