“You were going to sit over there,” she gestured to the seat, Doug was folding into.
“Thought about it.”
She laughed, lifted her glass, not a wine glass, not a cocktail or a spirit. He saw the bubbles of mineral water. “What stopped you?”
He should’ve said a smile, something surprisingly real in the seaweed of fake, but he was still processing the laugh. She’d laughed at him, not with bitterness, but the way you did when something amused you. “Thought it’d annoy you more if I sat here.”
“You must think my tolerance is pretty damn low?”
“My power to annoy is shit hot.”
She laughed and there it was again, a tear in the fabric of his known universe. “I can see that,” she said.
“This
is our longest conversation about,” he hesitated remembering the conversation in the cafe, “sport, mechanical failures or the state of the sun. Why are you humouring me?”
“Don’t get used to it.”
He considered her. He’d never been quite so close to her before. With the slightest movement of his knee or elbow he’d be touching her. He gestured to the bottle of Evian on the table. “You’re not drunk. You’re probably not high,” he looked over his shoulder. “Am I wearing a sign on my back that says ‘kick me’ and you’re being perverse?”
“Yes.”
“Yes?”
She shrugged. “Do I need a reason to be civil to you?”
“Hell yeah!”
She reached for the Evian bottle and poured it into the glass in front of his place setting. “I guess I like it better when we’re not at war. It’s less exhausting.”
He considered that. He considered her. Her suit today was a fitted dress and a lightweight jacket. Her caramel coloured hair was in a swirl at the back of her head, but the heat had made soft curls of the short pieces that framed her face and neck. She had freckles. He wasn’t blind especially where it came to a good looking woman, but he’d never noticed how big her eyes were, how plump her lips. She only wore the faintest trace of makeup and it was either Bree, or the wine being poured, that smelled crisp like his shirts did fresh from the dry-cleaner.
“Do I have lipstick on my teeth?”
Caught out staring. “Ah, no.”
“So what are you looking at me like that for?”
“Like what?” Like he was appreciating modern art, but was surprised that he liked it.
“Like I have two heads.”
He was keen for a beer. He should’ve ditched this and gone for a surf. Bree was having a go at him, but he’d lost the thread, didn’t get the joke. He was desperate for this conversation take a new tack. He used an old faithful Neanderthal fallback, “Huh?” while signalling their waiter to suggest he’d lost interest in anything but liquid sustenance.
Her laugh was a soft huff, but she took the hint, turning to Rowan on her right and joining in a conversation about the exorbitant cost of parking in the city. He studied the menu and tried not to get caught out watching her in his peripheral vision. How the fuck had she managed to tongue-tie him with nothing more than a couple of friendly smiles and a laugh that made him think of bellbirds calling?
As the dinner progressed and the alcohol flowed, he noticed she’d drunk nothing but the mineral water.
“Not drinking, Bree?”
“Huh?”
She bloody well mimicked him. Ant looked at the remains of his chargrilled lamb chops and shook his head. “Yeah, okay. I deserved that. Can we start again?”
“Where do you want to start?”
He looked up and met her eyes, full of mischief. If he said the beginning, he’d only cop some other sarcasm from her. “Where would you like to start?” This was ridiculous; his wit had totally deserted him, because a woman he’d once detested was teasing him.