It wasn’t a contest, Sam reminded himself. But it felt like one. How much sprang from his egalitarian desire to puncture Tim’s privilege and how much was due to Dee he hadn’t figured out.
The dart players moved on, probably to do heavier drinking at a livelier club.
“Fancy a game?” Sam asked Tim.
Tim held his gaze. Challenge met. “All right.” And then he turned to the girls. “You in?”
Dee smiled and started to get up.
“Unlike the male of the species, we do not need to whip out our shafts to have a good time.” Reeti waggled her fingers, dismissing them. “Go play your game. I want to talk to Dee.”
“You’ve been avoiding me,” Sam heard Reeti say as he got up to play. “How are things going with Dr.Ward?”
Dr.Ward. Maeve Ward. The name conjured memories of a broomstick of a woman at his father’s funeral, the only one of his instructors to attend, wearing black and carrying a black umbrella. They’d all worn black, except for Aoife, who was only a year old, and Grace, in her First Communion dress. Even Jack wore a little black tie. Janette made Sam put on one of his father’s two suits, the one he wasn’t being buried in. It was too big on Sam everywhere but the shoulders. He kept tugging on the jacket, conscious of everyone staring.
Dr.Ward came up to him after Mass. “I’m sorry for your loss,” she said.
Which is what everyone said. Sam hadn’t cared. His da was dead, and his mother looked like death, and Fiadh was red-faced with crying. Sam had wanted to cry, too.
She’d written him a letter that summer, he remembered. Ward. After he’d rejected the fellowship and notified the college he wasn’t coming back. He’d never responded. She would have forgotten him by now, one more faceless undergrad who had taken a single class with her nine years ago.
Tim gestured to Sam to go first.
He threw, just missing the double ring.
“Bad luck,” Tim said.
Condescending bastard. Or maybe he was genuinely a good sport. A decent guy. He doubled in on the first throw, hitting a five and a twenty with his next two darts.
Fuck. Sam went up to the line again, focusing this time. Double twenty. Double fifteen. Outer bull’s-eye.
Tim gave him a nod as he stepped back. He scored two decent shots and then a triple nineteen on the last throw.
Sam lifted an eyebrow. “Play a lot?”
“I did. Years ago.”
“A man of leisure.”
Tim gave him a straight look. “Not much else to do on deployment.”
“Lisburn?” In Northern Ireland.
“Kabul.”
Which made Sam feel like a right arsehole. The score went back and forth. At some point, the girls stopped talking to watch. Sam won, checking out with a double eighteen. Gratifying, that.
“Good game,” Tim said, as if they were schoolboys on the pitch.
Dee was smiling. “Very Ted Lasso,” she said, which made Reeti snort. Sam didn’t know what she was talking about.
Tim looked pained or maybe amused. He was so damn British it was hard to tell.
“Another?” Sam asked, signaling their server.
Tim pulled out his wallet. “I’ve got it.”
Sam didn’t want his charity. “You bought the last round.”
