Grant stopped talking. He watched her work the pit to the side of her cheek, then let out a long, suffering sigh.
"Really?" he asked, giving her a flat look. "We're doing this?"
Emmy paused, the bare stem still between her fingers. "Doing what?"
"The cherry stem thing. It reminds me of high school. Girls trying to prove they were..." He waved a hand, looking annoyed by the memory. "Good kissers. It was a stupid party trick then, and it's a stupid party trick now."
Emmy smiled. "You're just grumpy because you can't bring it up and expect me not to try it when I have a bowl of them right here."
She popped the stem into her mouth.
Grant rolled his eyes, picking up his water glass. "Riveting content, Em."
Emmy ignored him. She worked the stem, feeling the familiar twist and tuck. It took a little longer than she remembered. She had to use her teeth a bit, but finally, she felt it catch.
She pulled the stem out. It was a knot, technically. A bit loose, lopsided, more of a loop than a tight fastening, but it held.
"Still got it," she announced, dropping the wonky stem onto the coaster. "Your turn."
Grant stared at the sad little loop on the coaster. "That is a slipknot at best."
"It's a knot! It holds!" Emmy picked up the bowl and held it out to him, rattling the cherries slightly. "Put your money where your mouth is, Knight. Or are you afraid you can't keep up?"
Grant looked at the bowl, then up at her face. He shook his head slowly, jaw set, eyes heavenward.
"Give me the damn bowl."
He reached in and plucked a cherry like the outcome was already decided. He didn't delicately bite the fruit like she had. He popped the whole thing—fruit, pit, stem, and apparent superiority complex—into his mouth.
He leaned back against the sofa, looking bored. His jaw worked once, twice. He spit the clean pit into his cupped palm and discarded it on his plate.
Two seconds later, he pulled the stem from between his lips and flicked it onto the table next to hers.
Emmy stared.
Her knot looked like it had been tied by someone having a medical emergency. His was textbook. It wasn't just a knot. It was a surgical, impossibly tight coil.
"Brat," he muttered, reaching for his pizza.
"That's not fair," she said. "That's not even the same skill. That's—that's showing off."
Grant's mouth twitched. "Adaptable," he corrected, and went back to his pizza like the matter was settled.
Emmy stared at the two stems on the coaster. Her pulse had picked up. Her face was warm, and her fingers had tightened around the wine glass stem without her deciding to do that—and underneath the heat, a quieter, worse thought: Nathan couldn't even rememberbasil. Which was not a thought that belonged anywhere near a client debrief. Which was, in fact, a thought that had no filing category at all.
She cleared her throat, reaching for her wine glass. "Well. Adaptable we can do. I have two other profiles queued up in the database. Do you want to go over them now? One is a professor, the other is a?—"
Grant shook his head. He dropped the crust of his pizza onto the plate and rubbed a hand over his face.
"No. I can't look at another bio tonight, Em. If I have to read about anyone else's hobbies, my brain is going to shut down."
"Okay," Emmy said quickly. "No bios. We can table it."
"Just send me the details for the next one. Time and place. I trust you." Grant stood up, stretching his arms over his head. His shirt rode up slightly, and Emmy politely admired an imaginarypainting on the wall. "We fly to San Francisco tomorrow afternoon. Game on Sunday. I'll be gone all week."
"Right. The Niners." Emmy stood up too, smoothing her silk pants. "Big game."
"They're all big games when you're 2-1." Grant grabbed his blazer from the barstool, slinging it over his shoulder. He looked at the pizza box. "You want the rest of this? I'm not taking it back to my place."
