‘It’s on the water, small town, real pretty.’
‘Is that where you went to university as well?’
‘No ma—’ I stop myself just in time. ‘No. Marshall College, where Mia and I went to school before Hemden? That’s up in Columbia, about a hundred and fifty miles north.’
‘You and Mia?’
Refusing to look over at the bar, I nod.
‘That’s right.’
‘Considering the two of you aren’t friends, you’ve got a very bad case of mentionitis when it comes to her.’
‘What? No way.’ I rake my hair back from my face, scoffing as though she said something hilarious. Because she totally did. ‘Just don’t know that many people yet, is all. Good job I know you, huh?’
At last, I manage to say the right thing. Lauren leans forward looking like the cat that cleared out the entire milk section.
‘Okay, enough about her. Tell me something good.’
‘Something good?’ I rub my chin, not sure what she means. ‘Like how male penguins propose to their mates with a pebble?’
‘I was thinking something more personal but that is some of the best news I’ve ever heard.’ She pushes her drink back and forth between her hands, the glass gliding along the wooden surface on the slip of condensation. ‘You’re playing two years of catch-up, remember? I want to know something only the people closest to you in the whole entire world would know.’
So much for distracting myself. What’s something only the people closest to me in the whole entire world would know? It’s my fault my brother is in a wheelchair.
‘Uh, I can make my ears move?’ I offer, demonstrating this extraordinary talent on cue but Lauren’s face flattens with disappointment.
‘If that’s the best you can do, you better be as good of a football player as they say you are.’
‘Don’t worry, I am,’ I say with certainty and pride. ‘What about you?’
‘What’s something you’d already know about me if you’d been here for the last two years?’ Her lips pull into a pout and her eyes skirt up towards the ceiling. ‘Well, I love to go out dancing.’
And she thought my answer sucked?
‘Wednesday is student night at Media. That’s why it’s so quiet in here, everyone’s probably already in town, putting back one-pound shots at the Cat and Fiddle.’
‘I know all the words in that sentence but when you put them all together like that, they did not make the slightest bit of sense.’
A hand reaches across the table and lightly punches me in the arm but when she starts explaining, something about a club and a pub and bottom shelf sambuca, my attention drifts over to Mia behind the bar. Sitting on a barstool, hair pulled back, perfectly straight teeth cutting into her pillowy bottom lip as she turns the page on a book so big, at first I thought it was a Bible. She’s so engrossed in whatever the hell it is, she doesn’t seem to realize she’s getting closer and closer to swiping a stack of bottles off the shelf behind her every time she turns the page.
‘She’s gonna knock ’em over,’ I mutter, unable to look away.
‘Knock what over?’ Lauren asks. ‘Who?’
Half a dozen glass bottles crash to the floor and the whole of Members erupts in a cheer. Mia immediately throws her book aside and disappears from view, ducking down behind the bar.
‘I should go help,’ I say but Lauren rests a hand on my forearm to hold me in place.
‘I’m sure she’s on top of it, you don’t want to get in the way.’
She tightens her grip on my wrist and looks at me with those big old eyes of hers. Now I’m looking closer, are they too big? Mia has big eyes but these are ridiculous, like she’s part bushbaby or something.
‘Yeah, still, I should go check. Why don’t I get us another drink?’
‘Because we’ve still got our first drinks?’
Pulling my arm away, I get up from the table anyway and head over to the bar. Leaning over, I see Mia on her hands and knees, picking up the larger pieces of glass and dropping them in a trashcan.
