Follow Me(15)

Of course I said yes. I had been attending ever since, although my participation flagged the year Connor lived out of state for a clerkship. Since he had returned, I rarely missed trivia. Even though we now worked at the same law firm, those Thursday night excursions were the only times we saw each other outside of work, but remembering my vow to help Audrey acclimate to the city, I invited her to join us.

? ? ?

I ARRIVED AT the bar ten minutes later than promised and found Audrey perched on a barstool, dressed in short black shorts and a white eyelet lace shirt. She was sipping a glass of rosé and laughing with the bartender, a baby-faced guy adorned with tattoos. From his leering expression, I could tell he was wondering the same thing I was: whether she was wearing anything underneath that shirt.

Her glossy mouth twisted wryly as she said something to the bartender that made him throw his head back in exaggerated laughter. He said something back and she ducked her head coyly, twisting a lock of her long, red-gold hair with her white-polished fingers. I hesitated, unsure whether I should interrupt their flirtation.

Suddenly, she swiveled on her barstool and called out to me. “Cat! There you are!”

“Sorry,” I said, hurrying to her side. “I got stuck at work. Have you been waiting long?”

“I haven’t minded,” she said, throwing a coy smile at the bartender.

“Let’s—”

“Hey,” one of the regular waitresses, a young woman with emerald-green hair and the inability to make it through a shift without spilling at least one drink, said as she stepped between me and Audrey. With a tray of empty glasses balancing precariously on one hand, she said to Audrey, “You’re Audrey Miller, aren’t you?”

Audrey smiled beatifically at her. “I am. And you are . . . ?”

“Jody. I’ve been following you for, like, ever.” She set the tray down on the bar with a loud rattle and handed her phone to me. “Here, take our picture.”

Audrey offered me a shrug and a small smile before casually tossing an arm around Jody’s shoulders and grinning for the camera. It was magic: somehow Audrey managed to make it look as though she and Jody were great friends, rather than strangers who’d met only seconds before. I knew that photo would be plastered all over Jody’s social media the second we walked away.

The bartender smiled crookedly at Audrey. “Should I be following you, too?”

“Everyone should follow me.”

“Maybe I will,” he said, winking at her.

The way he said it turned my stomach, but Audrey was already plucking a business card from her purse. I restrained myself from snatching it out of her hand and warning her about picking up strangers in bars, particularly strangers who had a giant, bloody skull tattooed on one hand.

“Come on,” I said sternly instead. “The game’s about to start. We should find the rest of the team.”

“Absolutely,” she said. “Just let me settle up here.”

“No worries,” he said. “It’s on the house.”

“You’re a doll,” Audrey said, spinning off the barstool. She collected her wine and a plastic bag of animal crackers from the bar.

I smiled and pointed to them. “I see your favorite snack hasn’t changed.”

“Guilty as charged,” she said brightly, holding the bag out to me. “Want some?”

I took a few and led her through the bar to where our team, the Fertile Octogenarians (a property law joke that had seemed hilarious when we were neck-deep in bar prep), traditionally gathered in a large, rounded booth. I quickly made introductions: my friend Priya from law school; Jessa, Priya’s coworker at Planned Parenthood; Lamar, Jessa’s boyfriend; Harry, a friend of Lamar’s from college; and Lon, who worked with Harry at the DOJ.

“Hi, everyone, thanks for letting me crash your trivia party,” Audrey said, smiling and sliding into the booth beside Harry. She tossed the bag of animal crackers in the middle of the table. “Help yourselves.”

Lon, who had a nasty habit of digging around in his ears with his fingers, immediately reached a hand into the bag, and I decided I’d had enough animal crackers.

Audrey pulled me into the booth beside her and raised her arm, her phone angled toward us, taking a selfie. I forced a smile onto my face, already knowing what the image would look like: Audrey grinning coquettishly, her eyes widened and her chin tilted just so, while I sat woodenly beside her, my face inevitably captured with one eye partially closed. I had hundreds of such pictures from our college years.

“Where’s Connor?” I asked, striving for casualness even as my throat closed over his name. I had walked past his office on my way out of work, but his door had been shut and I couldn’t tell whether he was inside or already gone.

“Right here.”

Connor had the kind of deep, authoritative voice that all lawyers dreamed of having, and the sound of it always made my heart contract. I turned to see him standing at the edge of the booth, smoothing his thick, sand-colored hair with a hand. He grinned and my heart squeezed again, dangerously tightly. I loved his smile in its imperfect perfection, the way it lifted slightly higher on the left and the way it displayed his chipped front tooth.

“Hey, Harrell,” he said, sliding into the booth beside me. “Who’s your friend?”

“Hi,” Audrey said brightly, leaning around me. “I’m Audrey.”