Page 24 of Ruthless Edge

"What are you thinking about The Hawthorne Ballroom?" I ask. Emma specifically. I want to hear her voice. "For the venue. You still like the overnight angle?"

She looks up, and for a moment she's back. Actually in the conversation. "If pricing comes in on budget, yes. It changes the whole feel of the event."

"I'll have the numbers Monday."

"Good. We should also get something on record with Landon before we formalize anything with Dr. Neely. If he's committed, the pitch looks completely different."

"Agreed. I'll follow up with him before I send you the numbers⁠—"

"Knox," Laura says, "do you remember the beer-drinking contest at Declan's? After the Hartford game?"

I do. Last October. I won. "Yeah."

"He wouldn't let me win even though I asked him to." She's directing this at both of us. "Not even a little."

"You'd have been furious if I'd let you win."

"Completely furious," she agrees happily, and then she's into the next story. Some away game in February where she'd come to watch, had too many drinks, and I'd apparently carried her back to her hotel, which I remember as a non-event. Some party freshman year where she'd gotten too drunk and I guess she had done a strip tease for me that she finds hilarious. She asks, did I remember, wasn't that so funny, and on and on, wasting my time with Emma for stuff I couldn’t give two shits about.

I laugh when it seems correct to laugh. I'm watching Emma.

Emma is sitting with her hands around her water glass instead of her martini. The martini arrived a few minutes ago and it's just sitting there, untouched. She'd been happy enough with the first one. She'd accepted the replacement I got her when that guy knocked it out of her hand, no argument. She'd been drinking it all night.

Now it's sitting there full and she's not looking at it.

That bothers me more than it should.

"Emma." I pull her into the conversation again. "What did you think of the set? They seemed tighter than the last time I saw them."

She looks at me. "When did you last see them?"

"Freshman year."

Something moves in her expression. I don't know what, but it's not nothing.

"Me too," she says.

"We saw them together."

"I know."

I lean forward a little. "That was a good night."

Laura says, "Oh, I didn’t know you guys hung out outside of studying," and nobody properly responds and she moves on to something else before the moment has time to go anywhere.

Freshman year. Emma and me at this same bar, this same band. It happened after we found out we were both fans of theirs. I did some research into them afterwards. I wanted something to talk to her about. I'd spent the whole show trying to make her laugh and then trying to figure out if I could hold her hand, which I never got around to actually doing. I've thought about that night more times than I'd admit to anyone.

Would things have been different if I’d just grabbed her hand?

Emma is looking at the table again. But there's something slightly different in her expression than it was ten minutes ago, like something is still running behind her eyes that hasn't finished.

A plate of food appears. I don't remember ordering it, maybe Laura did, it doesn't matter. Before anyone reaches for it, Laura slides the whole thing across the table toward Emma and says, brightly, "Eat up. You must be starving after all that dancing, or whatever you want to call what you were doing in my arms."

Emma's expression closes all the way down.

I feel like I missed a step. I look at the plate and at Laura and at Emma and everyone is behaving normally on the surface, but something is sitting wrong and I can't find it. Laura is already onto something else. The moment passes, but I’m confused. Laura and Emma are on the committee together. They’re friends, but her mood shifted when Laura came. Is she as upset as I am that Laura crashed our date? Or is it something else?

Laura is suggesting everyone should head to her apartment after this, she's only a few blocks away, I could sleep over if I wanted, when Emma sets down her water glass and pushes her chair back.