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“I thought we were up first,” Kelsey said. Her voice was low and raspy. “I read the world section of the paper every morning, and I know a lot about—”

The bros laughed loudly, interrupting her. “The blonde can read!” one crowed, clapping. “Okay, Alice’s friend, you sit it out. Kelsey and Alice, you can join in.”

They were totally dicks. Sexist dicks. But I didn’t mind sitting out this category. It gave me time to study Bennett’s table, where they only had six people, meaning they all got to participate. He sat all straight-backed on his stool, an example of perfect posture—unlike me, who was slumped over in a way that would make a chiropractor cry—except when he’d lean in to debate some point or other with Ryan and his coworkers. He had a habit of tapping his fingers on the table erratically, as if trying to pound out some kind of rhythm. Or run and jump in a video game.

Their table was a lot more harmonious than ours. The announcer had asked for the last British prime minister to hold office while a member of the House of Lords. “Anthony Eden was an earl, wasn’t he?” said one of the Robs.

“Maybe, but he wasn’t the last one,” said Alice. “I read in this book that—”

“It’s got to be Eden,” another guy said, talking over her. “Remember him from The Crown? Great show.”

“I’m pretty sure it was Alec Douglas-Home,” said Alice, but now even she sounded unsure of herself. Which was unusual for Alice. “It was a big deal because he gave up his title and—”

“So, we’re going with Anthony Eden?” said the first guy. Without waiting for the others, he scrawled the man’s name on their little chalkboard, just in time for the announcer to ask them all to hold up their answers.

“I’m looking for Alec Douglas-Home,” said the announcer. Alice pursed her lips and cursed under her breath. I looked to the guys for an apology to her for blowing her off when she was right, but they were only laughing at themselves for getting it wrong. Should I speak up? My lips opened . . . then closed. Alice hadn’t told me to say anything. I didn’t want her getting mad at me.

But I couldn’t listen to them talk about how it had been such a hard question and nobody could have gotten it. I rolled my eyes and shifted in my seat, looking back over at Bennett. Only to find him looking back at me. He half smiled in my direction. I waited for that swoop of dislike to come over me, remind me that he was the enemy, a jerk . . .

And waited . . .

And stopped waiting, because if it hadn’t swept me off my stool by now, it wasn’t going to. He was still staring at me. My eyes flickered to his lips. They were slightly parted, and I could imagine . . . imagine . . .

Imagine them telling me, over and over, how he didn’t use social media because it was dumb and vapid, them speaking to the waiter at Calabaza and deliberately trying to bait me by ordering expensive wine they knew I’d hate. Brick by brick, I did my best to convince myself I hadn’t started to like him at Wander.

“The next category will be food,” the announcer stated.

Bennett flew out of my mind as I spun back to the table. “I can do this one.”

“Me, too,” said Alice. She’d accompanied me to enough restaurants, listened to me ramble about enough food stuff, and skimmed through enough articles I’d texted her that she probably knew as much as I did.

“Great, you three should do great with this category,” Rob One said, and the others grunted with laughter. Because women belong in the kitchen, amiright? Skin prickled all over the back over my neck. Do it. Say something. Don’t explode and get Alice in trouble; just say something polite but firm.

But then the announcer started talking. All my nerve trickled away into focus. “Question one,” he said. “What is the only fruit to wear their seeds on the outside?”

Fruits swept through my mind in a dizzying, colorful array. I cast aside their sorbet forms, then any fruit with peels. “I think strawberry?” They had their seeds on the outside, right? “Unless there’s something rare and obscure I’m missing.”

“We’ll go with that,” Kelsey said, and handed me the dry-erase marker. I scrawled Strawberry on our board just in time for the announcer to call for answers.

I held ours up but didn’t look to the announcer first. Instead, I looked to Bennett’s team. Sure enough, he was the one holding up his team’s board. Which said STRAWBERRY in his nearly incomprehensible scrawl.

“I’m looking for strawberry,” said the announcer. One of the other teams behind me groaned. Bennett flashed me a grin. Before I could think about it, I grinned back.

The questions became progressively harder from there. Thanks to a documentary series on Netflix, I knew that nachos were called nachos because of their inventor’s name (Ignacio, nicknamed Nacho). Croissants originated in Austria, not France, a tricky question that knocked all the other teams down . . . except for Bennett. Thanks to a paper I’d written in college on the history of the celebrity chef, I knew that the first TV celebrity chef was Fanny Cradock in England, not Julia Child, which three of the other teams thought.

Not Bennett, of course. I wondered how he knew about Fanny. She wasn’t exactly a household name. At least, not here. If I asked him, he’d probably expound upon a teenage trip to England, where he’d visited the former set.

The first food eaten in space? Applesauce. The first sushi restaurant in New York City? Nippon. I kept waiting for Bennett to miss one, but he didn’t. So, by the end of the round . . .

“Our top two teams are tied, which means we have a sudden death tiebreaker round!” the announcer said. He sounded very pleased with himself. “Walt Quizney and Very Stable Geniuses, please send up one member each to participate.”

I was standing before Rob Two said casually, “I can go if nobody else wants to.”

“I want to,” I said back, and not just because Bennett was already walking toward the front and I had to take him down. Because I’d gotten most of the freaking answers. Okay, maybe Rob Number Two had known that the first fast-food restaurant founded was In-N-Out Burger, but that was one question. I didn’t wait to hear his answer before stalking off, leaving my drink on the table, but I did hear him complaining loudly behind me about how pushy I was. Good. Let him think I was pushy.

I met Bennett up at the front of the room in the hot spot. In that it literally felt warmer up here. Sweat trickled down the back of my neck as I met his eyes. “What are the odds?” I said.

“That you and I would both have a friend attending the same trivia night and that we’d both agree to attend?” Bennett said. I hoped he wasn’t about to calculate the actual odds of such an event, but then he said, “Pretty low. This is the first one I’ve ever gone to with Ryan.”