Page 23 of Best Served Hot

I rolled my eyes, then felt bad, because I knew how hard it could be to stick your neck out like that. I didn’t want to put him down, but then again, I was definitely not interested in anyone who would use a pickup line that cheesy. Unless the person was literally offering me cheese. That would actually be the best pickup line somebody could use. “Sorry, but I have a . . .” I trailed off as I turned and saw who the person was. What were the odds? “Oh, it’s you.”

Bennett’s friend Ryan’s thick blond brows furrowed in surprise. I couldn’t believe it, but he was wearing another polo shirt with a rhino emblem on it. Maybe his entire wardrobe consisted of polo shirts with rhino emblems. He’d be cold in the winter, I bet. “Do I know you?”

I hesitated. I could explain that we’d met briefly at the Central Park Food Festival, where he was a giant douchebag to me and didn’t even have the decency to remember my face, and then probably argue with him for a half hour about who’d been right and who’d been wrong.

Or I could just . . . not do any of that. “What?” I said, turning away and pretending to spot someone coming in the door. I waved at nobody, which turned into waving at somebody when Alice pushed her way in. Filled with relief, I grabbed my drink, shoved a twenty across the counter, and hustled to her side.

Her lips twitched into an exhausted-looking smile when I reached her. “Our usual spot’s over here,” she shouted, and I followed her and a small group of what had to be her coworkers to a long table in the corner with a reserved sign on it. They all took a stool, so I took one, too. It was wobbly, one leg shorter than the other.

“Julie, this is Kelsey,” Alice yelled at me across the table, nodding to the stocky blond girl next to me. We nodded and smiled at each other. “And that’s . . .” She shouted the names of the four guys on the other end of the table. Were they all named Rob, or could I just not hear her? Probably the latter, but I chose to believe the former. Somehow each one looked like a Rob.

“You brought a friend, Alice?” one said. “Now we’re at seven people. Teams are six.”

Alice scowled. “You encourage me to bring a friend every week because we don’t have enough people.”

“It’s fine,” I said. “I can just watch—”

One of the Robs sighed, cutting me off. “Aren’t you the ‘influencer’ friend? You’re right, it’s probably best if you just watch. Maybe you can take some pictures of us for the company newsletter.”

Rage filled me. I placed my hands on my lap so that they didn’t fly off my wrists and strangle someone. “You know what, I changed my mind,” I said. “I want to do it after all.”

Some discussion among the guys, and they decided on a complex system of us all rotating in and out. “The categories tend to go from easiest to hardest. Why don’t we say ladies first,” the Rob who’d called me an influencer said, nodding at us in what he probably thought was a generous way.

I was ready to punch him.

All four went up to grab drinks for the table. Kelsey followed, maybe to make sure they didn’t pull any funny business. I gaped at Alice once they were out of earshot. “You weren’t kidding.”

“What?”

I leaned over the table, hoping they’d lower the music when it came time for the game. “You weren’t kidding about what dicks they are!”

She leaned back, looking affronted. “Of course I wasn’t kidding. Did you think I was?”

The rest of her team came back, spreading beers over the table, along with a glass of wine for Alice. They were all slapping one another’s backs, splashes of beer sloshing over their rims. The long table next to us, which had also been empty with a reserved sign, was now filling up.

“That’s one of the companies we’re playing against,” Alice explained. “They’re in finance. A hedge fund, I think.”

I looked over just in time to lock eyes with Ryan the Rhino. He blinked at me in response, maybe not sure whether to hit on me or ask me who I was. I smirked as he turned to look past me and waved toward the door. Nice trick.

Only the trick was on me. Because someone walked over to his wave. Someone I knew. All of my insides seized up as he turned to look at me.

Bennett.

Was it my imagination, or had the music suddenly quieted?

He looked just as surprised to see me as I did to see him. To his credit, he quickly lowered his eyebrows and gave me a little wave. I waved back only a moment too late. I would say he seemed out of place in this faux grunge bar in his usual button-down (green-and-yellow plaid today), but at that table full of hedge fund bros, he fit right in.

I sat back on my stool, trying to get out of his eyeline, and just managed to catch myself before sliding off. Stools don’t have backs, as it turned out. One of the Robs cracked, “Whoa, I think someone’s already had a little too much to drink,” and was rewarded with guffaws and backslaps from the others. If only they’d slapped him a little harder.

I realized then that it hadn’t been my imagination: the music volume had lowered. At the front of the room, near the bar, a man stood beside a chalk wall. He’d already divided it into a scoreboard between our team, Bennett’s team, and three others spaced out around the bar. Apparently our team was named Walt Quizney. “Welcome to the Dead Squirrel Trivia Night!” he announced. “Hopefully your teams will be better than they were last week. You were all so dead, we could’ve named the bar after you.”

Dead silence. One uncomfortable titter. The announcer scowled. “Anyway, our first category tonight will be world history.”

Rob One turned to the rest of us. He was white, tall and skinny, with long dark hair and a smattering of pimples on his cheeks. “Alice, Kelsey, or New Girl, one of you will need to sit this one out.”

Alice scowled. “Why us?”

“We know a lot about history. Leave it to us,” said another Rob.