“So, you’ve lost your palate and your sense of self-preservation.”
“Tell me again how you’re not flirting with me right now.”
“I’m not flirting.” Her foot finds mine under the table, her heel sliding along my ankle with practiced precision. “I’m verbally sparring with heavy eye contact.”
The table next to us buzzes with forced laughter. The senior associate from DC is there, the one who hides ambition behind pink lipstick and practiced smiles. But she’s background noise.
Everything is background noise except Tessa.
She’s turned toward me completely now, one elbow on the table, her body angled into my space. Her fingers trace absent patterns in the condensation on her glass—slow, hypnotic circles that make me think of other things her fingers do. Did. Will do again, if I have anything to say about it.
“You keep looking at me like I’m a problem you want to solve,” she murmurs, voice pitched low enough that only I can hear.
“You are a problem.”
“And you’re the worst kind of solution,” she replies, but her hand finds my thigh under the table, fingers splaying possessively.
The trivia coordinator’s voice booms through the space. “Ladies and gentlemen,—it’s time.”
Each team gets the standard equipment—buzzer, notepad, and a bowl of what looks like someone’s failed attempt at charcuterie.
Tessa commandeers the buzzer immediately, one hand claiming it with the confidence of someone who’s never met a competition she didn’t want to dominate. Her other hand, though—her other hand slides along the outside of my thigh with deliberate casualness.
Every muscle in my body locks.
She doesn’t even pause. Doesn’t acknowledge what she’s doing. Just keeps that hand there, warm and present.
She’s too comfortable now. Too confident. The nervousness from earlier has evaporated, replaced by whatever this is. Tessa unleashed. Tessa knowing her power.
The moderator grins with the enthusiasm of someone who peaked in college. “Tonight’s prize: bragging rights, a bottle of single malt, and a chef’s table dinner for two.”
Tessa turns to me, her expression shifting to something fierce and determined. “We’re winning.”
“Confident.”
She selects a grape from the bowl with and brings it to her lips, making a production of eating it. “I’m highly motivated.”
Fuck.
“Let’s start with something simple,” the moderator announces, his voice cutting through my rapidly deteriorating focus. “What landmark 1963 case ruled that the Sixth Amendment requires states to provide defense attorneys to criminal defendants who can’t afford them?”
Tessa’s hand slams the buzzer before he even finishes. “Gideon v. Wainwright.”
The room erupts in surprised laughter.
The moderator blinks. “That is… correct.”
I lean in, close enough that my breath stirs her hair. “You’ve been waiting to flex that one since undergrad.”
She lifts one shoulder in a shrug that manages to be both dismissive and seductive. “Some girls collect handbags. I collect case law.”
“Is that what you called it when you slept with your Criminal Procedure flashcards under your pillow?”
Her laugh is soft. “It worked, didn’t it?”
Another memory surfaces with finding her asleep at my desk, face pressed against her notes. The way I’d carried her to bed, the way she’d curled into me, murmuring aboutmens reaandactus reus.
The game accelerates. Questions fly. The team across from us—two law students—fumble through a commerce clause question with the kind of confidence that only comes from never being told you’re wrong.
