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“Uh...” I look around the room for inspiration, and my eyes land on my beer. “You drink. It’s a drinking game, of course.”
“Ah.”
“So? What do you think?”
Jack sighs. “I think I’m about to learn all your secrets, Raine Hart.”
We rope a few of the regulars who are already here into our game. Róisín comes into the room not long after we start playing and wipes down tables. They hover nearby, and I’m fairly certain I’ve never seen someone wipe a table so slowly. Or wipe each table twice. Jack says hello to Róisín when they pass by us, then does a double-take.
“You don’t need to bus tables, Ro. You only have to worry about the kitchen,” he says.
“I don’t mind,” they say.
Jack furrows his brow as he looks them over. “Isn’t it your night off?”
Róisín shrugs.
“We’ve got room if you want to play, Róisín,” I say, and pat the spot on the floor beside me. “Grab a pint and come on over.”
As it turns out, the Jenga Drinking Game is an awful drinking game when most of the players are open books anyway. I answer every question I’m asked: My grandfather taught me to play the guitar. I left Boston because I hated med school and wanted to avoid my parents’ feelings about it. I don’t have a favorite flower because I like them all.
Jack only passes on one question (What’s your greatest fear?asked by yours truly), and by the end of a few rounds, I know more about these people than I do my own sister.
When last call comes and the others go home, Jack and I rebuild the tower, then sit across from each other at the long table at the center of the room to drink one more pint.
“So, Lorraine Susan Hart,” Jack, who is very clearly delighted to have asked me my full name, says, “are you excited for the band to play tomorrow?”
I tap my fingers along the side of the glass. “No, Jack Stephen Dunne, I wouldn’t say I’m excited.”
Jack gives me a look that I have come to learn means,Go on.
I keep my eyes on my beer. “I’m nervous.”
“Musical sensation and intrepid world traveler Raine Hart is nervous about hosting some musicians at our wee little pub?”
“Ha.” I take a sip of my beer, then set it back onto the table with a sigh. “It’s just... what if no one comes?”
“I’ll be there,” Jack says.
“You own the pub, Jack.”
“But I’m technically off tomorrow. So really, I could do other things.”
I have to laugh at the absurd thought. I don’t think there’s been a day Ihaven’tseen Jack since we met, whether or not he was working. “I’m starting to suspect you don’t have anything better to do.”
He runs his hand along his pint glass and flicks the condensation at me. “Listen, you, I have plenty of things to do.”
“Like what?”
“Like...” He turns to look at the fire. The light slants over his face, making him even more colorful than usual. “Okay, I’ve got nothing.”
“I think you hang around the pub so much because you want to see me.”
Jack raises his eyebrows but doesn’t say anything. He spins the coaster in front of him. “Tomorrow will be great.”
He looks at me as if he really believes that, as if it’s impossible I could do something thatwasn’tgreat, and I decide that I’m at least a quarter in love with him already, if not halfway there.
After the pub closes and Jack leaves, I wander around downstairs, spinning a coaster in my hands and thinking of Jack and the way he didn’t answer when I said he only hangs around to be with me.
