A Night in a Year: 39. Second Round

[jacquelineb]

“You two stopped talking clothes and crap?” he asks.

“We were having a sociology discussion,” she retorts in a sing-songy voice. “You can join us if you like or sit there a be grumpy!”

It’s a surprise when Diarmuid actually laughs, a genuine, rich throaty laugh that she finds hits her in the right places in the chest. It’s a further surprise that she’s willing to give him another chance.

Perhaps it’s arrogant to assume that she has any say in this matter, that in this dance of negotiation and game-playing of whether sex will occur that she has the lead. Well, she thinks… They talk about women being easy to get into bed, but in her experience, it’s men who are the easy ones.

Xavier breaks her train of though. He says, looking not at the bar, but some space over her shoulder,

“My round, I think.”

The glasses are all still half-full, and Xavier gets up without asking for anyone’s drinks, and heads in the opposite direction of the bar. She follows his track, and knows what his goal is – or rather, who. Square Glasses is leaning on the marble wall, and Xavier’s approach is too calculated with casualness to be aiming for ‘just friends.’

Ah well, she thinks, and rules Xavier out of the equation of possibilities.

Diarmuid hasn’t spoken, but he’s looking at her, as if waiting for her to do something. She obliges, flicks her hair back with a roll of her head, feeling it fall against her skin, and bites her lower lip before taking a sucking sip from her beer bottle.

Diarmuid smirks. “I know what you’re on about,” he says.

As apparent as her plans were, it still riles to have them pointed out. And she suspects Diarmud isn’t a man who likes to be played.

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Next: 40. Deflection

Image found on flickr, by Dinner Series, used under the Creative Commons License.

Mirrored from jacquelinebrocker.esquinx.net.