Page 38 of Take This Heart
Goldie grabs the marker from me and scrawls: Whitman Genius + Architect Who Thinks He’s Right About Everything.
“Menace,” I mutter.
She beams. “Thank you.” Her head tilts. “Or would yourather do a celebrity couple moniker?” She crosses out the long title. “Mildie? Golo?”
My eyes narrow and I grin. “Couple, huh? Damn, Goldie, I knew you were into me, but I didn’t know you were ready to commit.”
She lets out an aggravated sigh and her cheeks flush bright pink. “You and Erin are determined to misunderstand me tonight. I see how it is.”
But she doesn’t cross out Mildie/Golo, which pleases me more than it should.
Round one begins. I answer the first three questions before she even uncaps the marker. She snatches it from me by question four.
“Excuse me,” she says under her breath. “Let arealnerd shine.”
“Oh, it’s on,” I whisper back.
We start tallying points between rounds. It’s neck and neck with a team called Smarty Pints, and Goldie is vibrating with competitive energy.
“I willdiebefore I lose to that tourist in the Green Bay jersey,” she hisses, pointing two tables over.
“He’s a cheesehead,” I say flatly. “We cannot lose to that.”
Round five is a disaster. One of the questions is aStar Trekreference and Goldie writes down an answer with such confidence that I hesitate—then erase it and write mine.
When they announce the answer…it’s hers.
She looks at me, completely insulted. “You didn’ttrustme?”
“I panicked!”
“You’re sleeping on the deck tonight.”
“I don’t live with you.”
“You’re moving injustso I can throw you out,” she snaps.
That gets me. I laugh and she straightens, trying to hold back her laugh too, but then it bursts out of her and we can’t stop. We barely get it together enough to keep playing the game.
But we manage and we win by two points. Goldie jumps out of her seat, arms raised victoriously. I stand too, caught up in her joy, and we both yell something unintelligible while Erin films the whole thing on her phone.
“You’re buying me a drink,” Goldie says, breathless, her face flushed from adrenaline.
I step closer. “Only if you admit I carried us through the literature round.”
“I willneveradmit that,” she says, poking me in the chest.
And then it’s like she realizes she’s touching me and she drops her hand, taking a step back.
She turns on her heels and walks off, and I sigh.
I guess the brief truce was a fluke.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
ESCAPADES
GOLDIE
