Page 57 of Just One Look

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Luka was glaring at her.She’d just apologized, though! She started to talk to the barman, and Luka spoke right over her. “One Scotch on the rocks, please. Glenlivet OK?” he asked her.

“What, for me?” she said. “I want the kind that says ‘Scotch’ on the label. By the time I’m drinking Scotch, I don’t care.”

“Glenlivet,” he said. “And a dirty martini, and a …”

“Champagne cocktail,” she said, when he didn’t go on. “How could you forget that? Piperalwayswanted a champagne cocktail, because she loved the way the bubbles popped, and it made her feel rich and sparkly. Which is snarky, so forget I said it, please. Latent hostility on both our parts, obviously. You for forgetting her habitual drink order, and me for saying that.”

“And a pint of Monteith’s Original,” he told the barman. “And, no,” he told Elizabeth. “It’s that I forgot, full stop. I don’t carry around women’s drink orders in my head forever. I’m not a surgeon. There’s only so much space in my brain, and most of it’s taken up by rugby.”

“Don’t give me that,” she said. “The ‘I’m just a dumb jock’ thing. You’re clearly not, and it’s definitely latent hostility. Why? What happened? Don’t tell me I did all that apologizing and it wasn’t all my fault after all. I know I’m awkward, but there’s a limit. Also, tell me you don’t have four kids with her. Please. I don’t need to feel any lower here.”

He stared at her. “Why would I have four kids with her? We broke up when we were about twenty, and her love life didn’t stop dead. I haven’t the least idea what she’s doing now, and I don’t know what all the trembling chin and tears and big eyes are about, either, but unless she’s living in the past, they’re not about me. And, yeh, that was a bit of a dickhead thing to say. Seems to me I deserve one dickhead move after all this, though. This fella’s about to hand over those drinks, and I’m going to have to go back there and watch her cry andnotbe a dickhead about it, because I already used up my one token. Watching women cry. My least favorite activity. On one beer.”

“Oh.” For some reason, she was smiling. “She seemed so sad, though. Also, isn’t crying yourself even worse?”

“Who, me? Sorry, but I’m not much of a weeper. Also, what is it about you and your outsized responsibility for the world? So she told you she was dating me. She told you about fifteen years ago, presumably. Not sure I understand the whole martyr bit. How are you terrible?”

“Excuse me,” she said. “How would I have known it was over?”

“I don’t know,” he said. “Because you’re her stepsister? Because I asked you out, and you saw me with a couple of other girls as well? How much do you think I get around?”

“Well, I’m sorry, but your sister said she was the love of your life. Piper said you were the love ofherlife.”

“We wereseventeen.”

“Also,” she said, “I met you. I knew she was dating you because Imetyou. With her.”

“No, you didn’t. I’d remember. I only met one sister, and she was somebody else. Piper talked about her pretty often, too.”

The bartender had put the drinks on the bar. Luka put his card into the machine a split second before she could get there, and she said, “I told you I’d pay.”

“And I told you I would,” he said. “I’m bigger. That means I win.”

“That does not mean you win,” she said. “You forget I have a scalpel.”

He stopped in the midst of punching his PIN into the machine. She said, “You should cover your hand. I now know your PIN.”

“Fortunately,” he said, “I know that if you use it for a shopping spree, you’ll turn up at my front door the next day, apologize, pay me back, and try to buy me something to make it up. I’m not fussed. But—wait. You have a scalpel. You—she—you said that. The name wasn’t Elizabeth, though. Piper’s stepsister was named something odd. Something awful. Barbie, or something.”

“Barbie?”she said.“Barbie?No. It was Birdie.”

“Like I said. Awful.”

“Hence,” she said, “Elizabeth.”

“That’s it? Elizabeth? You had a terrible nickname, and your solution is not to have a nickname at all? You’d never last in En Zed. Everybody needs a nickname.”

“What, Liz? Lizzie? No, thank you. I’ll stick to Elizabeth. I’m a grown woman. We need to go back there and get the … whatever this is over with. As a consolation prize, you still have an allowable dickhead move remaining. The one where you yell at me for not confessing the truth.”

“Yeh,” he said. “I’m saving that one for later, though.”