She flipped her board.
And now Zaf was the one staring.
“Green tea!” Edison said cheerfully, when it became clear Dani wasn’t going to.
She was feeling rather dazed, actually. A rush of relief and a flash of surprise combined to intoxicate her, until she returned to her senses and pulled herself firmly together. Of course Zaf knew she drank green tea. When she brought him coffee, he teased her about the contents of her own cup. And really, what was tea, anyway? Minor, that’s what. Practically public information. There were people Dani despised who knew her tea preferences.
Of course, those were usually people she’d worked with in close quarters, people who’d been forced to actually make her said tea as a matter of courtesy when it was their turn to be on kettle duty. But still.
Still.
“Next question!” Edison appeared to be enjoying himself. Either he had the intellect of a puppy, or he was unusually invested in #DrRugbae. Dani suspected, with no little discomfort, that it was the latter. “Dani, what’s Zaf’s favorite flavor of crisps?”
Well, she knew that; she’d seen him eating them often enough. Dani scrawled salt and vinegar onto her board and flipped it over before the ten seconds were up. What sort of relationship quiz was this if two work friends could win so easily? Although, some might say she and Zaf were a little more than work friends these days. Coconspiracy tended to intensify a relationship. Perhaps they’d leveled up to general friends, or some other platonic relationship status that explained the magnetic pull she felt sitting beside him, as if every second she spent not looking at him or smiling for him or laughing with him was a second wasted.
Perhaps they were best friends. How cute.
More questions flew by, all of which were answered correctly. But Dani refused to be impressed that Zaf knew her favorite season—autumn—and she wasn’t remotely happy with herself for remembering that he preferred dogs to cats. He had once told her, over the security desk, that cats were sneaky creatures who hid their toilet business, and an animal that hid its toileting could easily make a habit of pissing behind your sofa, and you wouldn’t even know until you died of ammonia inhalation. Really, when he’d displayed such an unexpected passion on the subject, how could she forget?
“All right,” Edison said finally. “Last question. Zaf, what is Dani’s area of academic interest?”
Those words popped Dani’s buoyant mood like barbed wire—which made very little sense, because they were doing well enough to excuse a single mistake. Zaf answering this question incorrectly shouldn’t throw any real doubt on their relationship. Ph.D.s were slippery and frequently boring things.
“Zaf, show us your board!”
In fact, this time last year, Dani might have struggled with such a question herself. It was a tricky—
“Race and gender in the West after slavery,” Zaf said.
At which point, Dani released a garbled sound of astonishment, one that sounded like a cross between a cough, a burp, and a squawked “What?,” into the ears of the entire city.
Zaf shot her a look of concern, as if he suspected she’d accidentally swallowed a passing pigeon. Which would be quite a feat, considering the room’s lack of windows.
“Dani,” Edison said patiently, “what’s your answer?”
Slowly, she turned her board over. “Evolution of misogynoir post–chattel slavery,”
“That’s close, right?” Zafir looked inordinately pleased with himself. He actually smiled, a big, beaming grin that made him achingly handsome, all white teeth and dark beard and lovely, lovely mouth. But she mustn’t get distracted by the mouth. In fact, for once, she couldn’t be—she was too busy staring at his whiteboard in astonishment. There it was, in black and white: a valid understanding of her general thesis topic.
“How did you know that?” Dani demanded in a whisper.
Zaf arched an eyebrow. “You think I don’t listen when you talk?”
“When I’m rambling about work? I was absolutely certain you weren’t listening, correct.”
“Yeah, well.” He tapped his lovely nose and looked smug.
“Zaf, that’s almost the title of my most recently published article.” In line with her twenty-year plan toward professorship, Dani had, of course, secured bylines in minor academic journals over the past few years.
“And now you think you’re the only one who knows how to use a library.”
Her voice reached dolphin pitch. “You’ve been reading my articles at the library?”
He shrugged, and she got the impression common sense had broken through his competitiveness, because he now looked slightly hunted. “Er . . . yeah. I mean, they’re interesting.”
Interesting?
It wasn’t that Dani didn’t find her own work interesting—of course she bloody did. She had to, or she might have stabbed herself in the throat with a ballpoint pen by now. And she knew very well that lots of other people found her work interesting, too. It was just . . . well. She’d never been with one of those people.
Not that she was with Zaf. But still. Even Dani’s sisters didn’t read her papers. The only friend who did so was Sorcha, and that was because Sorcha had studied a similar field at undergrad. No one outside Dani’s profession had ever withstood her disjointed ramblings about literary theory and come away with a burning desire to learn more about it all. She simply wasn’t as fascinating as the written work itself, as evidenced by the number of dates who had gently informed her that she was more boring than thrilling in long-term conversation.
Back when she still did silly things like date, that is.
So Dani couldn’t think of a single damned reason why Zaf would carry himself to the library to read her essays. Then he slid one big, warm hand over the nape of her neck, squeezed, and said, “Don’t look so surprised. You know I love your brain.” At which point, Dani stopped thinking of anything at all. Her throat dried up like the desert, and tiny darts of sheer, sunlit happiness zipped through her blood, and her eyes prickled oddly hot at the
