Offside in the Friend Zone novel · Chapter 3 of 24

Chapter 3: The Quiz

In front of both families they fake their way through Calla's trick questions until a true one slips out, and Calla promises she knows exactly when Henrik got over her.

At eight the next morning, Calla Frost stood at the head of the breakfast table.

She held a stack of index cards.

Both families sat in rows of chairs facing the fireplace.

Rolf had a coffee and a worried face.

Elsa was biting a pancake into smaller and smaller pieces.

Kaspar's mother was a silver-haired woman in a lilac sweater.

She folded her hands in her lap and looked at me.

"This is just for fun," Calla said.

"Couples' trivia, a little welcome tradition."

"Henrik and Astrid, you're up first."

Henrik and I were seated on a loveseat in front of everyone.

His hand was on my knee, because that was Rule Two, and I could feel his palm through my jeans.

We had slept maybe three hours.

He'd spent two of them lying on the rug saying nothing, and I'd spent them listening to him say nothing.

"Question one," Calla said sweetly.

"Where was your first date?"

I opened my mouth with absolutely nothing in it.

"The rink," said Henrik.

"After closing."

"I came in to sharpen my skates, and she charged me twenty dollars."

"Twenty-five," I said.

"Because it was after hours."

The room laughed, and Calla's smile didn't move.

"Who said I love you first?"

"Neither one of us," Henrik said.

"She threw a skate at me."

"It was a figure skate," I said.

"Which hurts more."

"It does."

He rubbed his eyebrow where the old scar sat, and that got a real laugh, and then Rolf was wheezing into his coffee.

Elsa's pancake had gone completely to crumbs.

Calla flipped a card.

"What's Astrid's middle name?"

"Marit," said Henrik, without a breath.

"After her grandmother, who taught her to lie about her age at the bingo hall."

"It's true," I said.

"She was ninety-one and said she was seventy."

Calla's pearls clicked as she shifted.

"What does he hate most about Astrid?"

I didn't have to think about that one.

"That I'm always right," I said.

"I'm usually right," Henrik said.

"And the sink."

"What about the sink?" asked Kaspar's mother.

"She leaves one dish in it," he said.

"Every night, since we were twelve."

"One cup, so there's always something to do in the morning."

I had never told anyone that.

I had never told him that.

I turned my head, and he was looking at me, and it wasn't a performance.

My throat tightened, and I looked away.

"Cute," said Calla.

"But those are all things you could find out in a week."

"One more."

She slid a final card from the stack and held it out at arm's length.

"Henrik, you're such an attentive boyfriend."

"What does Astrid do when she lies?"

My stomach dropped through the loveseat.

I hadn't done a thing, and she couldn't know.

She was fishing.

She had probably asked Elsa a hundred little questions to find a seam, and she'd picked this one on a guess.

"Touches her left ear," Henrik said.

He said it easily, to the room, with his hand still on my knee.

"Every time."

"She touches it, and then she pretends she's fixing her hair."

"Which is very funny," he added, "because she has two inches of hair."

The room roared.

Rolf slapped his knee.

Elsa had stopped chewing entirely and was staring at us with enormous wet eyes.

I laughed with everybody else.

My hand was halfway to my head before I put it down flat in my lap.

His fingers tightened on my knee, just once.

Maybe it was an apology.

Maybe it was a warning.

I couldn't tell anymore which one it had ever been.

"Well," said Kaspar's mother, and she dabbed her mouth with a napkin.

"I think that's quite enough for the poor things."

"They pass with honors, Calla dear."

Calla set the cards down on the mantel, one at a time, edges squared.

Then she crossed the room, bent down beside the loveseat, and put her mouth next to my ear, the left one.

Her perfume smelled like something expensive that had died.

"Cute trick," she whispered.

"But I know exactly when he got over you."

"I was there."

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