Just a beat the kind he took when he was choosing words rather than just saying the first ones that came. Because I wanted to know if you'd say yes. Not because I asked. Because you wanted to. The baseball game cut to a commercial.
Somebody at the long table laughed at something. The sound big and uncomplicated. Norris said. What if I told you to miss? Then I would have missed.
Just like that. Just like that, she believed him. That was the problem. He wasn't performing patient. He was patient.
The way some people are tall or left-handed, just a fact about them. He'd raised Lily for 5 years since her mother left. And Norah had watched him handle that with a steadiness that made her feel slightly chaotic by comparison, which was uncomfortable because she didn't usually feel that way about herself. She put down her drink and turned on the stool to face him. "You've been thinking about this for a while," she said.
"A while?" He agreed. How long? He thought about it. You remember the Harrove pitch? February.
He thought. February was the nightmare account. The one where the client kept changing the scope and they'd had to redo the presentation three times. That was 9 months ago. I know.
You've been thinking about this for 9 months. Not constantly. Just Just. Yeah. Norah looked at her drink.
She looked at the bar. She looked at Marcus Webb, who had apparently been carrying this around since February, like it was something he was just getting around to. No rush, no pressure, waiting for what felt like the right time with the exact same patience he applied to everything else in his life. She said, "You're a lot. I know," he said.
And there was something underneath it. Not apology, not quite humor, but something ry and a little tired, like a man who'd been told this before and had learned to agree with it. Norah thought about the field trip phone call. She thought about the article with no message, just the link. She thought about February and the Harrove pitch and the fact that he'd apparently decided something 9 months ago and then just waited.
Lily's with your mom this weekend, she asked. The question surprised him. She could tell because he went a little still. Yeah. Till Sunday.
Okay. She said, "Okay," he said back. And his voice was careful like he was making sure he was understanding correctly. I'm not paying off a bet, she said. I want to be clear about that.
Understood. But she said and she looked at him. You've got pretty good aim. He didn't say anything for a second. Then he said, I do.
For the record, she said, I was going to say yes. Before you took the shot, the corner of his mouth moved. Not quite a smile yet, but the shape one would take. I know, he said. I could tell when you put down your queue.
So the whole thing was unnecessary. The whole thing, he agreed, was completely unnecessary. She laughed again. The real kind. He smiled all the way this time.
And somewhere at the bar between her second drink and the end of the baseball game, Norah Chin stopped thinking about what to call what this was and just let it be the thing it already was, which was maybe what Marcus Webb had been waiting for all along. The walk from O'Brien's to the street was three blocks of uneven Chicago sidewalk. The kind that lifted and cracked from tree roots and hard winters lit yellow from the street lamps. Late September in the city still carried warmth in it, but barely the kind of warmth that knew it was leaving, that felt borrowed. Norah had her jacket half on, one arm through, and Marcus had his hands in his pockets, and they were walking without having said where they were going, which felt either easy or significant, and she couldn't decide which.
Tell me something, she said. What? The two shots you scratched on purpose. Which ones? Marcus thought about it.
The one off the seven on the left rail and the second break shot where I hit too wide. She processed this. That second break was a miss. That was not intentional. It wasn't my finest.
That was not on purpose. I'm willing to negotiate the definition of on purpose. She pointed at him. That is the most dishonest thing you've said all night. I planned 40 minutes in a parking lot.
I have limits. This made her laugh and he glanced over at the sound of it like she'd done something worth noting, which she found slightly embarrassing and decided not to think about. They stopped at a corner. The light was red. Neither of them had said the word dinner or coffee or any of the words that would have made the direction clear.
And yet somehow Nora knew they were heading for the Thai place on Wabash that they'd walked past twice together and said separately, "I keep meaning to try that without either of them ever doing it." She knew this the way you know things when you've worked alongside someone long enough to understand how they navigate small decisions without having to ask. She said Lily likes pool. Marcus looked over. She loves it. She's terrible.
Does she know she's terrible? She thinks she's excellent. She has a very high opinion of her pool skills. That tracks. What tracks?