Bibbi looked at everyone else, waiting to see who would break first. It was clear she couldn’t hold out much longer. I could see a little gap forming between her lips.
“What is it?” I asked.
That was all she needed, one last prod. Her lips burst open like she’d been holding back the entire Hoover Dam. “Hawk declared for you.” Her eyes lit up as she bounced in her seat.
Oscar seemed quite pleased as well, in a more resigned fashion.
“What the hell are you talking about? Declared what?” Had Hawk gone back on his word to me and was going to try to kick me out of Xest again?
Bibbi flattened both palms on the table and said, “He declared his intentions.” She watched me, waiting for a reaction.
“What intentions?” That son of a bitch. He had. He was going back on his words and intended to get rid of me.
“His interest. That he wants to be with you.” Bibbi’s voice rose.
I dropped my fork and leaned back, squinting in her direction.
She rolled her head. “You know, that you’re the one? How many more ways can I say it?”
She watched and waited, staring at me as if a light bulb would turn on.
Bibbi had been waiting for this so long that she was losing her mind. “Are you sure you know what you’re talking about?” I said. “I think you might’ve misconstrued something. Hawk and I aren’t… It’s not… Let’s just keep it simple and say there’s no way you’ve got that right.” I went back to eating now that I didn’t have to worry about packing my bags and finding a new place to live.
“Tippi, I know what I saw.”
Bertha turned to Bibbi. “Maybe I should take a crack at this?”
Bibbi shrugged, relenting to Bertha, who would surely make more sense. Bibbi was so set on the way she wanted things to be that she was getting a little crazier than normal.
Bertha smiled at me and then said, “When Hawk shared his wine with you, it wasn’t typical. He had you drink from his glass. That means he’s declaring for you, and it’s very significant. Like Bibbi said, it means he’s interested and is declaring that interest. If someone else was interested, they’d have to say something to him, perhaps fight him. He’s pretty much called dibs on you.”
Bibbi was giving me the now do you believe me? look.
Zab occasionally glanced up and shared a look with Musso before the two of them went back to eating.
Oscar laughed softly to himself, nodding in Bibbi’s direction as if they’d won a hard battle together.
“How can he declare for me if he’s dating Gillian?” I dropped my fork and looked around the table.
“Oh, he’s not dating her,” Bertha said, shaking her head. “She wants him to, but he’s not interested. We all know it. Musso tried to tell her that no good will come from it, but she wouldn’t listen. Didn’t want to hear the truth.”
Musso shrugged as he continued to eat. That was as much involvement as he seemed willing to give.
I’d finally lost my appetite. “Don’t I have a say in this? Shouldn’t he have to get my permission to declare?”
“Why? It’s not a contract with you,” Oscar said.
“But you said someone would have to go to him if they were interested in me,” I said to Oscar, daring him to deny what Bertha had said.
“Well, that’s true.” Oscar nodded.
“Nobody is going to fight him.” I was the one raising my voice now.
There were nods around the table.
“Only people who don’t want to challenge him,” Bertha said, not seeming upset at all.
“Which is everyone.”
“Well, yes, that’s true,” Bertha said.
Was she not understanding the situation? This was barbaric. Did none of them see this? As I again took the temperature of the people at the table, it didn’t seem as if they did.
I got up and made the third grand exit of the night.
I paced in front of the door to the upstairs like I was driven by a steam engine with an inexhaustible heap of coal. Hawk was still upstairs. Everyone else had gone to sleep a long time ago, and he still hadn’t come down. I would’ve stormed up there and barged in if I didn’t want to be as far away from his conversation with Gillian as possible. Even being in the building didn’t seem like a great idea, but there was a conversation that needed to be had tonight.
What was taking so long? Was he apologizing? Sorry you were into me? Sorry I flirted with you in front of Tippi? Sorry I was nice to you? Was that a thing you should say to someone?
I took another lap around the office before I made my way to the back room.
That was when the stairs creaked. I shot back into the office as Hawk walked in. He had barely got a second before I launched into the question that had been burning inside me for hours.
“What was that stunt you pulled at dinner?” I stood in front of him, arms crossed. He wouldn’t be leaving here without answering.
“I’m not sure what you’re talking about. You’ll have to expand on what you mean.” He walked past me into the back room.
I almost tripped on his heels. “You know what you did. What game are you playing now? You agree to stop pushing me out and now you figure you’ll make it miserable for me to stay?”
“I’m not sure I understand how I’m making you miserable this time.” He settled onto the couch, resting his arm on the back. He was looking at me as if he were completely in the dark.
“You know what you did, you know, with the wine and the declaration.”
“You mean sharing my drink with you when you didn’t have one?” He raised a brow, as if I were crazy.
Was I? It hadn’t been my idea. Bibbi told… Okay, Bibbi could be a little crazy, but Bertha wasn’t. And Gillian hadn’t run out of the room crying for nothing.
“If that was nothing, then how come everyone else in the room saw it as something?”
“Because they like to believe in old wives’ tales and weird rituals that are beyond antiquated. Think about this for a minute: I shared a drink with you. How many drinks have been shared in Xest? Does it make sense that would make it a declaration? What about Oscar sharing his food? Did he also declare?”
He had a point. Oscar had given me a bite of food. “What about how you moved chairs?”
Even as I pursued this line of questioning, I could feel the heat blooming in my cheeks. Was I really going to argue with him about how he’d declared for me when he was saying he hadn’t? Next I’d be trying to bully him into confessing his love for me.
“Oscar’s been playing his games for weeks, trying to instigate. I put an end to it in the easiest way possible.”
I felt a frisson of anger.
It meant nothing. The fuel I’d been running on all night sputtered out. I took a few steps back, making my way over to the safer area by the tea kettle as Hawk watched. So he hadn’t declared anything? I sank down onto a chair, the energy gone.
“Everything okay?” Hawk asked, his voice softer than usual, as he continued to watch me.
“Of course. I’m glad we got that cleared up is all.” Yep, things were back to normal, just the way they should be.