She lined up the shot again, and I want to tell you, the rest of the bar seemed to fade out a little bit in that moment. Derek and the others still talking somewhere behind us, completely oblivious to the fact that an actual real wager was hanging in the balance a few feet from us. She took the shot, this smooth, controlled motion, and the eightball rolled slower than I expected, curving toward the corner pocket, and for a second it looked like it might not have enough momentum to actually drop. It dropped. Hannah straightened up, Q still in hand, and looked at me with this expression that was equal parts triumphant, and underneath that something a little more nervous than her earlier confidence had led on.
Well, she said, I did say if I sink this, I set my own queue down against the table, and I remember my heart doing something genuinely ridiculous, some accelerated nervous rhythm that felt entirely disproportionate to what on paper was just a light-hearted bar bet between co-workers. You did say that, I said. I'm a man of my word. I want to tell you about that kiss honestly because it wasn't some dramatic sweeping movie moment, nothing like that. It was brief. a little clumsy in the way first kisses between two people who've spent two years very deliberately not thinking about each other that way tend to be.
Both of us a little unsure of the exact mechanics of the moment even as we leaned into it. But it was also unmistakably real. Not a joke, not a bit. Both of us fully present and fully aware that something had just genuinely shifted between us. When we pulled back, there was this beat of silence.
Both of us processing what had just happened. And then Hannah let out this short surprise laugh. "Okay," she said. "That happened in the middle of a bar in front of Derek." I glanced and confirmed.
Yes, Derek and the others were now very much not oblivious anymore. A couple of them grinning, one actually applauding softly, clearly witnessing the entire thing unfold in real time. This is going to be all over the office by Monday, I said, half laughing, half genuinely alarmed at the social implications of what had just happened in front of witnesses from our shared workplace. Probably, Hannah agreed, though she didn't look particularly bothered by that prospect. Do you regret it?
I want to tell you, I answered that question faster and more honestly than I'd planned. No, I said, not even a little. Do you? No, she said, and there was something in the way she said it, steady, sure of herself, that told me this hadn't actually been some spontaneous alcohol-fueled impulse on her part, that there was more thought behind that wager than a casual observer might have assumed. Can I ask you something?