“Trust me, if a girl makes a joke like that on a date, any inclination I have to flirt with her will evaporate.”

“What if she’s nervous?”

“Wouldn’t blame her,” he said mildly. “I am intimidating.”

“Then, when you’re laughing”—I raised my eyebrows at him, pointedly—“you can grab their arm and act like it’s just because you found them so funny. Like this,” I demonstrated, buckling forward in sudden, fake laughter, and gripped his toned bicep.

He surveyed my hand on his arm with a look of mild alarm. “You know what?” he asked, removing my hand delicately. “I think I’ll be okay without the flirting tips.”

“Fine.” I wasn’t thrown. I came prepared today. “Next, we’re going to do a timeline of your relationship with Winona.”

“Why?”

My head whipped up, and I damn near shot flames from my eyeballs. “Because I said so, Brougham, goddamnit.”

“Darcy, no murdering!” Ainsley’s voice sung out from down the hall.

Brougham’s eyes flickered toward the door. “Okay, sorry.” He didn’t sound sorry. “Go on.”

“Right,” I stuck the marker in my mouth and pulled the lid off with my teeth. The tinny smell of the Sharpie cleared out my sinuses. “Wew wid you guysh meet?”

“On a field trip bus. I accidentally knocked her backpack off her seat.”

I nodded, leaned over him, and drew a stick figure round-kicking a backpack into midair, next to a shocked-looking stick figure gaping on a vague imitation of a bus seat.

“It was absolutely nothing like that,” Brougham said.

“It’s called artistic expression, Brougham, look it up.” I finished off the drawing with a flourish and stuck it to the board with a thumbtack. “Perfect. First date?”

“It was actually a group thing, and we—”

“Doesn’t count. First real date.”

Brougham regarded me like he was hoping I might combust. “We went bowling.”

I drew two stick figures gazing into each other’s eyes, gently caressing a bowling ball between them.

Brougham sighed when he saw the final product. “Sure. Put it up.”

It joined the board. “How long were you two together?”

“About six months.”

“So, what made you work? It must have been good for a while.”

Brougham took a moment to answer, and in that time his face softened. Without his trademark expressionless mask, his eyes looked bluer, somehow. They’d gone from navy to almost azure. Like this, they looked dramatic, maybe even expressive, rather than bulgy. His fingers lightly traced the corner of his mouth, in a way that seemed unconscious. “We had fun,” he said. “She made me feel like a little kid. Sometimes we’d drive to the ocean and just hang out for hours, talking and mucking around and shit. Climbing trees, playing truth or dare, that sort of stuff.”

“Is that your best memory of being with her? Going to the beach?”