One-Off by Lynn Galli

night. She worked here, didn’t she? A little decorum should be the overriding theme in this setting. My eyes went back to gauge the flirty signals she was tossing Ainsley’s way. Correction: a lot of decorum was warranted.
    “We are late, I’m afraid,” Ainsley confirmed. She didn’t look regretful, but she didn’t look eager to leave the woman’s company either.
    “Oh, too bad. How long are you in town? Maybe another night?”
    Ainsley flashed her a smile. Nothing in it shut down the flirtation. Briefly I wondered if she was doing this for my benefit. To show me that everyone else liked her, some even enough to date her. “Perhaps,” she agreed.
    The smile slide from her face as she approached me. Yeah, same here. We turned without speaking and headed outside.
    “Do you know where we’re going?” she asked as we approached my car.
    “Yes.” I bit back the irritation at her intentional baiting. One time I’d gotten the roommates lost when we were walking around New York. One time, and she never let me forget it.
    Her head turned and I felt the stare burn a hole in my cheek. “Thanks for coming to collect me.”
    My step faltered. Had she just thanked me for something? The last time was when she was sick with the flu and laid out in our apartment. The other roommates purposefully spent three nights at their boyfriends’ places to avoid catching whatever she had. I’d canceled my study groups to keep the flu contained and spent three days making sure she had soup, crackers, ginger ale, and tissues. She’d been so surprised by my caregiving, it earned me a month free of snarky comments. I would have done it for any of our roommates, especially someone so far from home. No one liked being sick. Having someone around to make sure she didn’t die when she felt like dying was the least anyone could do.
    “You’re welcome. I didn’t realize you were giving a guest lecture while you’re here.”
    “You thought I’d be leeching off my cousin for a few weeks?”
    I shook my head in disgust. The moment of civility had passed. “I didn’t know you’d be here at all, but seeing you in the tux shop weeks ahead of the wedding, yeah, I figured you’d be on vacation.”
    “When Colin encouraged me to visit, I thought about taking a break, but I’ve been getting requests for guest talks for years. I thought I could combine the pleasure trip with a little business.”
    “Do you have more lectures planned?”
    She nodded. “Next week at American University and the following at University of Maryland.”
    “The material sounded interesting and it was well received.”
    “You’re surprised.”
    I opened the passenger door for her. “I’m not. I read your thesis, remember?”
    She’d been shocked when she saw me reading through the copy she’d left for our roommates to read. They’d skimmed sections, but I read the whole thing. It was scholarly and publishable. She hadn’t gotten angry that I’d read it and even seemed to appreciate that I’d taken the time when our other roommates hadn’t.
    “Aye,” she acknowledged when I joined her in the car. “I also remember the red marks you made.”
    I cringed. My curse, when I read something I proof it. “I probably saved you half a grade point with those edits.”
    “Doubtful.”
    “You keep forgetting that the majority of your professors were American. They don’t find the extra ‘u’ in words necessary. You could pull that with the Scottish professor you stalked across the Atlantic, but not your others.”
    “I didn’t stalk him,” she insisted.
    “He was at St. Andrews, where you were headed, until he took a position at Columbia. Suddenly, you’re going there instead. That’s the definition of stalking.”
    “It is not. He was the best option, really the only professor that could get me into the postgraduate field I wanted at Cambridge and later Glasgow. If I’d stayed at St. Andrews, I might not be where I am today.”
    Her tone made me