The Strongest | ɢᴏᴊᴏ ꜱᴀᴛᴏʀᴜ

Chapter 9

We're two bottles of wine deep in a pretty heated conversation about dumplings of all things. Gojo is convinced they're better with meat, whereas I think they're better with vegetables.

"Vegetables are boring," the man across from me says, giving me a fake yawn.

I narrow my eyes at him. "You're such a child," I argue. "The meat just makes it taste like meat."

"That's the whole point!"

"But it's not supposed to taste like meat. It's supposed to taste like dumpling."

Gojo throws his hands up and leans back in his chair, then rubs his blindfold with two fingers and sighs. "You're unbelievable, really. We've been sitting here for three hours, and we haven't found a single thing we can agree on."

"Maybe that's not my fault," I snap. "Maybe it's because you seem to be determined to disagree with me. Everything I say has to be met with a snide remark from you."

We order another bottle of wine, and I order some water because I know that if I keep drinking like this, I'm going to climb across the table and strangle him with his own goddamned blindfold so I can see the life slipping out of those gorgeously blue eyes as they look at me one last time.

"So what about Yaga, then? I agree with you on that, don't I?" Gojo challenges. "That this weekend was a stupid idea and that there's no way we'd ever get along for even just a day? Don't I agree with you on that?"

I empty my glass of wine wordlessly and look away. "This dinner alone is proving the point," I mumble.

That shuts him up for a while, leaving both of us to stew in silence and slight intoxication until the waiter comes back with our brand-new bottle of expensive wine.

Just before the shift of Gojo's pretty little waitress ended an hour ago, she had slipped him her number and told him to meet her outside in fifteen minutes. I think he is convinced that I haven't heard her request, but I'm pretty sure the waitress intended for me to know. I don't know what her goal is here. He's not my territory to mark. He's all hers. I don't want him. But he never left the table. Not even to excuse himself to go to the toilet or anything else. He's been right across from me, arguing with me, for the past hour ever since the waitress came by with our second bottle of wine and a piece of paper that she slipped into my colleague's hand.

When I focus my eyes back on him, I have to hide a smirk because he looks so stupid. He's obviously trying to listen to the couple at the table behind him. Their heads are close to each other, and they look about two seconds away from eating each other alive.

"Stop eavesdropping," I hiss across the table.

Gojo's lips stretch into a smile. "They're in a very serious discussion about sexual positions."

I pull a grimace as if I've just bitten into a lemon. "Stop it, I don't want to know that!"

"Yes, you do," he argues, and the smile turns into this annoying smirk that I hate. "You're curious."

"Fine," I sigh. "What's the general consensus?"

His grin widens, making me wish I hadn't asked. I don't like to humor him, and I don't like to feed into his craziness. But when he leans in across the table, so do I, anticipating his whisper. "Her on top of him seems to be the most popular one so far," he says in a low voice.

My stupid heart takes a leap and continues to race up and down through my chest. It's the alcohol. The same alcohol that I can smell on his breath and would taste on his lips if I were to try. I don't want to try, of course, but -

"He likes to see her," Gojo tells me.

I blink at him and swallow. I nod. "As he should. She's gorgeous," I say without looking away from Gojo's face.

Even with his eyes hidden, I can feel that they're poring right through me. It's as if they can see every single thought and desire inside of my head, every bad and good little thing that's floating around in there. He knows everything. He sees everything.

He grins again, showing his white teeth. "She, however, likes it when she can put her legs on his shoulders because that way he can get... deeper."

I think I might faint. I've always thought I was good at handling alcohol but apparently, I'm not. Maybe it wasn't such a good idea to drink after my body had to use so much cursed energy to heal. I clear my throat because it suddenly feels way too dry and way too closed as if words would have a hard time coming out now.

"She seems to know what she likes," I say, trying very hard not to let the sorcerer know how much I'm sweating.

"She does," Gojo agrees with a nod, but the way he says it makes me feel like we're not talking about the strange woman anymore.

Before I can answer, I can hear two chairs being pushed back, and I lean back in my chair to watch the couple getting up from their table. They walk past us towards the door, the man's hand around the woman's waist.

My colleague gives a quick laugh before leaning back, too, and drinking his wine. "Which one do you think they're going to do first?"

I roll my eyes and empty my glass of water. "You're disgusting," I say. "I'm done talking about this."

Really nothing I say can keep him from replying with a laugh. And no laugh of his can keep me from rolling my eyes. That's just what we do: I say something, he laughs, I roll my eyes. He says something, I snap at him, he laughs, I roll my eyes.

"Alright, where were we?" he asks.

"Agreements," I reply and drink my wine.

"Right, agreements." Gojo points his finger at me, then thinks for a second. "We both agree that I made the right choice by not going after that waitress and staying here with you instead."

The glass of wine slips out of my hand and almost spills across the whole table, but Gojo's reflexes are so good that he catches it before anything can happen.

"You knew that I know?" I ask.

He laughs again and carefully sets the glass on the table. "Are you asking if I thought you were stupid enough not to know what she was doing? No, I didn't think that. I knew that you know."

I don't know what to say. It's rare that anyone ever renders me speechless, but here I am. Speechless. I thought I played it off perfectly and that he didn't notice that I heard what the waitress had said. Is that the reason he stayed? Because he knew I'd know where he was going? But he said he made the right choice in staying here. I'm confused.

"Why didn't you?" I ask even though I probably don't want to know the answer. "She was pretty."

He's wearing a soft smile I haven't seen before. It looks almost sad. I wonder what he's thinking. "She was," he agrees. "Very pretty."

"So?" I think he doesn't want to tell me, and I don't even know why I'm pushing the question. I'm not interested in the answer, really. I don't care why he didn't go, I just care that he didn't. He didn't leave me again. Maybe that's what all of this is about. Maybe he's still thinking about that.

The man shrugs. "I doubt I'll ever find anyone who makes fighting so much fun," he says, looking at me. "Who else can I put toothpaste in cereal for? And who else will eat it wordlessly just so she doesn't have to admit defeat?"

I roll my eyes again. "It was disgusting, and you got the payback you deserved." But I can't ignore the subtext here.

Gojo snorts and fills the last bit of wine from our third bottle into both of our glasses. "I did. I couldn't sleep for a week after what you did to my mattress until I found out where the smell was coming from."

That makes me laugh. I guess, after all, we really do have some good laughs. Not together. Never together. But at the other's expense, and I'd say that's close enough.