Sidney’s elbow pokes me in the side. Her voice is soft. “We’re going to start in the middle of the game? It looks like they already started.”
“Last weekend,” Trevor says, beating me to it. “We probably could have finished if this one”—he jabs a finger at me—“hadn’t decided to get trashed.”
“One time.” I shake my head at him. “I said I was sorry.”
He smiles. Trevor loves giving me crap. “I know, I know, you were having a rough night. You were having g—” I cough and pull Trevor out of his drunken ramble. He looks at Sidney and then me and finishes clumsily with, “We forgive you.”
I met Trevor two summers ago at a party, and that’s mostly where we hang out. Once in a while his folks take us out on the big lake in their boat, so we can wakeboard. He knows just enough about me to be awkward around someone like Sidney, who would kill for incriminating information about me.
Sidney sets down the little figurine she was examining in front of her and looks at me curiously. “Why were you having a rough night?” It’s such a normal question, but it sounds utterly foreign coming out of her mouth. It makes me glance down at her cup to see how far gone she is. It’s still half full.
“I don’t think I actually said that.”
“Oh, you did,” Trevor says, taking another sip from his cup.
I take the gold piece from in front of Sidney and put it back in its spot. “You can’t move these, everything is in play right now.” I pick up her hands from the table and set them in her lap, suddenly aware of the fact that I just touched her thigh. “No touching,” I say, pretending to scold her, but also reminding myself.
She gets quiet, and maybe we’re done talking about my drunken night. “This isn’t what I imagined you doing at parties,” Sidney says. She starts to pick up her hands, then sets them back down, as if she suddenly remembered she wasn’t allowed to move them. I want to laugh but I don’t, because if Sidney thinks she can “out nice” me, she’s so wrong. Instead, I look at the small stack of cards Trevor has placed in front of me.
“But youwerethinking about me at parties, huh?” I hold the cards between us.
Sidney looks at me, and I can tell she’s biting her cheeks, the way they pull in on the sides, making her cheekbones look sharper. Her hands flinch in her lap and she makes a disgusted little growl deep in her throat. “Mostly I was imagining you being drunk and obnoxious,” she says, raising an eyebrow. “From what I saw at the last party, I wasn’t too far off.” She smirks at me, then flicks one of the cards with her finger. “Tell me what these mean.”
While everyone takes their turns I explain the story cards to Sidney, and show her which pieces are mine and how to move around the map. It takes me longer than it should, because she’s super into it and starts suggesting moves while I’m still explaining the different territories.
“So everything with the blue coin is currently mine.”
“Ours,” she corrects, taking a sip from her cup. It’s close to empty, and I wonder how much that has to do with her willingness to be teammates. Or the way she’s smiling at me rightnow, as Trevor makes a bad move into one of our neighboring territories.
I pick up our cards and she leans into me, her hand cupping my ear. “We should start moving toward the river,” she says, but she’s waving her finger toward an entirely different area of the board. Even tipsy, she’s thinking two steps ahead. “The lower half of that territory to the north is basically wide open. We could take that smaller one and then work north. We’d have him surrounded before he can finish his beer.”
“What are you majoring in?” I interrupt her, and she looks confused.
“English, I think. Why? What are you majoring in?”
“Finance.” I shake my head. “You have the brain of a criminal mastermind.”
She looks at me blankly. “Um. Thanks? I think.” Her finger pulls a card toward us on the table. “I don’t think they have majors for that, though.”
“Seriously. I suddenly feel like I should be thankful you haven’t donemuchworse things to me over the years.” I tap a finger on the edge of the table. “You didn’t put some sort of slow-metabolizing poison in those pancakes, did you?”
She smiles and shakes her head. “I do take it easy on you, Marin. I appreciate you acknowledging that, finally.”
“Consider it acknowledged.”
There’s a long stretch of silence before she says, “Finance? Really?”
“Really.”
“Hm.”
“What did you think I’d major in?”
She shrugs. “I don’t know. I just have a hard time imagining you working at a desk. I could see you as a teacher, or something like that, though. You’re good with people.”
“You work with people in finance, too.”
She shrugs. “I guess so.”
