Ellie slumps farther back into the couch, trying to remove herself as much as possible from the line of fire. She does a move I’ve seen a hundred times before, where she pretends to make eye contact with a camera lens, like she’s Jim from her favorite show,The Office, and makes an awkward face at the imaginary viewers.
Her movement catches Chance’s eye, and he pounces on her. “Can you guys have some kids already so you can have more hearty arguments here?” He points a finger between David and Ellie, and whoo-ey the tension in here just shot up ten-fold. “‘They’re both all right’ is hardly groundbreaking input.”
Tonight is game night at Casa Anderson.
It’s been, oh, about three or four years since the last one?
Not sure we’ll be hosting again anytime soon, considering Eli and Chance’s friendship (loose term here) might not survive the current game we’re playing.
What’s the game, you ask?
Good question, my friend.
Earlier today, Chance and I made a bracket, drew it up on the iPad, which is now casting to the Apple TV in our living room. Sixteen children’s shows were pitted against each other, and we’ve been battling to the death, or close enough to it, for over an hour now. In the first of several shock upsets,Paw Patrolwas eliminated in the first round. We’re down to the final two contenders. Welcome to the party.
“Okay, closing arguments have been delivered, final votes will be cast now.” Roxanne’s diplomatic mommy tone leaves no room for argument, and I take a mental note to try to replicate it next time Ford is talking circles around me, advocating for staying up late, or more junk food, or whatever else he tries to get out of me with his wordsmithing.
“All in favor ofDora, raise your hand,” she says calmly, gesturing to all three couples in the room. I watch the hands go up.
Eli.
Roxanne.
Chance glares at Ellie and David. “You two better not be pussies and sit this one out, I know you’ve watchedBubble Guppieswith Lele before.”
Ellie’s brows rise and Chance backtracks rapidly, realizing he just said that to his boss’s boss.
“Respectfully speaking, I mean.” He runs a hand over his brow, across his buzzed, graying hair, like he saved that one.
I shake my head at him, laughing.
“All in favor ofBubble Guppies, raise your hand.” Roxanne gestures again, and looks for hands.
Chance’s.
Mine.
Ellie’s.
David is still pressed against the back of the couch, like the pocket protector of a human being that he is. He aspires to be a wet noodle, that man.
As Chance gets up and does a victory dance, taunting Eli like the thirteen-year-old he still is at heart, my eyes narrow on the tall, expensively groomed man who’s attempting to get swallowed up by my Costco couch.
More than four years he’s been with my best friend, an actual fucking walking, brilliantly talking pin-up model with brains even bigger than her rack, and he’s a total fucking snooze fest. She’s a dime and a half, and this guy can’t even vote on which show he likes better for a laugh. I don’t care how much money he makes, how much their “life visions” align with one another, she deserves better. But I bite my tongue. Literally. Or I might cut him down with it.
Chance and I have both realized that welikeseeing friends. Hosting them has actually been fucking fun. Not sure when we decided we couldn’t fit in a few nights a year with some other humans over the age of ten, but this has been—David’s lackluster nature aside—a fabulous night, and I wanna do it again.
So I shan’t be giving him the tongue-lashing of my fantasies tonight. But I smell change in the air for those two. I just hope it comes sooner, rather than later. She’s not getting any younger, and I say that with love in my heart. She deserves all the happiness in the world, and she shouldn’t be in her forties before she finds it.
Chance makes an obnoxious show out of circling the winning show with the pencil to the iPad, knockingDoraout of the running for good, and I pop up to refill the snack options.
The next game on the agenda is one Ellie and I invented, the Rob Thomas-off, and I need to get my voice good and ready for it.
Roxanne’s soothing murmurs become the predominant sound coming from the direction of the living room, and then laughter floats out. Within seconds, I feel my husband’s hands sneak over my curves for a quick feel, our bodies largely hidden behind the door of the fridge.
They land right on the chunkiest part of my hips, and where I would’ve wanted to slap them away two weeks ago, I sink into his hold now, letting my head fall back against his chest and soaking in his embrace. His lips come down to my face, peppering my jaw with soft kisses, down my neck, and across the bits of bare skin he can reach along my shoulder. Those hands keep wandering, up and over to that pooch on my lower belly, up farther to grab a handful of tits, and he squeezes me against him for this hidden moment.
“Hey,” I tell him, suddenly turning around in his arms and letting the fridge door close. “There’s something I wanted to run by you.”
