“I was just thinking about how good my ex-girlfriend and I were as teammates on game nights,” I said.
She blinked at me for a minute before her smile returned. “Oh.Ex-girlfriend, huh?” She leaned over so I could get a look at her extreme cleavage. I kept my eyes on her face.
“Unfortunately,” I said, sipping my drink and looking around the room.
The bartender’s smile froze, and I saw her looking around for another guy to hit on.
“What can I get you, ma’am?” a male bartender asked someone behind me.
“Chardonnay, please,” came an extremely familiar voice. I turned to see Sadie standing pretty close to me. She looked amazing in a sparkly red dress and sky-high heels. I couldn’t think for a second as I took her in.
She waited until she got her wine before she acknowledged me. “Wewerea good team on game nights, weren’t we?”
She’d heard me. I thought back over what I’d said, hoping it wasn’t too pathetically embarrassing. “We were.”
She grinned at me as we walked over to the head table where teams seemed to be forming. “That bartender was a sure thing, you know.”
I glanced at her. “Not interested.”
She sipped her wine while we stood in line. “Why not?”
I shrugged. “Just not looking for anything right now.”
“Anything serious, you mean? I remember you seemed to have an aversion to that after the end of our relationship.”
I winced. “I believe we’ve established my level of idiocy.” I shook my head. “I was a fucking moron.” I paused trying to think of how to put what I wanted to say. “But no, it’s not just that I’m not looking for anything serious. I’m not really looking for anything at all right now.”
“Why not?” She didn’t sound extremely interested. It was more like she was just making polite conversation. I wished she cared, but I could tell she didn’t. Not really.
“You really want to know?”
She looked at me, startled. “Yeah. Even more so now.”
“I tried to date for a while after… everything. But it was always disappointing. So, after a while, I stopped.”
“Stopped dating and just looked for casual hookups?”
I gave a wry smile. “Nah. I haven’t even done hookups in the last year or so.” It had been longer than that, but I didn’t want to admit it to her. Especially since I knew she was dating and almost certainly sleeping with guys.
Her eyes widened. “That’s surprising.”
A loud voice interrupted us. “No. Absolutely not!”
I turned to see Melinda pointing a finger between the two of us. “The only good thing about the two of you breaking up was that Drake and I have ruled game night for the past several years. Youcannotbe a team.”
“Honey,” Drake whispered in her ear, “you’re being a little intense…”
She speared him with a look. “Do you want to win or not?”
“Of course, but remember we do want everyone to have fun tonight.”
While they were arguing, I gave Sadie a look. “Well, now I think wehaveto be partners.”
She nodded, a determined look coming over her face. “Yep.”
We signed our names on the team list, grabbed our name tags, and headed for one of the empty tables.
The games were played in an elimination style tournament all night. Both Melinda and Drake had a lot of family who’d flown in from out of town for the wedding. And even though it was supposed to be a bachelor and bachelorette party, lots of parents had been invited. Because there were so many people there besides the wedding party, there were eight groups of teams each with six teams competing. The winner of each small group advanced to the next stage of the tournament, and so on.
