Luke lifted his fork in salute. “Perfectly reasonable, I’ll take it. Not that it matters. I’ll wind up sharing my portion with Oliver anyway.”
He said it so casually, without any hesitation, like sharing his life with me, his legacy, even in jest, didn’t require negotiation, it simply was.
Vincent had money. More than I’d ever comprehended. But everything he’d given me under the aesthetic of generosity remained his. His home, his wallet, his rules. Nothing had ever been truly mine.
Luke gave, not to control but to include.
More than the act of giving itself, the implication floored me. He saw me as someone permanent. Someone whose presence in his life wasn’t a temporary arrangement, but a future certainty.
It should have occurred to me sooner. After all, we were here, meeting his parents. You didn’t do that for a casual fling. But it wasn’t until now that it hit—Luke saw a future with me. He wanted a future with me.
“These really are incredible, Oliver.”
Susan’s voice pulled me back into the present. I blinked, forcing myself to refocus.
“You have quite the talent,” she continued. “Thank you for sharing it with us.”
My cheeks flushed under the compliment. “Thank you, I’m glad you all like them.”
“Like is an understatement,” John said, “I love them. And now, with a stomach full of sugary excellence, I believe I am fortified to bring my A-game.”
With the table cleared and drinks replenished, we laid out the board.
I could hold my own in a game of Scrabble, in fact in my college days I’d had a reputation for my elite Scrabble talent, but from the moment the first tiles hit the board, it becameclear Susan and John were here to win. John had a talent for unearthing obscure words from impossible combinations, slotting them between existing letters with smug finesse. Susan, meanwhile, was a tactician. Her mind saw patterns amidst the jumble of letters.
Then came Luke. Where his parents played with calculated mastery, Luke played with reckless abandon. No strategy. No game plan. Nothing but eager enthusiasm and impulse. While it didn’t earn him a lot of points, I found it charming.
After Susan earned one hundred and seventy-six points on her word, Luke laid down his latest contribution.
“Flablastchooneeze,” he announced, sitting back with a triumphant grin.
“And here we go,” John murmured, reaching for the dictionary.
“Sweetpea, that’s not a word.”
“It is a word. It’s a verb. It means to sneeze in a flamboyantly dramatic fashion. We’ve all seen it. Mom, you most of all, living with Dad.”
John looked up from the dictionary. “Not in here. No such word. Zero points.”
“Ollie...” Luke turned to me with imploring eyes. “Angel, help me out here. Surely you’ve been privy to a flablastchooneeze in your time?”
I tried to keep a straight face, but the moment the word landed in my mind with all its ridiculousness, I lost the fight. A laugh burst out of me. “It sounds so believable, I’m almost tempted to allow it.”
“Thank you! Finally, someone in this house who understands I operate on a higher linguistic plane.”
“But,” I added, raising a finger. “We’d be setting a dangerous precedent if we allowed it. If you make up a word, then we wouldall make up a word, and before you know it we’d be allowing anything to fly,”
“It would be straight-up anarchy,” John agreed.
Luke slumped in his chair. “You people are strangling the evolution of language. Shakespeare would have let me have it.”
John gave a dry grunt as he rearranged his tray. “Shakespeare made up words that at least made sense and had poetic resonance.”
“Please. Anyone who claims The Bard made sense is a pretentious, performative foghorn who couldn’t explain the meaning of ‘a rose by any other name would smell as sweet’ if it slapped them in the face with a bouquet.”
“I’m going to settle this,” I said, taking my turn and laying out the letters for a double triple word using all seven of my tiles, totaling a whopping three hundred and twenty-two points. “Read ’em and weep, everyone. I win.”
“Yes! Way to go, Ollie. It’s about time someone knocked these two down a peg,” Luke cheered.
