“Mind like a steel trap.” She held up the small blue box. “I brought cards. Are you ready for some poker?”
“Oh! I… um.” Frowning slightly, he glanced over his shoulder. “Do you mind waiting here a second?”
With a shrug, she settled onto the couch as he hustled into the bedroom and shut the door. What was he hiding in there? Besides his article inSnakearama. Jean didn’t have long to wonder. The door flew open again a moment later and he zoomed into the kitchen before detouring back to the living room to set a sloshing glass of water on the coffee table in front of Jean.
“Would you like anything else?” he asked, a little breathless. “I have granola bars.”
Jean indicated the bag she’d set on the floor. “I brought snacks.”
“That was nice of you.” He leaned against the arm of the couch, smiling as if she’d wheeled in a three-tiered dessert cart instead of hitting the vending machines in the staff lounge. They stayed like that until he suddenly jerked upright, remembering his secret mission.
“I’ll be just a minute.” He held up a finger before dashing into his bedroom.
So far Jean gave him top marks for entertainment, and they hadn’t even started playing cards.
The muffled noise of drawers opening and closing, a heavy object being dragged across the floor, and hopping on one leg ensued, followed by a loud thud and some G-rated cursing. Did he have a pogo stick, or was there a pony on the loose?
“Everything okay in there?” Jean called.
“Almost done,” he assured her, sounding winded.
She sipped her room-temperature water, enjoying a pleasant sense of anticipation. Coming back here had definitely been the right call.
“Okay,” he panted, throwing the door open. “I’m ready.”
It took a few seconds to process what she was seeing. “Is it opposite day?”
“Why do you say that?” He looked down at his newly bulked-up torso.
“Because you went from zero to dressing like a sixty-year-old man.” She frowned at the rain poncho he’d draped over himself like a tent. It couldn’t fully conceal the layers of padding beneath. Jean thought there might be a sport coat under that cardigan, and she spotted the collars of at least three different shirts. It looked like a suitcase worth of clothes. “Did you catch a cold from running around naked, Dakota?”
He tugged at one of his shirttails. “It’s Charlie, actually.”
“Okay, Dakota Charlie.” She turned around, trying to decide where to set up. The bed looked comfortable, but even Jean recognized that as a bad idea, so she slid onto the carpet. “What’s the story? With this look you’re rocking. It’s giving ‘I didn’t want to check any bags.’”
It took him a few attempts to fold his heavily padded legs, but eventually he managed to join her on the floor. “Just trying to even the odds.”
“I hate to tell you this, but there are no weight classes in poker.” She paused to give him a flirty glance. “Unless you want to throw in a wrestling component. Greco-Roman poker could be a thing.”
His face flushed, though this time it might have been from the sauna effect of wearing so many outfits at once. “I know you’re going to be really good.”
Jean put a hand to her cheek, pretending to be scandalized. “Are you getting fresh with me, Charlie?”
“At poker,” he said, blushing harder. “I’ll probably have to take off everything and I didn’t want the game to be over too soon.”
Oh. He thought they were playingstrippoker. Jean wanted to tease him, but one look at his face—slow-roasting atop his prison of many garments—told her that a) he was used to losing and b) he’d taken a lot of crap for his lack of gamesmanship.
“Good thinking,” she said, shuffling the deck. “Okay if we use my cards?”
“Sure.”
“Bzzz.” Jean made a game-show-buzzer sound effect. “Never let someone else choose the deck. There are scammers everywhere.”
Wide-eyed, he started to get up. “I’ll go get mine.”
She put a hand on his knee to stop him. “It’s okay. You can trust me—at least with cards. Beyond that, you’re taking your chances.”
“Oh.” He laughed at himself. “I thought maybe it was a test.”
