“Worse than Scrabble. All I know is it involves a long staring contest and one word answers. They play it for hours.”
“You’re a Harwood, aren’t you?” Clay’s grandpa stood when we came in and reached out to shake my hand.
“Yep. I sure am.”
“That’s enough chitchat. Let’s play.” Clay’s grandma sank into the seat across from us and took her seven letter pieces from the pile, placing them on her wooden rack. Clay was not joking. When it came to game playing, she meant serious business.
On the ride over, we had agreed to play as a team, but one frown from Clay’s grandma was all it took for him to take his own rack and place letters on it. Admitting to me he was intimidated by the game had been humbling enough. Now he was tossed into what I knew would be a cut-throat game, and it was all my fault. I took a peek at his letters, swapping them around in my mind while his grandparents took their turns.
I nudged his foot with mine before saying, “That bridge closure sure was a pain.”
“Yep. Lots of traffic.” I was so glad he’d gone along with my weird statement, because otherwise he’d totally give away my blatant attempt to help him. Unfortunately, one look from him was all it took to know he had no idea what I was doing.
There was an E available for his use at the end of his grandfather’s word, and he had B, R, I, D, and G sitting there, waiting to be used. I nudged his foot again and looked right at his letters.
And then he got it. He placed them on the board, and took his respectable points. I went next, smiling at his grandma who had continued to study me with interest. Interest was better than contempt. Interest, I could deal with. It meant they cared about Clay, and I wanted them to care about him. There was no one in the world who deserved to be loved more than him.
I picked up the hand loose at his side and rested it on my knee, and then began tracing letters into his palm before each of his turns. MIFFED. TOXIC. JULEP. I was concentrating so hard on helping him that I was losing, by a lot.
“Are you left-handed, Lauren?” Clay’s grandma asked after jotting down her triple word score. She stared me down, and it was like she was gazing into my soul.
“No. I’m just holding Clay’s hand.”
“Why?”
“Because I like him.”
“Clay, what does miffed mean?”
I bit my lip and glanced over at him. We were so busted.
He squeezed my hand. “Miffed means you’re upset?”
“Use it in a sentence.”
“Grandma is miffed because someone dropped something toxic in her mint julep.”
There was this awkward silence right after where laughter should have been. Like a stand-up comedian telling fart jokes at a women’s country club meeting.
His grandma’s eyes narrowed. “If someone tried to poison me, I’d be pretty miffed. Almost as miffed as I’d be if someone cheated while playing Scrabble with me.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
I echoed him, and for a half second, I saw a ghost of a smile cross her face. It was so brief I wondered if I’d imagined it.
She turned to her husband. “Did you know they were cheating?”
“Since bridge,” Clay’s grandfather acknowledged in that quiet, gravelly voice of his.
“And you weren’t going to say anything?”
The old man shrugged. “In my house growing up, if you didn’t cheat at cards, you weren’t trying hard enough.”
“Have you ever cheated while we’ve played?”
“No, ma’am. I didn’t want anything toxic dropped in my anything.”
“Harold.” Clay’s grandma shook her head, but that ghost of a smile was back, less ghostly this time and much more alive.
