I want to earn her smiles all the time.
When everyone’s done eating, we pack up the food and clear the table. Hunter pulls out two decks of cards. “Okay, we’ve got a newbie here today, so we’ll do an easy round first.”
“Whoa, whoa, whoa. An easy round?” Rory’s brows are knitted together. “You don’t even know that I’m a newbie.”
“Oh, you’re a newbie,” Bailey says into her wine, which is rich because she only started coming to Sunday Funday when she moved here.
Hunter ignores the interruptions. “The name of the game is ‘Whose Turn Is It Anyway?’ and the base play is like Uno. Suits follow suits, face value follows face value, the first player to get rid of all their cards wins. All the other rules . . .” He leans forward and whispers, “are a secret.”
Everyone obliges with a long “Ooooooo.”
Hunter makes a big show of plucking one card out of the stack, looking at it, and putting it back. Then he reshuffles and deals out seven cards each, and the play begins. We make it twice around before Hunter interrupts game play and pulls a card from the stack for Bailey. “Penalty for playing out of turn.”
Bailey groans. Rory’s just played an eight, and Kit crows on her other side and plays a card. Game play resumes, in the opposite direction.
“Wait, what?” Rory asks.
“Watch and learn, my queen,” I tell her.
Tuan plays the next eight, and since most of us have caught on, the play is reversed, and no penalties are handed out.
“So does that mean every time an eight is played, someone has to?—”
Rory’s cut off by Bailey’s hand covering her mouth. “Shh, you don’t want to get a penalty.”
“Oof, Bailey.” Hunter shakes his head and pulls a card. “Penalty for revealing a rule of the game.”
“What!?” Bailey throws a hand up. “I was protecting her! Guarding the newbie!”
“Nah, seconded,” I say.
“Damn you!”
Play continues, until we go a few rounds with no penalties. “Okay,” Hunter says, tossing his cards into the center. “Let’s play for real.”
Rory
* * *
“Jared, present your trophies.”
At Hunter’s words, Jared reaches under the table and raises up the most god-awful trophy I’ve ever seen. It is, actually, a trophy, and not one of the cheap plastic ones either, but it’s dinged and scuffed and it has a faded old ribbon tied to the bottom and a fake plant sticking out of the top.
Etched on the base is “Ruler of the Sirens.”
“And,” Jared reaches down again and this time pulls out a brown paper bag. From it he pulls out an unmarked, sealed beer bottle. “This is,” he says, “four bottles of the underground Golden Voice pilsner. It’ll be the best fucking thing you’ve ever put in your mouth . . . no offense to present company of course.”
There’s sputtering laughter from around the table and glances cast at me and Morgan while my cheeks heat.
“This is from Dad’s own limited run, never to be sold. I’ll fucking disown you if so much as a peep of this beer’s existence gets out.”
“Holy shit,” someone murmurs.
Golden Voice is the local brewery, the same one that makes the Call of the Wild IPA that I love so much.
Morgan catches my eye across the table. His brows furrow and he purses his lips, like I’ve got this. And I know exactly what he’s thinking. I’m the newbie, no one’s expecting me to win, so Morgan’s going to win those bottles for me.
Oh, it’s on.
