“I think I might have to pass,” Taylor said. “Though if I have to look at it much longer, I may not be able to resist.”
Matt put some in a bowl and slid it her way. “This way it’ll be ready for you once you’re ready for it.”
“Thanks,” Taylor said with a laugh.
As I ate a few small spoonfuls, I looked around at the kitchen. Melissa still had the gray hand towels with drawings of dogs that resembled Buddy, and the teapot that only got used when we had company sat on the stove on a trivet Matt had made by sticking rubber feet to a piece of leftover ceramic tile he had from when he replaced the bathroom floor.
Not much had changed since I’d lived here seven years ago or so, but somehow nothing had stayed the same either. It was an odd paradox I struggled to make sense of.
“You know what we need?” Matt said. He stood up and headed for the living room. None of us tried to guess what he’d come back with, but when I saw the old Parcheesi box tucked under his arm, I should’ve known.
“Really?” Melissa asked.
“You say it like you don’t wanna play,” Matt told her.
The game had been a staple of the Holt game nights Matt and Melissa had insisted we implement once a week as a way to keep Emily and me in the house more. I’m not sure if their intention was to spend more time with us or keep us out of trouble because we were both in high school, but looking back on it, I was glad they’d required us to stay at home one weekend night.
“I’ll play,” I said.
“What game is it?” Taylor asked.
“Parcheesi,” I told her. “It’s fun.”
“It’s actually Pacheesi,” Matt said. “Ransom and Melissa like to put the r in there, even though it doesn’t exist.”
“The real game is called Parcheesi,” Melissa said in our defense. “Matt got a knock-off he saw somewhere.”
“Whatever. Tissues still wipe your nose even if they aren’t Kleenex,” Matt said, brushing her off as he set up the game in the middle of the table. Melissa got up to put the ice cream away, clearly accepting that she was going to play whether she wanted to or not. She always gave Matt a hard time, saying the game annoyed her when we all knew it didn’t.
Matt gave me the blue pieces, and I put them in my circle. “You have a color preference, Taylor?”
“Red’s good, I guess,” she told him, and I assumed it was because she was seated in front of that circle. “Is this hard to learn?”
“Not really. We’ll help you as we go.” Matt reached to his right to give her the red and then placed the green in his own circle and the yellow in Melissa’s. Seated at the kitchen table as I stared at the old gameboard caused a kind of nostalgia I wasn’t sure I wanted to experience. I hadn’t played Parcheesi—or Pacheesi—in years, and the last time we’d played, it had been Emily seated beside me.
We must’ve played this game a hundred times while I lived with the Holts, and I could count on one hand the number of times Emily had won. She’d get nervous when any of us started to get some of our pieces in the home space and then try to join forces with whoever was doing the worst. Unfortunately for her, her alliance barely ever worked, and even when it did, it usually wasn’t her who benefited most from it.
“Did your family play board games when you were young, Taylor?” Melissa asked.
Taylor looked momentarily stunned, as if she were unsure of how to answer. “Not…often,” she finally said. “My parents split up when I was pretty young, and they both ended up remarrying. We kind of just did our own thing most of the time.”
“Oh, I’m sorry to hear that,” Melissa said. “About your parents.”
“Thank you, but it’s really fine. It was probably for the best. I can’t imagine the two of them living together all these years later. They’re totally different people.”
“Marriage definitely isn’t easy,” she said. “Especially when you’re married to this one.” I saw her raise her eyebrows at Matt, and it made me happy to see they could still tease each other like they’d done…before.
I remember a couple of months after I’d moved in, Matt had come up from working in the basement while Melissa was cooking dinner. He took the Scotch tape he had in his hand and grabbed a hold of her. Then he wrapped her up so tightly in the tape, she couldn’t move anything but her legs. Or at least she acted like she couldn’t. Emily and I laughed hysterically, along with Matt, while Melissa threatened that we wouldn’t have a dinner to eat unless one of us untaped her so she could finish cooking it.
Finally, Matt gave in and unwrapped her, pulling her into a hug once she was released. She threatened that he’d better sleep with one eye open that night, but she still kissed him back when he put his lips on hers. I’d pretend I was just as grossed out as Emily was whenever they’d display any sort of public affection, but deep inside it made me happy to be in a home with people as loving as the Holts, and I’d often let my mind wander to one day in the not-so-distant future when maybe I’d have a wife who would kiss me like that and a home that felt like mine.
Now I just hoped my home wouldn’t be an eight-by-ten cell.
T A Y L O R
It’d taken me a few turns to get the point of the game, but once I did, I was fully invested. I wanted to get one of my pieces into the home space before Ransom got any of his in there. I doubted I’d actually win on my first time playing, but there was always a chance I’d get a little beginner’s luck.
“Okay, so since Ransom just rolled a double,” Melissa explained, “and he has all his pieces out of the nest, he’s allowed to move his pieces a total of fourteen spaces. But since he rolled twos, he needs to break up his moves in increments of twos and fives.”
I had no idea how I could feel so dumb playing a game they told me Emily had learned when she was five. “Wait, what? Why fives?”
Ransom flipped over the dice and showed me the fives on the other side. “The opposite sides always equal seven, so if I’d rolled fours, for example, there’d be threes on the other side.”
That made sense, but I’d probably screw it up if I had to do it later. I just hoped I wouldn’t get any doubles so I didn’t have to worry about it. “Oh, okay. I think I get it.”
Ransom studied the board before deciding on his move. He counted his first five out loud and hit the yellow piece with his own when he landed on a space occupied by one of Melissa’s pieces.
“Get out of here,” he teased.
“Come on,” Melissa said. “I only have one other piece out.”
The way he stared at her made me wonder how intense he must have been on the football field if he took a board game this seriously.
“I take no mercy,” he said. “And I’ll take my twenty now.”
“Twenty! Why do you get an extra twenty?” I asked.
“Because he captured another piece,” Matt explained. “You get twenty extra moves, but they have to be taken all at once and with the piece that did the capturing.”
“No one told me that.”
Ransom moved on to his other pieces, deciding to move one of them the remaining nine, which brought him close to the path to home. He rolled again, getting doubles again, but this time it was two ones. “Oh, is that why you’ve been playing so conservatively this whole time?” he joked as he studied the board again.
“I’ve been lulling you into a false sense of security,” I deadpanned.
Ransom moved his piece that was farthest from home up the pathway.
Melissa and Matt laughed, and then they both exchanged glances before they started chanting, “Dou-bles, dou-bles, dou-bles.”
“Your witchcraft isn’t gonna work on me,” Ransom said to them. “May as well save your breath for complaining after you lose.” He held the dice in his hand and blew into his fist.
“What happens if you get doubles again?” I asked.
“I have to move my farthest piece back to the nest.”
This wasn’t a difficult game to understand, necessarily, but it was a lot to remember. T
hey hadn’t told me most of the rules until something happened that necessitated explaining them, probably because it would’ve been completely overwhelming to hear them all at once. Like reading an entire economics textbook when you had a quiz on only one chapter.
Matt and Melissa were still chanting, and I looked over at them with a devious smile before joining in. “Dou-bles, dou-bles.”
“You picked the wrong side,” Ransom joked.
“Just roll,” Matt told him. “We don’t have all night.”
“Actually you do have all night,” Ransom told him. Then he tossed the dice onto the table, and all of us watched them jump around.
They landed, and all of us moved whatever way we had to in order to see them.
“Yes!” Ransom yelled.
The roll came up a six and a four, so Ransom advanced a few of his pieces safely.
“My turn.” I grabbed the dice off the table, shook them in my hand, and rolled a three and a five.
I used the three to capture one of Matt’s pieces and was able to take another of my pieces from the nest with the five I rolled. Then I moved my twenty extra spaces I got because I’d captured Matt, and it landed me right onto a space Ransom currently occupied.
“Back to your nest, little bird,” I said. I picked up his blue piece and put it back for him, basking in my capture. Ransom’s eyes were alight with competition, like he enjoyed the back-and-forth almost as much as he liked being in the lead. I moved my other twenty spaces and then sat back in my chair happily. “I love this game.”
Melissa picked up the dice and rolled. “You’d love it more if you remembered to go up your home row.” Then she moved her pieces and slid the dice to Matt.
“Oooh, that’s cold,” Matt said. “That’s no way to treat our guest.”
It took me a moment to realize what she was talking about, and once I did, I felt like a complete moron. In my excitement, I’d completely forgotten to turn toward the home space, which was in the center of the board, and now I’d be forced to go around again.
“Can I get a mulligan or something since it’s my first time?”
The Holts all looked at each other, their eyes darting back and forth like they were deciding how to proceed in a language only they could understand.
“That’s gonna be a no,” Ransom said. “No mercy, remember?”
And that’s how the rest of the night continued. None of us taking pity on anyone else. If someone had a chance to capture someone, they did it, and everyone carefully plotted their strategy with every roll. It took three hours before the game finally ended with Melissa as the winner. When she rolled a two, advancing her last piece into the home space, she practically jumped out of her chair.
“I love Parcheesi!” she said. “Losers put the game away.”
Matt and Ransom shook their heads and rolled their eyes at her, but I could tell their annoyance was all for sport.
“I thought it was Pacheesi,” Matt said.
“Whatever it’s called, I love it!” she said again.
And even though I hadn’t come close to having any chance of winning, I realized I loved it too.
R A N S O M
Taylor and I made our way upstairs not long after the game ended, both of us flopping inelegantly onto the bed and groaning out our exhaustion from the day.
“I don’t ever want to move from this spot,” Taylor said, her voice muffled against the pillow.
“Well, you’re going to have to because you’re on top of the covers.”
“So?”
“So I need them.”
“For what?”
“To sleep under.” Why the hell else would I need them?
“It’s warm in here. We don’t need them.”
“I do need them.”
She twisted her head in my direction without moving the rest of her body, making her look like some kind of snake. “Why?”
I sighed, exasperated. “This is the dumbest conversation ever. I like to sleep under the covers, which is their purpose.”
“You like to sleep under them, or you need to sleep under them?”
“What?” Had she dropped some LSD when I hadn’t been looking?
“I had this friend in grade school who thought her covers protected her from monsters. I was always like, ‘They’re fabric, Erin, not armor.’ But she didn’t care. She wouldn’t even let a foot sneak out the sides.” She moved closer until her face was inches from mine. “Are you scared of monsters, Erin? I mean Ransom.”
I shot her a withering look. “As much as I love being compared to a little girl, no, I don’t think a blanket protects me. I just…like them.”
“Like a security blankie?”
I took the pillow out from under my head and hit her in the face with it, causing her to burst out laughing. I then gathered her close, and she rested her head on my chest.
We lazed in contented silence for a few minutes before I remembered something. “Wait, what’s going on with your LSATs?”
She tensed. “What do you mean?”
“You looked weird earlier when the subject came up.”
“Just what every girl wants to hear from her boyfriend—that she looks weird.”
“Shut up,” I said before placing a kiss on her head to offset the words. “Did you get them?”
“Maybe.”
“Hmm, this is a fun game. Much preferable to you just coming out and telling me about them.”
She chuckled. “I got them this morning, but I haven’t opened the results yet.”
I jerked up, causing her to fall to the mattress with a squeak. “What are you waiting for?”
She sighed and sat up next to me. “I dunno. I guess I didn’t want to make today about me.”
“Because having it be about me went so well?” I teased.
After rolling her eyes, she brought her knees up so she could rest her chin on them. She darted her gaze over to peek at me before staring straight ahead. “What if my score sucks?”
“Then you take it again.”
“Maybe it would be a sign that I should do something else.”
I cocked my head a bit at her words. “Do you want to do something else?” She’d never given me any indication she did, but so much had changed in the past couple of months. I wouldn’t blame her for reevaluating things.
“No,” she said almost immediately.
“Then that settles it. If you failed, which is a totally hypothetical concern since you haven’t even opened the damn results yet, then you’ll take them again. And you’ll keep taking them until you pass.”
“You make it sound really simple.”
“Isn’t it?”
She shrugged in reply.
I scooched closer and wrapped an arm around her. “We have a lot of shit going on that makes life harder. But this doesn’t have to be one of those things. I get that the test is tough, but so are you. You just gotta keep trying.”
She let out a sharp exhale before resting her head on my shoulder. “Thanks for the pep talk, coach.”
“You got it, slugger.”
“Can you hand me my phone?” she asked.
I retrieved it from where she’d set it on the nightstand before collapsing onto the bed. She pulled up her email and selected the one with the link to her results.
“Here goes nothing,” she muttered before clicking.
I tried to look over her shoulder after she logged in, but I didn’t have much clue what I was seeing.
Suddenly, her body sagged as if a pressure valve had been released.
“What? What is it?” Was it a good sag or a bad sag? Why wasn’t she talking? She was almost always talking!
“My score is good,” she said with a sniffle. “Really good.” She let out a small laugh that sounded watery.
“Holy shit! That’s amazing!” I tackled her to the bed and began peppering her face with kisses. When I pulled back, her smile was blinding. “Congratulations,” I said softly.
“Thank you,�
�� she replied.
As I looked down on this amazing woman who had accomplished this incredible thing while dealing with a shitstorm, who’d supported me against a family I hadn’t seen in over fifteen years, who I knew I could always count on, in whatever way I needed her, I was filled with such incredible emotions, I couldn’t suppress them.
“I love you.”
And maybe the timing was shit with all we were dealing with and what might happen to us in the future, but she deserved to know. Even if this trip turned out to be the last time we had together, at least she’d know I’d loved her. That I’d do it all again with her, even if we had only a little while.
Her eyes shined as tears sprang in them. She blinked, and they spilled over, leaving tracks down her cheeks. If it weren’t for the fact that she was still smiling, I would’ve been worried.
She tightened her arms around my neck and pulled me down so my lips were nearly grazing hers. “I love you too,” she said. “So much.”
And with that, we were kissing, our tongues tangling in a dance that spoke in ways words couldn’t. She’d twisted me up from the first time I’d seen her, and I’d only become more wrapped up in her as time had worn on.
I might not always be able to touch her like this. But I’d sure as hell always remember it.
We undressed each other slowly until we were naked and writhing against each other in ecstasy.
A small voice in the back of my head said maybe this was a tacky thing to do in Matt and Melissa’s house, but I told that voice to fuck right the hell off. This moment was too big to stop.
Her hands caressed my body as I slid inside her, her gasp filling the air before being followed by a low moan. We tried to stay quiet, but our soft sounds of pleasure became a soundtrack that couldn’t be stifled.
And as her body quaked beneath me, I followed her off that cliff.
Just like I’d follow her anywhere else.
Chapter Seventeen
T A Y L O R
Despite the exhaustion of the day, my mind kept me from getting much actual rest. I’d drifted in and out of sleep for much of the night, spending most of my time trapped in that space that exists between dreams and conscious thoughts, making it difficult to tell the difference between the two.
Let's Not & Say We Did (The Love Game Book 5) Page 15
