Game Planner

by BJ Harvey

  Everyone else laughs, and I can’t stop from smiling.

  “He’s got you there, petal,” Justice says.

  “Like mother, like daughter, then?” Dad asks.

  “Dad, that’s a bit TMI.”

  “And your man here telling your four parents that you had sex in Vegas isn’t?”

  “To be fair,” Malcolm says, “who hasn’t gotten laid in Vegas?”

  I cross my arms over my chest and quirk a brow as I look around the table, wearing a ‘see?’ expression, which just starts everyone laughing again.

  Jase reaches out his hand to me, beckoning me forward with his fingers. I slide my palm into his and give it a gentle squeeze.

  “I meant it,” he says, and not for the first time today, I consider how many times I can get him off between here and Chicago.

  “Damn, you two must have some wild sex,” Mom announces, clapping her hands, turning her eyes to me. “I’m so happy for you, baby. You deserve a good man and good sex. That’s all I could ever hope for.”

  I roll my eyes at my—as always—brutally honest mother, but I wouldn’t have her any other way.

  “Excellent. Well, now that’s sorted,” Dad says, sliding his chair back and standing from the table, “who’s for dessert and a bong? Or a bong and dessert?”

  For what seems like the tenth time since we arrived, Jase’s mouth drops open before he quickly snaps it shut again.

  All I can do is wink at him and reach out my foot to slide against his under the table. “I love you,” I mouth, earning a shake of his head and smile.

  “Love you too,” he says, not quietly, not ashamed, and not running for hills.

  I’m totally giving that man some tonight. He survived the gauntlet that is my crazy parents and lived to tell the tale. There’s nothing to stop us now. Wherever this unpredictable life may take us, I know I want to do it with this man at my side.

  I mean, he’s got a tattoo on his ass saying he’s mine. What more can a girl ask for?

  When Jase Proves Me Wrong

  Six years of living in blissful sin, and I’m starting to wonder if Mom was right to worry about the extended trial and whether Jase has forgotten about his plan to marry me. That’s because we’ve cohabited for seven years, and there’s been no proposal. There’s definitely no ring on my finger either.

  Since that first meet-the-parents experience, there have been many trips back to Indiana to stay with them, and we’ve even been on vacation with Heather and Marcus too.

  Jase and I are still just as in love as we have always been—probably more so. We still have sex at least once a day—more often than not, more. We’ve moved three times, each house slightly bigger, and each house a work-in-progress that the two of us have flipped together. We give each house a new lease on life and put our unique stamp on it before selling and finding our next project. Thankfully, Jase has utilized the services of our friend Abi’s brothers—Jamie, Jaxon, Bryant, and Cohen—to help with any renovations and landscaping. The four of them are now starting their own house-flipping adventure having overseen a few of our projects over the years.

  There have also been a lot of other changes around us during this time. Even Matt and Mia have extended their dream house and have not just their eldest, Emma, who is now seven, but also Jade, who is four, and my spirit animal, Sadie, who is two, and is a toddler version of me. Mia is constantly calling me up, regaling me with Sadie’s latest misdemeanors, the most recent being she tried to stick a bullet vibrator in one of her sister’s ears while she was sleeping. Or the time she pressed a button on Matt’s phone and shared a homemade sex tape with our group chat. That one we got a lot of mileage from.

  It’s not that we’ve become stagnant—far from it. It’s just that I’m starting to feel like everyone around us is swimming confidently in the deep end of the adult pool, and Jase and I are still wading in the paddling pool without a care in the world.

  Every new announcement of a baby or a proposal, or even our friends Sean and Sam renewing their vows on their ten-year anniversary, hasn’t spurred him into taking that assumed next step in our relationship. I love Jase, and he loves me, and we have our cat, George, who we adopted three years ago. He’s our baby, and he’s been successful in muting my biological clock. Or so I thought.

  But a few months ago, something started gnawing away at me. It was just the slightest tingling in the beginning, then it started to irritate me, a small seed sprouting its roots deep inside of me as every day, week, and month passed and brought my thirty-third birthday closer.

  Then I started letting my mother-in-law’s innocent and completely unbitchy comments provide the shade this seed needed to become a fully-fledged rage planted deep inside of me. I’ve even started overanalyzing my carefree, easygoing parents’ words and actions. Every visit is a check-up. Every call is to nag, when in reality, they are just doing their normal hovering, like they always do, tag-teaming a week on and week off so as not to seem overbearing. It’s a trick I caught on to during my first year in college.

  My normally content nights with Jase have started to irritate me. Our weekend outings for dinner with Matt and Mia or to any of our other friends’ houses for a barbecue—early, of course, to accommodate their kids—have started to grate on me. It’s not that our relationship is anything short of perfect for me. It’s that I’ve started comparing our life to that of everyone around us.

  For someone who has never given a single iota of thought to what society thought of me, I’ve begun to doubt my core beliefs. Those that I’ve held dear since I was old enough to form an opinion and voice it.

  It’s not just myself I’ve started to doubt—it’s Jase. The man who has never lied, cheated, stolen, climaxed without reciprocating, forgotten an anniversary or birthday, or even left the toilet seat up. I swear to God, he is perfect in every way. And that’s irritating me.

  George sitting in the middle of the kitchen eying me like I’m his meal ticket—which, of course, I am—is aggravating me.

  And the fact that Jase and George—my two perfect and handsome men—are annoying me… that’s infuriating.

  Jase has taken to wearing figurative kid gloves around me. He’s being extra attentive, extra kind, extra funny, and super sexy, and even that is making me grate my teeth and be super nice back to him, feeling guilty for being annoyed. It’s almost like I’ve had a personality transplant in my sleep and the universe is like surprise, welcome to the rest of your life.

  I hate it. I don’t want to be this neurotic and crazy girlfriend, friend, and daughter. I want to go back to being the carefree, easygoing, sometimes out-there Nat that everyone knows and—hopefully—still loves.

  Then it happens, one month before my birthday—New Year’s Eve, to be exact. Our entire extended group of friends and the members of their families gather in Zoe and Noah’s large living area to hear Dani announce she’s pregnant, just two months after she and Zach married. I burst into tears.

  The thing is, I’m not normally a crier. I’ve never been the overly emotional kind of girl who tears up at those military homecoming videos online, or when a kid wins a million-dollar talent show contest on TV. I’m happy for them, I appreciate their sacrifice and hard work, but I don’t cry—usually.

  Mia—who is the emotional yin to my cold-hearted yang—stands across the room from me, her mouth dropped open as huge lady tears pour out of me before I bury my face into Jase’s neck.

  “Baby, what’s wrong?” he asks in all his annoying perfection. “Are you just happy for them?”

  He’s so perfect, yet so completely ignorant sometimes, too.

  Looking up across the room at my best friend, I mouth “help me” to Mia. My chest is feeling tight, and my head is starting to spin—and not from the two drinks I’ve had tonight. It’s like I’m having an out-of-body experience. I’m on the verge of something weird and potentially catastrophic to my life as I know it, and what I need are fresh air and space. Mia snaps her mouth shut and moves in
to action, grabbing my hand, murmuring something I can’t make out to Jase, then dragging me from the room and out into the huge backyard.

  Leading me to the table and chairs by the pool, she doesn’t let go of my hand until I take a seat.

  I look up at her face to see her brows pinched and her teeth digging into her lip. I open my mouth to ask what’s wrong, but she cuts me off.

  “Does this breakdown call for tequila or a joint? Because I just realized that Zo and No probably have tequila, but we do have two off-duty police officers inside, so the joint is a no-go—for now.”

  Her rambling brings a smile to my face. A real one. It’s a New Year’s miracle! “I don’t know what I need.” Truer words have never left my lips.

  Mia smiles and takes a seat beside me. “You’re going to have to explain what you mean by that, Nat.”

  “I don’t feel like me anymore.”

  “That’s because you’re not.”

  My head jerks back. “What?” I whisper.

  “Because you’re not you. You haven’t been you for a fair few months now.” Her eyes are warm and soft, her hand reaching out to hold mine, her thumb rubbing over the matching ampersand symbols on our wrists.

  “Matt, Jase, and I have known this was coming. Actually, all the girls have, too. Mac and Daniel were at our house a few weeks ago, and they asked about you and Jase because they sensed some tension at the Friendsgiving dinner.”

  “But Jase and I are good.” Aren’t we? Maybe he’s not riding the same happy—albeit annoying—relationship train I am.

  “Is Jase not good with me?” I ask, my voice breaking. My chest feels like it has the weight of a thousand men sitting on it, my breathing becoming desperate at the thought of not having Jase in my life. Nat and Jase go together like Ross and Rachel, Lois and Clark, Batman and Robin—in my porn cartoon version at home, anyway. There’s no either-or in that scenario. It’s Nat and Jase, not Nat and then Jase. We’re not supposed to be two separate things. Not since that amazing first date seven years ago. Not for as long as I can remember, or as long as I even want to.

  Now I’m hyperventilating for a different reason. What if the reason Mia brought me out here was to let me down easy on Jase’s behalf? Is my stuff now in some storage locker somewhere, and this is my best friend’s way of having my back?

  “Nat, where did you just go? You look a million miles away.”

  I snatch my hand away and glare at her. Not once in all of my angry months has Mia ever annoyed me, but right now I’m seeing red, irrational and dark scarlet red covering my entire body. “Is Jase breaking up with me?”

  Her eyes go wide as saucers. “No! He thinks you’re going to break it off with him.”

  I jump to my feet. “What?” I shriek, loud enough that I’m sure half of the neighborhood would’ve heard me. “I don’t want to lose Jase. I don’t want to lose anybody,” I say, still shouting. “I want… I want…” I stand there, opening and closing my mouth like a goldfish. The words I’m trying to get out are right on the tip of my tongue.

  “Let me ask you something, and be honest. Do you love Jase?”

  “Yes, of course I do.”

  “Do you love me?”

  “Well, duh.”

  “Do you love Emma and Jade and Sadie?”

  “Absolutely.”

  “Do you want to have an Emma and a Jade and a Sadie of your own one day?” she asks, her eyes darting over my shoulder then returning to mine. I start to turn my head to see what caught her attention, but she squeezes my hand, stopping me. “Do you?”

  “Maybe not a Jade, ’cause she’s a little too much like Matt for my liking, but definitely a Sadie clone. She’s my kind of people,” I say with a smile.

  “Do you want to get married?”

  My breath catches as I connect the dots. Realization smacks me in the face.

  “Oh my God.” I jump up and down on the spot, my despair turning to joy. I’m not crazy, I’m not losing my mind, and I’m not a man-hating, cat-hating, ungrateful bitch at all. “I’m having an early midlife, okay, maybe third-life crisis!” I blurt out, and it’s then I’m hit with the sense that we’re no longer alone in the backyard.

  “Mia…” I whisper. “Did I just announce to our family and friends that I’m having an existential breakdown?”

  Her lips twitch as she nods. “You didn’t answer my question though,” she says softly. “But maybe you’d prefer if he asked instead.”

  I slowly turn around, my hand covering my shocked mouth at a kneeling Jase in front of me, a platinum ring with diamonds in the shape of a daisy pinched between his thumb and index finger. Our family and friends all stand behind him, each holding a white rose; Mom, Justice, Dad and Malcolm, Jase’s parents, our friends, their parents and siblings. Our no-longer-little close-knit community built on friendship and love, and a lot of friend-cest and ex-partner swapping, but it’s a community all the same.

  “To you?” I blurt out, earning a murmur of laughs from behind us. That earns me a wide grin.

  “Natalie Persephone Chase, will you marry me, and have my babies or cats or whatever your heart desires for as long as forever?” Then he smirks. “Yes or No?”

  His words remind me of the game we used to play before we got into our comfort zone. He looks up at me with those beautiful sexy eyes that had me hook, line, and sinker across the bar all those years ago, and there’s absolutely no thought needed.

  “Yes!” I whisper. “Yes! Yes! Yes! Yes! Yes!” I’m yelling by the end of it. I jump up and down as Jase stands and takes my hand, sliding the ring that appears made for me onto my finger before grabbing hold of my ponytail, tugging my hair back, and laying a deep, wet, hot, and heavy one on my lips for the world to see. That doesn’t stop me though; I pour everything into that kiss, purging every single annoying, irritating, aggravating doubt out of my body and letting Jase take the weight of it all as he sets about thoroughly reassuring me that this did actually just happen. We pull apart ever so slightly, our eyes locked, my huge smile reflected back at me.

  “Yes or no?” I ask with a laugh, realizing he actually considered the possibility I could ever reject his proposal.

  “Well I wouldn’t have accepted no, but your dads said I had to give you the option. It was the deal-breaker, apparently.” I look over his shoulder to see my parents beaming at each other, Malcolm and Justice hugging as Dad dips his chin and places a soft, reverent kiss on Mom’s lips.

  Raised by love, surrounded by love, in the arms of the man I’ve chosen to love, I give a big high-five to the universe and set about thanking my man in the only way that’s allowed right now. The real celebration will come shortly, and if the look in my fiancé’s eyes is anything to go by, he’s thinking the exact same thing.

  “I love you,” Jase murmurs against my lips as he slides the hotel room key into the slot and lets us into my second surprise of the night—a penthouse suite overlooking the lake.

  After the clock struck midnight, and we’d celebrated New Years and our new engagement with copious bottles of champagne, Jase whispered in my ear that we had somewhere else to be.

  A million goodbyes to our friends and family later—I was sitting in my new fiancé’s lap, knees braced on either side of his hips, making out like a teenager on prom night while the driver took us to a secret destination only he and Jase knew about.

  That brings us to now, and me pushing Jase onto his back on the mattress and assuming a similar position to the one we were in during the limo ride—just with more room to play this time. He sits up and faces me, his eager cock pulsing against the lace of my underwear. I thank the lord for the creation of skirts in this moment.

  His eyes are full of lust and heat, his gaze dropping to the glistening ring on my left hand that rests on his chest. “You like it?”

  I drop my gaze, taking in the platinum band that slid on like it was born to live at the base of my finger. “I love it,” I whisper, my voice thick. “I don’t ever want to take it o
ff.”

  “Good. Because it’s there forever since I’m gonna be yours for just as long.”

  I can’t help the grin that curves my lips as my eyes fill with tears again. Who would’ve thought I’d be such a girl about this kind of thing?

  “You know I’m a sure thing tonight, right?” I say with a smirk.

  He moves quickly, flipping me onto my back and hovering over me, his smile almost blinding. Then that smile is covering mine, his kiss full of love and happiness, full of the same furious heat that has consumed us since our first date. His tongue probes my mouth, dueling with mine as I dig my nails into his back and give as good as I get.

  When he lifts his head, his eyes are hooded. His rolling hips press hard against my clit, my brain misfiring as shots of heat consume my thoughts. “I love you.”

  “I love you too, and if you get naked, I’ll show you just how much I love my new ring.”

  His smile grows even wider, and definitely more wicked. “How about I show you just how happy I am you said yes?” he says, sliding his way down my body, his fingers dropping to the hem of my skirt. “Tomorrow, I’ll show you my vision board.”

  All I care about is his body reaching its destination, and in the state I’m in, I’d agree to anything to get his lips, teeth, tongue, and cock on me or in me.

  “Deal,” I moan as he dips his head under the fabric and covers my clit with his mouth, not letting a little pair of lace underwear stop him from going for what he wants.

  He’s a giving man, my fiancé.

  Lucky for him, I’ll give him as good as I get—once he’s finished.

  Then we’ll start all over again.

  It’s the right thing to do.

  When Jase Surprises Me Again

  “So why did you two wait seven years to get engaged?” Mrs. Roberts asks from the end of the table.

  It’s March, the day after our engagement party, and along with Mom, Mia and her sisters, Zoe and Dani, and Mrs. Roberts, I’m relaxing in Mia’s backyard, while our men—Jase, Matt, Noah, Dani’s husband, Zach, Dad, Malcolm, Justice, Zoe’s two kids, and Mia’s three daughters—have all gone to Lincoln Park Zoo.