Vanessa finished the beer, studying him.
“How old are you?”he asked.
“Twenty-nine.”
“What do you do?”
“I already told you.”
He had to concentrate to retrieve the information.“ER nurse.”
“Very good.”
“You’re from Colorado.”
“Denver,” she confirmed.“But I was born here.”
Paul found her enchanting, and it wasn’t just the drugs talking.The time spent outdoors must have agreed with her, because she looked more vibrant.Her cheeks were flushed from the day in the sun and her eyes sparkled with vitality.
“Where are you from?”she asked.
“Houston.”
“What did you do in Houston?”
“This and that,” he hedged.
“You’re very cagey, for a stoner.”
Her tone registered as teasing but the point penetrated his brain fog.Evasive answers tended to arouse suspicion.He fumbled for the details of his cover story.“I worked for a security company.”
She shifted her attention to his mouth, which made him feel self-conscious.He’d been looking forward to the opportunity to practice his deception skills but it felt wrong to practice here, with her.His mind wasn’t sharp right now, and he regretted how he’d treated her earlier.He’d accused her of being deliberately suggestive.The truth was that her natural sensuality got under his skin.
“Did you get hurt on the job?”she asked.
“Yes.”
“How are you feeling?”
“Not great,” he said honestly.
“It might help to distract yourself with a quiet activity.What do you like to do?”
Only one activity sprang to mind, along with a dozen variations of it.He clamped his lips shut in fear that an inappropriate comment would burst out.Instead of waiting for him to respond, she hopped up from the couch again.She crossed the room to a shelf that held a variety of paperback books and board games.
“How about Scrabble?”
Paul was in no condition to exercise his intellect, but he just shrugged.He could stare at her while she moved letters around and try not to drool.She brought the game to the coffee table, set it up, and sat cross-legged on the floor.While she placed square tiles on the rack, she glanced at her sleeping daughter.The little girl hadn’t moved.Then she formed a word in the center of the board: RATIO.
Paul blinked at his tiles owlishly.R-R-T-K-I-N-G.He added an N to the end of RATIO to make RATION, and arranged a few other letters to form KING.
She smirked as this attempt, which he considered admirable, and marked their scores on the tally sheet.It became clear that she wasn’t going to go easy on him.Her next word, GARGOYLE, blew him out of the water.She’d used all seven tiles.He couldn’t calculate the score.
He studied his own tiles.F-U-C-T-R-R-T.The best he could do was add FUC to KING.
She laughed, unoffended by the graphic choice, and scribbled more numbers.The sound of her laughter filtered through him, bubbly and full-throated.Her beauty took his breath away.Paul was mesmerized by the combination.He thought of the strange battle they’d waged earlier.He’d won the challenge by making her laugh.Now she was laughing again, and he felt the same unfiltered delight.
They went a few more rounds.She continued to outplay him, keeping score in tidy script.Her hands were slender, with short, manicured fingernails.Paul’s attention strayed from the game board to her pretty features often.He was clumsy and slow.He fumbled with his letter tiles and forgot to pick new ones.She had to remind him to breathe.Although he failed at creating words that scored well or inspired laughter, the brain fog lifted at one point and the universe realigned.After she played QUIP vertically, he added some tiles horizontally to form QUIM, which made her do a double take.
