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“Holy crap, weren't you that girl with the weird eyes in school?”
“Wait, you're with Lennon Jacobs now? When the hell did that happen?”
“Oh my God, you were the one with the sunglasses!”
It didn't take long before I started to question what I'd been thinking when I agreed to go to game night at Peter's friend Nate's house. I guessed I had thought it could be nice to catch up and have fun with some of the people I hadn't seen in years. But I didn't recognize a single face in Nate's living room, and age and blindness had nothing to do with it.
I never knew any of these people. Not then and certainly not now. But they made no secret of knowing me even if it was only by the superficial characteristic of needing to wear sunglasses underneath the school's bright fluorescent lights.
Funny they’d never thought to say something then.
Not to my face anyway.
“Guys, come on,” Peter finally said in reply to the barrage of questions after introducing me to the group sitting around a coffee table. He added a little awkward chuckle that told me he was as uncomfortable by their reaction as me. “Cool it.”
He walked ahead of me toward the couch, and I reached out, grappling for his hand. There was no way I could navigate my way through this room full of feet and extended legs without tripping. I found his fingers, they wrapped around mine, and I sighed with quiet relief.
“Here,” he said, finding a couple of empty spots for us. “We'll sit here.”
I sat on the oversize cushion beside a guy I vaguely remembered telling the elementary school cafeteria he was allergic to water. Peter took the cushion next to me, groaning about his stiffening joints and being too young to feel so damn old. I sniffed a gentle laugh as I swept my blurry gaze around the circle of unfamiliar faces. They looked friendly enough, I supposed, and I hoped I'd have a good time.
Then, Peter reached out for something on the coffee table.
“All right, ladies and gents, are we ready to play this game or what?” he asked, opening his clenched fist between us.
“We were waiting for you, loser,” some guy beside Peter said. I thought it was Tim maybe.
“Okay, so these are the game pieces,” Peter instructed, offering two squirrel-shaped blocks. “Which color do you want to be?”
“Um …” I squinted at the squirrels in his hand. “What colors are there?”
“They're right there,” the guy who had once been allergic to water said, shooting his pointer finger in front of my gaze and toward Peter’s palm.
“Okay, uh …”
“The only two left are green and blue,” Peter said quietly, ignoring Water Guy. He pointed one finger to each of the pieces in his hand as he spoke, implying he was holding one of each.
That was news to me when, to my eyes, they looked the same.
“Oh, I can't see the difference between these,” I whispered, quickly embarrassed. “I usually play red or white. They have a higher contrast.”
“Oh,” Peter said, slowly turning away to look up at the board. “Who's playing red or white?”
“Trade with Meg,” Nate said, mentioning his wife. “She's playing white.”
“Ialwaysplay white,” a woman—I was assuming Meg—across the table said, her tone flat and bored.
“Babe, you can play something else this time,” Nate replied.
She huffed loudly but agreed with a begrudged, “Fine,” like she was a child and had just been told there was only chocolate ice cream left for dessert instead of vanilla.
I shrank further into my cushion, already wishing I'd just stayed home with my laptop and cat, while Peter and Meg traded the green squirrel for the white. He placed his blue squirrel and mine on the board, then settled beside me again.
“You want me to explain, or can you pick up as we go along?” he asked, pressing his shoulder against mine.
“It's probably better to show me as we go,” I said, knowing board game instructions typically went in one ear and out the other when explained to me.
