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“Gotcha,” he replied before pressing a kiss to my cheek. “Okay, who's going first?”
It was a first for me—game night at a boyfriend's friend's house. Being introduced to his friends—or in this case,reintroduced. Spending time, laughing awkwardly, and accepting this as our second chance of getting to know each other. I wasn't very good at the game, barely understood it, even after Peter explained it through several turns. But that was okay; it was fun. And by the time it was over and Meg, the green squirrel, had won, I was sitting taller on my cushion and laughing a little less awkwardly.
But then Water Guy—apparently, his name was Kenny—had to ruin it when Peter got up to grab us a drink refill.
“Hey, so, Lennon, can I ask you something?”
“Yeah, sure,” I replied, turning to him with a smile.
Propping his elbow on a knee, he asked, “So, youreallycan't see, huh?”
It was a juvenile question, one I seldom heard from someone his age. When asked questions about my vision, I found adults were usually less intrusive, more thoughtful, while kids were significantly more blunt, even vicious and brutal. Sometimes, it was that the adults were craftier in their cruelty, but they at least tried to mask it with false kindness.
Judging from the smirk on his face, I didn't sense anything kind about this.
“Not very well, no,” I answered, already thinking the Sprite I'd asked for wasn’t that important.
Kenny raised a hand in front of my face. “How many fingers am I holding up?”
There were six other people sitting around that living room—three other couples. I had little reason to wonder why Kenny was flying solo to this shindig, but I did wonder why none of the others were saying anything in my defense as I stared at his three fat fingers, waving an inch away from my nose.
“The last person to ask me that was about ten years old,” I replied, unamused and obviously annoyed.
Kenny chuckled, dropping his hand to the floor. “Oh, relax. I'm just having some fun. Don't be like that.”
“Don't be like what?” Peter asked from behind me, and I turned to watch him approach.
“Nothing,” Kenny said, patting my shoulder. “I was just havin' some fun with Lennon, like the old days.”
He said it like teasing a disabled kid in school with fingers and relentless questions was a fond memory. For all I knew, the guy truly didn't see the harm in what he or any of them had done back then. At the time, I'd always brushed it off as genuine curiosity of something they didn't understand. But now? He was too old to find that type of crap entertaining, and I was too old to put up with it.
I pulled from his touch on my shoulder and stood. “I'm actually getting kinda tired,” I said to Peter.
“Oh, you wanna go home?” he asked with a furrowed brow, still holding the two cans of Sprite. I responded with a silent nod, and he sighed, obviously disappointed to be cutting the night short. “Okay.”
I felt a little guilty as we offered our good-byes to the group. Peter liked his biweekly game nights; it was his break from the usual stress of living. He enjoyed his friends and the time he spent with them, and that was fine. But right now, I didn't care much for spending any more of my time in that living room.
It wasn't until we were pulling out of the driveway when Peter thought to ask me what was wrong.
“I guess you didn't hear Kenny's stupid questions,” I said as Breaking Benjamin came on WROX with “So Cold.”
“No, I didn't,” he replied, barely visible in the darkness of his Toyota.
“He asked me if I really couldn't see, like I'd lie about it, and then he asked how many fingers he was holding up,” I spat out, hardly able to believe I was speaking of a thirty-year-old man and not a seven-year-old.
Peter hesitated, his hands stiff and tight against the wheel, before saying, “Kenny’s an asshole. He doesn’t have any filters.”
“Yeah, well, I didn't appreciate it,” I muttered. “It's bad enough I got that kind of crap as a kid, but I shouldn't have to put up with it as an adult.”
“No, you shouldn't,” he said softly. Kindly. “I'm sorry. You should've said something. I would've kicked his ass.”
“It's fine,” I replied. The irritation was already fading as the distance between us and Nate's house grew. “I'm over it.”
“Good,” he said, reaching across the center console to lay a hand against my thigh. “But seriously, next time—if there ever is a next time—I want you to say something to me, okay? You shouldn't feel like I'm not in your corner.”
The heat of his hand was there, warming my jeans and searing through to the skin beneath as his unfeigned words struck every chord against my thundering heart. Like a brick to the chest, it hit me—we were a couple. In a real relationship. A team, a duo, partners in crime.Lennon and Peter, sitting in a tree, K-I-S-S-I-N-G, and all that. It settled in comfortably as I stared across the car at his bristled cheek with his fingers squeezing my thigh gently and my body reminding my brain it'd been weeks since I'd been laid.
“Because I'm there,” he went on, his Adam's apple bobbing in the glow of a streetlamp. “I'm right there with you. I want you to know that.”
