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Jenna shook her head. “Anyone at the hospital. It can get... messy.”
Ouch. Good policy. Would have saved me a lot of trouble, if Cassie and I had even started dating. Sounded like Jenna had also learned that the hard way.
“Oh, sorry!” Ellie cringed. “And you’re seeing someone from work aren’t you?” she asked me. “The woman from the gala.”
Yeah, there was the flinch. Judging by everyone else’s silent stares, I looked as uncomfortable as I felt, as if she’d punched me in the breadbasket.
“Why don’t we let Davis decide what we play?” Jenna offered quickly, changing the subject.
Everyone agreed, and I blew out a silent breath as we rearranged ourselves around the rickety card table, enough of a distraction to put the subject to rest entirely.Thank you, I mouthed to Jenna. She just nodded.
I peered at the board games between bites of pizza. Maybe these were niche Philadelphia games, or maybe I’d wasted my board-game-playing career as a kid in Europe, but I hadn’t heard of most of these. “Sorry, I don’t know how to play these.” Nobody liked teaching someone a new game.
“Oh, they’re easy.” Owen’s friend Brandon picked up one on top of the pile,Smashed Potatoes. “So in this game, you get seven cards, and you have to collect all the butter.”
“Well—first tell him about the milk,” Ellie interjected, then she turned to me. “There are also these milk cards.”
Apparently Ellie joined in these game nights regularly, but I wouldn’t be, based on the disjointed description she and Brandon tag-teamed.
“Stop,” Tiffany finally said. “Even I can’t follow you, and I bought the game.”
“Sorry,” I said, “I’m not following either.”
Tiffany poked Owen in the arm. “See? I told you.”
“Told him what?” I asked. Had they been talking about me? I’d barely met Tiffany.
He shot her a sideways glance. “That there should be an easy app to quickly explain games in an accessible way.”
“He’s an app programmer,” Tiffany supplied, which did help the conversation make a little more sense.
Owen countered this with a so-so handwave. “On the side. People like to give me ideas.”
“People who know how good you are,” Tiffany insisted. I wasn’t sure how to read the dynamic there. Owen’s blush and the way he watched her when she wasn’t looking seemed to say one thing, but Tiffany’s punctuating, playful shove read as brotherly rather than flirting.
Made sense. She was dating Godric.
“Seriously.” Tiffany turned to Davis. “If you’ve got a killer app idea, he’ll help you out.”
Speaking of programming, Tiffany suggested one of those guessing game apps, and Owen quickly seconded. Everyone pushed back the table to make room, half of the group piling onto a dilapidated couch, and the rest of us in a row of folding chairs behind. We voted seven to two against dividing into teams and keeping score, Tiffany and Owen on the losing side.
My phone buzzed as we debated who’d go first, and I glanced at it, ignoring a tiny twinge that it wasn’t Cassie. Instead it was Ellie from the other side of the room:Sorry if these aren’t your people. I can find someone to connect you with, I promise!
“Davis,” Owen called, holding out his phone, “you’re up.”
I set aside my second helping of pizza and accepted the phone, browsing the available categories. “Have we tried ‘Show Your Stuff’?” As soon as I read it, I started to worry about what it might be. Surely this was all PG at most. I hoped.
The other two guys, groaned, but every woman cheered. “It’s reverse charades.”
“We’re terrible at it,” one dude moaned.
“Terribly entertaining,” Tiffany joked.
Then show our stuff we would.
It took me fifteen seconds to guess blowing out birthday candles, partially because the guys ended up rolling on the floor, and I was laughing too hard to speak.
Once I got that, they aimed the same candle-blowing faces up at the sky, and I took twenty seconds to shift out of blowing something mode (blowing up? Blowing... leaves? Blowing away clouds?) to get that they were howling at the moon.
