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Inside the hall, games were finishing, and new ones were starting. Winners were crowing, losers tucking tail, reputations were being made and grudges formed, and spectators were lining up to watch it all happen all over again.
Rory had been all those things. A winner, a loser, high on success and lashing out at the truth. She’d finished a big game of life with a man she still regretfully loved and respected and she’d spent a year standing on the sidelines waiting for a new one to begin.
Whatever she played next, it had to be a game where she wasn’t so wrapped up in the fun of it she ignored the stakes, where she didn’t con herself, or reject help along the way from the people she loved.
And it couldn’t be a game where she confused fantasy and fact and hurt Zeke again, and yet the board was set for that very scenario to play out.
The whole time she’d stood in the doorway, Continuers had been moving in and out of the hall. No one spoke to her, most didn’t even glance at her. No one was going to want to huddle over a game board with her, sit beside her while she completed a quest or defeated a wizard, took a shot at someone’s fleet, spun a wheel, jumped a square, or built a road in Catan. She was already in jail, do not pass go, do not collect $200.
If the love bombing didn’t start soon she could perish of boredom.
“Did you know that when given a choice, goats gravitate towards happy faces?”
Zeke’s voice made little shivers ripple up her spine. After they’d had their strained moment in the field he’d gone to take a nap and she’d spent the rest of the afternoon confirming her suspicion that Abundance didn’t have a cemetery, which either meant no one had died in the years the settlement had been running or something fishy was going on.
“Liar.” Something fishy was most certainly on the hook.
“It’s strange but true.”
Zeke didn’t touch her, but he stood close enough behind her that his breath sheared across her ear, making all the wayward hairs at her neck feel electrified. “Thought you were going to stand me up,” she said.
“The mistake I made with that goat was not smiling. I’d never make the mistake of standing you up, Aurora Rae.”
She turned to face him. He’d hugged her so hard in that field with the outraged goat shouting at them and he was telling her again that he’d always be there for her. She couldn’t quite meet his gaze, focusing instead on the eye sockets in the skull on his Foo Fighters “Matter of Time” T-shirt, waiting for him to touch her in the most casual but careful way.
“I don’t think anyone will let me play.”
He tugged on her belt loop. “If you can’t finesse your way onto a games table in the next half hour I will eat my shirt.”
“Are you trying to fake me out?”
That’s exactly what she was trying to do to him. She pointed two fingers at her eyes and then poked them in the skull’s sockets, her fingertips stabbing his chest.
“You love a challenge.” With his finger still through her belt loop, he stepped around her, making her spin, awkwardly off-balance, before he let go and took off toward a plate of cookies. At least he’d get his sugar fix.
It took her fifteen minutes to find a poker game and another ten to finagle their way onto the table. No one wanted to talk to her, but she could still make them. This was games night, after all, and making annoying people do things not to their advantage was her specialty.
“Earl, it’s nice to meet you. Thank you so much for letting my brother and I sit in on your game. I’m Rosie and that tall streak making his way over is my brother, Zack,” she said, holding her hand out to the dealer on a table where two players had just vacated.
“I didn’t say you could sit in,” Earl said, eyeing her hand as if it was a rattlesnake in disguise. Earl was smarter than he looked in his farm-boy overalls and his Bulls trucker hat.
“You didn’t? I thought you were different, friendly, a real gentleman. Not like everyone else here.”
“No, I didn’t say anything. How do you even know my name? This table is full.”
She knew his name because she was a well-trained listener. “But I saw two people leave.” Heard them exchange goodnights.
“There’s a wait-list and you’re not on it.”
There were wait-lists for most other games at other tables but Earl and the other two men who’d remained were notably friendless. She pegged them as entitled hard-asses. Opportunity knocked.
“Oh, come on now. You can’t be scared of me.”
“Let her play, Earl.” One of the other men, plaid shirt, shaved head, stood and offered his hand. “You don’t look like the kind of trouble we can’t deal with. I’m Wayne and that’s Bernie.”
She shook Wayne’s hand, beamed a smile at Bernie who didn’t acknowledge her and noted Earl wasn’t impressed. There were more handshakes when Zeke arrived. Notably more enthusiastic.
“We play five card,” Earl started.
