Good Time(38)

“Ahh.”

“She cried and somehow it all ended with me getting kicked out for conduct unbecoming of a Girl Trooper. They said I wasn’t Girl Trooper material. I was seven! The worst part was she kept my keychain. She attached it to her backpack and wore it to school for the rest of the year.”

“Ouch.”

“Right? I should have known better. She’d been a serious bitch since kindergarten but I was blinded by that stupid badge.” I stand, stacking our plates on top of each other and bringing them over to the dishwasher.

“Did you just refer to a five-year-old as a bitch?” Vince is laughing now.

“Well she was seven at this point in the story, but yeah, I guess I did just tell you she was already a bitch at five. In any case, that’s my humiliating story of being kicked out of the Girl Troopers. They referred to it as a badge pyramid scheme, by the way, which has irritated me to this day because it was a badge-for-sale scheme, there was no pyramid.” I finish loading the plates into the dishwasher, then add the cutting board and knife Vince used while he was cooking and set the pan in the sink filled with an inch of hot soapy water to soak. I wipe down the counter, stalling as long as possible before reaching for the envelope.

I slide it off the countertop and it’s not as heavy as I expected. I know we’ve only been married forty-eight hours but I somehow thought that would warrant a weightier amount of paperwork.

“Hey.” Vince speaks up and I lift my eyes to his. “Let’s play a game.”





Chapter Nineteen





“Want to?” He’s moved from the table to my living area where he’s examining a set of board games stacked on a shelf under my television. It’s a motley assortment of boxes that Lydia has collected from trips to the Goodwill. We haven’t actually played any of them, but it pleases her to collect them. They’re usually missing pieces, the boxes torn and taped. Sometimes she’ll buy the same game a few times to get enough pieces to reassemble one complete game.

“What?” He wants to stay… and play a board game?

“How about Scrabble?”

“You’re not too busy? You have time?” I set the envelope back onto the counter and eye him from where I’m standing in the kitchen.

He digs the box out from the stack and holds it up, the wooden pieces clattering about the box with the movement.

“I’m not sure if all the correct letters are in there. There may be twenty M’s and no P’s for all I know, my roommate bought that used.”

“I’m willing to risk it.” He opens the box and sets the board on the coffee table, then begins flipping all the pieces face down inside the lid. I abandon the envelope and walk slowly over to the sofa to join him, not quite believing that this is happening right now.

I draw the highest letter and start us off with the word SHARK. He smiles and uses the A in my word to play the word CRAZY.

It’s nice, sitting here with Vince. He asks me what it was like growing up in Tennessee and what brought me to Las Vegas. I ask him what it was like to grow up in a desert. We don’t keep score, just play and talk, and it’s… nice. It’s great.

I use the M from MIST to spell KISMET. It’s not a particularly high-scoring word, which doesn’t matter because we’re not counting, but I’m very pleased with myself all the same.

“Kismet,” he says softly as I lay down the tiles.

“It’s a fancy word for fate!” I explain, thinking he’s challenging the word like he did when I tried to play MATHING.

He kisses me.

I’m not expecting it. He’s quietly looking at me one moment, his lips are pressed against mine the next. When his lips leave mine I sense he’s just as surprised by the impromptu kiss as I am. The pad of his thumb trails my bottom lip, a soft firm exploration. Then he kisses me again, firmer now. Tongues mingling, hands exploring. I tug his head closer, my hands dragging through his hair. He pulls me closer, his hand cupping the nape of my neck.

Then I’m sitting astride him, one knee on each side of his hips. I kiss him everywhere. Brows and jaw. I run my tongue along the side of his neck and nip his earlobe with my teeth. His hands are roaming my back, cupping my bottom and slipping beneath my tank top.

It’s the most satisfying make-out session I’ve been involved in since high school, except it’s better because in high school I wasn’t making out with grown men who knew what they were doing and I didn’t have my own apartment. One of his hands works its way to my chest, and it’s stupid really, that this one point of contact, his thumb brushing across my nipple as his lips press against my neck, should make me feel so many things. Turned on and safe and eager and wanted and excited.

I trail my fingertips down the sides of his neck before moving them to the second button on his shirt. The first one was undone when he took off his tie, but I need more of him exposed. I slip two additional buttons free of the fabric, freeing enough space to trace his clavicle, the sinewy spots where his neck muscles connect to his shoulders.

His hand leaves my breast long enough to slide my tank up. It’s odd how something so simple can feel so erotic when Vince is doing it. It feels like my tank is coming off in slow motion, the material sliding up my stomach, his hands guiding the fabric on its journey. My skin tingles in the wake of his fingers as the material clears my chest, my arms lifting to allow the tank to clear my head. My hair falls in a wave against my back, tickling my skin.