Page 28 of The Cocky Neighbor

"Hey, that's not fair," Ian grumbled. "You two can basically read each other's minds."

"It can't be helped that fate decided to put us in a team," Jason said with a shrug, but his smug look told me he was very happy about the arrangement.

"It's okay, Ian. Don't forget you have a professional designer in this group. If I can draw cake designs, then this will be easy as pie. We're going to kick their asses!" Caleb said with a fist up.

"Hey! Why would you want to kick my ass? I'm your husband-to-be," Zack complained.

"You should have thought about that before deciding to kill me off," Caleb snapped back.

"Oh, c'mon. Are you still not over that? It's beenmonths," Zack grumbled, and Caleb responded by sticking his tongue out at him.

A few months back, we'd played a game where we had to guess which one of us were the assigned werewolves who were killing off the villagers. Zack and Scott had gotten the werewolf cards, and the first person they decided to off was Caleb.

Zack had made a big deal about being the poor widowed villager who had lost the love of his life, but we learned afterwards that it was his idea in the first place to choose Caleb.

Nobody thought Caleb was seriously mad at Zack for it, but the sweet man liked to tease hisfiancé about it.

"Okay, which team is going first?" Ian cut in between the couple.

"There's a small number on the corner of the paper. I figured we can use that to decide which everyone draws. As for which team goes first, rock paper scissors!" Jason said and raised his fist out to our group.

"I'll take you on," Ian said, stepping forward to take on the challenge. The two said the battle phase and launched their attacks, and Ian won with scissors. Everyone in our group cheered as the other team booed.

Jason snuggled into Will's arms for comfort. "It's okay, baby. We're going to win," he said, placing a kiss on his forehead.

"Don't be cocky just yet. You may not know this, but I used to be part of the art club in college," I said with a lift of my chin.

"Didn't you join because you heard the club had hot men come in as naked models?" Zack chimed in, and I shot him a glare. I'd forgotten about that little bit. That may have been the reason I'd joined the art club, but I'd quickly taken a liking to sketching. It was fun creating something out of nothing.

"Why doesn't that surprise me?" Liam added from beside me. I turned to find him grinning at me. That was a piece of my dark past that I wished he hadn't learned.

"It wasn't like that. It was all for art. Besides, I didn't attend many of the figure drawing sessions," I found myself explaining. Not that it was anything to be ashamed about or any of his business. We were all consenting adults, and it was true that everyone was there in pursuit of art. But for some reason, I still felt the need to explain myself.

He hummed in reply. "I believe you. The human body is a very…beautiful thing," he said as his eyes slowly dragged up and down my body.

Was it me or was it getting hot in here?

I turned away from him, needing to cool down or something. I caught Zack watching me with a curious expression on his face. I knew he knew something was up, but I wasn't ready to talk about it, so I schooled my expression and shot him a wink. He rolled his eyes and turned back to what everyone else was doing.

Caleb was the first person to draw. He picked a card from the stack, thought for a second, and nodded. He picked up the dry erase marker and began drawing as soon as Jason flipped over the tiny plastic hourglass and called start.

The three of us shouted our guesses as something oval took shape on the whiteboard. Tiny legs came out from the main body with a circle at the end. "Chandelier!" I guessed, and Caleb jumped up as he pointed to me.

The other team groaned, then Jason popped up to take over Caleb's position. He picked a card at random and shot his team a bright smile. "Don't worry, this'll be easy."

When we called for him to start, he drew a fat "u" that had short horizontal lines coming out from each end of the top. Iscrutinized the drawing when Will called out, "Jump rope."

Jason cheered and ran over to hug Will. The rest of us continued to stare in confusion. I never would have connected the drawing with a jump rope. Perhaps if he'd drawn a stick figure with it, but as it stood, it looked like a stretched out, upside-down omega letter.

Ian was right. They had an uncanny ability to read each other's minds.

"They just got lucky. We can't lose focus now. We can still beat them!" Caleb encouraged. Liam stood as the next drawer and chose a card.

"This will be easy," he said with a cocky smile. His time started and he quickly drew a figure in a suit. The rest of us started guessing.

Businessman. Model. Butler. Suit. Man in a suit.

On and on the guesses went, but Liam shook his head each time and continued to add details to the suit the man was wearing. It was a detailed drawing and not too bad, I had to admit, but this game wasn't about how good the drawing was. It was all pointless if your teammates couldn't figure outwhatyou were drawing.

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