Page 92 of Beautifully Conflicted

“Which one do you like best?” Cam asks Liam.

“Well, I get the UFO thing, but it doesn’t really cover all the stuff that happened in the last decade.” He pushes my answer to the side. “Acquire beer money and seek alcohol both fit, but they’re basically the same so I can’t choose one.” He pushes those aside as well and concentrates on the remaining two answers. “Revolt incident advances fear is pretty good, but I think it falls short of a full ten years of history, so I’m going with unlikely weather.”

“Yes.”Bennet pumps his fist.

“Okay, you all get it. Cruz judges the first round.”

Cruz picks a card and reads, “Best pickup line.”

We all get to work crafting our answers and submit them face down. Like Liam did before him, Cruz reads them off one at a time. “Want to breed?... Stroke love weenie… Tug dazzling weapon… Play with Mister Tentacle… Top my fantasy flesh…”

The first answer got us all laughing so hard we can’t hear the rest of them, and he has to read them three times before we finally understand what he’s saying.

“Oh my God, love weenie.” Jagger wipes at his eyes. “That’s fucking brilliant.”

“I’m kind of partial to Mister Tentacle,” Liam says.

“Dazzling weapon puts everything else to shame,” Bennet declares.

“Alright, what’s your pick?” Cam asks.

“Well, want to breed would be classic if anyone in this room was trying to pick up a woman, but since none of us are into that—” he casts a sheepish glance at Bennet “—it doesn’t really fit. And since I now know what nicknames you’re all going to give your junk, I can’t pick one over the other. So… since I mostly top, I’m going with top my fantasy flesh.”

“Oh yeah!” I punch the air.

“Wait, if you mostly top you couldn’t use top my fantasy flesh, that’s a bottom pickup line,” Bennet objects.

“But if someone came up to me and asked me to top them, I’d be down.” Cruz shrugs.

“Hey,” Liam barks.

“Hypothetically.” Cruz holds up his hands in surrender.

“I’ll breed you with Mister Tentacle later if you want.” Cam waggles his eyebrows at Jagger.

“You knew that one was mine?” Jagger asks, to which Cam just arches his brow in a way that saysreally? “Yeah, okay. You know how I think.”

“Okay, moving on,” Bennet says. “Jagger, you’re the next judge.”

Jagger picks up the card, snorts, and reads aloud, “Walk us through the masturbation process.”

I do not have the right words for this prompt. I’ve got some tiles about bombs, machinery and produce, not body parts or descriptive action words. So, I slap together what resembles a valid answer.

Jagger looks at all the submissions before giving us all a withering look. “Guys, these sort of suck. Where’s the crazy nicknames for dicks?”

“We’ve gotta work with the tiles we have,” Liam says.

“What do they say?” Cam nods his head towards the stack of responses.

One by one, Jagger reads them off. “Drill supple goddess… Pulverize long being… Pump cute vegetable… Champion smooth anatomy… Claim amazing virtue…”

“Ouch, those are kind of weak.” Bennet winces. Maybe we should pick more tiles after this round.”

“Agreed,” Cam says. “So, what’s the winner?”

“I mean, I have to go with pump cute vegetable. It’s the only one that sort of references cocks.”

“Two for two!” I punch the air again.

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