Page 59 of No Such Thing as Serendipity
After round two ended, I said to Emma, “I thought this was going to be impossible. It’s surprising how easy it is to pick up someone’s emotions.”
Emma smiled. “Are you telling me you’re not as ignorant of feelings as you pretend to be?”
I crinkled my nose. “Hush. We need to pay attention.”
She bumped me with her hip before she focused on the player from the other team who’d just started.
It went down to the last seconds when Beverly called out, “Insecurity.”
“Wow. Great job,” Robyn said.
Beverly actually smiled and accepted high fives from her teammates.
Emma went next, and we nailed her word, reluctance, within a minute. The other team followed suit with a correct guess, to even the score.
Katlynn moved into the center and stared at her word for some time before she handed it to Robyn. Then her face contorted.
What the hell was that?“Constipation,” I shouted.
Robyn burst out laughing, as did the rest of our team.
Katlynn glared before giving us the same expression again. When we continued shouting out wrong answers, she dropped to her knees and looked up at Robyn with the same expression.
“Forgiveness,” Emma said.
“Guilt,” Annie yelled.
Still kneeling, Katlynn took Robyn’s hand and stroked it.
I studied Katlynn’s face as the others called out more wrong answers. “Yearning,” I finally said.
“Yes!” Robyn waved the clue over her head.
My teammates cheered, and the other team groaned.
Annie looked over her shoulder at me. “How the hell did you get that?”
I shrugged. “I’m not sure.”
“The score is tied again,” Robyn said. “This could come down to the wire.”
As the final round progressed, Robyn turned out to be prophetic. With three clues remaining, we were ahead by one point.
“Come on, team.” Annie walked toward the center, clutching her envelope. “We get this one, and we take a commanding lead.”
“It’s over if we get this one,” I said.
“How do you figure?” someone from the other team said. “You’d be two ahead with two points left.”
“Simple.” I smiled. “Even if you get your word, I’m the last to go.”
“Yeah, and we could steal it,” the woman answered.
I grinned. “I suppose if you have telepathy. I’ll just stand up there and do nothing. It’d make it pretty hard to guess.”
Annie laughed. “Spoken like an equities trader. Always looking for an angle.”
“Why do you think I’m so good at what I do? I—”
