Page 23 of In For a Penny
When the hell would he have had the time to get to know her better? He is almost always with me or Oliver and Jane while we are at school. Is he seeing her outside of class?
“Wait,” he says nervously. “Do you not like her? Should I not have invited her?”
Um, NO YOU SHOULD NOT HAVE INVITED HER. She doesn’t seem nice at all.
“I just wish you had asked. I don’t really know her. I thought you were going to invite Michael or Chloe, you know? This was supposed to be a friendly but unfriendly game ofRisk.” I smile a little. “I didn’t know you were bringing adate.” I quickly turn around so he can’t see my face.
Fuck. I didn’t mean it that way.
I make myself busy by straightening out the glasses and the plates, placing the cutlery on the napkins. God, I just made myself sound so petty.
“Date? She’s not my date,” he says, concern in his voice. I can’t turn to look at him. I’m acting like a jealous girlfriend, and I don’t even like this guy! I guess I feel like I could become good friends with him, and I don’t want to lose him before I even have him.
I slap a fake smile on my face and look at him. “It’s fine, Josh. If you like her, she must be great. Can’t wait to get to know her better.”
“Penny—”
But he’s thankfully interrupted by the loud sound of the buzzer. For the first time since I moved here, I thank my lucky stars for such an obnoxious sound.
I run to the door and press the answer button. “Yes?”
“Mr. Oliver James and Miss Jane Green have arrived!” I hear Oliver on the other end.
I snort and buzz them up.
“Oliver and Jane are here!” I yell to Josh as I unlock the door for them, waiting until they get off the elevator.
“Oh,” I hear Josh from the living room. He reaches the front door, scratching his head. “Listen, I didn’t know you felt that way about Eloise. I honestly just thought it would be good to get to know her in solidarity and all. I’m just gonna text her to tell her we had to cancel the game night last minute, and I’ll go meet her somewhere else.” He looks contrite and embarrassed. I know that I’m overreacting a bit, but the thought of him leaving my house onmygame night to meet some other girl annoys me even more. This isourplan. We’re supposed to battle it out atRiskand massacre the noobs before destroying each other. Where is theEast Coast versus West Coastof it all? I could vividly see Oliver and Jane getting into the game, but why is he including Eloise, who so evidently looked like someone who would hate it?
Maybe he sees something in her that I just can’t.
“Don’t be ridiculous,” I say. “If you say she’s nice, then she must be.” I don’t want to bring up the fact that perhaps he doesn’t have a great track record on being the best judge of character, given his dating history, because that’s just mean.
“Are you sure?”
“Stay.” I put a hand on his chest, and he holds my gaze a second too long before our eye contact is broken by the sound of the elevator doors opening. I drop my hand quickly, hiding it behind my back like there would be some evidence of what had just happened visible on my fingertips. “East Coast versus West Coast, remember?”
“Hello, friends!” Jane runs up. “Are we ready to ruin friendships tonight?”
“How did we even letthis happen?” I ask, shocked to the core. I feel sick to my stomach, and it’s not from the pizza, cookies, chips, and dip that I’ve been gorging myself on for the past hour.
“I don’t know. It’s all a blur, to be honest,” Josh says, shaking his head in disbelief. “I can’t remember how we got to this point.”
Half an hour into the game, Josh and I had been defeated by threeRisknovices.
No. Not defeated—massacred.
We both started off strong the first two turns. But then it got ugly.
Somehow, Oliver was able to take over all of Asia in two turns, killing most of Josh off, leaving his remaining territories to be taken over by the rest of us. Most of my territories were split between Europe and South America, but I was done when Eloise took me out in the former and Jane in the latter. My last territory had been in Indonesia, and Oliver got rid of my final troop in one roll of the die with a, “AND THE BRITISH EMPIRE HAS BEEN AVENGED!” There hadn’t even been any time to emotionally manipulate anyone during the game. I hadn’t even been able to form an alliance against anyone!
This is bullshit.
“I’m so disappointed in us,” I say with a disbelieving laugh.
Josh and I move onto the couch with a couple of beers so we can talk and watch the remaining three Brits duke it out for world domination (we decided to skip Mission Cards). To be fair, it seems like all three of them are naturals. Jane and Oliver are extremely competitive, and—not to sound catty or anything—but Eloise looks like a manipulative bitch, so she of course excelled here.
“I’m glad we got to do this, though,” Josh says. “I gotta say, I’ve been feeling kind of homesick, and this helped. I used to play this a lot with my brother and our friends.” He flashes me a thankful smile.
