Page 56 of Run, Run, Roommates
“Yeah that’s fair.” I pull my sweatpants up and follow her into the bathroom. She starts brushing her teeth, and I lean against the door. “Sorry you can’t make it to the party tonight,” I say.
By our calculation, we earned thirty-nine points for the activities we completed. We won’t know the judges’ points we’re awarded until tonight, so I promised Brin I’d text her as soon as I find out at the party.
She offered to try to switch her shift with someone, but I told her not to worry about it. She already took a night off because I’d run her ragged with the scavenger hunt, and I don’t want her to lose out on another shift.
Plus, I’d rather that she take time off for just the two of us to spend together. I don’t want to share her with a room full of strangers.
Brin can’t answer, ’cause she’s brushing the taste of my cum out of her mouth, but I watch her for the pleasure of it. When our eyes meet in the bathroom mirror, hers crinkle.
Her toothbrush finally finishes buzzing and she spits in the sink. “Stop making me laugh.”
I hold my hands up in mock offense. “I was just watching you. What’s so funny about that?”
“I don’t know! It’s domestic.”
I come up behind her. “We’ve been roommates for a long time.” I kiss her shoulder. “I know you’re my girlfriend now, but since we already live together this is off into the deep end.”
“I know,” she says, leaning her head back onto my chest. “I like it.”
The ballroom is still dressed in its Christmas finery, but now instead of a stage there’s a DJ and a dance floor. Two bars are on either side of the room and I’ve got four drink tickets in my pocket—two for me and two for Brin.
To the right of the DJ is a scoreboard. The bottom twenty-seven teams are listed in order of their combined score. I quickly skim down until I find our names and run my finger across. Just like we thought, thirty-nine points for the activities, plus another eight for the creativity. That’s forty-seven total points.
Damn. I was hoping for at least fifty, but we’ve fallen short. We’re still in the top half, though.
I scan the list again, looking for Greg and his partner. They’re not far above us in ninth place, with fifty-five points, so that means I’ve lost the bet.
The top three slots on the scoreboard are empty, waiting for the ceremony that will announce the winners.
I get in line at the bar and text Brin our results. I also tell her we lost to Greg but we’re still in the top half of the scoreboard, to give her some context.
While looking for Greg, I notice that the projector screen next to the DJ stand is playing a slideshow of photos and videos from the teams. I watch with amazement. One team built a sleigh out of snow in the one hour that they had and posed with one of them as a reindeer. Next is a video with two guys holding stained-glass cookies up to the camera before tapping the cookies together in a toast and taking a bite. The “glass”—I can’t begin to guess how they did it—shatters and makes a mess, leaving both of them laughing.
There’s a gasp from the crowd around me when the next photo reveals a giant paper snowflake. This is one of the tasks we didn’t complete, and there’s no way we could have competed with the size of this thing—the photo is taken from above, and the snowflake is laid out on a gym floor, the team members lying on the ground next to it, arms and legs spread like they’re trying to make snow angels.
By the time I get up to the bar to order a beer I’ve seen two of our submissions: our Christmas tree made from candy—it looks even brighter green on the big screen and we had to make the trunk enormous so it wouldn’t collapse—and our sunny snow person.
“Marco!” A voice calls for me to my left, and I spot Greg and Luis at a high-top table. We shake hands and back-slap and Greg grins at me. “Did you see the scoreboard?”
I lift my beer to him. “Great job, you win.”
“I can’t wait to have my own assistant for a week.” He rubs his hands together. “I might unleash you on my spreadsheet. I know you’re an expert there.”
“Don’t threaten me with a good time.”
We chat about the scavenger hunt and Greg and Luis tell me some entertaining stories about their adventures around the city. Soon, the lights are dimming and the music fades away.
“Welcome, SHiNY teams!” It’s the same woman who kicked the scavenger hunt off.
We applaud, there’s a welcoming speech, another speech by a guy on the board of one of the organizing charities, two more speeches, an award given to one of the corporate sponsors, and then they start announcing the top three teams, starting with the third place team. The announcer slips through the photos and videos the team submitted and they are amazing. The team with the giant paper snowflake is in third place and the second-place team had dressed up as Victorians to go caroling.
“And now, our winning team.” Behind her, the screen is black. “We’d like to spotlight how far this team, with an astounding thirty-eight creativity points from the judges, went to come in first place.”
The screen fades in and “Carol of the Bells” plays over the sound system. The video itself is in slow motion: snowflakes falling, walking through the woods, an axe striking wood.
It’s a goddamn music video for chopping down their own Christmas tree. It’s professional grade, and someone on that team has got to be a professional—or they hired one.
When the video’s done, the room is filled with applause. Another video starts playing, but without sound now. It’s as cinematic as the previous one. “With their thirty-eight judges’ points added to the activity points, our winners of SHiNY, with a total of eighty-five points, are Jacob Templeman and Rebecca Foley!”
