Page 1 of Bella And Her Secret Crush

1

Isabella

"Checkmate!"screamedMandyasshe threw her final card down, grinning victoriously.

"This is Uno, not chess, Mandy," Cooper rolled his eyes at his girlfriend, but I could see the smirk on his mouth.

"Checkmate felt more dramatic. Doesn't matter what I said, because I still won!" She celebrated her win as if she had just won the Kentucky Derby, not a Saturday night game with her friends. But that's what made her fun.

"Whatever," Cooper said under his breath. He was pretty much always a sore loser.

"Do we want to play this again, or shall we move on?" I asked, pulling everyone's cards to me. I had to lean across the table to grab Andrew's cards, and when I did, Landon grabbed my side, squeezing hard. "Ah!" I stood up straight, turning and swatting his hand away from me. He loved pestering me, and even though I hated it, I kind of loved it too.

When I sat back down, I elbowed him in the ribs, earning myself a laugh. I turned, sending him a glare.

When I looked back at our friends around the table, I noticed they were all watching us with weird looks in their eyes, which wasn't exactly unusual.

"Let's just play this again, it's too fun," Leslie grabbed the cards from my left, beginning to shuffle them.

Every fourth Saturday, Landon and I hosted game night at our shared house. Our circle of friends nearly never missed, and we enjoyed a long night of highly competitive games and way too much junk food. But it was the night that I looked forward to the most every month. I loved stuffing my face with garbage food and yelling at my friends over games that children also find highly entertaining. I was sure that the alcohol also helped our fun time, but even without it, we'd be having a blast.

And Uno was usually our favorite. We, of course, made up our own rules and made the game more cutthroat than the normal version, which made it so intense every time and had us coming back for more. Competitive didn't even begin to describe our group, which played almost savagely enough to hurt feelings.

"Everyone against Belle this time," Landon announced, shooting me a wicked grin. I just glared at him, hoping that the threat in my eyes would scare him away from sabotaging me. Even though I knew I was about as scary as a penguin. Regardless, I had to play the part.

Our friends laughed, and Cooper whispered something in Mandy's ear. Her eyes shot to mine as she laughed, and I had the sneaking suspicion they were making a comment about me. I didn't even need to know what it was about, but I'm sure it was their plan to make sure I lost.

I had a reputation for losing almost every game that we played. It didn't matter if I was one card away from winning; somehow, I always had to draw extra cards and lose to someone else. Thankfully, I didn't take it too seriously.

Once the cards were dealt, we started playing. The rules of our game wouldn't make sense to anyone but us, and that was how we liked it. We added stacking rules, where players could skip over other players if they could play the exact same card—color and number. We had rules where everyone had to switch hands, and other more nefarious rules that ended with shots or people having to slap the table fastest.

As the game heated up, Mandy placed a blue plus five-card to the stack. Cooper gave her an ugly look, reaching for the draw pile. I started snickering, but then another hand came down on the discard pile, placing two blue plus five cards on top of the first one. That stacking rule? Yeah, it meant the draw five cards could be stacked, meaning that someone just doomed another player to draw fifteen new cards.

Slowly, I turned my head and looked at Landon. He was barely holding in a laugh, his hand covering his mouth. I was shooting daggers at him because, as it stood, I was the player with the most cards already. Now I had to add fifteen to that. Not to mention I wouldn't be able to hold onto the cards very well with that many.

"Sorry, Belle. Nothing personal." He gave me a shrug to accompany that evil grin on his face.

Huffing dramatically, I picked up a stack of cards and counted out fifteen before putting the rest back. I did my best to organize the cards in my hand, but there were just too many. Everyone that sat around our wooden dining table was cackling with their amusement, and I just let it roll off of me. Times like this were why this game was so fun.

"You'll pay for that," I muttered under my breath as we continued playing.

"Probably not," He answered. "Unlucky duck." He winked one of those green eyes at me, and I just rolled mine.

He honestly wasn't wrong.

Finally, after another two minutes of torture, someone reversed the playing direction. I cheered in my head, not wanting to give my excitement away. The color was red, which meant that I could play the cards I'd been saving for this special moment.

Turns out there are positives to drawing so many cards. When it was my turn, I slapped down the two red plus five cards and whipped my head to look at Landon. I stuck my tongue out at him as I looked down at his hand to see that he only had two cards left before I laid mine down.

"Take that," I said triumphantly. Landon narrowed his eyes, but then suddenly widened them as he looked across the table. I watched in horror as Leslie, the player to my right, laid down two more red plus fives. And I was after her in paying order. My smile fell, and my soul was crushed.

"Actually, you'll take that." Landon picked up the stack of cards that was the draw pile, counting out every single card loudly. He enunciated each syllable of each number, making eye contact with me the whole time. Would the cops understand if I murdered him right now? Surely they would have sympathy for my case.

"Twenty," He said smugly, sliding the tiny stack of cards in front of me. Now I had half the deck in my possession.

"You've got to be kidding me." I closed my eyes and took a deep breath. So maybe I was a little competitive.

"All is fair in Uno," Landon mocked, leaning into me and shoving me with his shoulder.

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