Page 26 of S is for SEX

THIRTY-EIGHT

Pee Bee

She laughed until I thought she was going to pee her pants. After catching her breath, she looked up. “Really?”

I flipped her my middle finger. “It’s a fucking word.”

She arched an eyebrow. “You went to college, right?”

“Fuck off, kid,”

“P-I-G,” she said. “Six points.”

“A word’s a word. And six points is six points.”

“We’re playing for stakes. And, they’re high. Don’t you want to win?”

I didn’t. I really didn’t. “I’m trying babe. I really am.”

But, I wasn’t.

“Okay,” she said.

She studied the tiles on her rack, twisted her mouth to the side, and then burst out laughing.

Using an existing U, she spelled a word using all her letters. After she placed the tiles down on the board, I looked at her in disbelief. “What the fuck is that?”

“That, my dear, is a word worth enough to seal my win. And, it’s nothing short of a miracle that I had those letters. Truth be told, it sends chills down my spine to spell it.”

I stared at it. M-U-Z-J-I-K. It made no sense. “You’re making shit up, now. You’ve been challenged.”

“A muzjik,” she said “Is a Russian peasant.”

“And if it isn’t in the dictionary, you’re going to be an American peasant.”

I grabbed the dictionary, flipped through the pages, and found the word. She was right, a muzjik was a Russian peasant. Aggravated, I considered throwing the dictionary down – just to be a shit – but remembered it was fifty years old.

I placed it in the box carefully, then stood. I took a bow. “Turn relinquished, my dear.”

“Thank you, honorable sir.”

In ten minutes, the game was over. After tallying up the points, she declared the score. “502-312”

“Ouch,” I said. “That bad?”

She bit her bottom lip, nodded, and then shrugged. “Sucks, huh?”

“Kind of.”

“So, what’s it gonna be?” I asked.

“Haven’t decided yet,” she said. “Let me think on it for a few minutes.”

“Okay.”

There was nothing she would assign me that I’d argue with, that was for sure. We’d been playing three nights a week for the last four weeks, and my father was right. Playing Scrabble built an incredibly solid foundation for a relationship.

If he knew we were playing for stakes, he’d probably laugh.

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