Chapter 26
Alessandro
“You bitch!” Elena hisses from the dining room as I’m coming home in the evening.
I grit my teeth and change course towards that room, expecting to deal with drama.
Although that hasn’t even remotely been the case in the past week since Sofia and I made up.
It’s been domestic bliss. The three of us eat dinner together most nights, although Elena lets us have some date nights alone as well.
I hear a crashing sound before I enter the dining room, then realize they’re playing a silly game and no one is genuinely mad.
Elena slaps her hand on the table among some wooden pieces. “I’m done.”
Across from her, Sofia is seated in front of a tower that’s still intact. My eyes flick to the game’s packaging—Bandu. I’m not familiar with it, and one of them must have rummaged through a storage closet to find it; it looks old.
“Sandro,” Elena greets me as she heads out of the room, leaving me alone with my wife.
I take over Elena’s seat across from Sofia.
“Sorry, I broke rule number three and found this in a bedroom closet.” There’s a twinkle in her eye. Those stupid rules that I tried to enforce are nothing but a joke between us now.
“I’ll deal with that tonight.” I play along with her and then grab the box, holding it up to her with raised eyebrows. “Is it any fun?”
She nods and keeps her voice low. “I beat Elena three times in a row, so I think she got sick of it.”
I smirk. That sounds about what I’d expect from Sofia.
“Do you want to try?” she asks.
“I’m not familiar with this one.” Or… any game for that matter, but I don’t want her to get that look in her eye whenever I say something depressing about my childhood.
“This is the first time I’ve even heard of it.” She shrugs. “Come on, it’s easy…”
She explains the directions for the game in detail, but I'm too distracted to pay attention. My mind has been focused on what I should do about her family, and the game seems basic enough for me to learn as I go. It looks like an extreme version of Jenga except we’re trying to build a tower from the base up and we can force the other to build with some of the more awkward pieces.
“Simple enough.” My eyes scan the table, taking in the various shapes on the table. Some seem impossible to incorporate into a stable structure, like the ball or the pyramid or the skinny cylinders. Others are angled wooden rectangles that could be steady if placed in a strategic position.
“You can go first.” She smiles and pushes her assembled tower onto the table with a clatter.
Her brown eyes have a warmth to them. Her thick hair is pulled back into a sloppy bun, I’m sure done in haste so she could focus solely on the game.
Sofia has mentioned that she’s competitive, but aside from our bickering, I haven’t been able to see that side of her yet.
I pick up sturdy-looking block and set it at the base of my tower then we continue on back and forth in concentration until I place an awkward piece on a tower that grew much higher than I originally expected, only to see it collapse in front of me.
She opens her mouth to say something, but I beat her to it. “We’re playing again.”
The start of this next game goes smoother for me, and I feel like I have a chance at winning. In fact, I feel confident. The middle of her tower looks vulnerable, like it could collapse at any moment.
And it does.
I want to keep playing, but I assume she’s bored with it, seeing that she played this with Elena before I came into the room. And I know that I’m the weird person who gets obsessive about things—I’ll probably feel compelled to build the intricate tower on the box after she leaves the dining room.
“Again,” she says.
“Best two out of three.”
As we move the pieces towards the middle to start over, I ask, “Did you play a lot of games with your family growing up?”
“Kind of. They’d get annoyed that I’d never lose, so… I’d ask but expect them to say no. And on the off-chance one of them said yes, it didn’t last long. Especially Max, we fought so much when we were young. Did you fight with Elena a lot growing up?”
I lean back in my chair, naturally having the urge to shut down at a personal question directed towards me. But I want to try with Sofia. The few times I have let her in, I’ve felt a sense of relief.
“Not really, no. But I believe the difference in our ages is larger than yours and Max’s—I viewed her as a baby for the longest time.
And…” I realize that I could have stopped there, but I continue on anyway.
“Well, Marco kept us separated so often that when I finally could spend time with her, I was just happy to be in the same room as her.”
I look up from the table and meet her eyes, worried that I came off like a sad sap.
But she doesn’t look at me with pity and instead keeps a neutral expression and graciously points at the center of the table.
“Now, quit stalling and let’s get started on this next game.
I know you’re just worried that you’ll lose. ”
She gives me a fake, cocky smile as we set up.
And I lose this one.
But we play again. And again. And again.
“What the actual fuck?”
My sister’s voice breaks my concentration, and my tower falls. She stands behind Sofia, clutching the neck of her robe as sunlight streams against her face.
Sunlight?
My attention shifts to Sofia, who is now sporting dark circles beneath her eyes that I’m sure I have as well.
There was a manic energy to us all night, obsessing over this game.
I realize that I’m grinning as Elena continues staring at me with a mixture of annoyance and fascination.
We didn’t just play this game all night.
We connected in a way that I didn’t think was possible.
There’s a warmth in my chest that appeared around two in the morning and hasn’t gone away.
In our sleep-deprived state, we developed a language of our own, making jokes that no one else would understand.
I laughed so hard I don’t even remember what was funny.
All I knew was that I didn’t want the night to end. But the damn sun forced that upon us.
“What time is it?” I ask.
“Seven.” She raises her eyebrows. “Did you two wake up early to play more or did you…”
“We stayed up all night,” Sofia answers for me as she gathers up the pieces in the middle.
Elena shakes her head and chuckles as she leaves the dining room.
“One more?” Sofia asks, and my impulse is to say yes. But it’s as if Elena snapped me out of a spell, and suddenly, I’m exhausted.
“I can’t.”
“So, I win then?”
“You’re still keeping score?” I laugh at her ridiculousness.
“I’m up twenty-six to twenty-four.”
“Sofia, I physically cannot keep my eyes open enough anymore to win three times. Even if you clamped my eyes open, I think I’d collapse right here on the table.”
She has an arrogant smile on her face as she cleans up this game. A smile that I want to kiss off of her face despite how tired I am. Sofia doesn’t seem like the type to cheat, but I want to fuck with her, anyway.
“That score is made up, isn’t it?”
“No,” she barks, her brow furrowed. And I’m shocked when she goes into an explanation detailing how the past handful of games went down.
How the fuck does she remember all of that? If I let her recap the entire night, then we’ll be at this table all morning as well.
I hold up my hand to stop her. “Please. I was just messing with you. I couldn’t care less about who won.”
“Oh.” She deflates as if I said something offensive.
“Did I say something to anger you?”
“No.” She doesn’t make eye-contact as she drops the last bit of the game into the box.
“Sofia? That was the best night of my life, and I will not have it end on a sour note. Now, tell me why you are looking cross suddenly?”
The words that come out of my mouth surprise me. Was that really the best night of my life? Playing a board game all night.
Yes.
But now she’s angry, and I’m worried that will spoil everything.
“I’m sorry I got so carried away. I know it’s obnoxious that I kept score to that degree.”
Oh, she’s not mad at me; she’s embarrassed with herself over caring too much.
“You’re apologizing for getting carried away?
Sofia, I thought there was something wrong with me for being able to hyper-focus on my hobbies for hours and hours.
But… I’ve never been able to share that feeling with someone else before.
And…” I lose my train of thought from the exhaustion. “What the hell was I saying?”
“That we’re both freaks?”
“Right.” I clap my hand onto hers as it rests on the table, gently squeezing it. “Exactly.”
I don’t know which of the two of us laughs first, but another fit happens. Nothing terribly funny was said, but that doesn’t stop us. Sofia balls up her fist and covers her mouth as tears stream from her face.
I gasp for air and question whether some of our enemies pumped my home with a poisonous gas to make me high so that I can be murdered easily.
But what I think is going on is even more frightening than my mortality.
I think I’m falling in love.
This thought sobers me when I think about the looming threat that is her family.
They’re certainly planning to rescue her and murder me.
What the fuck am I going to do? I want to run away with her and hide.
No… I should just call them and tell them I’m in love with their daughter and we had a delightful night playing Bandu.
What the hell am I thinking? Of course, that wouldn’t work. My family tried to exterminate hers. It doesn’t matter how I feel about her. They’re going to want me dead, regardless.
“Okay. Now you’re the one that looks mad.”
Her voice snaps me out of it. I blink a few times to think of a lie to tell her because the truth ruins this whole night.
“Work crept into my mind. It was reckless of me to stay up this late.” She gets that guilty look in her eye again as if I weren’t a willing participant in this game night. “But it was worth it, and nothing a quick nap won’t fix.”