Chapter 5 #3
I pressed my palms to the pile of cards and started mixing them in circular motions around the tabletop, careful not to accidentally flip any. Careful not to let my shakiness show. “We each get a set number of cards and we try to pair them up. Whoever has the most pairs—”
“I know how to play.”
My attention remained on shuffling. Under my breath, I murmured, “Well, you didn’t say anything, so—”
Hudson’s hands came down over mine, slender fingers stilling my own in their chaotic shuffling. It made me think of his hands grasping my shoulders that day on the bridge, his arm shooting around my waist.
I yanked away, focusing my now-wide eyes on him.
He collected the cards, much like he’d done with my posters the day in the hallway.
He tapped them on the table and then split the deck into two stacks, arching the cards.
They shuffled together with a soft shh sound, and then Hudson bent the cards in the opposite direction, letting them cascade into one neat pile.
The awe had to be showing on my face, because a corner of Hudson’s lips tugged up. “It makes sense that you only know how to play a kid’s game with the way you shuffle.”
I struggled to think of a response as he dealt us each seven cards.
“So, you couldn’t do it, huh?” Hudson asked as he studied his cards, boredom leaking from his expression. He laid down a pair of twos from his hand. “Couldn’t stand up for yourself and tell Principal Oliphant no deal?”
“Maybe I wanted to be paired up with you.” I hoped my voice didn’t sound so high. “Maybe I wanted to do something…dangerous.”
Hudson’s lips stretched even further, but the smile was not a warm one. “Of course, because there’s nothing more dangerous than playing Go Fish in the guidance counselor’s office.”
“It’s all in who you’re playing with,” I replied, laying down my last pair.
If I’d been playing with Jaden, my expression would probably look the same as Hudson’s had a moment ago.
Bored. Wishing we could do anything else.
But sitting here across from Brentwood’s bad boy now, I was on the edge of my seat.
Hudson looked over his deck of cards, those blue eyes fixing me in place. “You go first.”
I cleared my throat. “Do you have any fours?”
He picked a card out of his hand and passed it over between his index and middle fingers.
It gave me a brief, closer glance at the rings on his left hand and the intricate designs carved into the silver metal.
There were little white scars over his knuckles too, like the skin had been broken once upon a time.
Like broken over someone’s jaw. I forced my face not to twist. “Any eights?”
Hudson shook his head. “Go fish.”
The reality of the moment didn’t really hit me until he spoke those words. It was a sort of surreal “am I dreaming” moment, looking at the boy drenched in black cloth sitting across from me, holding my Winnie the Pooh cards between thin fingers. The Grim Reaper, playing Go Fish.
I definitely would’ve allowed someone to pinch me.
Hudson asked for a three, and I frowned at the three of hearts in my hand. “So…” I said as I passed it over. “Why are you on thin ice not even a week into the school year?”
“It’s this nice little reason called none of your business,” he snapped. “Do you have a queen?”
Begrudgingly, I handed that to him, too. The ice in his tone had clearly been a warning, one I wanted to back down from, but I still managed another sentence. “You had tardies and everything last year, but how does that translate into this year? What happened over the summer?”
This time, Hudson ignored me completely. “Any ones?”
So, I took a page from his book and ignored him, too. “If I’m your buddy, I should know a little bit about you, don’t you think?”
“Let’s get one thing straight.” Hudson laid his cards face-down on the table, hard enough for the surface to shake.
He leaned forward, lowering his voice. “This mentor buddy thing or whatever the hell Principal Oliphant called it? It’s a load, okay?
It doesn’t mean anything. I don’t need to know about you, and you don’t need to know about me.
You’re suffering this on your own accord; I don’t owe you anything.
So let’s just shut up and play cards. Okay, Sophomore? ”
Oo-kay. I struck a nerve, but strangely, his intensity didn’t have me cowering in fear like I would’ve thought. I didn’t understand why a prying sophomore like me could’ve pushed a button like that so easily, but he reacted like he was the one backed into a corner.
A buzzing sensation kept my spine straight. My timidness from earlier was gone now, replaced with the adrenaline of confronting Goliath with nothing more than a slingshot. I wouldn’t let him beat me down. “You know, you were a lot nicer before. Over summer break.”
Hudson looked at me carefully, but his expression was still nothing close to friendly.
He almost looked angry, in a muted sort of way.
Like my existence annoyed him. One thing that I quickly learned about Hudson was his affinity for staring.
A glare fit for the Grim Reaper. “That’s why you’re here, then? Because we met on the bridge?”
“So what if it is?”
“I think that it’s obvious, but I was only nice and chatty because I thought you were going to jump off. If you’re expecting the same guy, you’ll be sorely disappointed.”
“Which role is it that you feel tied down to? That version of you or this one?”
From the way his jaw clenched now, he hadn’t planned for that conversation to ever come up again, much like I hadn’t.
If I knew who really grabbed my shoulders that day, would I have even mentioned my thoughts to begin with?
Would I have brought up my birthday? The only difference was that I didn’t regret it—like he clearly did.
“Don’t,” he warned.
I almost felt like smiling, like instead of cards, we were suddenly playing chess, and I’d called check. “Don’t what?”
“Don’t act like you have me all figured out just because I said something to a sad, pathetic girl on her birthday.
” The line between his eyebrows was vivid, and his fingers clutched his cards furiously.
“And if that’s your reason for being here, because you want to uncover some secret, you should get lost now.
Before you really start to test my patience. ”
I rocked in my seat and looked down at my cards, needing a reprieve from the hatred he radiated.
That was not how I was expecting this to go.
Then again, when he’d first said he felt forced into a role, I never expected this role—the one of the villain.
Is there a point to fighting it if nothing will change?
“Maybe I’m here for me,” I told him. “Maybe this is me growing a backbone and facing something that scares me.”
“You’re only saying that because of your Most Likely To label,” he shot back. “They’ll be the sort of kids who peak in high school and go downhill from there. This is the happiest they’ll ever be, and they have their entire life ahead of them. And you’re going to let what they think bother you?”
I regarded him quietly for a moment. “Are you on the Most Likely Tos?”
“No, I just have an unhealthy hatred for the Top Tier, can’t you tell?” He’d said the words with a sneer, but when he looked down at his cards, his discomfort was clear. “Got any eights?”
I passed the card over, looking at the few pairs I had.
My gaze lingered on the king of hearts. For this deck, it was Pooh with a crown on his head and a scepter in his hand, but he wasn’t smiling.
He was as serious as Hudson was. “I may be suffering through this, or I might not be, and I might be here because of the bridge or I might not be, but you’re right—it is my choice. ”
All of his sharp words were designed to inflict the most damage, cutting anything within reach like glass.
But the longer I looked at him, the longer he looked at me, the more they felt hollow—like the words were slivers of glass, but shards from something that had already been broken.
A weapon of defense rather than offense.
That strange warmth from before danced across my skin, not from anger or embarrassment—it was the feeling one got at the top of a rollercoaster, seconds before the drop.
“You’ll regret it, Sophomore,” he said at last, unflinching.
“It’s Gemma,” I told him. “With a G.”
Hudson’s harsh gaze didn’t falter, nor did the crease from his forehead fully smooth out, but that corner of his mouth tugged up again.
“Gemma.” He enunciated the two syllables slowly, lips curving around the letters.
“With a G.” He sat back into his seat and picked up his cards, but his posture wasn’t as lazy as it’d been before.
He propped an elbow on the table’s surface, like now he was fully into the game. “Got any sevens?”