24. Lizzy
“Psst.”
I hear a whisper from behind me and turn. Bethany appears from the dark, wrapped in a robe—sleep bonnet already in place—a hot cup of tea steaming in her right hand.
“You scared the shit out of me,” I gripe, glancing up at her from over my shoulder. “What are you doing down here?”
The agreement was that they were going to stay in their rooms and not mettle because that’s what Brodie’s roommates do, and it’s annoying as hell.
I promised him it would be chill over here.
“I came down to get this.” She shows me her mug. “And to lurk in case one of y’all came out of the bedroom.” My roommate gets closer. “How’s it going?”
“Good. We’re just hanging out.”
Her brows go up as they often do when she’s skeptical. “Is that a code word for something?”
“No.” I laugh. “In fact, we’re going to play Connect Four.”
I pull the game out of the cabinet and stand, clutching it to my chest like a prize.
“You’re going to play board games?”
“I thought it would be fun.”
Bethany grabs the tab from the string in her mug and bobs the tea bag back up and down.
“He seems like a nice guy.”
Is that her polite way of saying she doesn’t find Brodie attractive? This is fine with me ’cause I don’t need my roommates panting over a guy I’m interested in.
“He is a nice guy.” Nice but not too nice, whatever that means.
“Not at all what I was picturing,” she goes on to say, still bobbing the tea bag back up and down in the water to steep it.
“What were you picturing?”
“I don’t know. Someone not as big?”
I don’t know what to say to that other than, “Aren’t most hockey players like, huge?”
“I guess,” Bethany allows. “Guess I don’t pay that much attention.”
No, she wouldn’t. Jon, her boyfriend, is more of the fratty type. The kind of frat guy who’s in the econ club, who wears polo shirts and sweaters draped over his shoulders like an East Coast douche.
Which is all fine and good if that’s your type.
But it’s not mine, though I’ll admit, it may have been in the past.
I’m a new me as of forty-eight hours ago.
“Have you fooled around at all?”
I laugh quietly, not wanting to kiss and tell but also wanting to give Brodie props for a job well done.
I nod. “He went down on me.”
“He did? When?” Bethany holds her breath. “How was it?”
“At his house. Oh my god, Bethany, I literally saw stars.” I’m whispering so he can’t hear me from the bedroom.
“Shut the fuck up.” She takes a sip of her tea. “Did you come?”
Duh. “Uh, yeah. He was really freaking good at it—like, give that guy a medal good at it.”
“Shit. I’m so jealous.” She breathes out a sigh. “Bless Jon’s little heart, but he couldn’t make me come if he spent an hour down there tryin’. Not that he tries all that often.” She hmphs. “Still expects me to suck his dick, though.”
“Go on strike.”
“Maybe I should.” She laughs. “Anyway. Go have your fun playing your game. And try to keep the noise to a minimum,” she teases.
“I’ll do my best.”
Brodie waits for me when I get back, flipping through the channels on the television. He’s already in his plaid pajama bottoms and a tee, bare feet propped up on a pillow as he reclines against the headboard.
“I feel like I’m at a spa.”
I close my bedroom door behind me and lock it for good measure, not that I think anyone is going to come busting in.
“If you want an face mask or cucumbers for your eyes, let me know.” I set the game down on the bed, and he scoots, making room for me.
I climb on, tapping the box. “Found this in the cabinet.”
“Connect Four?” He’s already taking the box top off. “Haven’t played this since I was a kid.”
“Me either.”
Brodie goes about setting the game board up, putting the brackets on the yellow plastic grid and separating the blue and red checkers.
“How good are you?” I ask him.
“No idea. But since I’m good at most things, I’ll probably be good at this too.”
I gaze at him. “You’re being serious right now.”
“Well, yeah. I’m good at everything.”
My head tilts back as I laugh. “Oh my god—you should hear yourself.” I’m actually stunned at how cocky he sounds when he’s usually so quiet and unassuming. And nice. “Are you this competitive that you think you’re going to win at a game you just admitted you haven’t played since you were a kid?”
Brodie nods. “Yup.”
“Wow.” I am shook. “You cocky shithead.”
He shrugs, his gray T-shirt is snug across his shoulders the way I’ve come to appreciate his clothes fitting.
“Should we switch up how it’s played?” He wants to know as he continues to organize the pieces.
“What do you mean?”
“I don’t know?” His low chuckle sounds delicious. “To play your piece, you should have to answer a question.”
I nod immediately. “Ohhhh, I like that. But that’s also not what I thought you were going to say.”
Brodie is done stacking his blue checkers. “What did you think I was going to say?”
“I don’t know. That we should play Strip Connect Four to make it interesting?”
“You want to take an innocent childhood game and make it naked?”
I move my shoulders into a shrug. “Yes? And I might point out that it’s not a childhood game. It’s for ages four to one hundred.”
“Do you know I’ve never played strip anything before?”
“Based on what I know about you, Brodie, that does not surprise me.”
He studies my face. “Have you?”
“Almost went skinny-dipping once but chickened out.”
He leans back on the bed, resting his chin in his hand. “Why did you chicken out?”
“We were in high school, and I’m from a small town where there isn’t much to do besides have bonfires in the cornfield or jump off a cold pier into the lake. And one night, my friends were drinking beer and thought skinny dipping would be fun—but I wasn’t into it.”
No towels.
Too cold.
I didn’t want the guys to see that I didn’t shave down below.
And when I think about it now, I want to tell that seventeen-year-old girl that it shouldn’t have mattered what those idiots thought and that she never should have started shaving her business because some guys thought it was gross to have pubic hair.
But anywayyyy…..
“Are you brave enough to play Strip Connect Four?” Brodie asks.
“Are you?”
“Sure. Today is a day of firsts.”
“A day of firsts?” I repeat. “What kind of firsts?”
He shakes his head as if he doesn’t want to say.
“Oh come on—you have to tell me. You wouldn’t have said that otherwise.”
He has the entire stack of blue chips in his hands. “That can be the first question you ask me before I can take my turn.”
“You are such a brat.”
Brodie shrugs, nonplussed. “Or don’t.”
“Fine.” I sigh loudly and dramatically as if he’s putting me out. “Who goes first?”
“Rock, paper, scissors and the loser of this game removes an article of clothing.”
I shiver with excitement.
Hold my hand and we count to three, rock, paper, scissors, shoot. I hold my hand flat because I heard somewhere that statistically, people are more apt to do rock first, and I’m not wrong.
Brodie has his fist clenched in the shape of a ‘rock’, and I cover it with my ‘paper’ and stare at him so I can take my turn.
“When was your last relationship?” That’s his first question, and I can’t say I’m not surprised it’s a personal one. I would have expected his first question to be something lame, like what’s your favorite color?
“I can’t even remember. Five, six, eight months ago? Clearly, it wasn’t that serious.” I laugh and take my red checker, placing it into the grid and watching it fall into place. “Your turn.”
I consider what question I want to ask, skipping the question I’d asked him earlier about firsts, instead asking him, “When was your first kiss?”
“When I was sixteen, in the back seat of my friend Weston’s car. I used too much tongue, and the girl got pissed.” He places his blue checker in the grid so it falls and lands beside mine.
I laugh at his blunt answer, ready for my turn. “Go.”
“Have you ever had braces, or are your teeth naturally that straight?”
I grin and laugh. “I had braces on the top but not on the bottom, but not to straighten them. I had dental surgery and had to have them on for six months.”
In goes my chip on top of his. “What’s the dumbest thing you’ve ever done?”
Brodie cocks his head to the side as he considers my question, and it’s telling that he has to think about it for a few moments before he can answer.
“When I was a teenager, there was a night I wanted to skip hockey practice to see a movie that had just come out but of course, my parents said no and dropped me off at the rink. Me and my buddy Paulie stashed all our crap and walked to the movie theater, which was across the interstate, and saw the movie. We still weren’t back when practice was over, and my mother had a fucking fit.”
My jaw drops. “I would have been freaking out too. She probably thought you’d been kidnapped!”
“Yeah, she did,” he says with a mischievous grin. “I’ve never heard her so mad. She was pissed about it for a month.”
He drops his blue game piece into the grid so it’s next to his other one.
“What nonsexual thing do you think is sexy?”
I groan. “The list is so long I wouldn’t know where to start!” I say honestly.
“Just say one thing.”
I rack my brain for the sexiest nonsexual things and try to choose the one I’m going to say out loud. “Besides cologne or perfume or someone freshly showered…I don’t know. I find so many things sexy. Like a guy holding the door or putting his hand on the back of my seat when he’s backing a car up.”
His brows rose. “You think it’s sexy when a guy backs a car up?”
“Uh—yeah.” Who doesn’t?!
“That’s really random.”
I lift one of my shoulders as if to say, “yes, I know, and I don’t care” and slide my red chip in on top of his newly added blue one, slowly building a ladder in the game grid, hoping he doesn’t fuck it up by putting a chip on top of mine.
“Same question back at you. What’s one nonsexual thing you find sexy?”
Brodie has his remaining game pieces in the palm of his hand, and he clicks them, rolling them around in his fingers as he mulls this over.
See? I want to say. Not so easy, is it?
“I’ll echo everything you just said BUT!” he adds before I can act affronted that he poached my answer. “But I’ll add that I find it sexy watching someone read a book. Watching a girl braid her hair. Delicate hands with painted fingernails.”
My mouth gapes, and my memory jogs back to see if I’ve done any of those things in his presence. I make a note to myself to braid my hair later while he’s sitting here, getting some kind of hot and bothered knowing he thinks seeing someone read is sexy.
He plops his chip into the grid on top of mine, and I groan.
“Dammit!” I laugh. “Cockblocker.”
He looks over at me and narrows his eyes. “I see what you’re trying to do.”
Ugh.
It’s never any good when they know your strategy, but it also wouldn’t hurt if I had to remove an article of clothing.
Ha!
“What’s your favorite body part?” Brodie whispers as if he were embarrassed to be asking such a question.
“On me or on you?”
He blinks. “Of yours.”
“My boobs.” Obviously. I plunk my game piece into the grid, starting in a new spot so I can rebuild my ladder, abandoning the first one. “What’s your favorite body part—of yours?”
He rolls a blue chip between his fingers. “I don’t know. My hands, I guess?”
His hands.
Big, rough. Strong.
I hum. “Mmm. Yes, those hands. They’re a personal favorite.”
Brodie adds his chip to the board and leans back. “I win.” He crosses his arms smugly. “Told you.”
My mouth gapes again. “Wha…? How…”
I focus my eyes on the grid, brain doing its best to see his blue in a row but only seeing my red scattered ones. Shit. His four across blink and wink at me—taunting me.
“Are we still playing Strip Connect Four or no?” he reminds me in a subtle way that tells me he’s hopeful but doesn’t want to be aggressive or pushy.
Which only makes me like him more and want him to have all of my cookie.
“Suppose I have to pay the toll.” But what to remove first?
Decisions, decisions…
If I remove my shorts, I’ll be in my thong and I can roll around the bed with my ass out, fabric lodged up in my ass cheeks, taunting him. If I take off my sweatshirt, I’ll be in my white bralette, which isn’t overtly sexy but gets the job done.
I mean—it’s tits.
Guys love tits and skin.
“Take your time,” he offers, magnanimous as ever.
I lick my lips.
“How about…you choose for me.”