Chapter 23
“KNOCK, KNOCK,” HEATHER SAYS, stepping into the house early Saturday evening.
“Careful,” I warn her, and she freezes with both feet on the doormat. “The floors are slick. We got the ratio wrong on the wood cleaner, and it’s like an ice rink in here. Go barefoot if you want to remain upright.”
“Or just embrace it!” Mark calls from the hallway. Heather and I turn toward his voice, and a moment later, he glides down the hallway on his belly, penguin-style.
“Nice distance,” I say. He stands up, keeping a hand on the wall for balance.
“The guys gave me a push. This is actually a really good time,” he says. “Human curling.” He turns and shuffles back up the hallway on socked feet.
“And you’re encouraging this?” Heather asks.
“The guys have already exceeded their entertainment budget for the month and were desperate for things to do. Outside of their multiple video game systems, the finest television and sound system setup this side of an actual theater—”
“You have the TV tonight!” Grant reminds me from the depths of the hallway.
“Only from eight to ten,” I holler back. “Y’all have the entire internet at your disposal.”
“We’re bored of the internet!” Diego counters.
Heather laughs. “I’m not sure if that’s great for society or terrible,” she says, and toes off her sneakers. She eyes the shiny hardwood, then braves a step off the mat. Immediately, she drops into a crouch to keep her balance. “Good God, what did you use? Motor oil?”
“Might as well have. The floors look great, though.”
“Until they’re covered in my blood. Yeesh.” Still crouching, she shuffles toward the couch and grabs hold of the arm, using it to tow herself to safety. She takes a seat, craning her neck toward the hallway as she settles. “How long have they been doing this?”
“About twenty minutes. It was Mark’s idea. I attribute it to his improv background. Big ‘yes, and’ energy.”
As we watch, fingers curl around the wall at the mouth of the hallway. A moment later, Diego slingshots himself into the living room, slowing to a stop before the couch. He flops onto his back. “I’m bored again. What else can we do?”
“For free,” I remind him.
“Fine. What else can we do for free?” he asks. The other guys pad into the living room, Grant employing a skating motion to glide to the couch.
“Might I propose…” Mark plants both feet on the wall at the mouth of the hallway, then launches himself into the living room, maintaining a casual side-lying posture as he eases to a stop. “Silence and Sabotage.”
I catch Heather’s eye, and she shakes her head. He’s in auteur mode.
“It’s a variation on tag. The person who is It is blindfolded.
And everyone else is confined to a certain area, say”—he gestures around himself—“the living room. Whoever’s It has to feel around for the others, who have to remain silent or otherwise keep who’s It from figuring out where they are.
Players may sabotage others by making noise, but do so at their own peril; create enough noise to draw the attention of It, and you may be found instead. ”
“Did you come up with this?” Heather asks.
“Absolutely not. I saw it on Instagram. But I did come up with the name.”
“Just now?” I ask.
“Just now.”
“Very cool,” Diego marvels. “Silence and Sabotage is a great name.”
“Thank you. In the version I saw, the evading party was confined to a couch, and the blindfolded person had a squirt gun, and while I suspect that Ellie would murder me if I proposed that—”
“You would be correct,” I chime.
“—I think that having everyone trying not to bite it on the floor will be challenging enough.” He looks around at each of us. “Y’all in?”
All eyes turn to me.
Regular Life Me rails against the idiocy of the proposed activity. My mind floods with visions of busted chins, cracked teeth, blood on the couch. But I also haven’t joined the guys in any non-gym nonsense so far. This is what these six months are supposed to be about.
I press up from my spot on the couch. “I’ll get some socks.”
Silence and Sabotage is more fun than it has any right to be.
We’re all treating it with the same deathly seriousness that Mark had when introducing the game.
Heather is ruthless, sliding up beside other participants and making a noise, only to skate away while whoever’s It closes in.
She got me caught that way, which is why I’m standing with Alistair’s backup—as opposed to primary?
—sleep mask on, listening for a player to give away their location.
Someone in the room clears their throat nominally, the wet rumble coming from my left. I’m edging that way when I pick up on something else: footsteps on the porch. Heavy. Distinctive. I lean in the direction of the sound. “Is Ian here?”
Across the room, Diego mutters, “She knows his feet?”
A double knock sounds at the door, and then I hear it open. “Hey. You guys ready to go eat?” He pauses. “What is this?”
I wheel toward him, tugging off the eye mask.
He’s on the doormat, in faded jeans and a baseball tee with navy sleeves.
I don’t dare look at Heather; we’ve long championed the baseball tee as superior to all other male casual wear.
It strikes the perfect balance of universally flattering crewneck and forearm-baring sleeves that demand some degree of musculature to fill out.
Why all the love for the Henley, which, frankly, sits awkwardly on the neck and shoulders of all but a select few male forms, when the baseball tee is already doing the Lord’s work?
Instead, I glare at each of my roommates, who studiously avoid my gaze. “Did you recruit him to take you out?”
Grant’s focus is somewhere near his toes. “Maybe.”
“I—” Ian begins, and starts to take a step forward, off the doormat. The entire room cries “No!” before his foot makes contact with the floor. He hops backward.
“We got a little overzealous cleaning the floor,” I explain. “We’re making the most of it.”
“Ah! I was told that you’d come up with a way to keep them entertained for free.” He eyes me. “And that you were being a fanatic about their entertainment budget.”
“They’re supposed to be learning how to manage their funds,” I say, cutting my eyes at the guys again.
“But it seems they’ve only learned to be sneakier when turning to you.
” I sigh. “And I’m afraid you’re going to have to join in, now that you’ve been duped into undoing all my work toward molding these ding-dongs into financially responsible young men. ”
“I wasn’t duped,” he counters, face almost convincingly stern. “I was being a good brother.”
“Pushover.”
“Tyrant.”
“Are we going to get back to the game, or do we have to wait for the sexual tension to diffuse, first?” Heather calls.
I elect not to dignify that with a response and ask Ian, who has somehow maintained a straight face through all of this, “You in?”
“Do I get to wear the eye mask?”
“No!” Diego calls. “I’m tired of hiding. I want to be It.”
“Hey, Ian!” Heather shoots me a wicked wink. “Nice shirt.”
My knee pops.
The unmistakable sound is like a gunshot in the silent room. Diego’s head whips around like a predator catching a scent on the wind, and he grins. “Ellie!”
Shit.
He stalks toward me, posture hunched. Each step is taken in exaggerated slow motion, with Diego losing his footing every few inches and scrambling to recover.
It’s like watching a moose cross a frozen pond.
I hold back a laugh. Across from me, Heather is convulsing with the effort not to let hers out, a hand over her mouth, eyes watering.
But he’s getting closer. And I can’t trust my creaky joints to risk moving again. The most I can do is lean back a tiny bit—
I’m so focused on Diego’s progress that I almost miss Heather waving her arms. I meet her insistent glare, and she points behind me, mouthing, Ian!
I frown in confusion, and she makes a tugging gesture with both of her hands, grabbing at waist level, then driving her simulated grip into her hips—
Is that a hump? Involving Ian? Madam, this is no time to mime my secret thoughts!
I’m still frowning at her gesticulations when Diego takes two large steps forward, recapturing my attention. But then, warm hands close on my hips. Big hands. Ian’s hands. I stare down at the fingers pressing into my hipbones. My immediate thought is Eh?,
followed by an equally inarticulate Is this a hump? But then I begin easing backward.
A glance over my shoulder gives me a view of Ian, bent over fully at the waist, making use of his impressive torso and arm length to close the distance between our spots.
He’s achieved traction by going barefoot, the crafty guy, and as he pulls, I scoot ever nearer to him, my socks sliding soundlessly over the glossy wood.
I face forward, Diego has advanced. He’s stalking straight for me, while Heather and Alistair—the traitors!—have scooched out of his way, leaving the path clear.
Ian adjusts his grip, fingers digging into my sides, and heaves me back.
I careen into his chest, molding my back into his body while Diego gropes in the spot where I’d been not two seconds before.
I shrink further into Ian, his arms banding across my chest and waist. He starts edging backward with me in tow, the motion rocking me side to side with each shuffle of his retreat.
I am, essentially, being rubbed against the entire front of his person. I do not mind.
Diego pauses, doing birdlike head tilts, but for the moment, I’m out of his range.
I tell myself it’s out of relief that I let the back of my head rest again Ian’s chest. But when I connect with that impressive swell of muscle, I am fused to the spot.
I’m like a cat caught in a sunbeam, totally immobilized. God, he’s warm.