Page 55 of Game Night: Truth or Dare

“I’m sorry,” I repeated. “And, yeah. I can do that. Relax, I mean.”

He nodded. “Good. Thanks.”

“It was…” Did he need to hear my reasoning? My excuses? Probably not. I cut off the long monologue my brain was preparing. “I was hurt. You were there. I didn’t understand what had gone down. With the timeline thing, I mean. Maybe I overreacted.”

“Yeah,” he said. “Understandable.”

“Did…” A question burned my lips, but asking it would cost me some pride. I decided to go for it. “Did Elliot really say those things about me? That I was immature and dramatic?”

He didn’t answer for a second, but then he nodded slowly. “Yeah.”

Ouch. Well. That was that. “Okay.”

Ben smiled, just a little bit. “If it helps, though…Elliot always kind of had a stick up his ass.”

I chuckled, almost in spite of myself. “Yeah. He kind of did.”

“And…” He trailed off, then picked back up again. “I didn’t mean what I said. During my truth, I mean. When I said I could tell he was right. I think…” He shrugged. “Maybe you are dramatic? I don’t know you well enough to say. But you’re sure as hell charismatic. People are drawn to you, Oliver. That’s why it gets under my skin so bad, you hating me. You have this…charm. And I hate having it turned against me.”

I didn’t know how to process that. He always seemed so stoic, so above it all, like he just walked through his life completely unbothered. It was a little bit of a mindfuck that he thought about me like that—or that he thought about me at all. “Thanks.”

“I don’t know if this will help? But Elliot saw it, too. He called you ‘magnetic.’” He laughed. “I guess that’s the flip side of being dramatic. But he used to say…” He blinked, cutting himself off. “Well, he used to say a lot of things about you, Oliver. It’s part of why things never got too serious between him and me. I think maybe…maybe you were a little too much for him? But he was never able to get you out of his mind.”

He didn’t say it like he was sad about it. Just like it was a fact. Stupidly, I felt sad about it. Like, proud, I guess—who doesn’t want to be unforgettable?—but also, I wondered how it felt to be the new guy when Elliot was still thinking about the old guy. It made me curious, and since Ben was opening up to me, I decided to ask. “What did you like about him?”

The smile returned, a little dreamy, like he was remembering. “He was nice to me. That sounds pathetic maybe, but it was hard for me to settle in here. Being older, I mean, and coming from the army. It’s…it’s a very different life. And my grandparents live a couple hours away, and there’s stuff going on with them—just them getting older, I mean? So they’re on my mind a lot. And being here, taking classes and stuff…it didn’t feel real. Elliot sort of took me under his wing. Showed me around the history department, introduced me to the professors, got me into a good study group. He just…made things easier for me.”

That made sense. Elliot liked taking care of people. “I’m glad he did that for you.”

“Yeah,” he said. “What about you? What drew you to him?”

I laughed. “It was that stick-up-his-ass thing, I guess? He’s stable. I’m…I can get a little emotional sometimes—”

“Noo. You?”

“Shut up.” I was grinning, though. “But I can. As you may have noticed. And Elliot…he sort of evened me out.”

“That’s a good thing to have,” he said. “Someone to balance you.”

“Yeah.”

We stood there for a while. It was awkward, but not in a bad way. It felt like there was something unfinished between us, only I didn’t know what that might be. We’d talked our shit out, and that was what I’d wanted when I followed him in here. We seemed like we were at peace which, if I’m honest, was more than I’d hoped for. There was nothing else to take care of, nothing to ask for.

I should say goodnight, I thought. Get back to the game before Bianca gets worried.

Instead, I said, “We don’t have to be friends, like you said? But maybe we could talk again sometime.”

He nodded, and maybe it was just a trick of the light, but he might have smiled. “Maybe.”

“It seems dumb not to. Like you said, it’s a small campus. And besides…we have some stuff in common.”

He did smile then, and it looked nice on him. “I guess we do. One big thing, at least.”

I grinned, and decided to risk a little joke. “Not that big, if I’m being honest.”

That got a laugh out of him, which made me feel good. “It’s not the size of the ship, Oliver.”

Now I was laughing, too. “No, I guess not. Anyway, it’s not like he…” Uh…how do you drive a boat? “It’s not like he ever took the wheel.”

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