Page 34 of Four Letter Feelings

“A card game?” Jeremy asked, intrigued.

“Yeah. What do you think Mom? Pim? You think it’s time for some Ligretto? Teach the new boy how to get his ass kicked?”

“Wow. Well. That’s some fighting talk right there, AnaBanana,” he goaded. “I can see competitiveness runs strong in this family.”

“Let’s do it,” Cindy answered, setting her crochet to the side. “If anything will wake Art from his post-Thanksgiving coma for dessert it’ll be those two killing each other over Ligretto.” She smiled and shook her head. “I guess it wouldn’t be a typical Williams’ Thanksgiving without a side of carnage and sibling warfare now, would it?”

When Ana grinned, if Jeremy hadn’t known better, he could have been convinced she was AJ’s twin. The resemblance was striking. As it turned out, Ligretto was a high-paced card came, the aim of which was to get rid of all your cards faster than all the other players by discarding them in the middle of the table.

“Right, here’s the deal,” Ana began very seriously. “As you can see, the cards are separated into four colors. Red, green, yellow or blue and each are numbered one to ten. Each player gets their own ‘deck’ of forty cards, ten of each color, which are marked with a distinctive design on the back. That shows which cards belong to which player, okay?”

“Okaaaaay…” Jeremy was already questioning the complexity of this game and whether he would be able to comprehend it with such a full stomach.

“Before we start, everyone shuffles their own cards and puts ten cards into a ‘stack’ face up on the table. Three cards are laid out next to this pile and are called the ‘row’, the rest of the cards you hold in your hand.”

“Okay.”

“Okay. Right. So, the game starts when someone shouts ‘Ligretto’, when it starts, you put your cards on the table, building colored piles in ascending numerical order. For example, you’ll put the yellow two, on top of the yellow one.”

“And let me guess, the yellow three doesn’t go on top of the blue five?”

“Jeremy!” Ana glared at him. “The rules are incredibly important. It’s a fast-paced game and you might very well end up knocked on your ass. Pay attention and you might learn something. Though I’m incredibly proud of you knowing that three comes after two, good boy!”

She gave him a patronizing head-pat and Jeremy chuckled.

“Knocked on my ass? I thought card games fell under no-contact sport!”

“Not this one.” Ana grinned. “Shut up— or we’ll burn the damn pie. Y’know what? Let’s just turn the pie back off until we’ve played a game.”

She paused to turn the oven back off. “New piles can be started at any time, if you come up with a ‘one’ during play. Like I said, it’s fast-paced. You snooze, you lose, and there is a real chance you could end up shoved, elbowed, pushed or tackled. Also, if you, and say for example Pim, both have a green two and you try and put it on top of the same one, the winner is the one who is clearly the person whose card is underneath. Sounds obvious, but you’d be amazed at how often it comes into question.”

“This game sounds insane.” Jeremy looked at Cindy and AJ for reassurance, but all he saw was gleeful competitiveness sparkling in their eyes. “Oh, god. This is gonna hurt isn’t it?”

“Not finished explaining!” Ana announced. “When one of your three ‘row’ cards are played, the space gets filled up with the top card from the ‘stack’. The winner is whoever gets through their stack pile first and calls out Ligretto to end the round.”

“Holy shit.”

“Got it?”

“Nope.”

“You will. It’s easier to play than explain.”

“Then what the hell did you just explain it all to me for?”

“Just in case you’re not a visual learner. I had to say I gave you all the information I could so you had a fighting chance.”

“A—”

“GO!” AJ’s voice boomed and pandemonium ensued. Jeremy took a step back from the table, holding onto his cards and not making a move while the others burst into motion. The scene in front of him was arms and flashes of color, moving so quickly he could barely keep up. A blur of arms reaching across the table and the occasional swear word when two people made the same ‘move’ at the same time. At one point, AJ narrowly missed smacking his mother in the face as he retracted his arm from placing a card with a triumphant flourish of his hand. It was organized chaos. Jeremy picked up the rules quickly and by the time they got to the end of the first round, Jeremy was confident that he could join in.

“You’ve picked it up already, haven’t you?” AJ asked, as Jeremy pushed his way into the small circle around the table.

“How can you tell?”

“At the start of the round you looked traumatized, now it looks like someone located the light switch.”

“Something like that,” Jeremy answered. “It looks like a pretty cool game.”

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