Page 75 of Weekends with You

“Since when are you my keeper?” he snapped.

Her eyes went wide. “Jeez, Hen. I was just joking.”

“Right, sorry.”

Eight pairs of eyes darted around, looking for something to make this less awkward. I hadn’t noticed he’d been drinking a lot during dinner, but now that I looked at him, his eyes were a bit glassy. Usually when he was drunk, he was just a bit of a lush, but I had a feeling that wouldn’t be the case tonight.

When Jan returned, he studied our faces in the silence. “Did someone die?”

“Henry’s sense of humor, maybe,” Finn said. Bold of him to crack another joke.

“Yeah, yeah,” Henry said, a lopsided smile returning to his face. “Everyone’s just taking the piss, aren’t they?”

All nine of us seemed to exhale at the same time, turning our attention back to the game. If we were lucky, he’d stay in good spirits.

Jan placed an empty cup in the center of the plastic table and fanned the cards in a circle around it. “Oliver, you know the rules?”

“I’ve been to university,” he laughed. “So, yes. Pick a card, follow the rule, pour a bit of your drink in the cup if you draw a king, chug the cup if you draw the last king and lose the game?”

“He’s a natural. Good find, Luce,” Jan said.

I stared at Oliver’s profile, silently agreeing with Jan. Hewasa good find, wasn’t he? He fielded their ridiculousness with deft hands, and now he was planning to play a drinking game he probably hadn’t played in years, on account of him being a proper adult, and he was going to do it with enthusiasm.

“Ready?” Jan asked, hand poised over the first card. We nodded, and he turned it over. “Six—chicks,” he announced, waggling his eyebrows at the four of us. Raja, Liv, Margot, and I raised our glasses to each other, rolling our eyes at Jan. Margot tapped her glass ceremoniously on the table before she brought it to her lips, and Raja chugged way more than a sip. The boys whooped as we drank, and the game was underway.

In a way, it was symbolic. A little piece of each of us carefully poured into the centerpiece until it became an amalgamation of all the characters in the house. I always felt the King’s Cup held strange secrets, and if it were ever to be knockedover, they would come pouring out, right onto the floor. We would bathe in each other’s dark pasts, most embarrassing desires, and deepest skeletons.

We drew card after card, drinking if we were the last to point to the floor, the first to repeat a rhyme, the one who laughed instead of responding to a question with a question. Most important, each time we drew a king, we poured a little of our drink into the King’s Cup at the center of the table.

Henry drew next, pulling a jack—“Never Have I Ever.” We all raised three fingers in preparation.

“Last jack of the game, Hen,” Raja said when he turned the card over. “Better make it a good one.”

“Never have I ever...” He trailed off, biting his lip while he tried to think of something he hadn’t done. “Never have I ever used someone to get over someone else.”

I froze, three fingers poised in the air. He wasn’t really doing this, was he?

“Aye, a bit dark there, mate,” Cal laughed, but Henry only shrugged. Hewasdoing this.

“Jan, you better put a finger down, you sod,” Finn said. “Remember that poor guy who came around after Sebastian? The one with the face tattoo?”

“I did not use him. And he has a name,” Jan said.

“Oh yeah? What is it, then?”

We burst into laughter at Jan’s silence, and he dutifully put a finger down. Henry stared in my direction, and I tried to look anywhere else but back in his.

“Anyone else?” he said before we moved on. All the air in my lungs turned to ash, and taking a deep breath seemed nearly impossible. Oliver hadn’t a clue about my history with Henry, and this wasn’t exactly how I wanted him to find out. Besides, Henry had rejected me. How could he be mad at me for moving on?

“Nope,” I said, finding the courage to meet his gaze. “Well done, us. Who’s next?”

He laughed a humorless laugh under his breath, one I wasn’t sure anyone else noticed but that made my blood feel like lava. He cracked another beer despite the graveyard of empty bottles beside him, and I counted the cards left on the table, trying to determine how much longer this would go on.

“All right, I’m next,” Liv said. “Never have I ever smoked a cigarette.” She flicked her hair off her shoulders, smiling at each of us as we all put a finger down and took a swig.

“You should try it sometime,” Jan said. “Might loosen you up a little.”

“I don’t need to be loose, thank you.”

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