Page 32 of Deception and New Direction

I gaveJacka high-five before turning to high-five the others.

Delia just laughed. “Youdidn’t need us at all, soI’mnot sure why you’re high-fiving me.”

“Yeah,I’venever felt so invisible in my life,”Catcommented while smiling at me.

Thinking back,IguessedJackandIhad done that round all by ourselves.Asif he heard my inner thoughts,Jackpulled me into his side for a hug and told the whole group we made a great team of two.Hethen looked down at me and winked.

Crap.Hewas totally going to use this against me.

We played a few more rounds before breaking to get some more food.

“Uh,Ruthie,”Diegocalled from the kitchen. “Howmuch pizza is too much pizza for a dog?”

Oh no.

I immediately jumped from my seat and sped into the kitchen, at least as fast as my crutches would let me. “Didhe get a piece?”

“Judging by the sauce on his face and the empty box in front of me,I’mguessing he stole more than one piece,”Diegoanswered.

Ugh.

“Dash,”Ireprimanded him, but he just stared up at me as though he had done nothing wrong.

I hoped this didn’t come back to haunt me later with him having digestive issues at three in the morning.

The next game wasPictionary, and beforeIcould even get a word out,Jackselected me as his partner.Everyoneelse paired up in teams of two, and we began to take turns having players draw words from a card within one minute.Withoutusing letters, numbers, or speaking to give clues, their teammate tries to guess the word.

I learned one very valuable lesson from this game tonight—none of the men could draw anything recognizable.Atall.

Archer’s supposed flamingo looked like a dog.Vince’stree was essentially a stick with a circle on top.And, even now,Istill had no idea whatWade’sversion ofAustralialooked like—certainly nothing even remotely close to the actual depiction ofAustralia.

Cat was by far the best artist—which made sense since she did a lot of graphic design with her website business.Thisalso gave her andDeliaan unfair advantage, butIwasn’t going to say anything becauseIwanted the three of us—women—to outshine the men in any way we could since we were already outnumbered.

Jack andIweren’t great artists either, but for some reason we synced and seemed to get more answers than most of the other teams did, so at least there was that.

Two hours later, we were all gamed out.Everyonetook some leftovers and made their way to their respective homes.

“Do you think everyone had fun tonight?”IaskedJackas we got into the car to head back to his place.

“Yeah,” he replied. “Everyoneseemed to enjoy themselves.Youshould feel good about putting this together.”

“Well, it wasn’t entirely my idea,”Itold him.

“I get thatDiegooffered up game night, but you put it all together and made it happen,” he countered. “Alot of great ideas remain just ideas because no one puts in the effort to make them happen.”

I hadn’t really thought of it like that.

“I also noticed that we make a great team,” he added.

“We did do pretty well at the games, didn’t we?”Iremarked.

“Yeah, thoughIimagine we’d be a great team in other ways too.”Imade the mistake of looking up at him after his comment to see him grinning at me with one half of his lips turned up and wiggling his eyebrows.

I knew what he was implying, butIwasn’t ready to go there yet—maybe ever.Ididn’t share people, and he literally just went on a date not that long ago.

“I don’t think yourgirlfriendwould appreciate that,”Imumbled.

He must have heard me though, because his eyebrows lifted high as if to question me.

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