Page 49 of Finding Jack
I pulled myself together and tried to figure out where to go next after opening the date with basically, “I know we’ve never met, but let’s define this thing.” I glanced around the room, trying to find something I could seize on for conversation. There was nothing. Unless I wanted to talk about throw pillows or indoor lighting. Which I didn’t.
“I’d like to destroy you in Scrabble now,” Jack said.
It was pretty effective as changes of subject went. “You wish. You should probably tell me now if you’re one of those types who hates losing to a woman.”
“What if I am?”
“It’ll make beating you even more fun.”
He grinned, and I had a full-blown pitter-patter of the heart. Man, he was gorgeous.
“It’s on,” he said as a link for an online match pinged in my DMs.
I opened the game and examined my tiles. I got first play and I made it bloody. As in I literally spelled out the word “bloody” and scored 24 points.
“I see how it’s going to be,” he said.
“From start to finish.” I flashed a return grin at him.
“That looks less a smile and more like what a shark looks like before it eats you. People are friends, not food, Em.”
I liked the way he used my nickname instinctively, like he’d said it that way forever. But all I said was, “Chomp, chomp.”
It was a bruising game, and even though I led the whole time, he always stayed within twenty points, not something a lot of people could do when I played. And for sure no one had ever made me laugh as much during a match. At least, not until he wiped the smile off my face by playing “zambuck” on a triple word score for his final play and destroying me.
“Zambuck?” I said.
“You want to challenge it?”
“Obviously not.” The program didn’t let you make up words. If it was on the board, it was a real word.
“That’s one of the downsides to the online games.”
“That it keeps you honest?”
He laughed. “No. That I can’t lure you into challenging a word that ends up backfiring on you.”
“So ruthless, Jack.”
“Only because I’ve discovered you really are a shark.”
“Sharks don’t go from winning the entire game to losing by thirty in one play.”
“You know how it is. Sometimes letters just line up exactly right.”
“It’s not luck that lets you come up with a word like zambuck.”
“Could be. Maybe I put letters on the board until I guessed a real word that the game let me play.”
“I doubt that’s what you did.” He didn’t seem the type, and I liked that.
“You’re right. A zambuck is a slang term for a paramedic in Australia.”
My jaw dropped, and he laughed.
“You didn’t even have to Google that, did you?”
“Nope.”
