Free She, Myself & I by Whitney Gaskell Page B

them.”
    Zack smiled. “Later. Now, I beat you in Scrabble,” he said, rubbing his hands together.
    We smoothed the duvet out, and then I set up the game right on the bed.”I can’t believe this. I got four O s. Are there even four O s in the game?” Zack complained after we’d chosen our tiles.
    I consulted the list of letters. “Yes, there are eight O s in total. You can re-pick if you want,” I said charitably. Normally, I’m a shark when it comes to board games, and especially Scrabble—my family’s vicious games of Sorry are legendary—but in my postcoital bliss, I was feeling magnanimous.
    “Cheat? No, I’m not going to cheat, thank you very much. I plan on trouncing you, even with my four O s.”
    I started first, and put down “viper.” “Ha-ha, look at that! That’s fifteen . . . wait, no, sixteen points, and it’s doubled for thirty-two. Thirty-two points!” I crowed, marking it down on the score sheet.
    “Hey, let me see that. You got ‘viper’ and I got four Os ? Is this game rigged? And how do I know you’re trustworthy enough to keep score?” Zack asked suspiciously.
    “House rules,” I said. “Come on, your time has already started to run, you’d better hurry up.”
    “Time? We’re playing with time limits? Is that another house rule?”
    “Of course! You have one minute to put down your word.” I consulted my watch. “But since you didn’t know, I’ll let you start now.”
    Zack added a D and four Os to the V and spelled “voodoo.” “Look at that! Did you see how I’m working those Os ? What’s that . . . ten points? Almost as good as yours, oh but crap, I don’t get to double it,” he said. “You don’t have to look quite so gleeful about that.”
    “Sorry,” I said cheerfully. I love winning.
    An hour later, we were nearly out of tiles, and Zack was beating me by twenty-seven points.
    “ Grrr. We’re going to have to play again,” I said.
    “Don’t worry, I won’t gloat about my victory,” Zack said modestly.
    “Just because you got that lucky break with the triple ‘xylem.’ Otherwise, I would have won,” I said.
    “You shouldn’t have challenged me. I told you it was a real word.”
    “I’ve never heard of it before, I was sure you made it up. Okay, you win, I give up,” I said. I’d been scouring the board, trying to figure out where I could plug in the R and the W I was still holding on to, but Zack had blocked me from the one open A .
    Zack grinned and leaned back against the pillows, his hands behind his head, his elbows splayed out to either side. “So, since I’m the winner, you have to be my slave for the rest of the night, right?”
    I stretched out next to him, lying on my stomach, resting my head on folded arms. “I don’t remember agreeing to that,” I said.
    “Oh no? I could have sworn those were the house rules,” he said. He rolled toward me and poked me in the side, catching me right on my secret tickle spot.
    “Ack!” I squealed, and started to roll away. Zack caught me in his arms, preventing my escape.
    “What was that?” he laughed.
    “Nothing!”
    “Hmmm, if it’s nothing, then you won’t mind if I do it again,” he said, one finger poised mercilessly above my tickle spot.
    “No, no, don’t, please!” I begged. “Okay, so I have one very small, not-worth-mentioning tickle spot.”
    “Ah, so now I have power over you,” Zack teased me.
    I smiled back at him and relaxed in his arms.
    “Just don’t tell anyone,” I said.
    “You are so beautiful,” Zack said, and all traces of laughter vanished from his face. And then he leaned over and kissed me.
    A few minutes later, the Scrabble game fell to the floor, scattering its tiles across the pristine, deep-pile white carpeting and under my bed. But at that moment, neither one of us even noticed.
    Chapter Ten

    The next morning, we went to a little dive café on Red River, where the plastic menus were sticky with pancake syrup and you had to throw yourself