Love Games

On rainy days Scrabble seems like a good idea, but it never ends well. It’s like we both forgot what happened last time.

“’Gailing’ isn’t a word.” I pointed out.

“Yes it is.”

“No it isn’t.”

“Fine. Look it up in the dictionary.” I said shoving the dictionary toward him. As he thumbed through the pages and I secretly wished that he’d get a really really bad paper cut, the kind that don’t bleed but are just shallow enough to sting like a million needles. And I would not have blown cool air on it either.

“Well, this is the 1995 edition. Do we have a more recent one?”

“It’s not a word, Blake. It’s not a word.” My voice was becoming uncontrollably exasperated.

“That dictionary is ancient,” he exclaimed pushing it back across the table, “They add words all the time. I’m going to look it up on the internet.” Off he went to the computer in the other room. “Ha! Found it!” rose his voice triumphantly.

“Is it a proper noun?” I rolled my eyes safely out of his sight.

“Dang it!” He slumped back into the room and threw himself into his chair. Shuffling his tiles around, he bit his lip and fell into silence.

“Gosh, would you just go already?”

“Chill out, Jen. My gosh what’s the rush? We don’t have anywhere to be.”

“What’s the point of even playing if we’re just going to sit around and stare at the board.” I slumped my cheek into my palm like a bored child.

“Fine, I’ll go I’ll go.” He put down ‘gut’ on the board. Charming. “Hey, that’s a triple word score! Not bad.” I always hated it when bland words got good scores. The words should be scored based on placement, but also artistic flair I thought. Pretty words shouldn't have the same score as "gut" or "bag" or "cat". I played “lavish” earning a tidy sum of points.

Blake moved about as quickly at dried tar. I got up with a loud sigh to make myself a cup of coffee. When I got back he still hadn’t moved.
I picked up one of the tiles and threw it at him. “S” hit him square in the nose.

“Hey, what the heck?”

“Hurry up and go!” Blake crossed his arms.

“No.” I glared at him from across the table.

“This is just like you. You never finish things that you start!”

“Like what?” He raised his eyebrow cockily.

“Like that garden fence, the faucet in the guest bathroom, and the light bulb in the den still flickers!”

“This is all about my ‘honey-do’ list?” He laughed, eyes softening like caramel. “You see why I wanted to play Scrabble now?” he said looking at me from over his glasses. “The truth always comes out with Scrabble.” He reached over tugged on the ends of my hair. “You’re weird like that.”

“Gee, thanks,” I said in my best still-mad-voice.

“How about I go fix the bulb in the den right now, and then we can finish playing our game?”

“Ok.”

As soon has he was gone I turned his tile tray toward me and picked out all the letters I didn’t need exchanging them for others from the tile bag. When I was done I pushed the tray to exactly where Blake had left it.
He sat back down several minutes later his brown hair a little dusty from the light bulb fixture. A smiled twisted at his mouth as his eyes fell on the tile tray.

“I love you too.”