It Was Always You (Gaming the System) (2 page)

Tiff poked her head out of the doorway as we were standing there, staring at each other. “What’s so interesting out here on the stoop?” she said, using a word that revealed her East Coast origins. She’d lived in California for four years for college and still hadn’t got the hang of how we talk.

“Uh, nothing. We were just arguing over who should go through the doorway first,” Mic said. As usual she was quick on her feet. Thank goodness because I really hadn’t wanted to answer that question with,
Staring into your roommate’s beautiful blue eyes yet again.
I heaved a sigh and waved her inside.

With a nod she acknowledged my gesture, walked through the door and I followed her.

“Michaela,” Tiff grabbed her arm as soon as she set the beer down on the counter. “Come here, there’s someone I want you to meet!” Tiff talked loud enough that the entire house could hear her. It was a spacious cabin with lots of bedrooms and a wide loft overhead. Opening off the main room was a large game room complete with billiards table. Nathan, the groom-to-be, Lucas, and our other friend Tyler all stood around the table with pool sticks in their hands.

The bride and our other friends hadn’t arrived yet. Mic stiffened and trailed her roommate like a dog getting dragged to his bath, trying to wrench her arm out of Tiff’s grip.

This could be funny, actually… so I followed closely behind. Lucas wasn’t a bad guy but he couldn’t have been more wrong for Mic. I figured she’d politely set him down if he was interested. And why wouldn’t he be? Mic was gorgeous, tall, curvy, blonde, with the face of an angel. But she was also stubborn, and the mere fact that Tiff was shoving some guy in her face would be enough for her to get her back up. All I’d have to do would be to sit back and hope she didn’t humiliate Lucas too badly.

“Lucas, this is my roommate Michaela. Michaela, Lucas works with Jeremy.”

Tiff flashed Lucas her almost too-bright smile and I could see he was being reeled in. It had that effect on most guys. And I had to admit that it was somewhat edifying at work to be known as the geek with the hot girlfriend.

Michaela leaned forward, with a lopsided smile. I recognized immediately that it meant that she was feeling awkward. “Hey Lucas—think we met once, actually…at that picnic?”

Lucas turned to Mic, his grin widening. “I do remember, actually.” His eyes floated over her sweater and jeans and I immediately felt hot under the collar from irritation. “How could I forget?”

Mic gave a little laugh and looked at me sidelong. I clenched my jaw and tried to ignore the annoyance I felt. I wondered, too, if she would even be bothering with this charade had I not tried to warn her off Lucas in the first place. She was just being contrary.

“Did anyone bring a toboggan? I feel like sledding and Donna told me there’s a nice hill on the next lot over from this one!” I interrupted, trying to draw their attention away from each other, but they still seemed to be checking each other out—and Mic had a smile on her face that was the furthest thing from lopsided.

Nathan answered that he had brought a sled. “Wait a second,” Tiff said, coming up beside me and hooking her arm in mine. “You forgot that I volunteered to wrap the shower gifts.”

I frowned. “I didn’t forget that.”

“Did you forget that you are helping me? We need to get them wrapped before the bride shows up!” She turned to Nathan. “No peeking, you! They’re for you, too!”

“Hopefully you’ve got something pretty from Victoria’s Secret in there.
That
would be my ideal gift.” Nathan laughed.

“Oh really, Nathan? You were hoping you could wear a lacey little thong number for your wedding night?” Lucas said.

“Fuck you,” Nathan replied with a cheesy grin. But what I focused on was Mic’s reaction. She was doubled over laughing at Lucas’s dumbass joke. Lucas had noticed, his grin widening, his eyes sliding over Mic’s form once again with more than a little interest.

My fist clenched.

“Well, shall we get to it?” Tiff was asking, tugging at my arm.

“Um, what?”

“The gift wrapping…” Her eyes widened and she was pulling me toward the kitchen.

“But…but…sledding. There’s snow.”

“Pfft. You Californians and your fascination with snow! I grew up with this stuff all over the ground every winter for
months
. It’s not a big deal.”

I rolled me eyes when she wasn’t looking but let her pull me into the other room. Tossing another glance over my shoulder, I caught a glimpse of Lucas and Mic continuing to talk while he grabbed his coat and scarf, picking up her bag and lugging it upstairs to the loft.

Shit. Why was this bugging me so badly?

I tried to get my mind off of it as I watched Tiff whip out the wrapping paper, the tape, and the ribbon for the gift-wrapping. Inwardly I groaned. I’d promised to spend more time with her over the weekend, since I finally had the time off. I’d been slaving away at work doing twelve-hour days as we tried to get the new Dragon Epoch expansion ready for release. The time off was long overdue—for
all
of us.

Tiff unrolled a length of wrapping paper along the table and asked me to bring her a box. For the next forty-five minutes as a hostage, I managed to not die of boredom while helping her wrap the gifts. I was sure it would be much more exciting that night when they opened them, all of us tanked on the beer and teasing the hell out of Donna and Nathan.

Out the window, I watched as Mic and Lucas became better acquainted while frolicking in the snow. My heart pinched a little. I wanted to be the one out there pelting her with snowballs and pulling the inner tube up the hill…

“Well, looks like Michaela and Lucas sure have hit it off!”

I grunted, pulled my eyes away as Mic bombarded Lucas and the other guys with a barrage of snowballs, then ran screaming away to hide behind a tree trunk. She slipped halfway there and barely avoided doing a face plant. I laughed.

“You’re awfully quiet,” Tiff said.

“’I’d like to be out in the snow with the rest of them. This is a drag. Can’t we do it later?”

Tiff frowned. “No. We can’t. We’re opening them after dinner.”

“Everyone’s going to be drunk after dinner. Who cares if the gifts are wrapped?”

She did that weird jerk of her head, flipping her hair off her shoulder like she always did when she was irritated. “Why are you trying to weasel out of spending time with me? We never see each other as it is.”

“I’d be perfectly happy spending time with you—out there,” I said, pointing out the window to where Lucas and Mic were now lying side by side in the snow making snow angels and smiling at each other. It was so ridiculously sweet I wanted to puke.

Then, I wanted to punch the shit out of Lucas.

Which, you know, was weird because generally I liked Lucas.

But the thought of him with Mic just bugged me.

“It’s cold and my hair gets all screwed up when it gets wet. We’re fine in here.”

I sighed. “Well let’s get this all wrapped up so I can at least have
some
snow time.” I turned to her. “No pun intended.”

Her mouth twisted. “It was a very silly pun. Fine. But we still have three more to wrap and this big one over here.”

I gritted my teeth and played nice with her so she wouldn’t get upset. When Tiff got upset, she was not fun to be around. By the time we were done, everyone had wandered back inside and was making hot toddies to warm up.

So much for sledding down the hill next door.

Chapter Three
Michaela

“So, uh, how do you know Jeremy and Tiffani?” Lucas asked in our little corner of the living room over spiked hot chocolate.

“I grew up with Jeremy. He and my brother were best friends in high school. We ended up going to different schools but he came down after graduation to work at Draco. I go to UCI. So…we started hanging out again.”

“You two dated?”

I frowned. “Ah…no…no. I was dating someone else.”
Date Jeremy?
There was a time when I’d wanted to…a long time, actually. But that had been years ago. He hadn’t been interested. And I thought those feelings had gone away until he had shown up again.

“So…you
were
dating someone…and now you’re not?”

Wow, subtle he was not. I took another sip of my coffee and studied Lucas. He was a good-looking guy, sandy blond hair, blue eyes. I usually liked my men sultry and dark-haired but…“I was. But not anymore!”

He smiled. “Well…good.”

I tried not to roll my eyes. The conversation was hardly scintillating but I wasn’t ready to write him off yet. I wasn’t horribly interested but something about what Jeremy had said to me on the front porch had gotten my hackles up. Part of me was determined to prove him wrong just for the sake of proving him wrong. But would that mean actually dating someone I wasn’t into just to do it?

All of that made my head hurt. I rubbed my forehead between my eyebrows, frowning.

“You have a headache?”

“Nothing that another shot of Irish Cream in my coffee won’t cure.”

***

After dinner, Jeremy came out of the loft with a toilet plunger in his hand.

“What up, bro?” Nathan said. “You plug up the toilet? We had to pay a deposit on this place.”

“No…I’m going out to build a snowman.”

“It’s dark!” Tiff protested.

“Frosty has a broom, not a plunger,” I said.

“I’m not building Frosty. I’m building a snow Dalek. This is going to be the probe.”

I jumped up, suddenly excited. “Badass! You need something for the laser and the two luminosity dischargers on top. And the plunger would be for the manipulator arm—there is no
probe.
”

“What the
what
? “ Tiff asked.

“You wouldn’t know about it. It’s from
Doctor Who
,” I waved her off. Tiff absolutely refused to watch
Doctor Who
with me when it came on and often would leave me and Jeremy to watch it together while she went off and answered emails or surfed the Internet.

She wrinkled her nose. “Oh, that. Let’s play something else instead. How about a board game?”

“I have not had
nearly
enough to drink yet for a board game,” said Donna, the bride-to-be, as she bent over and picked up her bottle of beer.

“We could do something fun!” Tiffani said, slapping her hands together. “Like Truth or Dare.” She waggled her eyebrows.

“OMG. No.” I said, standing up to go into the kitchen to find more parts for the snow Dalek. “Exterminate! Exterrrrrrrrminate!” I buzzed.

“Girlfriend what are
you
drinkin, ’cause I want some!” Donna said.

It took us an hour to figure out how the old snow was going to stick together to make the base of our snow Dalek. By the end, Jeremy and I were both soaking wet and the snow Dalek was a disaster, a pile of mush. But neither one of us was willing to be the one to call it quits.

I did manage to get in a few good-quality shots at Jeremy, though, till he wrestled me down, insisting I call “uncle” like when we were kids. Only this time it was different. His hands, where they gripped my wrists tightly, made my heartbeat race like a colt. I swallowed, looking up into his deep green eyes. With his dark hair, his tall, slim build, he was—as he had always been—a handsome guy. A handsome guy I couldn’t have.

I cut our little struggle short by calling uncle long before I normally would have, unable to stand any more of the tension and the awareness of his heavy, solid weight on mine.

I think we were both relieved when Tiffani called us inside and, shaking from the cold and wet, we didn’t protest. “We’re going to play Sardines in the house!”

“Neither of you are drunk enough to play with us!” Nathan declared. “You must each down three shots before we even start. We’ve been in here drinking all this time while you were out messing with your snowman and doing god knows what.”

Jeremy scowled. “We were making a snowman. Shut up.” He darted a quick look at Tiffani, who didn’t react.

With a grimace, I downed two shots of vodka to satisfy everyone and Jeremy did several as well. Then, because apparently I was the most sober of everyone—which was a bit scary because I was feeling mighty woozy—I was chosen as the Sardine. We all stood outside shivering while they explained to me that I needed to go back inside.

“So what the heck do I do again?”

“It’s like hide and seek only in reverse,” Tiffani said.

Nathan stepped in to elaborate. “You’re ‘it’ so you go inside and hide and we drunkards stumble around and try and find you. But when we do, we don’t tell anyone. We just hide with you.

“Ugh, okay, as long as that I don’t have to run around and act like an idiot, because I’m seriously starting to feel a little nauseous.”

“Lightweight,” Jeremy cracked and I shot him the bird.

I went into the house with all the lights turned off with the sound of Donna counting loudly outside.

I fumbled around for a few minutes, letting my eyes get used to the dark, and then remembered the weird little cubby closet tucked back around the corner between my room and the bathroom. I’d opened it earlier, thinking it was a linen closet, but had found it empty except for some winterizing gear for the cabin, snow shovels, and things like that. It was mostly empty and would be the perfect spot to tuck myself away.

I crept up the stairs, trying not to make a sound—for some reason paranoid that they could hear me outside. But I hesitated when it sounded like someone was in the house with me.

I stopped and the sound stopped so I shook my head and continued slowly up the stairs, when I heard Donna’s numbers get close to one hundred—the agreed-on number. I was just seconds away from them entering the house to come find me. I darted up the stairs and into the closet, shutting it just in time.

The doors opened and I could hear people filing around the huge downstairs, cupboards opening and closing in the kitchen. Before even a minute had passed, the doorknob to my hiding place rattled, the door opened quietly and without a word, a large figure slipped inside. How did he even know I was here? He hadn’t even taken a moment to look or ask the ritual question,
“Are you the Sardine?”