Game Night

Chapter 1

Rayne

The warm, inviting aroma of freshly baked cookies filled the apartment. Part of me wanted to cancel game night just so I wouldn’t have to share my girlfriend’s home cooking. A small part though. Ash had said she was bringing in a new prototype for us to try out from a famous designer, and I wasn’t going to pass on an opportunity like that.

I walked into the kitchen where Haruka was humming to herself as she grated cheese onto the pizza dough. She was wearing an extra-girly high-waisted pink skirt that cinched just under her chest, pulling the white blouse underneath tight to make her modest breasts slightly more prominent.

“Anything I can help with?” I asked.

“Nope!” came the prompt reply, Haruka’s grating not even slowing for a beat.

“There must be something…”

“Set up the round table and chairs? Set the plates? Tidied up the living room? What about the dirty dishes?”

I pursed my lips. I’d already taken care of all of that ten minutes ago. “I’m just trying to be helpful.”

“I know! And you are. Every day.” Haruka turned around, gripping the counter as she smirked. “And tonight is the one night every two weeks that’s not about being helpful, but about you having fun. So you’re going to relax. You’re going to have fun. And you’re going to stuff yourself on carbs and sugar. Got it?”

She was too cute to argue with. “Okay, okay. You win.”

Before Haruka could gloat about her victory, there was a text on my phone: Open up. “Frank’s early,” I muttered.

“That man needs a hobby,” Haruka said. “You know, aside from board games.”

“Well, let’s be nice.” I buzzed Frank into the apartment building, then met him at the door.

“Evenin’, Ray. Woah, smells great in here.” He craned his head to the side to look at the kitchen. “You girls making cookies?”

I knew he didn’t mean anything negative calling us ‘girls’, but it still grated on my nerves. “Hello, Frank. Mind wiping your feet before you come into our nice, clean apartment?”

“Ah, yeah. Sure, sure.”

Frank might have been attractive if he weren’t such a mess. Tall but lanky like a scarecrow, and his face still having a boyish quality to it even though this was his 5th year in college. There was a heavy rain tonight, and it’d left Frank’s messy dark red hair damp and his dark blue henley shirt speckled with drops. There wasn’t any dirt or grass from the parking lot to the building’s entrance, but I still wouldn’t put it past him to track in muddy footprints. When I was finally satisfied, I let him in and he made a beeline for the tray of cooling cookies.

“Don’t mind if I…?”

“Just one,” Haruka warned. “And watch the crumbs.”

“Oh, there’s a trick for that.” Frank took the large chocolate chip cookie, opened his mouth wide, and shoved the whole thing inside, his cheeks stretched out for a second until the cookie collapsed. “Phee?”

Haruka rolled her eyes. “Incredible.”

After he’d finished swallowing, Haruka made it clear that she was still busy in the kitchen, so Frank wandered back towards me. “Quick game of Standard before everyone else gets here?” He’d already pulled out his deck of sleeved Magic: The Gathering trading cards.

“...sure.” I couldn’t really think of a good excuse to say no, and I knew it was either that or I’d be stuck talking about anime with him for the next twenty minutes. One of the ‘nice’ things about Frank was that he took the game so seriously he’d hardly even talk while playing. He’d been playing ‘professionally’ since high school, though he’d only once won a big cash prize in all that time.

Even so, he was a good sport; not long after he’d joined the group, he’d asked for the decklists everyone had. Not so he could prepare counter decks to win every time, but "the much more interesting challenge of crafting a competitive deck with as close to a 50/50 win rate as possible.”

So when I brought out my aggressive dinosaur deck, he met it with his deck of plants and zombies, and ten minutes later…

“Gyahhh… you tricked me! That lip bite! You were trying to make me think you didn’t have anything left in your hand.”

“Guilty,” I admitted. Frank was acing his post-graduate computer science classes, knew the probability of any play in the game down to a tenth of a percent, but he wore his emotions on his sleeve and was terrible at picking up on cues from others. I had no doubt he’d have been much more successful at those tournaments if they were purely online.

As we were putting the cards away, my phone rang. “Hello?”

“Hey! Sorry we’re late!” April apologized. “Can you buzz us in?”

“You’re still three minutes early,” I pointed out as I did just that.

“It’s this rain. I made Ken drive extra slow.” April stayed on the phone. “I just hope the power doesn’t go out.”

“We’ve got candles if it does. But I don’t think we need to worry.”

“Of course you do. We should get candles for our new place too. What would you recommend? Scented, or the long red ones? Not the little birthday candles for sure. Do you think it’s worth getting a lamp? Oh. And a lighter. I hate those tiny plastic ones, but it wouldn’t be worth it to get a fancy metal box one, right? Oh, but—”

“Hanging up now,” I said when I could hear footsteps in the hall and stuck my head out to wave. April and her boyfriend, Ken, waved right back.

I’d known I was gay before even entering middle school, but even I had to admit that Ken looked unreasonably nice. Short, messy hair with just enough product to let you know it was meant to look that way. Sun-bronzed skin over a powerful, athletic frame. Where Frank was tall but lanky, Ken was tall and built like a superhero. The way he filled out that tight white t-shirt with the open red flannel shirt on top, he looked like he was ready to snag the hottest girl in a nightclub, not spend the next four hours playing board games.

Poor April. After two months of dating, she still looked almost embarrassed to be seen with Ken. Which I had told her, time and time again, was ridiculous. April was worried that she stood out next to Ken, and not in a good way. Mousey. Chubby. Plain.

The woman had an hourglass figure and needed to order her bras online because no store would ever carry anything in her ridiculous size. She was ‘chubby’ in the exact way that men (and women like me) loved. It only really made sense when I’d seen the few pictures April had from back in high school, back when she was carrying most of her extra fat around the waist and had to deal with some heartbreaking acne problems. But the sooner April realized just how much she’d blossomed, the better.

“Shit, Haruka made cookies again?” Ken asked as soon as the smell hit his nose. “Hey, uh, Ray, where you want this?” He gave his wet umbrella a shake in the hallway, drops flying everywhere.

“Just hand it to me, thank you,” I propped the umbrella up in the bathtub and came back to the living room to see Ken with a small plate of cookies talking to Frank and April in the kitchen with Haruka. I was only able to enjoy that bit of calm for a minute though before there was a knock on the door.

I opened it to find Ash on the other side, bone dry with no umbrella. If someone had a fashion slider, they’d pushed Ash’s goth setting all the way over to the right. Hair dyed a deeper black than Haruka’s natural color, a spiked choker. Black makeup, black lipstick, black shirt short enough to show off the belly button piercing, and tight black leather pants so tight that she must have needed ten minutes just to squeeze into.

No umbrella, but she did have a backpack slung over one shoulder. The prototype she’d asked us to play tonight.

“You’re supposed to wait to be buzzed in. How did you even get inside the building?” I asked.

“Fresh cookies, nice.” Ash skipped the question and went straight to the kitchen. As I watched her go, I wondered how she’d made it inside without getting wet for that matter. Had she stashed a collapsible umbrella into her backpack? Or maybe she had another friend living here. Most of the building was taken up by other college students after all.

I doubted Ash would give me any answers though. Anytime I tried to pry, Ash would either change the subject or ignore me altogether.

She was lucky she was cute.

“First pizza is in the oven, babe,” Haruka sidled up next to me, and my cheeks warmed when I felt those skilled hands give my ass a squeeze through the jeans I was wearing. “Time for your favorite part, yeah?”

I countered by resting my hand on top of Haruka’s head and scratching the way she loved/hated. “This is not my favorite part,” I lied.

I walked over to the large, folding round table, big enough to comfortably seat six. “Ahem. Everyone? Tonight’s going to be a special night. For the first time, Ash has volunteered to bring in a game for us to play. So before we eat,” Eating came first, then playing. Mixing the two had led to some unacceptable accidents in my view. “Ash, why don’t you show it to us and we can start going over the rules?”

“Jumping right into it then.” Ash unslung her backpack and unceremoniously slapped it onto the table, unzipping it to unveil an unassuming black back. Untying it uncovered a small deck of cards. Bigger than standard playing cards, though there were so few, my expectations for tonight were starting to drop.

Well, worst case scenario, we could play some EDH instead.