It Was Always You (Gaming the System), Page 2

  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 whe
n 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?”

  Then I felt hands curl around my hips and a head dip down to smell my hair—and I didn’t even have to ask. I knew who it was. My heart thundered madly to feel him so near, to smell him—that clean scent of soap and sweat, of snow, of the vodka on his breath. I could fool myself that this was Lucas. But no.

  I knew, I knew it was Jeremy. Tiff’s boyfriend. The one my roommate was dating. But my Jeremy. He’d been mine long before he’d been hers. So when his mouth landed on mine in a fiery kiss, I didn’t resist. I opened my mouth to his taste, his heat, and I melted like snow against him.

  His lips glided across mine, tasting, then pushing my lips open, his tongue slid in. And thoughts raced through my mind in a weird sort of biopic of my childhood—that time I’d crashed my bike against the dead-end barrier at the end of the street and badly bloodied my knees. Jeremy had walked me home, had consoled me, wiping my dusty tears with his hands. I hadn’t seen my bike for days until he’d proudly presented it to me, good as new. His mom had told me months later that he’d spent his own allowance money to get the parts to fix it.

  Jeremy’s hands cinched around my waist, pulling me against his firm chest. My hands splayed against his shirt, wishing I could reach underneath. Jeremy didn’t belong to me. He was Tiff’s, such as that relationship was. I had no right to kiss him, but how could I not when it felt so damn right?

  My tongue slid in after him, as he pulled his back in retreat. I invaded his mouth, tasting him, the tingle of hot desire washing down my back like a tropical shower. My hands slid to his shoulders, his to the bottom of my shirt, a thumb slipping tentatively underneath, flicking across my skin.

  I gasped against his mouth. His name was on my lips but I wouldn’t say it—I couldn’t. Because if I did, it would make this real instead of a phantom encounter in the dark that should not ever have happened. My fingers dug into his shoulders and I was drunk with something besides just vodka. His taste, his smell, his touch. His mouth left mine and trailed a slow, hot path over the edge of my jaw, my throat. Every place that it landed sizzled like electricity zinging from the point of contact all through me.

  I shivered uncontrollably, even less in control of myself than I was back when we were trading shoves in the snow over the snow Dalek. But God, I wanted him. Jeremy. My brother’s friend. The kid who lived down the block from me for ten years. The kid who used to ignore me while we were on the high school campus but was nice as could be during the summer and on vacations. The guy who was dating my roommate.

  And it felt so damn good.

  Shit.

  Why now, of all times?

  His hot breath was bathing my face, his fingers twining through my hair. Each touch was like a shock through my system, starting off a chain reaction that settled at my center. It was getting extremely hot in this closet and I didn’t care. Because I wanted Jeremy to reach under my clothes and touch me.

  My head fell back and his mouth was everywhere, sliding across the tender, sensitive skin of my neck. My fingers curled into his shirt, ready to pull it off of him and—

  The doorknob rattled again.

  We froze.

  The door cracked open and we flew from each other as if someone had doused us in ice water. And by the shivering I felt with the loss of his warmth, the feel of his mouth and his hands, it almost felt as if I was threatening hypothermia.

  A quiet whisper—that of a woman—asked, “Are you the Sardine?”

  “Yes,” I said quickly and she slipped inside. I immediately smelled Tiffani’s shampoo and was bathed with sick guilt. She was inside with us and I had just been making out with her boyfriend.

  Damn it!

  I felt fingers brush against mine. Strong fingers. He took my hand in his and squeezed it, a plea for silence? As if I would say anything! Perhaps he was afraid my guilt would get the better of me and I’d confess to Tiffani straight away.

  Nope. It would be best to forget this ever happened. I quickly pulled my hand out of his grip and quietly coughed into the darkness. Tiffani shushed me, of course. But the sooner more people joined us in here, the less awkward and awful this would be.

  Thankfully someone outside must have heard because seconds later, the door opened and again, “Are you the Sardine?”

  “Yes,” answered Tiffani. Another form joined us in the darkness—this time it was Lucas—because this whole encounter really needed to be even more awkward than it already was! It was getting cramped and hot with the four of us in here. And I could have sworn that at least one of them was a mouth-breather. Probably Tiffani.

  That thought got me giggling. I mean really giggling. Uncontrollable chortles rose up in my throat and despite their shushing, I couldn’t stop. In fact, because of their shushing, I only laughed louder. It was the kind of laugh that made your gut ache the more you tried to clamp down on it and stop it. That made your eyes tear up. It was the kind of laugh that should be let out to spend itself. But I couldn’t, so the more I tried to cork it, the more it built up pressure inside of me like a bottle of soda pop when you shook it as hard as you could without twisting the cap. Because once you twisted the cap, that soda went everywhere.

  And so it was with me, the human version of a soda bottle. With nowhere for that internal pressure to release, between the spaghetti dinner, the roughhousing in the snow, the spiked hot chocolate and shots of vodka, and now this stuffy closet and this impossible guilty feeling knotting in my chest, I was like a volcano ready to blow.

  So yep, it happened. I barfed everywhere. Everywhere. All over the closet. All over myself. All over Tiff’s hair. No sardine in that tin escaped unscathed.

  We piled out of there in short order. Tiffani raced for the bathroom covered in my puke, looking green around the gills herself.

  It took about an hour for the collateral damage from my bottled-up giggle fest to be cleared away. As I felt bad and there were only two bathrooms in the place, I volunteered to shower last. Tiff had showered first downstairs and Lucas was waiting to use that one after her. I let Jeremy use the bathroom next to my bedroom and as soon as I heard him open the door, my heart raced and I hesitated. I almost turned around and bolted back for my room.

  Jeremy was fully clothed, his hair still wet. He met me in the hallway and with a slight nudge, pushed me back toward my room.

  “Mic,” he said, coming inside and shutting the door.

  “Don’t c
ome any closer, I’m vomit-covered.”

  “I just thought we should talk about what happened in there.”

  I cleared my throat, fidgeted, clutching my balled-up packet of clean clothes and towel to me. “There’s nothing to discuss. It shouldn’t have happened and as far as I am concerned it didn’t happen.”

  He raised his eyebrow. “For real?”

  My throat tightened. I couldn’t see any relief in his face. He was probably not convinced that I wouldn’t tell Tiffani about it. “I don’t see why it would be necessary to hurt her like that.”

  Realization appeared to dawn. He ran a hand through his damp hair, frowning. “I see…I don’t want to hurt her either, but—”

  “So you see? We agree. There’s—there’s nothing to talk about.” And I most certainly was not going to talk about how his kisses had steamed me up inside—how I’d never, ever been kissed like that before. And, if I were never to be kissed like that again, it would be a very sad and barren future for me.

  Because in the grand scheme of things, that kiss rated a thirteen on a scale of one to five. And thirteen was not a lucky number. So while I was at the whole business of attributing unlucky numbers to my “kiss of a lifetime,” I might as well have gone and broken a few mirrors or walked under a ladder while I was at it.

  I heaved a big sigh and looked away from the enigmatic expression in his green eyes. “Please, Jeremy. Let’s not belabor this. It happened. It’s over. You have a girlfriend.”

  He clenched his jaw and then nodded, reaching for the doorknob. “I’m—I’m sorry, Mic. It was…at that moment, I couldn’t help myself.”

  More guilt gripped at me. Wasn’t that what all cheaters said? And here I was, the other woman. “Maybe we should, uh…just avoid each other for a while.”

  But even as I said it, a twinge of pain at the thought pinched me. Even as Tiffani’s boyfriend, it had been great to have him around the past year, hanging out, drinking beers, geeking out to Doctor Who and playing video games when he could tear himself away from work.