I
would say my hobbies consist of a lot of things. I love to read, write, paint, go shopping, bake, and even cook. But baking with others was surely not it.
“Oh hell no.” I laugh at Margo as she pulls up to the front of my house,
“There is no fucking way I am baking with anyone!”
“Too bad, this will be fun!” Margo giggles, pulling out a bunch of groceries from the back, “Guess where I went while you were in therapy?”
“This has got to be a nightmare.” I groaned, opening the door to my house, Verina and Juliette lay on the couch like they always do. But disdain filled my face when I saw Grayson, Liam, Chris, and Neil gathered by the pool table looking incredibly pissed at each other.
Remembering the past events this morning my face heats at Grayson who looked better than ever. He sends over a smirk.
I take a breath, “How was the shopping?” Verina yells, running up to me for a hug.
“I didn’t buy anything.”
Juliette and Verina froze. Damn, that wasn’t believable at all. “I just bought a lot of perfume, it didn’t count.” I save myself as they nod, agreeing with my lie.
Margo walks over to the kitchen, dumping the food over the large island.
“Why are they here?”
I scowl as she looked pleased, “Well, I thought this could be more of a media date. We take cute pictures and videos of you and Grayson to post so it makes it more believable!”
It was smart, but I wasn’t fond of the idea.
Grayson leaned on the pool table, his abs flexing as I swallowed, remembering the sensation I felt when I orgasmed. I wanted to crush my lips on top of his. But that would be an obvious no.
“I think it would be a fun idea if we did a bake off!” I knock my head back from distress.
I would lose my mind, and no it wasn’t because I was a control freak. Well, I was, but I have OCD and thinking about someone intervening in the creation of what is supposed to be a masterpiece would be the end of me.
“But before that, we can play a board game,” Verina smiles while sitting by the fireplace, signaling for everyone to sit, her eyes scanning the room to look at Chris.
“You can be my partner, Chris!”
She urged, gentle as Chris scratched his jaw, unsure on what to say.
This was going to be a long night. I knew that for a fact. With the endless battle of Margo and Liam, the endless flirtation of Verina towards Chris who clearly couldn’t have cared less. Juliette clearly couldn’t be bothered because she was reading her new book that she spent thousands on while Neil looked as happy as the Scrooge on Christmas morning.
And lastly, Grayson and I’s unresolved s*xual tension.
He looked like he’d been starving since the last time I saw him. I was almost half naked and he was without a shirt.
I couldn’t help but imagine him without the damn sweatshirt he was wearing.
And the worst part is, he knows that I won’t stop thinking about it. “Margo, you can be with me.” Liam grins like he was waiting to say it. “Over my dead body.” Margo scoffs as she looks at Juliette who laughs,
“If you think I’m going to be partners with you after you threw a wooden stand at me last time we played, then you’re clearly delusional.”
Juliette walks over, sitting next to Neil who gives a weird look, “No way I’m being partners with you.”
Juliette looks back with a challenging smile, “You scared you might be in my shadow?” She winked as he sneered.
Liam reaches for Margo, “Looks like you should be nicer to your friends in the future, sunshine.” Liam winks as Margo gags.
I look at Grayson who lets his lips curve into a smirk. “Fuck that.” I laugh, turning to walk up the stairs.
Grayson pulls on my waist, “Oh, you’re not going anywhere.” He lifts me up to his shoulders as I my body freezes.
His hand caresses my lower back, traveling behind my thighs making me silent.
“Sit down.” He places me down as I send an angry expression, “C’mon Dove, I’m not even that bad.”
Liam nods, “He’s right. He’s pretty competitive.”
I stayed silent, Grayson’s wide eyes settled, “I’ll take that as a yes!” “It was most certainly not a yes.” I flip him off as he shakes his head.
“Once you have me as a Scrabble partner, you wouldn’t ever ask for another person again.”
“Doubtful.” I assert as he fidgets with his rings.
“Can we play the game now?” Verina asks politely as she hands the bag of words to Chris eagerly.
Chris picks up seven letters from the bag as did everyone else.
“Does everyone know the rules?” Juliette asks as everyone grew silent.
Liam beams, “Can we get three more letters? Ours suck and three is my favorite number!”
Margo tilts her head, “Okay, my favorite number is thirty, should we have thirty more Scrabble tiles to add?” She voices with attitude as Liam scowl.
Grayson places the tiles on the wooden stand, I rearrange them into alphabetical order. It was making me anxious when it wasn’t before.
“OCD much?” He questions as my lips thinned.
He places his hand on top of mine, caressing my hand as I breath out, “I like them in alphabetical order too.” He makes notes, earning a smile from me.
Liam mocks Margo before he places the letters “O” and “E” down next to each other, “That is not a word.” I acknowledge.
“Of course, it is!” Liam insists as Margo surprisingly backed him up, “It’s a suffix.”
“It’s desperate.” I sneered, squinting my eyes at him.
Grayson gives a smug look, “If you put down a different word, I’m going to shove this wooden stand up your ass, Brookshire.”
Neil laughs, “He’d probably like it.”
I looked over at Liam who was mindlessly staring at me with intense focus, I couldn’t help but grow uncomfortable. I fidgeted in a way, letting
Grayson know I felt uneasy.
Grayson’s face turns into a scowl, “Is something wrong with your face Brookshire?” He addresses Liam, while Neil grins widely.
“You know Prince… If you’re fake dating Adrianna, you’re technically dating me. I mean come on… the dark hair, the dark eyes, the tanned skin, I’m practically your type! Except you can stand me and we’ve seen each other naked.”
My eyes widen as everyone laughs. Grayson’s face was scrunched up like he didn’t need to envision Liam and him in a relationship.
“You and Adrianna do not look remotely alike. That’s disgusting.” He gags.
I burst out a grin, now understanding why Liam was heavily examining me, prior to this wonderful conversation.
I look over at Margo, who was now examining both of us, “Margo, I swear to god if you tell me I look like Liam I will never let you borrow my Birkin.”
She pretends as if she wasn’t doing anything by putting her hands in the air, with no guilt.
“I didn’t even say anything!”
Verina laughs, “You were thinking it.”
Juliette shakes her head, “Are we going to skip over the fact that they’ve seen each other naked?”
Neil nods, “Hockey locker shower room, it’s basically dick central in the fog.”
Juliette winces, “I didn’t need to know that.”
“Hey, you asked!” Neil suddenly places his hand in the air.
“Ahem!” Chris coughs loudly, making the whole group quiet down. “Sorry.” We all say in unison.
Silence.
Until Liam explodes into a laughing fit, everyone joins in hysterically laughing.
Chris on the other hand looked miserable as we quieted down.
Chris takes off the two letters from the middle, placing down “alright”
in the middle using up all of his letters.
He leans back, “How many points is that?” He says in a way that was overly confident.
“Great job, Chris!” Grayson exclaimed as I looked up at his heated face.
“Shut up. This is killing you inside so bad.” Chris looks at Verina who couldn’t stop looking at him.
She was head over heels.
“It was Verina who put it together.” Chris mentions as her face lightens
up.
Juliette connects the word, “ratify” from the previous work as we all
look at her.
“Why can’t you pick something normal?” Liam sneers as she cracks a smile.
“It’s not my fault you boys don’t know your vocabulary.” “We do.” Liam fires back.
“Well, maybe enhance it.” Juliette opens her book and starts reading.
Neil looked at her like she grew three heads.
I couldn’t help but smile at the interactions within this new group. But I would never admit that Margo was right.
A couple more rounds went on and a couple more arguments took place. It was pretty clear that everyone was getting frustrated, Grayson had looked like he was ready to strangle Liam.
He stood, running off with the bag of words while Chris and Neil tried to catch him. Everyone was laughing, it was great.
“I think that we might win.” I whisper to Grayson as he looks down at me nodding.
“You want any food?”
“No, I’m good.” I urged, not really realizing that I placed my head on Grayson’s shoulder.
He didn’t move. He didn’t dare to move. Margo looked at me, but my eyelids were too heavy to lift as she snapped a picture of Grayson looking at me.
“This definitely looks believable.” She beams as I straighten, pulling away from Grayson’s cold body.
“You have to be kidding me.” Verina stands up. “What is it?”
“Grayson, when were you going to tell us that your father is hosting a gala?” My eyes sparkled at the thought of beautiful gowns and shining chandeliers.
“I didn’t know.” He simply muttered while placing the word, “suppose” making us win the whole game, Neil flipped the board as Juliette groans. They won second place.
“And the winners are the best people ever!” I start twirling around as Grayson lifts me up.
“I still hate you though.” He mutters as I look down at him smiling. Of course, he did.
“Well, I loathe you, so it doesn’t matter what you think.” I walked away as Margo walked in front of me without saying it, I knew what she was trying to say.
Did I have fun? Maybe.
