rose
I was not preparedfor Jovie to show up holding Risk. Ireallywasn’t prepared for Reed to show up with his baseball cap on backwards again.
We pushed off game night for almost a week. I’ve fully recovered and returned to work, but Reed said I should be at full strength for an evening with Jovie. We’re situated around my dining table, drawing country cards and placing our army pieces on the big game board between us. We’ve been at this for twenty minutes already and we’re still in the set-up phase. This game is going to takeforever.
But I don’t care. Jovie made a playlist for our game night on her phone—mostly girly pop songs that I’m pretty sure she chose specifically to mess with Reed. Every time a new song comes on, she watches his reaction, smirking away at him. He sighs each time as though they rehearsed her excitement and his pretend annoyance. She gets up every other song to do a dance and tell us the music is just too good to resist. At this rate, we might never get our armies prepared to battle.
But Reed puts up with it all because he obviously loves the heck out of her. Her giggling and chattering cracks his grumpy façade, letting his affection for her shine out. He’s gentle andpatient, and she clearly knows she rules the roost with him. If my heart wasn’t already lost to this man, tonight would be the night.
“Would you rather always be sticky or always be smelly?” Jovie uses the time between her turns to ask unhinged “Would you rather” questions. I’m starting to suspect she does it to distract us from whatever strategy we should be developing on the board. If it’s possible to have strategy in this game? I’m still trying to understand how you can plan ahead if the battles are all determined by dice throws.
“I guess…sticky.” I pop a Nerds cluster in my mouth. I’ve got several bowls of different types of candies along with three kinds of chips set out at one end of the table like I expect five more pre-teens to show up. Overboard is the theme tonight.
“Smelly.” Reed has both his elbows on the table, wheels turning behind his eyes as Jovie places her army units. Is he actually formulating a plan? “Not much of a change for me.”
Jovie giggles. “I’d choose sticky, too. I don’t want to be gross all day like Uncle Reed.”
He reaches over to lightly tug at the end of her long braid. “Thanks, nugget.”
My turn comes around again, and I roll the dice to find out how many army units to place on which country. If everything is predetermined by cards and dice, how am I supposed to skew the play in my favor? “This is a really confusing game.”
“If you think this is bad, do not play board games with Graham. His favorites come with one-hundred-page instruction manuals.”
“Haven’t you played Risk before?” Jovie asks me.
“Maybe once at a friend’s house? I don’t think we used the rules.” I remember laying out all the pieces but not the actual game play. Judging by tonight, that’s probably as far as we got.
“A free-for-all would be quicker, but Jovie’s a stickler.” Reed softly smiles at his niece, and I think my heart gives out.
“Who’s your best friend?” Jovie wants to know.
“My best friend, Brianna, got married three years ago andmoved to Utah. I don’t really have a new best friend yet.” I’ve tried, but making small talk over produce at the grocery store is more of a weirdo tactic than a solid way to create new friendships.
“You can make another best friend.” Jovie’s big green eyes get even wider than when I told her I’d rather always be healthy than always be rich. “Maybe it’s Uncle Reed!”
I meet his gaze over the table and will myself not to let all my emotions show on my face. He’s proven himself a good friend several times over this last month. He’s here for me when I need him, listens when I overshare, and uplifts and encourages me like best friends do. He brings me sweet treats, too, an important quality skewing the scales in his favor.
“Maybe he is my best friend.”
As he stares back at me with those brown eyes that have become my new favorite color, “best friend” doesn’t feel like a strong enough term.
“Would you rather fight one bear-sized chicken or ten chicken-sized bears?” Jovie asks, scanning the board to decide how to place her pieces.
I snort, breaking out of my stare down with Reed. “I feel like I’d be dead either way.”
“Ten chicken-sized bears is the way to go,” Reed says.
“I would love to see that fight.”
The pizzas arrive, and Reed gets up to accept the delivery. Jovie takes advantage of the moment, leaning closer to whisper to me. “Are you in love with Uncle Reed?”
Nothing gets past this little gal. But I can’t very well answer her when I haven’t answered the question for myself yet.
“I think he’s really wonderful,” I whisper back.
“I bet he’s in love with you.”
Hope unfurls in my heart like the endless petals of a peony bloom.