I take a chance, lean in toward Grady, and blow out a shaky breath. His arm pauses for a brief second, and I pounce, grabbing the ship from the table and handing it off to Cheyenne. Like a pro, she grabs the ship, hops out of her chair, and runs around the table to Lisa, who is dumping wings out of the plastic bags and into a glass bowl.
“That’s fucked,” Grady says and leans against the back of his chair. He takes a pull of his beer and shakes his head. “You’re supposed to be on my team, Chey!”
“Ha! You grounded me last month for being like ten minutes late for curfew. You’re on your own, dude,” she says. He grumbles something about an hour and fickle memories, but doesn’t make a stink out of it.
Lisa and Cheyenne bring bowls of wings and dip to the table, along with empty plates and a lot of napkins. I finish off my coffee and opt for a Coke before we dig into dinner. The entire experience of sitting around the kitchen table with this family makes me yearn for something like this for myself—a group of people so tightly-knit that they can tease one another and even argue, but it’s all in good fun. I don’t doubt that, like any other family, they fight and have their differences, but they’re all just so relaxed around each other. I can’t imagine Cheyenne doing anything that would truly shame her father. I wonder what it must be like, to know that kind of love and devotion.
Dinner ends and, as the game begins, Grady lays out the rules of Street’Opoly for me. Cheyenne and Lisa object to playing his way, but he ignores them and breezes through his explanation. In some twisted way, Street’Opoly has the extra element of gang involvement. Apparently nobody ever chooses the iron or the thimble, so he puts them to use to represent two different street gangs that seek to control the game board. The best way to protect yourself from the damage they can do to your houses and hotels is to pay one of the gangs for protection, but that gang has to make sure they can keep you safe; a task which is apparently quite difficult during times of war between the thimble gang and the iron gang. Truth be told, by the time he and Cheyenne were done explaining the rules, I thought they both needed to be committed. As if the game doesn’t have enough rules, now I have to worry about The Thimbles street gang—which Grady represents—devaluing my properties. Since I snubbed Grady’s gang, he’s sworn to target me. Cheyenne runs The Irons street gang and promises me I’ll be safe. The very fact that I’m genuinely worried about an attack from The Thimbles as we start to play is ridiculous, and I mentally take note that if Grady and Cheyenne need to be committed, I ought to just book myself a neighboring room as well. Only, I think I’d like that almost as much as sharing a padded room with Grady.
Only Lisa refuses to pay street protection. I don’t know how that works, but she’s confident that she can handle herself. The one thing that this crazy version of Monopoly buys me is the opportunity to hear Grady talk. Every time I ask a question, he goes to answer, but then Cheyenne cuts him off, then he cuts her off, and they end up in some kind of bickering contest until Lisa steals a move when it’s not her turn and they notice her little dog is progressing on the board out of order. They don’t fight it, but it does stop them from nit-picking about why the other person is wrong.
I’m the biggest idiot in the world. In the three hours it takes us to play the game, I fall completely and totally in lust with Grady. It comes on so strong and immediate that it reminds me of my first kiss in ninth grade, and the first time a boy told me he loved me. It’s like being slapped across the face and punched in the gut, and it’s nothing like any lust I’ve felt before. It’s terrifying and exciting, and when Grady leans back in his chair and tosses an arm over my shoulders, I actually feel like I want to throw up. He’s so much of what I’ve always wanted in a man—strong, caring, protective, playful—and the more time I spend with him, the deeper I’m going to get. But it can’t be more than lust, a primal desire to be part of his world, even a little bit, because love doesn’t happen this quickly.