Unexpected Encounters [B.H.M.]

13

"By the way, I appreciate that you're not insisting on talking about my job all the time. I could imagine you're curious.."

I shrugged. "It would be a lie to say I'm not curious, yeah. But ... I ... well, it's not really my position to ask, is it? If you want to tell me then you're welcome to tell me, I'll listen to any stories, but if not then that's okay.""Are you sure? You can ask if you want to, but I appreciate a break from all of that too if I'm honest. Just somewhere where I can be normal."

He was a sweet one. "You can be normal here, yes. I'm not judging you. Do you want to play a board game maybe?"

He shrugged. "Sure, we can do that. What do you have?"

That was a good question actually. "Uhm... maybe that was a bad idea, I don't have very much. I rarely have enough people over for an actual board game session. I know I have playing cards somewhere, that's not an actual board game I know, but still..." I got up and knelt down in front of one of the cabinets I had in my living room. Anything game related would be in there. I dug out the playing cards that I had before I stumbled across a box I had forgotten about. "Oh would you look at that," I exclaimed. "I completely forgot about this."

"What?" He asked, leaning forward a little.

"My friends gave me Scrabble for my birthday... I've never even opened it, I've never played Scrabble before," I told him and got up with the box in my hand. "Are you up for working out how to play this?"

"I could teach you," he said with a small smile on his face.

Since it seemed like we had found our occupation for the evening I closed the cabinet door and returned to the couch. "You know how to play this?" I asked, examining the box as I sat down beside him.

"Do I know? I'm the unofficial Scrabble king of the band," he said, his smile growing a little.

I chuckled a little. "Unofficial Scrabble king? That's quite some title to have, impressive. Well if you want to play with an absolute beginner I'm totally up for that."

"Yes, I think that could be fun. I haven't played in quite some time, we used to play that endlessly on tours. It could get a little intense sometimes," he admitted and watched me open the foil wrapping of the box.

"That sounds like we have a fun night ahead," I chuckled and lifted the cardboard lid off the box. "Be fair though, I have no idea how this works."

"I'm always fair, don't worry. But I won't let you win just because you've never played," he cautioned, pushing up the sleeves of his shirt as he leaned forward.

I smiled and nodded. "Good, that wouldn't be fair anymore. How about you get everything out while I clear away a few things here?" I suggested and handed him the box before I made space on my coffee table. Brian separated all the tiles while I did that and unfolded the board. "So how does this work?"

"I can't believe you've never played this before," Brian said, shaking his head. "Okay, so the basic aim is to place words down with the tiles you have in such a combination that you get the most possible points."

"That sounds manageable, okay. How do we start?" I asked and looked at him.

"We each draw a letter tile and see who's closer to A," he instructed me, mixing all the tiles in the bag they had come in.

He let me go first, so I reach in and picked a letter, with Brian doing the same after me. I looked at mine and held it out for him. "I picked a H, and you?"

"L, damn it," he cursed quietly and dropped the L back in the bag.

I followed suit and looked at him. "What does that mean, and what do we do now?"