like I hadn’t thought through my entire plan. Now that I was here, I wasn’t sure what to do. It wasn’t like I could just hop on the couch and start playing without him.
I casually moved toward the living room that reminded me so much of mine and Dave’s back home. And just like last time, the dragon tank in the corner caught my attention. It really was a beautiful display; he couldn’t deny his talent at making it. In fact, it was enough to make me interested in the books that had inspired it. Although, that would have to wait a while, considering I had boot camp in my very near future, and I doubted I’d have time to read anything.
“What game would you like to play?” he asked as he turned on the console. He grabbed both controllers and then joined me on the couch. The best part about his sofa and what made it so much better than Tiffany’s was that there wasn’t much room, which meant we had no choice but to sit close together.
“Whatever, it doesn’t matter. He said it’d be about an hour, so anything that we can play in that timeframe.” It was good that we were on a time limit; otherwise, I could’ve spent all day at his place.
As we played, I kept my eye on the clock, knowing how easily the time could get away from me if I wasn’t paying attention. After about forty minutes, it began to storm outside. Not just rain and wind, but bolts of lightning and heavy thunder that made his small pool house rumble.
“Looks like you’re staying longer than an hour,” he said, almost teasingly, although part of me wanted to believe he was excited about that.
Just then, another lightning bolt lit up the dark sky, immediately followed by a crack of thunder. It wouldn’t have been too bad if it hadn’t knocked out the power. “Yeah, and now it looks like we’re gonna be playing Monopoly instead of Minecraft.”
“No, we’re not, because I don’t have Monopoly.”
“What games do you have?”
“PlayStation,” he said with a laugh, though it was obvious he wasn’t joking.
“Then what are we going to do? Just sit here and twiddle our thumbs?”
Without saying anything, Jacoby got up and went to another room. A minute or so later, he returned with a few candles and a lighter. They weren’t the type of candles one would use to make a room smell nice. They seemed to be more of the “essential” type, which was okay with me, because I wasn’t sure I’d be able to weather the storm if he set the mood with some exotic fragrance.
“I also have these.” He pulled out a worn deck of cards from his pocket before taking a seat on the floor on one side of the coffee table.
I slid off the couch to take the other side, sitting cross-legged in front of him, a flickering candle between us. This could go one of two ways, and at the moment, I wasn’t entirely sure if I cared which way it went.
“I hope you don’t mind, but war is about the only game I remember how to play,” he said while shuffling the deck.
“Fine by me.” The silence that filled the room as he dealt the cards between us became too overwhelming, and I needed to fill it with something. After contemplating what I should say for way too long, I decided to ask, “Why do you live in your sister’s pool house?”
Apparently, he found my question funny, because he laughed deep enough—though rather quietly—to cause his shoulders to jump. “Would you like the long version or the nutshell answer?”
I glanced out the window, realizing that we had time for him to tell me every aspect of his entire life, so I said, “The long version will do.”
“Well, about four years ago, I bought a house with my girlfriend. We were together for over five years at that point, so I thought it would be fine. Which it was…for about three years. Then we broke up and had to split everything. I certainly wasn’t about to buy her out of the house and live there alone, and neither was she, so we sold it, split the equity, and I moved in here.”
I waited a moment, not sure if he was done with his story. When I figured he was, I said, “That’s the long version? What’s the nutshell story, then?”