"Are you tired?" April asks me.
The clock on the microwave reads that it's past 1am. The rest of everyone who was here for game night is either asleep in the living room or back in their own home. Now, it's just me and April who are still up.
"Nope," I say. "I'm a night owl."
She smiles and shuffles the deck of cards between her hands.
"Are you?" I ask. "You're an early riser. You were up at like, 5 today, singing in the kitchen."
Her eyes widen. "You did not hear that."
"I so did."
She plunks her forehead on the table and I watch her shoulders bounce with giggles.
"I loved your rendition of Blank Space," I say. "You have a nice voice."
"Stop!" she says. "Literally, stop talking about it. Do you wanna keep playing?"
"Changing the subject on me…" I say.
"Jackson, shut up," she says. "Pick a game from the bowl. We'll play."
Earlier tonight, she wrote down a bunch of card games on little slips of paper and mixed them all up, and we'd been drawing from them all night. We played Go Fish, Phase 4, Uno and Old Maid. I dip my hand into the fishbowl and mix them around, then pull one out. I unfold it dramatically and clear my throat to read it.
"Strip poker," I say confidently, and watch all the color fade from her face.
"Wait, what?" she says. "I didn't write that… I definitely did not write that." She narrows her eyes towards the doors that lead to the living room, where a few people are sleeping. "It was probably Alex."
"We don't have to do it," I say.
She rests her forearms on the table and leans forward. "The rest of the games are lame," she says. "I just… don't know the rules. Teach me how to play?"
Something weird but regretfully familiar happens in my pants. She pulls her bottom lip into her mouth and chews on it, shedding her cardigan before I even open my mouth.
"You're getting a little ahead of yourself," I laugh.
"It's hot in here," she says, draping it over the back of her chair. "Okay. I'm ready to listen."
I sigh and let my eyes wander her face. "You sure you wanna do this?"
"Shut up, Jackson," she says. "You're ruining it."
I tell her the rules on autopilot, and she nods the whole way through as she understands them. We get our cards and I have an absolutely shit hand, so I shake my head and start to laugh.
"What?" she says.
"Nothing."
It's slow going. It starts with her taking off her socks, which doesn't do anything for me. I have to take my socks off, too, but I have nothing else before my shirt goes.
She giggles as I yank it off over my head, pulling one of her legs up on the chair to tuck it under her body.
"Stop laughing, dude," I say. "You won't be far behind."
I'm not wrong. She has no other choice but to take her shirt off next turn, and I can see that she's nervous about it. I don't say anything, though. I don't want to make it worse.
"Okay," she says, all breathy. She sets her cards down and does that girl thing where they cross their arms at the waist, then tug their shirt upward in one fluid motion.
It turns me on more than it should.
Then she's sitting there across from me in a pink-and-white striped bra. Just that. Her shoulders cave in self-consciously and I can see one little roll on her belly from the way she's slouching, but she doesn't chicken out. She keeps it off. She fixes the bra strap that was falling down her arm and shakes her hair away from her face. "What?" she says. "Stop staring."
"You stared at me," I say.
"Yeah," she says. "Well."
"Well," I echo. "Let's keep going."
As we continue to play, I can't stop staring at her chest. Nothing much is showing above the fabric of her bra, but it's just enough. Her breasts move slightly when she laughs, and I try to make myself less obvious. What's very obvious right now, though, is the tent that's being made out of my boxers when I take my pants off.
"You better not get one more…" she says, head tilting.
"Shut up," I say. "Really. Shut. Up."
She giggles, but eats her words next turn. Her pants have to come off, too. She stands up and meets my eyes as she lets out a long breath, then shimmies out of her tight leggings. Before she sits down, I take a second to look at her in her mismatched underthings - that bra and bright teal underwear that hug her hips just right.
"What?" she says, her mouth pulled up in a ghost of a smile.
"I - nothing," I say, directing my eyes back down.
"It's okay," she says, and still doesn't sit down. "Jackson," she says, even softer. I look up at her and she glances at the living room doors before taking a few steps towards me.
Completely catching me by surprise, she sits forward on my lap with her arms over the back of my chair. I can't believe this is happening - we'd been trying to forget about this.
Now I know that it's been impossible for her as it was for me.
"It's okay."