And the game dragged on even slower because Blake kept joking with Conrad as he filmed us. Finally, I’d had enough, and I waited through three turns of inaction, saving all my scrolls for several moves in rapid succession, first wiping out all Blake’s creatures, then making him discard his hand so he had no chance to repopulate, and finally power-boosting all my giants at once so I could go in for lethal damage with a single attack.
“Uh. Wow. Good game, I guess.” Blake blinked at me as he realized just how completely he had lost.
“Yes.” I shook his hand, same as I would anyone else, but I was already packing up my cards, not interested in postmatch chitchat.
“You sure I can’t buy you dinner?” Blake didn’t even bother looking my direction this time.
“Yeah. We sort of already ate.” Sounding both hungry and regretful, Conrad had a hearty handshake for Blake, complete with arm slap—the sort of easy “bro” contact that I had absolutely no talent for.
“We need to get going.” I headed for the exit, trusting that eventually he’d follow when he finished basking in all the attention.
“Gee. You couldn’t let him get in even a single hit on you?” As I’d expected, Conrad easily caught up with me right as I was unlocking the car. “You completely waxed him.”
“Yes. That was the point.” Too irritated to drive, I climbed into the passenger seat.
“Wow. Remind me to never piss you off.”
Conrad being impressed with my play went a long way toward calming me down. “It was an easy win. Those decks always think they squeeze like a vise, but really, they’re just jokes. You could have won against him.”
“High compliment from you. And yeah, I could have beat him. But I might not have cut off his balls to do it.” Conrad laughed. “With these sorts of things, you need to play friendly, you know? Let the other person think they have a shot at winning at least. It’s not all cutthroat.”
“It is to me.” Not liking how petulant I sounded, I added, “Besides, I need the practice. I don’t want to get soft right before the tournament.”
“Being nice isn’t the same thing as going soft.” Turning onto a busy main road, Conrad headed back toward the interstate. “Can we get more food before we get on the highway? The stuff we had earlier has already worn off.”
“You should have taken Blake up on the dinner offer. He seemed rather determined to take you out.”
“He was just being nice.”
I had to snort at that. “Nice isn’t looking at you like you’d make an awesome dessert.”
“Okay. Maybe he was a little flirty.” Conrad’s careless shrug and pleased half smile irritated me to no end.
“You didn’t need to encourage him.”
“What the heck, man? You jealous he wasn’t flirting with you?”
“Hardly.” No way was I confessing that any jealousy, if that’s what one wanted to label it, went more the other direction. “I simply don’t want either of us getting distracted. We’ve got a lot of miles to go.”
“He wasn’t exactly my type either, but there’s nothing wrong with taking a break here and there. Life has a way of screwing people over regardless, so you might as well find fun where you can.”
I scoffed at that. “In my experience, a careful plan goes a long way to avoiding disaster.” Except of course when it didn’t, but I didn’t want to think about that right then—think about how years of planning had failed me. And maybe my big, grand plan hadn’t come to fruition, but I still believed that preparation and caution were vital character traits.
“And your experience is rather…sheltered. No offense.”
I forced myself not to sound insulted as I pointed ahead of us. “There’s a hamburger place. Get some food.”
It wasn’t until we were in the parking lot, him with a cheap burger, me with some fries, that I finally gave in to my unrelenting curiosity. “What do you mean Blake wasn’t your type? He was into you. Even I could see that.”
“Hey, I’m not that undiscriminating. A guy has to have some standards. Just because someone is available doesn’t mean I have to tap that.”
“Yeah,” I said weakly, really wanting to know what his “standards” were. I mean, I doubted they included “short, Jewish, and nerdy” as prerequisites, but I wasn’t above hoping. “He wasn’t unattractive though.”
Conrad laughed hard enough to make me fidget in my seat. “I really do need to take you to a bar or party, show you how this works. Cute isn’t everything, and you can’t let yourself be overly distracted by the packaging.”
“I don’t need…sex lessons or something.” Appetite gone, I set my fries aside.
“Yeah, you kind of do.” Conrad’s voice was light, but my muscles still clenched and I swallowed back a quick retort. “Assuming you’re into the idea of hooking up with someone eventually, we need to teach you how to pick well. Or else you’re likely to get screwed over and not in the fun way.”