Somebody to Like

15 - Wild Card

**Amelie**

"UNO," Josh said with a wolfish grin from beside me as he slapped a card down on the pile in the middle of the coffee table. He seemed pretty confident that I didn't have a yellow card or an eight of anything. He was right.

I flipped my wild card onto the pile with a shouted "Ha!" and reached forward to pull the pile of ten Euro notes into a pile. Spreading them out into a fan I stood up and waved them over my head as I did a little bump and grind around the room. The pizzas we'd had for dinner may have been accompanied by several bottles of absolutely delicious Italian wine.

Gray dropped the massive pile of cards in his hand in disgust. "You're a savage competitor aren't you?"

I continued my dance around the room waving my pile of notes in everyone's faces. Bas and Lucy were wearing sunglasses and had refused to sit next to each other so I was not the only one with a competitive streak. "Yup. You try spending two rainy weeks with your cousins on a North Wales caravan holiday and see how it hones your UNO instincts."

"Who even invited her to play?" Ace pouted. A flurry of cards hit him in the face.

"You did you absolute berk. You could have checked she wasn't a ringer first!" Gray flicked one last card at him.

"So," I resumed my place on the sofa, "who's up for another game?" A chorus of groans broke out.

"You've emptied my pockets woman," Van complained, "I'm going to have to sell my child for medical experiments." I grinned at him recognising the Monty Python quote. My dad was obsessed with Monty Python.

Ace emitted an ominous chuckle and steepled his fingers in front of him. "Oh I think another round is very much in order but I know a way we can play where we all come out as winners. Who's in?"

There was a round of enthusiastic whoops and one very definitive, "No fuckin' way," from Van who took a sip of his mineral water and bestowed a bemused look of resignation upon the rest of us. I had no idea of what I was agreeing to but agree I did.

***

May I suggest that if someone ever suggests that you turn an innocent hand of UNO into a drinking game that you think long and hard about it. The reverses are a killer and don't even get me started on the draw fours. Armed with several bottles of limoncello Ace had proceeded to get us utterly obliterated.

Someone had won the game but I can't determine if it was the person who'd finished with no cards or the person who was drunkest. Oh wait. Both of those people were me. My victory dance involved choreography that would have done Beyoncé proud.

"So yeah," Kim slurred. I'd barely beaten her to claim the drunk jersey – apparently she'd been alcohol free since she'd found out she was pregnant with Rhiannon. Her story about the horrors of expressing milk made me glad that babies were at least a decade into my future. "That was how I found out that the love of my life was a cheating cockwomble." She slid sideways to gaze adoringly up at Van, who was not the cockwomble in question. On the contrary he was behaving like a doting father and husband with the way he avoided the booze and slipped off to the interconnecting suite every so often to check on the baby. "And then I found out I was wrong because Van is the love of my life. Now we've heard my dickhead ex story and Lucy and Bas have shared the horror that was Jennessee you have tell us your nightmare ex story!"

I dropped my head down between my knees and huffed out a sigh. When I looked up my hair hung in my face and I needed to grip Gray's leg for support. At some stage after my dance recital I'd slid off the couch to sit with my knees bent on the floor. Gray's leg beside me was acting like the wing on an old-fashioned armchair.