TELL ME WHAT YOU FIND WHEN YOU READ MY MIND (A BADLY DRAWN GIRAFFE)

Board games have been banished among them a long time ago.

They still play video games together, of course – nothing could keep Leo away from his consoles – sometimes cards and even role play games, when Adam feels confident enough to pretend he's something is not, doing stuff he's not really doing, in a place he's not in. But anything with a board, fake money, tokens and such has been buried away, forgotten, because it triggers the memories of them being the drunkest they have ever been in their life so far. All it takes is a die, and Adam remembers the awful feeling of losing control over his own body. Leo is once again bended over the toilet bowl, really believing he's going to puke himself dead (and vaguely wishing so at the same time). And Annie can feel again the sore in her lower back when she fell down from the table, after dancing half-naked and shamelessly so.

They were young, that was high school and they didn't know none of them couldn't handle vodka.

Tonight, it should be fine, tho.
They are in college, now. They are adults. And they had plenty of time to learn what drinks they are allowed to drink and in what quantity. There's no reason not to play a board game together. Actually, that's the best idea to spend some time together and get to know Cody better. He and Leo have been together for weeks now, so it's about time Adam and Annie meet him properly.

“It doesn't have to be Pictionary,” Cody offers, as he looks at them eyeing the game box suspiciously. The air is so tense around the table, it's almost hard to breathe. “I only said that because it's my favorite, but we can play something you like. Monopoly, perhaps. Or even Scrabble if you like words more.”

“It's not that,” Leo says, knowing that Cody feels easily self-conscious if he thinks he did or said something wrong. He put some safe cans of coke and two bowls of pop corn and chips on the table, and sits down opposite to Cody.

“We had a bad experience involving a board game,” Annie adds, smiling sweetly to Cody. And then she proceeds to explain. They were fourteen, she had the house to herself for the first time, she had the boys over, and they had the tragic idea of mixing a classic board game with a drinking game. As it turns out, you don't want to drink every time you have to pay when you play Monopoly. “We haven't played a single board game in six years.”

“Too many memories,” Adam nods, and then he opens the box of Pictionary, proving himself the hero among them once again.

“Did you really feel so sick?” Cody asks Leo, as he takes out the pencils and the little blocks to draw on. There's a vague amused tone in his voice, but he doesn't dare to laugh. He has seen Leo drink – drink heavily also – but he has never seen him so drunk as to be sick or even out of himself.

“Are you kidding me?” Leo says. “I threw up twice in Annie's room before reaching the bathroom.”

“And all the way there,” she reminds him. “There was a line of two days worth of meals along the stairs of the first floor.”

“Eeew,” Cody makes a face, but he can't help but chuckle this time.

“I thought I was gonna die,” Leo says dramatically. “And I though Annie might be dead already. She fell from a chair on a table straight on the only piece of floor without any rug. Her ass made an ominous sound hitting the ground.”

“I remember seeing her on the floor, whining and trying to roll on her side,” Adam says, shuffling the cards. “But every time I tried to stand up to go to her, my legs gave in. I think I managed to move two inches that night. It was horrible.”

“And then what happened?” Cody asks.

Leo sighs. “Annie's parents came back, and laughed at us a great deal. Then, her father gave us this disgusting concoction that tasted like rotten egg or something, I swear I can still taste it, and then called my fathers and Adam's mother. We were all grounded for, like, forever.”

“The best part of ninth grade's first semester,” Adam supplies. “Or at least that was the initial sentence. Then it was reduced to the first two months as mutually agreed by all the parents involved.”

“They probably didn't want to permanently damage our social life,” Leo reasons.

Once the board is set, two tokens – one blue and one red – are already on the starting line, the cards are all in their boxes and the sand timer is ready to be turned over, they look at each other. “So, what are the teams?” Annie asks.

“Well, we have two people who can actually draw,” Leo says, “and they can't play together. So I say me and Annie, we take one of you each.”

“Am I allowed to choose your boyfriend?” Annie asks, knowing the answer already.

Leo doesn't even turn towards her as he grabs a handful of pop corn to shove in his mouth. “No.”

“Couldn't you just say I wanna play with Cody, suit yourselves?” Adam asks, forever annoyed by Leo's need to make everything more complicated.

Annie chuckles. “Then, I'm stuck with you, Walker.”

“Don't be too excited about it,” Adam snorts. “You're embarrassing.”

Annie chuckles louder and throws a pop corn at him. “Oh, come on!”

Cody looks at the three of them and smiles sheepishly. They've been friends for so long and it shows. The way they talk and deal with each other, the way they always seem to know what the others are going to say or want next. It's a warming thought, but it makes a little hard for him to blend in. It's easy to feel the outcast when those three are together, because it's almost like dealing with one single person. One he doesn't know.

“Are you sure about this?” He asks Leo. “Adam is way better than me at drawing.”

Leo smiles at him. “I don't know about that,” he says. “Even if, I know how his brain works when it's about giving hints, and I'm pretty sure I'm better off with you. Plus, I want to play with you,” he adds, and then smirks. Cody knows what he's gonna say before he says it, and he blushes. “I always want to play with you.” He leans over the table and kisses him sweetly.

“Aw! So cute!” Annie says, watching them as she would look at two puppies.

“No smooching! Stop the smooching!” Adam protests instantly, making them all laugh. “Smooching is not allowed at my table. Come on, Romeo, roll the dice.”

Leo chuckles and throws the dice. “Six” He moves his and Cody's token on the board and looks at the square it ends on. “Yellow. P. What's P? I don't remember the rules.”

Adam took possession of the instruction sheet when the box was opened and he now proceeds to read from it like he's been invested from God himself to do so. “Person, place, animal. You must draw the word printed in the yellow box on the card you choose.”

“And I have to guess,” Cody adds with a smile.

“Good luck with that,” Adam says. “He couldn't draw a stick figure if his life depended on it.”

“Shut up!” Leo snorts, choosing a card. He reads it and nods. “Okay. I got it,” he says, putting the card away.

“You've got one minute. Are you ready?” Adam asks, ready to turn the timer.

Leo's got the pencil in his hand already. “Yes.”

“Go!”

Cody instantly kneels on his chair, leaning on the table to have a closer look at the piece of paper Leo is drawing on. Adam wasn't wrong, Leo can't draw. None of his lines are straight and he's got no sense of proportions at all. But he's very lazy and, as it turns out, that's a good quality for this game because he draws only what he really needs, which translates into a lot of different hints drawn and changed very quickly.

The circle with two eyes, some sort of snout and two ears on top of the head tells Cody that this is an animal. He tries with dog and wolf, but Leo shakes his head. He draws... horns on the head, maybe. So Cody tries with moose and deer. Then Leo's pencil goes down, drawing the longest neck line ever, something that would make a five years old green with envy in a kindergarten.

“Giraffe!” Cody screams. “It's a giraffe!”

“Yes!” Leo puts down the pencil and gives his boyfriend an high five. It took them no more than twenty seconds.

“That was easy,” Adam snorts. Rolling the dice. “I wanna see you two with a real challenge. Five. All play.”

“Meaning?” Asks Annie.

“Both teams compete with each other. The designated players draw the same word, the first team to guess wins.”

Adam chooses the card, and he and Cody read the word printed in the red box. The word is nuclear plant, and they both frown. Cody's face is so dark for a moment that Leo loses all hope to even get close to the meaning of what he's about to draw. It must be a hard one.

When the sand timer is turned, Cody and Adam start to draw. They're both so focused on the pieces of paper in front of them that it almost looks like this is serious business. Adam's trying to be precise and detailed, to be as clear as possible. But Cody knows Leo. So, instead of drawing a random nuclear plant, he draws the chimneys of the one Homer Simpson works in, with Homer on the side for good measure. In the same style The Simpsons are drawn in. It takes Leo a little more than thirty seconds to get it.

“Homer, Springfield, Work... Plant! Nuclear plant!” He screams, slamming his hand on the table.

Cody chuckles at his enthusiasm. “Yes.”

Annie looks at Adam's drawing, that looks just like a square thing for now. “How was I supposed to get that this is a nuclear plant?” She asks, genuinely confused.

“Well, I was trying to draw a planimetry, first. I was getting to the chimneys later,” Adam answers, almost outraged that Annie hasn't thought about that. Annie just shakes her head.

In the turns that follow, Adam learns how to be a little quicker and less precise, so Annie can guess vampire, warm and a very hard to rain. But it's Cody's perfect rendition of Marie Antoinette (with the head rolling!) and Leo's sad excuse for a platypus (consisting in a circle with a beak on a side and a spatula tail on the other, and four little legs) that make them win the match. The victory is celebrated with a lot of smooching, of course.

Later, Adam and Leo are on the couch, drinking a beer and watching some match or other – Leo doesn't really know. Adam was there, and he decided to join him. Annie offered to take Cody home after the game, possibly because she wanted some time alone with him, and so it's just the two of them now.
“You really suck at drawing, man,” Adam says, looking at Leo's scrabbling leftovers from the Pictionary game that lie scattered on the table. “Really suck.”

“Well, that's why I'm studying to be a lawyer and not an artist like you.”

“With your handwriting, it was either lawyer or doctor,” Adam reasons. “And you suck at bedside manners.”

Leo chuckles. “You're just mad because you can draw, and I still won.”

“Nah, you're just lucky as fuck,” Adam shrugs. “And Cody is proof enough of that. He's a doll, and you don't deserve him.”

Leo frowns, playfully. “Should I be worried? Are you gonna make a move on him?”

“If I was gay, I probably would,” Adam snorts. “Just to spite you.”

“Too bad I'm not gonna let go of him, so...”

Adam refrains from saying the only name in the world that would disprove that sentence.
He knows that that would turn a perfect lovely day into shit in no time, and he doesn't want that.
Just for this once, he can believe Leo will be true to his words. Instead, he grabs Leo and rubs his head sore with his knuckles, enjoying the little, undignified screams that he lets out.

If anything, they make up plenty for his defeat.