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Come with me, Max had said. I don’t think Lupe invited anyone else from work. I won’t know anyone there. We can just stay for a couple of hours, drink their beer, and then head back to yours. I won’t have any fun without you. Please. Please please please please.
Esther had given in and said yes after Max’s third please, because it was hard to say no to Max when she was begging, and harder to say no when she was begging and unbuttoning Esther’s shirt. Esther thought of herself as someone strong-willed, but Max had a cute face, clever hands, and little shame when she knew what she wanted. The more she used them on Esther, the weaker Esther's willpower seemed to get.
If it made her into a fool, she couldn’t find it in herself to be upset about it, even if it meant she was spending a Saturday night in a stranger’s kitchen, drinking the free beer that Max had promised, while she listened to Max’s increasingly loud voice coming from the living room.
“Oh my god,” Max was saying. “What am I doing wrong now?”
“You can’t just claim a route with a tunnel,” a voice said. Esther had heard it enough in the last hour to identify it as Lupe’s now. “You have to draw three more cards from the deck.”
“You never explained that,” Max said. “What the fuck is a route with a tunnel?”
“It’s—the tunnel routes,” Lupe replied. “These. If you draw any cards that are the same color as the route, you have to discard that number from your hand, too, or you lose your turn.”
“Oh, I lose my turn, huh,” Max said. “Convenient that you explain that to me after I go.”
“I thought you understood!” Lupe said, a little shrill.
“Uh-huh,” Max said, muttering something under her breath that was too quiet for Esther to understand, though she could safely assume it wasn’t flattering. Max was one of the most competitive people she’d ever met, especially when it was something other than baseball. On a team, she had a fierceness that made her a passionate and supportive teammate; on her own, she was a sore loser and an even sorer winner.
It was one of the many things about Max that had wedged itself into an irrational part of Esther’s brain and made her smile when she thought about it. If it were anyone else, she might have thought it was a little annoying to care so much—and more annoying to be so loud about it—but it felt different with Max. A lot of things did. Max expressed her emotions with an ease that had felt intimidating in the beginning but had become more and more grounding in the few months they'd been seeing each other. Esther wasn’t ready to look closer at why, but it felt good to let herself indulge in Max’s presence anyway, to let Max light up parts of her that Esther hadn’t acknowledged in a while.
It even felt good, knowing Max well enough to know that she wouldn’t mind if Esther hid in the kitchen until the game had ended. They had learned early on that they shouldn’t compete against each other. Maybe Esther would join later if the group moved onto a more cooperative game, or until Max wore herself out and wanted to head out. Until then, Esther was content with her beer, a bag of sesame honey almonds that had been left on the counter, and a Tigers game on her phone that had gone into the 10th inning. She could probably wait it out for at least another hour before she got restless, if it came to it.
“Come on, Báez,” she muttered, as the camera showed him rounding third base after Soto’s line drive up the middle.
“Oh, come on,” Lupe griped from the other room. “You know I need that route—”
“I’m sorry,” an unfamiliar voice said, and whoever it was seemed genuinely apologetic. “I don’t know where else I can go—”
“Good,” Max said, with a pettiness that made Esther smile despite herself. “Don’t let her—”
“Who are the Tigers playing?” a different voice asked, this time a few feet away from Esther. It was only a lifetime of dealing with older brothers that kept Esther from flinching as she looked up.
In the kitchen doorway was the lanky blond who had opened the door when Max and Esther had first arrived. Esther hadn’t caught their name, but Max had seemed familiar enough with them that she hadn’t asked, so Esther hadn’t either, and then they had called for Lupe and disappeared into the crowd that had, at that point in time, been gathered in and around the kitchen.
The crowd had since moved to the living room. Esther realized that she must look strange now, standing alone in the kitchen, which was too narrow to fit two strangers comfortably.
“The White Sox,” she said, glancing back at her phone just long enough to see that Báez had scored the run. She said a quiet prayer—God, fuck the White Sox—and then pressed the power button to turn her phone screen off. She gave the blond stranger a brief smile. “Hey. Am I in your way?”
“Hey,” they said, leaning against the doorframe and returning Esther’s smile with a scrunch of their nose and a shake of their head. “You’re good, if you want to grab me a beer from the fridge.”
“Sure,” Esther said, pivoting on her heel to open it. As a general rule, she didn’t like opening other peoples’ fridges without permission, but she had already broken it by grabbing herself a beer. At least this time she was being asked. “The—Leff? Leffuh?”
“Nah, that’s Lu’s,” they said. “A Pabst is fine.”
“Ah,” Esther said, reaching for one of the many tallboys of Pabst that lined the fridge's bottom shelf. “I owe Lupe a beer, then.”
“Yeah,” they said, blunt enough that it startled a laugh out of Esther. Their mouth twitched as they grabbed the can with a quiet, “Thanks,” and settled back into the doorframe.
Between that and their bare feet, they moved with the easy comfort of someone who probably lived here. Esther felt even more certain of it when the beer fizzed a little after opening, spilling over the lip and down the side of the can, and they just wiped it clean with the front of their shirt. It was an already dingy shirt, beer stains aside. Esther couldn’t help but look at them and wonder what exactly they were doing here now, idling on the fringe of the party.
They took a sip of their beer and looked back. Esther took a sip of her own stolen beer to waste a few more seconds. When it became obvious they didn’t plan to fill the silence, she cleared her throat and set down the beer so she could hold out her hand. “I’m Esther. I’m with Max.”
“I know,” they said, taking Esther’s hand in a brief but firm grip, and then they finally smiled at her, with a teasing edge that both set Esther at ease and made her want to roll her eyes. “Lupe mentioned Max was bringing someone. Saw you two come in together.”
“Right, yeah,” Esther said. They looked at each other for a few more beats. The stranger took a long pull of their beer and barely even blinked. Esther let herself roll her eyes now. “This is normally where the other person offers their name, too.”
“Jess,” they said.
“Jess,” Esther repeated, mostly to fill another second of the silence that Jess seemed to settle so comfortably in. It was normally something Esther didn’t have an issue with, either, but it was a little unnerving now, standing in what was presumably Jess’ kitchen with her contraband beer and Jess’ amused half-smile. “Nice to meet you. My bad for stealing a beer.”
Jess hummed and gestured with their chin at the open bag on the counter. “Those are Lu’s almonds, too.” They didn’t give Esther a chance to defend herself—the bag had already been open—before they continued: “Is there a reason you’re in the kitchen and not playing the game with everyone else?”
“Lupe,” Max’s voice cut in. “I’m not kidding, don’t touch my trains—”
“Yeah,” Esther said, biting down on her smile as Max’s loud voice was drowned out by Lupe’s even louder one. “Max and I tried to play board games together a couple of months ago. You can probably imagine how that went.” Jess gave a short nod. “Thought I'd sit this one out and stay on her good side tonight."
"Yeah, I get that. I got kicked out of this last game for 'winning too much,'" Jess said, their smile turning a little indulgent. They looked at Esther for a beat longer before they took a half-step back out of the doorway and nodded toward the hall. "Anyway, I was planning on sitting outside for a bit. You want to join me?”
Esther opened her mouth to say no but found herself hesitating. It had been entertaining enough, quietly messing around on her phone and listening in on Max bickering with Lupe, but she couldn’t deny that she was getting tired of being on her feet, and she wasn’t familiar enough with their game to know how much longer it would last.
“We don’t need to talk much,” Jess added with a shrug. “You can finish watching your game, if you want. Lu will come find me when they're done."
The idea of being able to finish watching the game made the offer more appealing. The idea of Max coming to look for her too when they were done—maybe gloating from a win, or sulky from a loss, but wanting for Esther’s attention either way—made it even more so.
"Yeah, sure," she said, straightening from her own slump against the fridge. The smile that Jess gave her was the friendliest one yet. Esther smiled back and grabbed her beer from the counter, then she gestured with it at the almonds. "Can I bring these with me?"
"No," Jess said, with a surprisingly loud laugh. "No, if Lu catches you eating those, you’re fucked. You might not be allowed to come back.”
“Seriously?” Esther asked.
“Seriously?” Lupe said, like an angry echo from the living room. “Which one of you is hoarding all of the blue cards? Jesus—”
“You’re free to find out,” Jess said, and the fondness on their face didn’t make it feel like any less of a threat.
“Yeah, alright,” Esther said, partially because she believed Jess, but mostly because it didn’t seem worth it to take a chance. She didn’t know enough about Max and Lupe’s relationship to know if Max would even want to come back, but she knew if Max did, she wanted to come with her. If Max asked her anything, Esther wanted to say yes.