It all started with a game

Chapter 24

I chuckled, resting my chin on my arm. "Have you been to the beach here?" I'd been meaning to take her. It was my favorite place, a definite must on the list of places one needed to visit.

She shook her head. "No. I wanted to but Klaus is afraid of the beach."

My eyebrow shot up. The gorilla, that giant build of a human being, is afraid of something? "He's scared of the beach?" I stared at Beatrice, completely baffled.

Beatrice added the legs to her crab. "He got bit by a shark when he was eleven and refuses to go back." She said it so casually, like it was a completely normal experience to get bit by a shark.

My mouth fell open, literally. He got bit by a shark. He. Got. Bit. By. A. Shark. He got bit by a shark! "How is he alive?"

"It was only a baby shark."

Only a baby shark. I'm sorry but if I see a shark I don't care how little it is, I'll start freaking out. It can still kill me.

"If you ask me he's being a baby about it. The thing took one little bite out of his arm and now he refuses to go to the beach. It's a one in a million chance of being bit by a shark, I mean what are the odds of it happening again."

It's actually a one in four million chance, which only proves my point. The man got bit by a shark. Who gets bit by a shark and lives to tell the tale? I live by a beach and I have never once heard of someone getting bit by a shark here. "You are not allowed to make fun of me for being scared of that guy anymore."

She rolled her eyes, a smile spreading across her features. "He is not scary! He's like a fluffy teddy bear."

"A fluffy teddy bear? He got bit by a shark! And lived! What did he do, punch the thing in the nose or something? Glare at it and it just swam away? Challenge it to a duel and it surrendered immediately?" A fluffy teddy bear? A shark would have eviscerated a fluffy teddy bear.

"It wasn't even a bad bite, he had one surgery and he was fine. He got to keep the shark tooth too, he wears it around his neck."

"Oh, so like a battle trinket. That makes me feel so much better." What, he just wears the thing around to prove he can win against a shark?

"He is not scary, now will you guess because I am certain you won't figure this one out."

"Hm," I pretended to think. "Is it a kite?"

"Nope."

"A pig?"

Her smile widened as she got more and more excited for my loss.

"I give up."

She squealed, throwing herself on top of me and wrapping her arms around my neck. "See, I told you I was good at this game. It was a crab."

Her excitement was contagious and before I knew it I found myself grinning alongside her. "Okay, my turn." I didn't think about what I was going to draw as we switched place and I didn't think about it as my finger started tracing the first letter along the curves of her body, I didn't think about it until I was already in the midst of writing it out.

"A stick man?" She tried to guess the first letter.

"No." I drew the second letter.

"Half a rectangle?"

Half a rectangle? That's what she got out of that, half a rectangle? She really is bad at this game. "No." I wrote the third letter.

"Okay, that's a circle, no doubt."

"Close enough." And then the fourth letter.

Her eyebrows creased together. "What is this? An upside down teepee?"