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"Negan, that's not a word." She swept her eyes over the five wooden tiles. "What's a cherk?"
"It's the sound your feet make when there's water in your shoes," he said with a jerk of the hand, motioning toward the scrabble board as if it were the most obvious thing in the world.
She tilted her head back and sputtered with laughter. Negan furrowed his brow and pushed himself again the king sized headboard. She sat parallel, scrabble tiles scattered by her toes. "You mean chorking? Chork." She rolled her eyes with a snort and swept his pieces off the board. "How do you know that, anyways?"
"You're the one that corrected me." He angrily snatched the tiles from her hands and placed them back on his stand. He poked at his cheek with his tongue for a few minutes as he squinted with focus at his seven letters. Growing impatient, Vada leaned over and subtly peeked at the options.
"Caret." She poked her head up, squirming back into her former position.
"What?"
"Caret, you can use it."
Irritated, he twisted his jaw but took the letters from his stand anyway. "When did you become a walking fucking dictionary?"
"Since I spent my whole childhood reading." She was quick to pick out a word, she needed one that began with D and ended with E. Five tiles from her stand spelt out delve and she placed them in a horizontal line, earning her eight points.
Negan picked up the notebook and scribbled her added score. "Might as well give up. Not like I'm gonna win this shit anyways."
"I'd call you a defeatist but I think this is the first time." She pursed her lips in a playful manner. "I'll take the victory."
"Good." He picked up a tile but she couldn't make out the letter on it before he tossed it at her chest. "If I have to spell out one more goddamn word I'm gonna end up throwing this whole board out the window."
Vada threw the tile right back at him and it bounced off his broad shoulder. "Love the positivity."
"Why do you read so much?" He began packing the tiles away, tossing them into the sack and placing them in the dusty box where they came from. He trailed over to closet where she'd found them, snooping around while looking for anything that could relieve their boredom. "Know all these words and shit. The hell is a caret anyway?"
"It's the symbol on a keyboard, y'know, the one that looks like an arrow pointing up. Like, the one used for exponents in math and stuff."
Negan paused and tilted his head to give her an astonished look. "You're kidding? Who the hell knows that shit?"
