Bad Games by Jeff Menapace Read Free Book Online

getting a little too worked up. I’m sure he was just an arrogant pervert, that’s all. The kind of guy who fancies himself a player—always on the lookout for the next notch on his bedpost. When you weren’t taking his bait it probably angered him, and that’s when he got crude. I wouldn’t read too much into it.”
    “I’m not so sure. What kind of player states that he has a girlfriend before implementing a pick-up line?”
    Patrick shrugged. “I don’t know. Maybe it was to bring your guard down. Who knows how a guy like that operates?”
    A solid minute of silence passed. Amy’s eyes were unblinking and staring off into nothing, reliving the experience and weighing her husband’s words simultaneously.
    “You know what though, baby?” Patrick eventually said. “If you stop and think about it, much of this is your fault.”
    Amy didn’t pull away. She didn’t yell. She didn’t even frown. She just stared at her husband, certain she had heard him wrong.
    “What?” was all she finally said.
    “Well just think about it for a second. If you weren’t such a stunningly, sexual succubus , none of this would have happened in the first place.” Patrick delivered one his trademark alliterations dripping with cheese and network-anchor eyebrows.
    Amy was aware of what her husband was attempting to do, and she instantly began pulling her hands out of his grip. His attempt at levity felt too soon. She managed to pull one hand free but Patrick held on tight to the other.
    Patrick continued. “I mean if you’re going to go to such a happening spot like the supermarket, you need to ugly yourself up a little bit…”
    Amy tried to tug her remaining hand free, a smile was working its way to her face and she would not give him the satisfaction of seeing it.
    “Maybe pad your butt and belly with big pillows, make ’em look huge…”
    She tugged harder. He was grinning, her elusive smile now on the line and being reeled in.
    “Forget to brush your teeth, let the stank-breath blow…”
    She tried to pull free with both hands now, her head down, hiding the smile at all costs.
    “Oh and forgetting to bathe for a few days might help as well.”
    Amy stopped pulling and changed tactics; she used Patrick’s own leverage against him by going with his resistance and launching herself forward into his sternum, knocking him to the kitchen floor with her on top.
    Patrick began laughing once his back hit the linoleum and Amy instantly straddled him, pretending to choke him with both hands. “You make me crazeeeeeeeeeeeey! ” she yelled between fake throttles and psycho eyes.
    Still laughing, Patrick reached around and pinched his wife’s butt. She squealed and bounced up, only to come crashing back down onto Patrick’s stomach, causing him to let out a definitive OOMPH!
    “What? Are you saying I’m fat ?”
    Patrick’s mouth opened, searching for the answer that was never correct under any circumstances, but Amy had already taken the initiative to lean forward and sink her teeth into his ear.
    “Ow! Ow! Ow! Okay, okay, you win! You win! ”
    Amy cinched herself further up onto her husband’s chest. “Damn right I do.” She then brushed the hair out of her face and let out a long sigh. “So you think I’m overreacting by wanting to leave?”
    Patrick rubbed his recently chomped ear. “No, baby, I don’t. It was a freaky moment that spooked you, and your initial reaction was totally understandable and justified. The guy was a perverted asshole, plain and simple. And like I told you before, I would never, ever let anything happen to you and the kids.” He kissed his first two fingers and reached up to touch them to his wife’s lips. “And from now on, I’ll be the one who does the food shopping.”
    “Mmmmm…Spaghettios and cereal,” she said.
    “And Pop-Tarts.”
    Amy bent forward and kissed him, her hair falling forward around both their faces. “I love you, baby.”
    “I love you too, honey,” he