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“I loved it when I was ten I still o,” I say “But why do we keep playing it when it always ends the same?”

“What do you mean it always ends the same?” Ed—or Stephen Edward D’Onofrio! if you’re his mother—pulls out the chair to my left Ed’s hair is this wild mop of reddish-brown curls that always looks like he either just got up or should really go to bed

“For starters,” I begin, “Reid is always the top hat, you’re the car, Alex is the ship, Chris is the shoe, and I’ht before it’s your turn so we all have to wait Chris will hoard hison Alex’s hotels Reid will only buy the utilities and soe to clean the floor with all of us, and I’ll get bored and quit six hours into a never-ending game”

“That’s not true,” Ed says “I quit last tiet back at Alex for the rooster-shaped birthday cake”

“Man, that was a great cake,” Alex says, dark eyes downcast as he laughs into his drink “Still worth Chris putting salt in reater,” Chris tells him, “is how you never once expected the salt, even after the fourth tioal, and pipes up fro the property cards “The rules were very clear tonight: roan in unison because he has a point Reid and Ed are both in neuroscience—also at UCSB—but while Ed works as a postdoc researcher in Reid’s lab, Reid is a newly minted associate professor, just awarded tenure Said tenure is why I’ both a dress and a party hat, and why there are sohout Chris’s living rooame pieces, but not to put thes up I’ll be the dog, Mills”

“I think you’remy point, Christopher”

Four sets of eyes stare blankly back at ive up the battle

“Okay then,” I say, resigned as I stand and walk into the kitchen for another bottle of wine

An hour later, I’ve lost track of how much pretend money I’ve paid Reid, and how lass Alex is a professor of biocheetabout: Monopoly is awesome!

Chris reshuffles the Community Chest cards and places the that redhead?”

I have no idea how Chris remembers this Between Alex and Ed it seeo around Alex, I get He’s tall, dark, and wicked, and even though he’s originally froton Beach, he spent every childhood su him an accent that stops women in their tracks He’s also never serious about anyone, and rarely sees so

Ed isnone of these things Don’t get , he’s not unattractive and he has the aforerown frat boy than a ht noe’d find ketchup and a case of Mountain Dew in his refrigerator, and a living roooes out more thaneous and accoht here at the university But he’s also picky and serious, and works the same insane hours as Reid does And me? Honestly, maybe I’m just lazy

Alex counts out his spaces and sets the dice in the center of the board “You’re talking about the one with the eye patch?”

Okay, that jogs my memory

Ed isn’t amused “She did not have an eye patch”

“Actually, I re a patch covering an eye” I motion to the board and the neat row of hotels lined up there “PS, it’s your turn and if you roll anything other than a thich will land you in Jail—you are fu-ucked”

“Slumlords,” Ed mutters, but rolls the dice anyway I have no idea how, but he does—miraculously—roll a two, and does a celebratory fist pu his little car into the space marked Jail A momentary reprieve from the rows and rows of Alex’s hotels “And it wasn’t an eye patch, it was a sot a little crazy”