The wingwoman handbook dictates that Keisha and I GTFO, but she doesn’t appear to be in a rush to go anywhere. Instead, she takes the deck from where it was abandoned during the rush of cheek-kiss goodbyes and gives it a shuffle worthy of Vegas. It’s starting to feel like I’m the only one here not born with an ace up her sleeve and a joker in every pocket. “Spades?” she suggests, cracking her cinnamon gum, but judging from the way Carter and Jasmine seamlessly shift around the table to split us into teams—cousins versus housemates—it isn’t really a suggestion.

This is confirmed when I reach for a second cider, only to feel Jasmine’s rings dig into my wrist. “You’re gonna need to keep your wits about you, Tinkerbell,” she warns me. “These two share a Spades brain.”

I snort. “I think I can handle it.”

I could not, in fact, handle it. “The two of you are such shitty cheaters!” I yelp after getting utterly destroyed for a third hand in a row. “This is not humanly possible.”

Keisha smiles smug and wide, tossing her tight beaded braids over shoulder, while Carter throws back his head and laughs. “We’ve been coming down here since we were babies,” she says, her Southern accent coming in stronger as the night wears on and the alcohol settles in. “Carter’s brother and our cousin Richie trained us at this table as soon as we could walk.”

“There’s not a lot to do here after dark before you get a driver’s license,” Carter confirms. “At least not before I discovered girls.”

“You mean before girls discovered you,” Keisha says with a snort. “Your goofy ass wasn’t exactly ‘filling the time’ until you came back six inches taller and with your braces off.”

“Burrrrrn,” I say instinctively before realizing that Jasmine is one of those girls, though she seems completely unbothered. In fact, she’s laughing too. I turn to Keisha, remembering that she mentioned being aroace. “And what’d you do while girls were ‘discovering’ Carter? Guessing you had … different preoccupations.”

“Slightly,” she says with a laugh, dealing another hand. “I’m a gaming nerd, so I was plenty happy to stay home while Carter and them went out, play The Sims or Dragon Age until sunrise. But lots of nights we all stayed in and played, same as we did waiting up for Santa when we were kids.”

“See, that’s my problem,” says Jasmine, tugging on the six-pointed star charm hanging at her throat. “Too Jewish.”