Chapter 3
“No no no no no. There aren’t dreidel teams, Maggie doesn’t get to be on Alex’s team, know why? Because there are no teams!”
James sat back and sipped at his beer with a grin: this might take a while, as Winn’s look of indignation and proclamation that there were no teams in dreidel cowered slightly against Alex’s sitting up on the couch and leaning in toward him.
Kara flickered her eyes between them like she was watching a tennis match, and James leaned in to Maggie. “This is gonna be entertaining.” She smirked back at him.
“And how would you know this, Winn, with your superior knowledge of all things Jewish?”
“I would normally never say anything like this, but considering that we’re playing a gambling game based around a spinning top with chocolate for currency, I’m gonna feel free to go ahead and say it: you’re gonna play the religion card? Alex Danvers, that is low!”
“Whoaaaaa!” James and Maggie exploded with simultaneous laughter, both leaning forward and tossing their arms in the air haphazardly.
Winn and Alex both shot them dirty looks.
“I’m trying to advocate for you here, babe.”
“Dude, come on, whose side are you on?”
“Man, it’s Alex, and I don’t have my Guardian suit right now, so I’m pretty sure she could kick my ass without breaking a sweat.”
“And you wouldn’t take an ass kicking for me?”
“From Alex Danvers?”
“Okay!” Kara held up her hands as Alex sat back, arms crossed, smug triumph written all over her face, as Maggie bit her lip, both utterly amused and turned on by the fact that a man as powerful as James knew with certainty that her girlfriend could take him with one armed tied behind her back.
“No one will be kicking anyone’s ass,” Kara announced with a pointed look at Alex.
“They brought up the ass kicking, that wasn’t me.”
Kara pointed an accusatory finger at her, and Alex shut up, but stuck her tongue out at Winn, who scoffed back at her.
“Winn, when you were new at this last year, James was also new, so you both had another newbie to be confused with. Maggie doesn’t have that, so let’s have her partner with Alex for a couple of rounds until she gets the hang of it, and then she’ll get her own gelt and turn. Okay?”
“Kara, did you ever consider being an elementary school teacher?” James wanted to know.
“That’s exactly what I was thinking!” Maggie whispered, reaching around behind Alex to slap James five.
“You both realize you just compared us all to five year olds and claimed that Kara is the most mature one, right?” Winn asked.
Maggie and James immediately pursed their lips and looked down in a stunned kind of shame. Alex smirked and Kara lifted her chin.
“Alright?”
“Okay,” Maggie leaned forward toward the table and clapped. “Someone finally gonna tell me how this whole top thing works?”
Alex beamed at her girlfriend and took the dreidel Kara was passing her.
“Alright, so. This? Dreidel. Each side means something different, let’s you take or give a different amount of the gelt – the chocolate coins – that’s all pooled in the center.”
To illustrate, Winn upturned the box of Chanukah gelt he and James had picked up from the store and pre-ripped out of their bags. The little discs with golden foil clattered all over the table, and some scattered on the floor.
Kara snatched one, and Winn slapped at her hand, but before he could even get to her, she’d unwrapped it and popped it in her mouth, giggling maniacally.
“The mature one,” Alex nodded at Kara with a smile in her eyes. “So, everyone takes a turn with the dreidel. You spin it – ” She demonstrated. “And whatever it lands on…” She waited. “Dictates what you do.”
“This letter, nun, stands in for nisht. Means no, nothing. So, you land on this – ”
“Loser!” Winn interjected, and Maggie choked on her beer.
“You don’t get to take any gelt,” Alex said as she nudged Winn in the ribs. “This,” she rotated the dreidel, showing Maggie its second side, “is shin, shtel, telling you to put something in, so you have to toss in a piece of candy to the pool. This, gimel, gantz – ”
“The money maker!”
“The chocolate getter!”
“The sugar rush bringer!”
“I hate all of you. Means you get to take everything that’s in the pool. And this last side, hey, halb, means half, so you get half of the chocolate pool.”
Alex put the dreidel down and grimaced playfully as she looked Maggie in the eyes. “I know that’s a lot. You good?”
Maggie picked the dreidel up and turned it around in her fingers for a moment, examining each side and nodding to herself. “Mmhmm, good. But uh, why’d you say it’d be easier for me if I’m on your team? Couldn’t I just spin and you guys tell me what to do based on how the dreidel lands?”
The four of them erupted in laughter, and Alex grabbed at Maggie’s hand and sought her eyes with her own to make sure she knew they weren’t laughing at her. “We would if we were a normal family, babe,” she informed her grimly. “But we don’t play regular dreidel. We play – ”
“Dreidel Extreme!”
“Speed Dreidel!”
“Sudden Death Dreidel!”
“I… can’t say I’m an expert, but that whole sudden death part sounds pretty antithetical to the spirit of the holiday,” Maggie smirked.
“Basically, the second the dreidel lands, you have to shout out what you do – all, half, give, or none – before everyone else can, or you have to give back a piece of chocolate.”
“And trust me, you don’t want to give up any of this chocolate,” Kara said through a full mouth, and Alex grabbed a fistful of the chocolate coins from her hand and scattered them back on the table.
“Kara, you can’t eat all our game pieces before we even play the game!”
“Sorry.” She didn’t tell Alex she’d stashed a couple more pieces up her sleeve. Kara watched Maggie notice, but they winked at each other and said nothing.
“Guys, if it’s okay, I think I’ll be on my own team. I like trying new things, babe, I don’t mind if I lose a few rounds.”
“Oh babe, I don’t want you to miss out, and you already lose all the time at pool. You sure?”
Kara stared suspiciously at Maggie, a hint of a smile tugging at her lips, but Maggie had kept her secret, so she said nothing.
“Yeah, let’s do it,” Maggie said gamely, leaning forward and resting her elbows on her knees, eyes wide and innocent.
The game was loud and the game was fast. Kara spun first and when it landed on nun, the shouts that rang out to try to beat her to it were loud and fierce and full of laughter and spilled beer.
Alex was next, and she got this intense look on her face while the dreidel spun, like she was calculating exactly how it was going to land. And she probably was.
Maggie was so wildly in love she forgot to shout along with the rest of them to try to beat Alex to it.
James was next, then Winn, who forgot hey momentarily and had to surrender a piece of chocolate with a lot of loud grumbling.
Maggie’s turn came and the Superfriends were quiet, contemplating whether they should go easy on her, at least for her first spin. But she called gimel before any of the others had even realized the dreidel had landed, and calmly swept all the chocolate toward herself.
“You… you traitor,” Alex turned to her. “You memorized them all, easy. You wanted to be on your own team because you knew you didn’t have to practice and could just win right now.”
Kara leaned back and kicked out with both feet, laughing hysterically. “I knew it!”
“I’m a detective, Agent Danvers. I detect. That includes a real good memory for random pieces of information. Like, you know, the meaning of the different sides of a dreidel.”
Alex watched her with an open mouth, not knowing whether to push her back onto the couch and trap her hands above her head, straddling her and kissing her senseless, or… no. No, that was pretty much the only thing Alex wanted to do, and it must have showed in her eyes, because Maggie’s breath hitched and Kara hid her face in her hands and James looked up at the ceiling and Winn ventured, “Down girl.”
The sound of her friend’s voice jolted her out of her Maggie-induced haze – somewhat – and she grabbed for the dreidel on the table.
“Oh, I’ll show you down, Schott,” she said, spinning the dreidel for all it was worth as Kara protested that it was her turn next, and Maggie doubled over laughing, laughing, because she had a girlfriend who ran headfirst into everything in her life, including holiday games with family – family – she was included in their family.