At Any Price (Gaming The System) (21 page)

I shook my head. “That’s not true. We haven’t—”

“You haven’t fucked. But you’ve done other stuff,” Heath said. “You don’t even have to tell me that. I know.”

I shook my head. “That doesn’t make sense. He hasn’t even…”

Heath shrugged. “There are all kinds. Maybe he gets off on denying himself.”

“Shut up, Heath. Stop trying to make this all sound sick.”

“Girl, it started out sick. It’s just getting worse.”

I plunked down at my kitchen table and Heath’s eyes flew to the shiny new laptop. He waved a hand toward it. “New phone. New computer. A fancy overnight stay on a yacht. What’s next? A car? What’s he buying with all these expensive gifts? He wants something. He wants more than one night.”

I rubbed my forehead. I felt so stupid at this moment, unable to figure out what the simplest things meant. Was Adam using me? For what? I couldn’t get the vision of that expression on his face out of my mind—right after he’d stopped himself and pulled away. He’d looked so disgusted.

“
You
picked him out, Heath.
You
said he was the best choice.”

“I wasn’t lying. He was. But this whole thing started out in bizarro world and took a sharp left turn into fucked-up land fast.”

I shook my head, no snarky reply forthcoming. I must have been off my game.

After staring through me for a few tense minutes, Heath finally blew out a breath. “Listen, you are a big girl. I love you, but I can’t stand by and watch you get yourself fucked by this guy—in more ways than the intended one.”

I couldn’t breathe, suddenly close to tears. “Heath, why are you being so hurtful?” Heath’s words were only confirming my worst fears. Adam was using me. Adam wanted something from me. Adam would discard me like garbage once he was done with me. Just like the Biological Sperm Donor had done with my mother. Because they were all the same.

“Because I’m worried about you. You aren’t actually developing feelings for him, are you? A guy like that will chew you up and spit you out.”

I looked into Heath’s eyes and shook my head. “I have to take my chances, Heath.”

Heath spread his hands out wide. “Fine. You don’t have to listen to me. But I’m not fielding your mother’s calls anymore. You handle it. Handle it all. I’m out.”

And with a disgusted wave of his arm, he turned and left, slamming the door behind him.

I might have laid my head down and cried. I sure felt like it. But I didn’t. I logged on to the game instead and took out about two dozen orcs, checking at least a dozen times to see if my friends FallenOne or Persephone were on. Fallen hadn’t logged into the game since the day we had chatted, weeks ago. I sent him a quick e-mail, asking how he was and when he was going to come back, then started working on an article for my blog.

Heath’s words repeated themselves over and over in my head and I could hardly concentrate on all the things I had to do. Was Adam playing me? For what reason? Was what we were doing truly sick? I couldn’t answer. Every time I thought about Adam, strange feelings rose up in my chest and threatened to crowd everything else out. It made it hard to think, hard to breathe.

With a shuddering sigh, I moved around that apartment like a mindless robot, getting the things I needed done before dressing in a pair of white Capris and a pale blue T-shirt for the barbecue.

***

Once again, Adam was prompt when he came to pick me up to take me to his uncle’s house. He opened the door for me and I settled into the vintage leather seats of his Porsche.

His uncle lived in the next city over from mine, Tustin, near the rolling hills that swept toward the canyons in OC’s backcountry. The homes here were nice. Not mansions like in Newport, but upper-middle-class homes with established but not wealthy inhabitants. And it was in the long white driveway of one of these that Adam parked his car.

We were hardly out of the car before two young boys—no older than six or eight, came racing out of the house. “Adam!” they shouted, clearly excited.

Adam bent and scooped up each one in a muscular arm, pulling them off the ground. “Holy crap!” he said with an exaggerated groan. “You two are getting heavy.”

“Put me down!” one of them said. I pegged him to be a few years older than his brother, as he was slightly bigger. Other than that, it was difficult to tell them apart. They had similar features and their hair was the exact same color. “DJ, I get to drive first!”

But the younger one had caught sight of me and tried to squirm out of Adam’s hold, his eyes widening and jaw dropping. “Adam brought a
girl,
” he said in clear disbelief.

I laughed—I couldn’t help it—especially when Adam rolled his eyes, dropping both the boys and putting his hands on their heads. “These two knuckleheads are Gareth and Dylan—we call him DJ. They’re my cousin Britt’s kids.”

DJ was still staring at me in wonder and approached me while his brother Gareth hopped into Adam’s car and started making pretend motor noises while tugging at the steering wheel. “Hi,” he said with a cheeky smile. “You’re pretty.”

“Well, thank you,” I said, laughing.

“Are you Adam’s girlfriend?”

“Uhh,” I said with a glance at Adam, who seemed more amused than embarrassed.

“Stop putting the moves on Emilia, DJ.”

DJ turned to his cousin. “Why’d you bring a girl? You never bring girls.”

“I’m sorry? Did you forget your cootie spray?” Adam said.

Soon, Adam was ushering me inside, leaving his cousins out in the driveway to pretend-drive the car with the strict instructions that they were not to touch the gearshift or the emergency brake. Clearly he trusted them, and that this was all the supervision they needed. I could hardly believe he’d let those kids fiddle around in that car, which was clearly worth a fortune.

“Don’t worry. They get bored with it after about ten minutes,” he said.

In quick succession, I was introduced to four more people, all full-sized. The first two were Britt, Adam’s cousin, and Rik, her husband—the parents of the two out in the front.

After initial introductions I thanked Britt for teaching Adam how to dance. “He taught me the foxtrot and blamed it on you,” I said with a grin and Britt shot an amused look at Adam.

“All that bitching and yet he still remembers all the dances—and is using them to impress the ladies. Why am I not surprised?”

“Hey, I was bitching about the arm twisting—I mean literally.” Adam turned to me. “She’d sit on me and twist my arm up behind my back until I agreed to be her partner.”

Britt snorted. “Let’s just say that I weighed a bit more than Adam back in those days.”

I couldn’t help giggling at the mental picture.

Next, Adam introduced me to his uncle, Peter Drake, a tall, thin and soft-spoken man. He wore a silly barbecue apron with writing on it that said, “I’m grilling the witness.” Adam’s Uncle Peter must have been tipped off that I was coming because he showed absolutely no surprise that I was there.

“Welcome,” he said. “How do you like your steak?”

“Medium well,” I said. And he shuffled out the back door with a plate of raw meat.

Adam was called away to make a phone call—no surprise. He worked even on Sunday during a family dinner. I had no idea how long he would be, so I wandered off to see what kind of trouble I could get into.

I knew Adam had another cousin about his own age but I didn’t see him until I ambled down the hall to find the bathroom. On my way back, I saw movement in one of the bedrooms and poked my head in.

“Hi,” I said.

A tall man in his midtwenties sat at long L-shaped table that held two nicely tricked-out computers. He was bent over something tiny, holding a paintbrush in one hand. He looked up at me and just as quickly jerked his eyes away. He was a good-looking man—clearly a trait that ran in Adam’s family—but he was dressed curiously, with a mismatched sweater vest pulled over a plaid shirt.

“Hi. You’re Emilia,” he said in a monotone, returning to his detailed brushwork.

I nodded. “Yes. How did you know?”

“Adam told me about you.”

I was surprised. He was so matter-of-fact about it. I wondered when Adam had mentioned me to his cousin and in what context.

“What’s your name?” I asked, stepping into the room. This looked like his bedroom, but he clearly did not live here. The place was immaculate and there was no bed in it.

“I’m William Drake, Peter Drake’s son,” he said formally.

“It’s nice to meet you,” I chirped. Adam had mentioned that he had a cousin on the autism spectrum. For part of my qualifications for medical school, I had volunteered to work with special needs teens and adults—most of whom had Asperger’s Syndrome or some other form of autism. I crept up to get a better look at his handiwork.

“May I ask what you are doing?”

“Painting figurines,” he said as if it were the most obvious thing ever. My eyes flew up to the shelves above his head, filled to overflowing with painted pewter figurines. They depicted all sorts of fantasy heroes—wizards, thieves, magicians, warriors, elves and dwarves.

“Wow, these are awesome,” I said, moving up to get a closer look. The figurines were not more than an inch tall, made of pewter and each painted in great detail, sometimes even with coats of arms on the shields and delicately rendered facial features, which must have required painstaking hours to depict. “You must have hundreds of these here.”

“We don’t use them anymore. Adam never plays D and D like he used to in high school.”

“Oh, these are for Dungeons and Dragons? I’ve never played.”

“We used to play all the time. A big group of us. Adam was the GM.” Huh. Adam had been the Game Master. Why didn’t it surprise me to find that out? The Game Master was the one who controlled the story and the game environment for the other players, moving their characters within that world. With his penchant for control, I was not surprised that Adam played that role in his group of friends.

“And you painted all the figurines?”

“I paint for my job, too. I work in the art department for Dragon Epoch.”

I took a seat across from him, following his delicate movement. He was painting a female sorceress with flowing purple robes covered in golden symbols. “So you must get to see Adam all the time, then, if you work with him.”

He glanced at me out of the corner of his eyes but kept working, his head tilted down. “No, hardly ever. I barely see him at all anymore.”

I paused, reflecting on that. Especially since this was the first time in our entire conversation that William had shown an emotion—regret. I watched him as he quietly continued his work. He looked sad, lonely. He missed his cousin, who had likely been one of his closest friends—and yet they worked in the same building every day! What did that say about Adam? Why employ a cousin, someone who was once a good friend, and then never spend time with him?

It was true Adam’s work kept him immensely busy, but I was certain he could manage thirty minutes to sit with William over lunch once a week.

I decided to change the subject. “I play DE. Did you design anything I know?”

“I’m a colorist. I fill in the color on other peoples’ designs.”

“So did you work on any designs I’d know?”

“Probably,” he said and I couldn’t help but smile.

“Don’t tell her any game secrets, Liam. She’ll try to weasel anything she can out of you,” came a dry voice from the doorway and I turned to Adam, who stood watching us.

William didn’t even look up when his cousin spoke. He just shrugged. “I don’t know any.”

Adam came into the room and walked up behind his cousin to look at what he was doing. “Oh, I remember her. Didn’t you have her wearing yellow before?”

“Different figure,” William grunted.

“So Adam, I heard you used to be a GM for Dungeons and Dragons.”

He glanced at the shelf above William’s head. “Yeah, a long time ago. Liam likes to keep painting the figurines even though we haven’t played in almost a decade.”

“He does an awesome job. Maybe you guys should play again sometime.” Adam shot me a curious look but said nothing. I could interpret the expression though. It said something along the lines of:
Like I have the time for that?

We were called to dinner and ate on the back patio around a gorgeous pool. Britt regaled me with more funny stories from Adam’s adolescence while he bore the usual brand of family humiliation stoically.

DJ, however, brought up a blush on both of our faces when he asked Adam if he’d kissed me yet. Britt shooed him away before Adam could answer.

I offered to help with the dishes and Adam collected them for me, standing at my shoulder to rinse and dry after I’d washed. We didn’t talk much. I was at a loss for what to say. The questions swirled in my mind and knotted at the base of my throat in tight confusion. Why had Adam brought me here? Why risk introducing me to his entire family when he knew damn well I would never be in his life after our contract had been fulfilled? They were a delightful family and I was glad to know he’d had some happiness after the heartbreaks of his childhood.

When we were saying our good-byes, about to walk out the door, William stopped me and placed a small object in my hand. It was one of the figurines I had been admiring earlier. “Adam says you play a Spiritual Enchantress in DE. I thought you might like this,” he said, his eyes never meeting mine.

I looked down at the figure in the dim light and sure enough, it was a non-scantily-clad sorceress waving a huge staff above her head while preparing to conjure a spell. She had a long black hair and a red cloak that billowed about her. She was intricately rendered, a tiny work of art.

“Thank you, William. It’s perfect.”

Adam wrapped his hand around mine and we bid everyone good-bye as he pulled me to his car.

Back at my house, after a mostly quiet ride home, he walked me to my door. We stood on the doorstep and he looked into my eyes. “Thanks for coming with me tonight, Emilia,” he said.

“I had fun. But…” I shook my head. He tilted his head toward me, asking the question without speaking it, so I responded. “Why would you introduce me to your family? Won’t they wonder what happened, when we finally…?”