At Any Turn (Gaming The System) (20 page)

“Yeah, I’ve moved on from the bruises. I didn’t think they were from domestic violence. What’s with the tattoo? Of all the people in the world, I would have never imagined Adam Drake tattooing a woman’s name on his chest—especially when it’s not the woman he’s currently with.”

“So are you interested in the apartment or not? Because if not, I’ll get my realtor to put it up on the market.”

“You aren’t going to tell me who Sabrina is?”

I shifted, giving her an irritated look. “Nope.” I never spoke her name. It had taken everything in me to even get the tattoo, but it had been something I’d
had
to do at the time. I’d been afraid that I was forgetting her, letting her slip from my memory and my heart. It was a stupid notion, but at the time, it had made sense to me. It was a way to keep a piece of her with me always. I’d never spoken of Bree to anyone—not even my own family. My uncle and cousins knew, of course. But Lindsay had never been privy to what was inside my heart.

Which made it even more remarkable that Emilia had been able to wrest that secret from me with hardly any effort at all. Usually if people asked me who Sabrina was after seeing the tattoo, I evaded the question.

While we’d been sitting in the hot tub on my yacht, Emilia had asked me, too, after having bared her soul to me about a painful experience from her past. And I’d answered her. Simply, shortly. But even that had taken every bit of strength I could muster. Emilia was the first person I could talk about it with. And only in short, vague terms, recounting the pain of my childhood as if it was someone else’s faraway tale. I shook my head to rid it of the thought.

Lindsay looked away, flipping her blond hair over her shoulder. She was clearly annoyed by my secrecy. “I’m sorry. You must be pretty upset.”

“Not at all, but I
am
hungry and it’s two o’clock, so how about we wrap this up over lunch?”

Lindsay turned and walked slowly to the counter to fetch her bright red purse that matched her long nails. Then, she pivoted toward me. “I talked to Jordan. He told me about—about you and Mia breaking up.”

I set my jaw. I did
not
want to discuss this with her right now. “It’s okay, Adam. I’m not going to proposition you again. I do have
some
pride. I’m just worried about you, that’s all. As a friend. You’ve never really
been
with anyone…well, that I know of, anyway,” she said with a significant gesture in the direction of my chest and the tattoo. “And from what I understand you and Mia were living together. It—well, I’m just sorry, that’s all. You seemed happier than I’ve seen you in a long time. Healthier, too.”

I sighed and gave a pointed jingle of my keychain, which dangled from my fingers.

She scrutinized me with hardening eyes. “Okay, you are going to be a typical guy and refuse to talk about it. But is it really a lost cause?”

I gritted my teeth. “Probably.”

She nodded. “I’m going to give you some unsolicited advice. And you’re going to have to listen until I walk out that door and follow you down to the restaurant. She’s young, Adam. She’s what—twenty-two, twenty-three? That’s the same age I was when you and I hooked up. The last thing on my mind was commitment and a future in a relationship. She wants to be a doctor. I wanted to be an attorney. It was the most important thing to me at that point and no man was going to get in the way of that.”

I let her talk. I listened to what she had to say, but hell if we were going to actually have a conversation about this. This whole encounter had already crossed over into the Twilight Zone. I was expecting Rod Serling to step into the room at any moment to provide a dry narration of the fucked-up history between Lindsay and me.

“So, let’s decide already. Italian or Mexican?” I asked.

She blew out a breath and rolled her eyes. “Just think about it. Give her some space. She may just come back to you if you back off and don’t push your agenda.”

Well, that advice sounded familiar. “Is this where you pull out your inspirational keychain with the picture of a butterfly and the saying that if you love something you should set it free?”

Her lips twisted into a dry smile. “Something like that.” She turned and walked out of the kitchen. “Come on. Let’s go eat.”

I followed her out and we did enjoy a pleasant lunch—mostly talking about safe subjects. She never brought up Emilia or the tattoo again, at least. Like I said, Lindsay wasn’t dumb. But, unsolicited or not, her words kept rolling around in my mind.
This
was the reason Emilia had backed off—because she cared more about being a doctor, her original goal since she was a child, than she did about this new relationship full of unknowns.

In trying to secure her, I had pushed her away because I had arrogantly assumed that I was the number one priority. While at the same time telling
her
that she wasn’t the number one priority to me by refusing to move back East to be with her.

I was beginning to realize how ridiculously unfair I had been in that. The real question was, was it too late for me to fix it?

Chapter Thirteen

The next day was Sunday and I had very little to do in the morning. In this post-Emilia life, the weekends were turning out to be the worst. The loneliness threatened to rise up and suffocate me. Especially when I was trying my hardest to resist my old fallback—work. There was plenty to do, but today I wouldn’t allow it. I couldn’t fall into those old patterns again.

But it called to me like alcohol to a wino, like the baccarat table to a gambler. Just one hour, that voice would say.
You can log in and get stuff done
.
It will be so productive
.
After an hour, you can log off
.
Or maybe just swing by the office and check on things
.

But I’d prove to myself that I could resist—if just for today. No checking work e-mail. Because once I fell down that rabbit hole, it was a steep-ass climb back out again. And I had no desire
at all
to go hiking some godforsaken mountain trail to reclaim my inner self.

I allowed myself the concession that playing on DE would not be in complete violation of this Sunday work blackout. So I started up the game and logged on to my invisible Gamemaster account to see if the old group I used to play with was on. We often played together on Sunday mornings and I wondered if they were continuing the tradition.

I checked my friends list.

*Your friend, Eloisa, is online.
Emilia.

*Your friend, Fragged, is online.
Heath.

*Your friend, Persephone, is online.
Kat.

They were all here. I checked their location.
Golden Mountains Region
. They were working on the big secret quest. I resisted the urge to run the commands to see if I could read their in-game texts to each other. They used voice, mostly, unless I was playing with them. I sat back with a sigh. Like the rest of the players of Dragon Epoch, my regular gaming group had erroneously concluded that the Golden Mountains quest chain actually started in the Golden Mountains region instead of where the very first clue
actually
hid, in plain sight of all.

I smiled deviously at the screen. It had been months since the launch of the expansion and no one was any closer to figuring out the damn thing than they had been when it had started. If people didn’t start getting clues to that thing soon, I was certain we’d have a riot on our hands—a massive player revolt. Maybe even a sit-in demonstration at DracoCon. Already there were sites that claimed that the quest was a myth or a hoax or hadn’t even been finished and implemented into the game yet. How wrong they were. The idea for that quest had sprung into my mind while dreaming up the original storyline for the game, years ago.

It had been something of a dream and a long-term goal of mine to develop the technology and game programming in order to implement it. I wasn’t about to give up those clues easily. Not even to the woman I loved.

I remembered her teasing me about it. My clues to her had all been genuine, but they’d been so vague as to be useless and she’d known it. I hit the command that would cloak my character from being seen—an ability that could only be used by employees of the company—and traveled to their location. I’m not sure what I wanted to accomplish, but as I sat there for ten minutes watching them beat the life out of an endless string of trolls, I decided I was bored. It would be more fun if I could play with them.

I wasn’t sure how Emilia would react, but at that point I didn’t care. They were
my
friends, too, and I deserved to spend a little time with them, even if Emilia had chosen to break up with me. I risked her thinking of it as creepy stalking, but I was determined not to keep the huge distance in the virtual world that I was currently maintaining in the real one.

I logged out of my employee account and in to my “fun” account.

*FallenOne has entered the world of Yondareth.

FallenOne was a level seventy-five human spearman. He had gray hair and a long, white beard. He kind of looked like a cross between Santa Claus and a Chinese monk. I’d been in a weird mood on the day I created him and his look cracked me up. But he kicked ass and I liked him as a character. I found the nearest magic portal—couldn’t use any of the fancy employee tricks on this account—and sent my character to the zone where my regular group was working their magic.

*Persephone tells you, Holy shit…is it really you? Where have you been?

*You tell Persephone, Yup, really me. I’ve been doing other stuff
.

*FallenOne has been invited to join Persephone’s group
.

I clicked the appropriate button, accepting the invitation. Suddenly my headphones were assailed with Heath and Kat chattering excitedly on in-game voice chat. And for the very first time, I planned on joining them.

Previously, FallenOne had only engaged with the group through text. I could hear them all over voice chat, but I only communicated with them by typing to help preserve my anonymity. Since I type fast, it wasn’t difficult to do. This had worked in my favor when I’d met Heath and then Emilia, because it had helped me keep my identity as their in-game friend a secret. I’d done a lot of things, in those early days, to throw her off track so she’d never suspect. Some of it had been nice, and some, like my asshole act that day we first met in person, not so nice.

I adjusted my headphones and mouthpiece and pressed the talk button. “Hey guys, how are you?”

“No way!” Kat said. “Fallen’s on voice chat. You really
are
a dude!”

I laughed. “You thought I was a chick?”

“I
thought you were a chick,” said Heath.

“Screw you. I’m a dude. I won’t mention the details about being sixty-five and covered with back hair, though.”

“Eww,” said Kat. “I hope to God you’re kidding.”

Emilia wasn’t saying a thing.

I knew she could hear me. The icon next to her character’s name indicated that she was hooked into voice chat.

“Hey, Mia, why so quiet?” I said.

“She’s in a bad mood. We’re hacking through trolls to cheer her up,” said Kat.

“Hey, Fallen,” Emilia finally said. “Great to hear your voice.”

My screen lit up with the purple text that indicated a private message from Emilia.

*Eloisa tells you, Hi.

“So what’s with the bad mood? Is killing trolls helping?” I asked.

*You tell Eloisa, Hey.

“Yeah. Well, you know me. I’m always in for a good troll beat-down. I’m feeling useful, for once,” Emilia said. “These two losers actually need my elite enchantress powers to survive.”

To my surprise, we continued with the parallel conversation—one taking place over voice chat and the other, the private one, in typed instant messages.

*Eloisa tells you, So…how was your hot date?

*You tell Eloisa, How was your trip to Baltimore?

*Eloisa tells you, Touché. I guess you got me there.

“Whatev, Mia,” Kat said. “You’re always useful. But what the hell—my system has not been working right since that fucking patch those idiots put into the game last week. Assholes must have screwed something up.”

I suppressed a snort. It wasn’t every day I got called an asshole and an idiot by my in-game friend. Didn’t matter that she didn’t know she was actually calling
me
an idiot and an asshole.

“Yeah, those jerks at Draco. Damn them,” Heath said, not even attempting to hide the laughter in his voice.

*You tell Fragged, Fuck off.

*Fragged tells you, HAHAHAHAHA

“Kat, the problem is that you just have your head up your butt again,” said Heath.

“Shut up, Fragged, or I’m going to let you die this time.”

“
This
time? I die so much in this game they’re going to make me buy a plot at the local cemetery.”

I snickered. “Maybe it’s just PEBCAK.”

“What the hell is that?” Kat asked.

Heath and I answered at the same time. “Problem exists between chair and keyboard.”

“It’s a common term in IT,” I added.

“Oh shut up, Fallen, I liked you better when you could only type,” Kat hissed.

*You tell Eloisa, So are you ok with me playing today? Was kind of bored.

*Eloisa tells you, It’s okay if you play. Better playing than working.

*You tell Eloisa, Right.

*Eloisa tells you, You aren’t working too much, right?

*You tell Eloisa, Ummmm.

“So, what are we doing?” I asked the group. “Just hacking on trolls for hours on end? Let’s do something productive.”

“We’re working on that shitty quest,” Kat said. “I read on
Gamer Garden
that they’ve found evidence of a key to the first part of the dungeon system to rescue the princess. It drops when you loot a random dead troll. But it’s super rare. So we are killing them by the hundreds to see if it drops.”