A Two-Player Game (The Sentient Console #1)

Chapter 1

Two hours should have been nothing. A blink. But that's how long it took me to realize that I didn't know how to be alone anymore. Those two measly hours felt like two years.

When my ex-husband’s car pulled out of the driveway, with my two kids buckled in the back, their excited voices already fading, I let out a breath that I felt like I'd been holding for days.

I stood in the living room for a moment, just letting the quiet settle around me.

It was like dropping a weighted blanket; all the responsibility of keeping two people alive and happy just fell away.

I had big plans. I was going to sit on the couch, catch up on my favorite TV show, and maybe relax in a bubble bath.

The bath had taken up a lot of the time.

I turned the lights off and lowered myself into water hot enough to turn my skin red, letting the heat warm me throughout.

I lay there and let the quiet numb my brain.

It was pure bliss. When a familiar ache started between my legs, I let myself reach down.

It had been so long since I had relaxed enough to feel this particular ache that it didn’t take long to quench it.

Soon afterwards, the bone-deep relaxation gave way to more restlessness.

The tub drained while I toweled off, then pulled on leggings and a baggy shirt. No one around to impress meant dressing for comfort, not style. I walked to the kitchen, then stood, not knowing why I'd walked in there.

So the pantry got organized. Cans on one shelf and boxes on another, everything arranged into rows by height. The couch pillows were next; I fluffed them, moved them around, then fluffed them again. I dusted often-missed spaces: behind the TV, around the baseboards, and on top of the bookcase.

None of it helped. The house felt strange, empty, like someone had plucked the noise right out of it, and I suddenly realized I didn’t remember who I was without the chaos.

It was the first summer since the separation. The first time I would be alone for a significant length of time in over ten years. In that time there had always been someone in the house: my husband, then the kids. Now there was just me.

He had handed me divorce papers on Valentine's Day, which I had to admit was poetic.

He knew it was my favorite holiday. The one that I had felt was the most genuine; it was about love, not presents, and we always made it special.

We went on picnics, went hiking, camping—whatever we could do to spend time together.

The divorce wasn't technically finalized yet. Fortunately, it wasn’t contested; he had already bought a new house, so he was letting me keep this one.

We agreed to joint custody of the kids; everything should have gone smoothly.

But things rarely do when it comes to dealing with divorce court.

The marriage had ended the moment the envelope hit the kitchen table, but it had become a long, expensive goodbye.

That had been four months ago. Now it was summer, and the noisemakers were going to be two states away with their father for nearly three months.

What did single thirty-one-year-olds do when they were alone?

Go to bars, most likely. Flirt with men. Date.

The thought barely crossed my mind before I discarded it.

I did not need another man. I was done sharing space with someone who refused to put the toilet seat down.

Done debating life decisions, done waking up next to someone who ignored me more and more, and done needing another person to feel complete.

I had work to occupy my time, I supposed.

I worked from home, four hours a day, graphic designing.

It had felt like a gift to have gotten the job when I had kids to pick up from school, make dinner for, and help with homework.

Now I closed the laptop at noon, stood in the kitchen, and thought, That's it?

I used to have fun, didn’t I? Before I became Mrs. Boyd, back when I was just Catia Rivera. I would stay awake well into the morning with a controller in my hand, slaying dragons and saving damsels one level at a time. The memory hit me with a mix of sorrow and longing for the good-ole days.

When I was a teenager, you couldn’t tear me away from my PlayBox. Most of the kids at school spent their free time at the mall or in someone's basement for parties that I hadn’t been invited to.

I had preferred to stay home with a controller in my hand and snacks at the ready.

I liked the world of games more than the real world, which had felt too unpredictable and uncertain.

There were tons of arbitrary rules that I struggled to decode, but in video games, everything made sense.

There were objectives, boundaries, and clear rules that applied to everyone equally.

You knew exactly what was being asked of you.

My bedroom had looked like a shrine to gaming.

Posters of characters that I knew better than most of my classmates had covered every inch of wall space.

And every Halloween I dressed as one of them and cringed when almost everyone asked who I was supposed to be.

My true friends, the few who also enjoyed gaming, would always challenge me to see who could get the high score.

I almost always won, but they kept challenging me anyway.

It took me twenty years to understand how much that had meant to me.

Maybe I could have fun again. Maybe all I needed was a gaming console.

But I was not about to go into the kids' rooms and try using theirs; those new X-Stations were too complicated.

I wanted an old-fashioned PlayBox like when I was a teen.

A quick internet search and I found a used game shop nearby.

I grabbed my purse and keys, then rushed out the door. Five minutes later, I was pulling up to the shop with the ugly neon sign over the door that read ‘Pixel Palace.' A rundown game shop sandwiched between a mattress store and a hibachi restaurant.

When I pushed the door open, the smell of a citrusy incense hit me. Odd, I had prepared myself for the scent of body odor and fast food from the breakroom to assail my nostrils.

The store looked exactly like what I would expect a game shop to look like: walls lined with game cases organized by console, a glass display case serving as the front counter, and brightly colored sale signs taped crookedly to the shelves.

Everything was familiar, except for the small bundles of dried herbs hanging above the counter and the rows of crystals that sat atop each middle-aisle shelf.

At the sound of the door chime, a woman with silver hair looked up from her magazine and stood to greet me.

An old woman?

I had expected to see either a teenager or at least a younger adult managing the store.

“Welcome! I’m Selma,” she said, giving me a gentle smile. “And you look like a woman on a mission.”

“Is it that obvious?” I snorted.

“Oh, yes.” She tapped the side of her nose like we shared a secret. “I can tell a lot about someone just by looking; call it a sixth sense. You’re here to alleviate either boredom, nostalgia, or loneliness.”

Her tone was so confident, I couldn’t help but smile. After all, she wasn’t wrong. “It might be a bit of all three.”

Selma nodded in understanding. “Then you’re in the right place. What is it that you’re nostalgic about? A certain type of game?”

“I used to play anything,” I said, facing the racks of games in slim cases. “Racing, fighting, or adventure games, though RPGs were my favorite.” I sighed. “But it’s been a very long time.”

“Life does tend to get in the way.” Her expression softened. “As do people.”

I started to shrug; I wasn’t going to admit that my marriage and children were the reasons why I hadn’t taken time for myself in years, but when I looked in her eyes, I stopped.

The memories returned one by one. Saturday mornings when I would play games before my husband woke up. Then his voice from the hallway.

“Are you really playing that right now?”

Setting the controller down to avoid an argument. His raised eyebrow when I bought a new game. Him commenting about the electric bill when I spent too much time on it. Small things that added up to me playing less and less.

Then the kids were born, and it got harder to find the time to play. One day I realized that I couldn't remember the last time I'd even turned it on. So when a parent at my kids' school was struggling to buy her son a Christmas present, I donated the console without thinking twice.

All at once the silence I’d been surrounded by all morning cracked something open inside me.

“My kids went to spend the summer with their dad.” The words spilled from my mouth. “I thought it would feel like a vacation, but the house just feels wrong.”

Selma nodded, like she had known my story from the moment I walked in the door. “It’s always jarring when your house is quiet for the first time,” she said. “Makes you realize just how much of yourself you’ve given to other people.”

How much of myself I’ve given to other people.

That was it, wasn’t it? I didn’t feel like me anymore when I was alone because I’d given so much of myself away.

“I didn’t expect it to affect me so fast,” I admitted. “I mean, they’ve only been gone a few hours. But after they left, I couldn’t figure out what to do with myself. I used to have hobbies. I used to have... a life, I guess.”

I didn’t know why I was telling her all of this. It was as if a floodgate had opened, and I couldn’t hold the words back.

“You still have a life,” she said, giving me a reassuring smile. “It’s just waiting on you to prioritize yourself again.”

Something in her voice made me believe her. Made the knot in my chest loosen for the first time that day.

“I thought getting a PlayBox would help,” I said, smiling. “I used to play all the time when I was a teenager.”

“Returning to the familiar,” she nodded. “There’s nothing wrong with that. But sometimes what we needed before isn’t the same as what we need today.”