Chapter 15
Downtown Brentwood was filled with different shops and boutiques, and over the years, I’d gone into nearly every single one of them. In fact, there were only three I’d never stepped foot into.
Smitty’s Smoke Shop, for obvious reasons.
The Kraft Barn, because it was a quilt shop and I’d start quilting in maybe… fifty years.
And then there was one of the newer openings: Dice & Dragon, a store for absolute dweebs.
Guess which one Logan wanted to go into Saturday afternoon.
“This is the cool store you wanted to show me?” I stopped dead in my tracks when the green and blue awning came into view. “You’re joking.”
Logan, who’d taken a step forward after I stopped, turned toward me.
Wind stirred his golden hair, and his dark gray T-shirt tugged as he reached up to shove it back.
He would’ve looked totally handsome if it weren’t for literal Dweeb Capital over his shoulder.
“It’s just for five minutes,” he told me. “I have to pick up Noah’s die.”
“His die,” I echoed flatly. His die, because his best friend was someone who played with dice. “Cool. Go ahead. I’ll wait for you in the car.”
Logan snatched my wrist before I had a chance to take a step backward. “Just come inside and see,” he coaxed, warm fingers pressing into my skin. If he wasn’t trying to drag me into hell, my pulse might’ve jumped at the contact. “You’ll probably think it’s cool.”
“I’m starting to think you don’t know what the definition of cool is.” I gave my arm a weak tug, but he didn’t release it. “You—you’re like the definition of a nerd being trapped in a hot body, you know.”
A surprised chuckle burst from him. “You were wrong about mini golf,” he pointed out. “And about the arcade. I’m sure—”
“Do not say you’re sure, Logan Castle, because you will be wrong.”
“And here I thought someone wanted exposure therapy,” Logan continued, attacking from a different angle.
“I’m going to need actual therapy if I go in there.”
He shut his eyes briefly to fight off his amusement. “Someone voted Most Likely To: Peak in High School would never set foot in here.”
It wasn’t a dig, only because of the way he’d said it—light, leading. “Nice try,” I told him, not buying the psychology he was trying to pull.
“How about this?” Logan took a step closer to me, so our hands rested between us instead of pulled taut. “After this, we do whatever you want to do.”
It didn’t seem like a fair trade. Three dweeb dates compared to me finally getting to pick. Unless—“What if I say I want to go get manicures?”
Logan blinked, alarm filling his gaze. And he tried to tamp it down. “I—I’d say sure.”
For the first time since the awning game into view, I smiled. I turned his hand over, examining his cuticles. “Your skin tone would look good with pink polish.”
“Woah, no. No polish, just—”
“Too late.” I started forward, now tugging him after me. “Let’s go, Dragon Boy.”
I was expecting a bell to chime when we pushed the door open to the game shop, like how it did at Expresso’s.
Instead, it was… worse. Way worse. Instead of a sweet little bell, a deep, booming horn sounded—like the opening of some dramatic, medieval battle.
Logan cleared his throat. “I should’ve warned you about that.”
“You think this is funny, don’t you?”
The little dork was fighting a smile. “No, ‘course not.”
I squeezed his hand hard enough that he weakened under my grip, but still laughed. Jerk.
The shop itself was small, more hole-in-the-wall size than an actual store.
There was only enough room for two aisles with a long shelf in between, and every square inch of the store was filled with something.
Action figures in boxes, action figures outside of boxes, signs on the wall, board games—the geekiness spread over every surface.
“Who goes there!” a grand voice boomed almost as loud as the horn. A large man walked out of the back room, slapping aside the hanging beads that separated the space. “Ah, ‘tis Logan the Great!”
Oh my gosh. Manicures weren’t even worth this level of cringe.
The man was wearing a grayish-green cloak, one that looked a size or two too small, with the hood up over his head. His pants were dark brown and tight, cut off just underneath his knees, and he had on a pair of black slides.
“Cloak of invisibility?” I asked wearily, feeling my soul wither as the words came out.
The man’s face immediately twisted in offense. “This is an Elven Cloak from Lothlórien,” he told me, smoothing his palms down the fabric almost reverently. “Does this look like an Invisibility Cloak to you?”
I slowly lifted my flat gaze to Logan.
Logan pressed his lips together to keep from grinning, looking like he was having the time of his life. “She’s still learning,” Logan said, patting my hand. I almost snatched it back to smack him. “Noah placed an order last week. He asked me to swing by and pick it up.”
“He called me,” the guy confirmed with a sage nod. “Mind the store for me while I get it from the back, kay, kid? You’re the party leader until I return. Don’t let the goblins loot the place.”
Party leader. Goblins. Cringe.
When he disappeared back through the beads, Logan rocked back on his heels, still fighting his smile. “Invisibility Cloak was a good guess.”
This time, I did pull my hand from his grip to smack him.
Logan ruefully rubbed his shoulder, slow to lose the grin. “Want to take a look around?”
“No,” I huffed on instinct, folding my arms across my chest. “Lead the way.”
Logan ignored my tone, jumping to attention as if he were some tour guide. He brought me forward to examine the items on the shelf closest to the door. They were filled with dice and other things, but I barely looked.
Logan, though, was sure to explain it all to me. “This one’s for epic campaigns,” he told me as he plucked up a die with such small sides. It was dark blue with white numbers—a lot of numbers. “DMs don’t use them very often, but a d100 is great to have.”
“I mean this in the nicest way possible,” I told him honestly, feeling my eyebrows pull together. “I don’t understand geek speak.”
Logan set the die back, chuckling, moving onto the next shelf.
“Hugh has this deck,” he said, careful not to disrupt the other trinkets as he swiped up a card deck.
“It’s got a misprint, and half the cards don’t have the correct etchings on the back.
” He slid a few out of the box, showcasing me a card that had inscriptions on the front, but a white back. “Basically priceless for collectors.”
Priceless, he said. I would’ve called it ruined. “Hmm.”
Logan had a story for a lot of the things we came across, almost as if this was his own store.
Or as if he’d spent hours upon hours in here, learning the lore of each item.
I kept my hands awkwardly in front of me as we meandered through, waiting for the guy—Hugh, apparently—to come back out, but I found myself listening to Logan intently.
None of it made sense, except for his excitement.
“Hugh opened this place up last January,” Logan told me. We’d moved onto a display of smaller items, like little figurines of creatures and people. “Most of this is from his personal collection. He’s spent decades collecting everything.”
“And he’s just selling it?” A lot of the stuff looked like it would’ve been hard to find.
“Some. Some’s just for display. He runs this place as more of a ‘I’ll order this for you’ type of place.
And it’s a hangout for anyone wanting to come in for a game.
” Logan tipped his head toward the beaded door.
“There’s a bigger room in the back with a D&D table.
Free to use, but people usually leave donations. ”
A lot of stuff Logan was saying went over my head, but I still nodded slowly.
I’d never in a million years admit it to him, but the store seemed a bit different now that I knew this was someone’s personal collection.
Years and years of someone’s life sat on these shelves for others to come in and gawk at, and even though most of it was absolutely geeky, I wasn’t about to take something someone cherished for most of their life and spit on it.
I picked up a little gold dragon figurine, rubbing my thumb over the extended flame that billowed from its parted jaws. “He’s cute,” I found myself saying.
“Hugh hand-painted a lot of these,” Logan explained, using his pinky to point at the dragon’s scales. “You can see on this one where he used glitter paint and where he didn’t.”
He was right. Not all of the scales were glittering, but enough to add dimension. “Must’ve taken forever.” I gently put the dragon back among his other hand painted friends. “I don’t think I’d have the patience. Or a steady enough hand.”
Logan’s shoulder nudged mine. “Me either. But they’re cool.”
“Yeah,” I found myself murmuring, voice almost lost. “They’re cool.”
I followed behind Logan, watching as he admired the pieces on the glass shelves. His blue eyes traced over everything diligently, completely fascinated with the little trinkets and figurines. There was such a pure captivation in his eyes, and something in my chest fluttered at the sight of it.
The last time I’d felt that way about something had been when Jade had been rattling off the Top Tier rules at Brentwood’s open house. I’d been rapt, awestruck that we’d found ourselves at the top, fascinated by everything she’d listed off.
Now, though, that same fascination was absent within me. The rules, the requirements, the Most Likely To list—none of it held my attention the same way anymore.
The thought unsettled me, and I couldn’t even really pinpoint why.
“Why are your clothes always wrinkled?” I asked Logan suddenly, needing to change the subject in my mind.
I eyed the dark gray button-down he had on, though the creases weren’t as bad in the fabric today, and mainly near the hem of the shirt. “You don’t have an iron?”