Chapter 39
Chapter Thirty-Nine
“You’re sure this is okay with you, man?”
I look at Will, who’s nodding at me, smiling, as he lugs one of the heavier boxes into one of the spare rooms in his downstairs apartment. As he disappears into my new room, I get caught frowning by Iz, who uses her index fingers to force me into a mock smile.
“Stop worrying so much,” she says with a smirk.
I take her wrists in my hands, remove her fingers from my face, and kiss her forehead. “You’ll help me with my setup?”
“Are you kidding? I’m looking forward to it. I’ve been salivating since you mentioned a Ninety-One-Ninety Pro.”
I laugh, head shaking.
That’s my dream girl, getting hot and bothered over a top-of-the-line graphics card.
When I finally broke down and told Iz, Will, and Asher that I’d move into the B&B with them, later, there’d been a flurry of discussion I didn’t really understand.
Then it became clear that Will had his own apartment in the building's basement, and Iz and Asher were discussing with Will how they could move downstairs and leave their rooms vacant for guests.
So, after that, I had a long chat with my landlord, Lilly, and let her keep my final month’s rent because I left early—she argued, but I can be very persuasive—and Iz volunteered me to be the first of us to move in with Will, who enticed me with gig-speed fiber optic internet.
I didn’t mind, but I did demand to pay rent. I won’t be a freeloader on my pack, especially since I have the means to pay.
The bedroom I’m given is huge, which is great because I need the space with my streaming setup that Iz is going to help me with later.
“This is one hell of a gaming rig,” Asher says with a touch of admiration as he carefully sets Bertha, my gaming PC’s tower, on the floor beside my corner desk.
It had taken more time for me to drive back and forth from my old apartment to put my stuff in my car and take it to Will’s with Asher’s help than it did for all four of us to lug my junk into the basement.
And once we’re done at last, I topple onto my new mattress with a relieved and exhausted sigh, head spinning with plans for how to finish arranging everything in the room later.
The mattress dips as Iz sits on the edge of the bed, squeezes my hand. “Do you want to take a nap?”
“Nah.” I squeeze her hand back. “It’s just kind of nice to be here with you all.”
“‘Kind of’?” I hear Asher scoff from the doorway, making me laugh.
“Okay, it’s definitely nice. I haven’t been around people a lot in a while.”
“Any time you need some solitude, just close your door.” Will leans on my desk as he looks at me.
“And if I become an antisocial prick, I trust you’ll let me know.”
“Oh, we will.” Iz gives me a grimace-excuse for a smile and flutters her eyelashes.
Laughter is my response until I look up at the textured ceiling and suddenly feel like I’m falling, like I can’t get any air, hands closing around my neck, and I sit up, heart racing, breathing erratic.
“Matthew,” Iz’s voice sounds far, far away. “You’re okay, hun. I promise you are. Breathe.”
I do as she says, the best I can.
“What do you see?”
“The dresser. TV on top,” I say between breaths.
“What do you hear?”
“The heater. Maybe… a water heater.”
“Good,” she hums. “What do you feel?”
My head swivels toward her, the pressure easing, though not gone. “Your hand in mine.”
She smiles at me, and realization smacks me in the face. I haven’t been here more than a couple of hours and I’m already falling into panic in front of my entire pack.
“Matthew.” Will draws my attention to my other side.
“My therapist would tell me that my body and mind were out of alignment when I’d have panic attacks.
Living in a fear-state made my brain go down dark roads the moment I’d feel like something strange was happening to me physically.
The smallest thing would set me off, like a pinched nerve in my hand making a finger go numb, and that would make me think I was in terrible medical danger. My brain was always lying to me.”
“Yeah, mate,” Asher says as he travels further into the room. “For a long time after I left Hollywood, I’d start gasping for air if I thought a pap was around. Thought I was having a heart attack.”
I look from Asher to Will, a strange, warm sensation filling my chest. “Thank you, guys. I mean it.”
“We’re in this together, Matthew.” This from Iz. “I do need to ask you, though, if you’re taking any medication we should be aware of.”
I shake my head, no. “The pills they gave me would make me sleep for more than a day. Even half of the smallest dose available made me unable to drive. They were the ‘as-needed’ kind. I found out pretty quick that if I took them one day, the next day my attacks would get worse.” I frown, take my hand back to rub both my palms down my face.
“It was like they worked, but they dulled too much and the panic would come back with a vengeance once they wore off.”
“I had a similar experience,” Will chimes in. “But they did help me get through the early, tougher days. I was eventually able to come off of them.”
“What about CBD?” Iz asks.
“That’s what I used,” Asher says as he leans against the dresser across from me. “I would get the tinctures or gummies.”
The conversation eases my mind a bit more. I nudge Iz. “This one used to be quite the ‘gardener.’”
She lets out a “Pffft,” and cuts me a sassy look. “What do you mean, ‘used to be’?”
I gawk at her. “You still grow?”
“Seasonally.” She tips up her chin.
“I had no idea,” Asher says with a crooked grin. “Our very own herb connoisseur.”
Iz sighs before plopping onto her back beside me.
“It’s a lot of work, especially in a small space.
” She twists her head toward Asher. “My apartment is kind of a shoe box. I had a tent with a hydroponic setup and LEDs. Despite that, I haven’t grown anything since last winter.
I don’t know if it’s the same up in the north, but electricity costs less in the winter months in L.A. ”
“Not a whole lot,” I mutter, remembering the sweltering heat and trying to keep my electronics from overheating without declaring bankruptcy. Then, a smile crosses my face. “Do you still grow McGreggers?”
Iz laughs as Will blinks, one brow rising. “What’s a ‘McGreggers’?”
She grins wildly. “So, my Uncle Greg always used to complain that today’s weed was way too strong and that the herb of the 70s was so much better.
And since I took my little private grow op very seriously, I looked into why that would be, and found out that growers today are basically going hog-wild with the amount of THC they breed into their product.
That increases the psychedelic effects, but also causes all the bad side effects, like paranoia and shit.
” Her head shakes. “People don’t understand, or maybe just don’t care, that there’s a scale. ”
“What do you mean?” Asher asks, looking like he is really interested in this.
Iz purses her lips. “Weed is made up of THC, which is what gets you high, and CBD, which holds all the beneficial medicinal effects.” She frowns a moment.
“There are a lot more compounds than just those two, but we’ll keep it simple.
Anyway, Let’s say the THC and CBD make up one hundred percent of the bud.
So, the more you have of one, the less you have of the other.
” She makes a scale with her hands, weighing them back and forth.
“All these growers who breed for high THC are cutting the beneficial CBD from their strains, creating buds that make people trip hard while not really getting any of the good stuff.” She pauses to check we’re still with her, and I laugh.
“Anyway, I made a high CBD indica strain for my Uncle Greg and gave him all my cured herb for Christmas one year. Told him about it, so he knew it wasn’t the stuff you find out there today.
I’d named it ‘Greggers,’ but two days after Christmas, he called to thank me, raving about the strain, but told me that any time he smoked it, he’d start craving fast food really bad.
So I changed the name to ‘McGreggers’ as a little joke. ”
“I never knew about any of that,” Will says, sounding pretty fascinated.
Iz laughs, but it’s that nervous laugh of hers when she geeks-out about something she’s passionate about then get embarrassed after. “I’m a bit of a nerdy weirdo.” She looks at me. “Do you want to set up your stuff now?”
Good deflection, Iz.
I consider for a moment, then shake my head. “Nah. Why don’t you all let me order us some delivery as thanks for helping me today? This way nobody has to cook tonight.”
I’ve only ever seen Will do the cooking, sometimes with help, but still.
With everyone on board, I put a plan into motion that sprung to life in my head in a blink.
First, I load up the Foo-D app on my phone and place a massive order from Wei Wok, the most spectacular Chinese takeout place on the planet.
When the delivery estimate loads in at over an hour, as I’d expected, I get to work like a stealthy thief in the night in the downstairs living room while everyone else is doing their thing before dinner arrives.
By the time the buzzer on the front door chimes, everything is set, and I leap up the stairs to get the door, finding Will already there. He turns giant blue eyes on me, I assume because of the huge haul of food that just arrived, and I grin. “Let’s take this downstairs.”
I thank the delivery guy, pass him an extra bit of a cash tip on top of what I charged to my card, and Will and I load up with plastic delivery bags and head downstairs, shouting for Iz and Asher to join us.
Once in the living room, Will stops short, staring at the TV a moment before absently making his way to the kitchen counter to put the food down. “What’s…” He blinks a couple of times then turns to me. “What’s all this?”
“Aww, Matthew!” Iz throws her arms around me, pulling me down to kiss my cheek. “This is amazing!”
The TV shows the loading screen for Yavin-8, one of the co-op action role-playing games Iz’s former company made. I dug my current-generation console out of one of the boxes, and threw four game controllers on the charging station.
“I thought it would be fun to play together, instead of against one another.”
And that’s what the four of us do as we eat Chinese takeout on the couch together, running co-op campaigns, first in the sci-fi world of Yavin-8, then in the fantasy world of Fantasmaland.
You can learn a lot about people by the archetypes they play in video games.
Asher enjoys being a frontline protector and always plays a tank.
Will wants to soothe everyone around him, choosing healers.
Iz loves her DPS classes, embodying a fighter, whether it’s at range or up close—but I have it on good authority that magic-wielding is her favorite.
And, as for me, I’ve always been partial to stealth classes, preferring to play a dual-wielding rogue, sneaking in, slitting throats, then vanishing.
But tonight, I’ve done something I’ve never done before, choosing a support class that bolstered and shielded my team.
And you know what? I really fucking enjoyed it.