Chapter 10 Mason
Mason
I groaned and let my head fall until it landed on the wooden top of the dining room table.
“So, what did you roll?” Mama D asked solicitously, her voice carefully neutral as she peered over the top of her laptop at me. If I rolled anything except a one, we had the villain in the bag.
“…One.” I said, glaring at the offending dice.
“Woot! I did it again!” Mama D jumped up and started a little victory dance around the table. “I killed the party! I killed the party!” she sang, swiveling her hips to the music only she could hear as she celebrated.
Mama K was half asleep on the couch, having been one of the first casualties of the night.
The rest of us were seated around the table in various stages of exhaustion.
Kaine was typing away at his laptop, rolling up a new character, while Bishop was scribbling away in a notebook.
The boys ignored her and just sighed as they listened to their mom’s victory dance as she destroyed yet another unsuspecting adventuring party.
Apparently, this was a fairly regular occurrence.
“No fair, Mom,” Lee said, glancing over her shoulder and pointing at the laptop screen open in front of her. “That was way too many creatures to be attacking such a low-level party.”
“Hey, hands off!” she exclaimed, darting back to her seat at the end of the table and slamming the top of her laptop down, hiding the contents from Lee’s suspicious gaze.
“I am not the one who decided to open the dwarven sarcophagi with runes on them that said, ‘Doom to Any Who Disturb My Rest’,” she answered cheekily, winking at me and shooting a glare over at Kaine.
“How was I supposed to know?” he groaned. “We need better equipment, and there’s always magical loot in old graves!”
“Well, we did kinda tell you,” Lee said, patting his brother on the back, “But did you listen? No…”
Lee jumped back as Kaine’s hand flashed out to playfully punch at him.
“Watch it, old man. Keep up the ‘I told you so’s’ and we’ll find out who knows better on the mats. I can’t help it if I have a low wisdom score,” Kaine countered, pouting at his brother and pointing to the character sheet for his now-deceased rogue. “Or rather, had.”
Lee laughed and ducked around his brother, sitting back down in the chair next to me.
“You want some more?” he asked, looking down at my glass. We’d been drinking home- made Sangria for a couple of hours now, and I was feeling pleasantly buzzed.
“No, thanks,” I said, “I’m good.”
My early fear of meeting Lee’s family had dissolved under the relentless friendliness of his parents, and the playful shenanigans of his brothers. Kaine and Lee were a lot alike which surprised me, since Kaine was a lot younger than Lee, probably early- to mid-twenties.
The twins had called early on and said they had changed their minds and were just going to head home and call it an early night – they were going to have a lot of restocking to do first thing.
I sat back and just reveled in the feeling of relaxation that washed over me.
Usually when I met new people, I was anxious about everything, but not here.
I felt more at home in this room than I did in my own apartment.
The living room was large, almost the entire width of the first floor.
The walls were a warm beige that seemed to glow with the firelight.
The furniture was a mix of soft leather and well-worn tapestry cushions.
The paintings on the walls and the pictures of the family placed here and there documenting a lifetime of memories.
I watched as Mama D closed up her laptop, then went over to join Kyra on the couch, reaching out to playfully comfort her partner on her loss.
On the front of her laptop were post-it notes with pictures of the whole party – some drawn by me, others by Bishop, who was a pretty decent artist. The post-its had each player’s name on them, and whenever we rolled initiative (the order in which each player would take their turn) she would reorganize them to reflect the new party order.
The sangria had been delicious, but I realized I might have imbibed a too much when I started giggling as I looked at the names written across the laptop. Lee looked at me, obviously enjoying my state of relaxation, and said “What’s so funny?”
I giggled again and pointed at the post-its. “Hicks. Bishop. Kaine. All you need is Sigourney and a few space marines, and you’ll have the cast of Aliens.” I giggled again as Lee froze, then rolled his eyes.
“Yep,” he said in resignation, a smile tugging at the corner of his lips. “Pretty much. Check, and check.”
He pointed first to himself, then to pictures around the room of his absent siblings.
“Rip-Lee.” He emphasized. “My sister, Weaver,” he said, pointing at a photo of a red-haired woman in an Air Force uniform.
“Hudson,” he said, point to a picture of one of the twins, then at another.
“Hicks.” He paused a moment and peered closely at the pictures then switched their order on the shelf.
Then he pointed at a final picture of the whole family together on a boat, the name “Nostromo” written in large letters on its side.
“Oh my god,” I said, staring at the pictures, my eyes going wide as I looked at him. “You’re ‘Aliens’ freaks.”
Diana and Kyra laughed from their cuddle spot on the couch where Kyra had settled after her victory dance.
“…I mean that in the most respectful way possible?” I said, as I realized that either woman could have put me in the hospital twice over. Plus, they’d given me this wonderful sangria. I took another gulp.
“Just us, sweetie. I think the boys would have gladly changed their names when they were kids,” Diana said.
“Sonny absolutely freaks out if you call him ‘Hudson’,” Kyra responded. “And Ripley got teased for his name so much when he was younger, he made us call him Lee,” she said, sipping her drink.
“Diana and I met at one of the first showings of ‘Aliens’ back in ’86. We were the only ones who thought Ripley would make it out alive,” she said, smiling at her partner. “She was an absolutely bad-assed motherfucker.”
The incongruous picture of such colorful language coming from such a delicate looking woman made me laugh even harder, proof once again that I'd had too much to drink.
“I’ll never forget hanging out at Chapel Hill Mall afterward, so jazzed over the ending and working up the nerve to ask Di if she wanted to go to the bookstore with me to see if they had the novelization of the movie,” Kyra said.
She leaned over and laid a gentle kiss against her partner’s lips. “We’ve been together ever since.”
“Uh oh,” Lee said. “You might want to cover your eyes,” he whispered in my ear.
“Here it comes…” Said Kaine and Bishop in unison,
“Get away from her, you bitch!” the two women yelled in unison, then promptly began kissing passionately.
“Awww…” I said, sighing at the happy couple. “Love at first sight. That is amazing.”
“Yeah, we think so, too,” said Lee, his voice low and rumbling, his hand resting along the back of the wooden chair I was in.
It felt so goddamn nice to have his arm there, that for a minute I just let myself lean into him, feeling the warmth of his skin touching the back of my neck.
His arm moved slightly, and I felt his finger tease slightly along my nape.
Suddenly I was no longer warm, I was scorching.
My skin felt electrified, like tiny little lightning bolts would shoot off anywhere our skin touched.
I swallowed a moan as his breath brushed my ear.
“You okay there, Mason?” He asked, his eyes snagging mine.
There was a knowing look on his face, as if he knew exactly the kind of effect he was having on me.
I could feel the heat rushing up my face as his eyes bored into mine.
I could smell the slight scent of his body wash, mixed with the smells of the pizza and fruity sangria, though the sangria smell had to be me, as Lee hadn’t drunk anything except water or tea for a couple of hours now.
My eyes felt snared in his gaze, their green turned a dark mossy color, the firelight reflecting glints in his eyes.
Blood left my head at a dizzying rate, all of it heading to points south. Oh my God. I was seriously not going to pop a boner in front of Lee’s parents…
I cleared my throat and sat up, looking away guiltily. Conversation had gone on around us, and no one else seemed to have noticed the interchange.
Diana and Kyra yawned and stood, announcing they were calling it a night. It was after 2 a.m. and I eyed the clock on my phone in surprise. I couldn’t remember the last time I'd been out this late. I had a couple of texts from both Lizzie and Everett, but nothing looked urgent.
Despite their protests, we all stayed long enough to help the couple clean up. As we bade our goodbyes, Kyra and Diana refused to stand on ceremony.
“Once you’ve died on the table, you’re part of the family,” Diana said, wrapping her arms around my shoulders and hugging me close. I returned their hugs, hesitantly at first, but with increasing confidence.
They invited me back the following week, since I would still be in town.
I eagerly accepted. I realized as we drove home that, oddly enough, while I usually hated social events, I found I was really looking forward to seeing them and their crazy crew again.
I also began plotting how to min/max a character that I could keep alive despite Diana’s machinations.
With as dark as it was, I didn’t know how Lee knew where to turn in but before long we were pulling up the driveway to his home.
We got out of the Jeep, but decided to leave the books and other promotional materials there until tomorrow.
I grabbed just my backpack with my laptop in it, and I stood by his side as Lee unlocked the front door.
Something made me stop him as he reached for the door handle.