Chapter 3
Brian
Iwas so psyched that Sam loved my idea for a games night and wanted to run with it that I got started with things immediately.
Within twenty-four hours of getting the greenlight, I marked the first drop-in game night off on the café’s calendar, then went around to local thrift stores and game shops to source different board games for people to play.
I told as many of our regular customers to spread the word as I could during my shifts over the next few days, and I gushed about the whole thing to my roommate, Kendra, on one of the rare evenings when she wasn’t working a night shift and I wasn’t hanging out at the Meyers house.
“A games night sounds like a great idea,” Kendra said as we sat across the kitchen table from each other, eating an amazing supper she’d cooked.
Kendra was a nurse at the local hospital, but cooking was her passion.
Without her, I probably would have gained about twenty pounds from eating take-out all the time.
“I’m convinced it’ll bring a bunch of business into Common Grounds,” I said, spearing some of the chicken and vegetables on my plate. “Sam thinks so, too, although he thinks we would do better with a tournament version of games night.”
“Sam thinks so?” Kendra said, a flash of teasing in her eyes.
I knew what she was getting at, but I chose to ignore it.
My insides were already twisted up enough when I thought about Sam.
“I still think we’ll get more business by inviting people to come in and play whatever games they want while socializing, but Sam is convinced.
That’s why we’re setting up sort of dueling games nights to test our theories and figure out what works best.”
“And Sam is totally on board with this idea.” She was still teasing me. She couldn’t keep the smile off her face.
I let out a breath and stared flatly across the table at her. “Yes, I have a crush on Samwise Meyers, okay?”
“You’ve had a crush on him for a long time,” she laughed.
“Maybe,” I admitted. “But there’s no way I’m going to do anything about it.”
“What?” Kendra protested. “Come on, Brian. You’re a snack. Any man worth his salt would want to take a bite out of you.”
I laughed at that, but mostly out of nervousness. “Sam is my boss,” I reminded her. “Well, one of them.”
“That works to your advantage.” Kendra pointed her fork full of potato at me. “He’s not the only boss, so it’s not like there couldn’t be some sort of work-around if the two of you did, you know.” She wiggled her eyebrows.
“Stop,” I laughed, though I wouldn’t have minded doing something worthy of wiggling eyebrows with Sam.
Kendra laughed with me, but said, “You need to give yourself more credit, Brian. I know everything that happened to land you in Philly all those years ago was traumatic and really took a bite out of your self-esteem, but that was then. You don’t need to prove yourself to anyone around here.”
I swallowed the bite I’d just taken awkwardly. The reminder of where I’d come from, what I’d been running from in Pittsburgh, meant that bite and everything else I’d just eaten didn’t settle well. I put down my fork.
“It might have been a long time ago,” I said in a more subdued voice, “but a lot of things haven’t changed. I don’t know what I would do if Sam found out about…all that.”
“Sweetie, he’d be fine with it,” Kendra said, reaching a hand across the table to me. “I mean, I don’t know him very well, but he’s always seemed like a great guy to me. Very understanding.”
“He is a great guy,” I sighed, squeezing her hand. “That’s part of the problem.”
Kendra smiled at me and squeezed my hand back. We kept eye contact for a few seconds before both pulling back to finish our dinner.
“I need to figure out how to get as many people to come to this games night as possible,” I went on with my original thoughts once the mood had settled a little.
“You need to put up fliers and things all around town and take them to some of the nearby colleges,” Kendra said as she stabbed her last potato.
A flush of self-consciousness hit me. “That’s exactly what I was thinking,” I said, “but….”
Kendra’s expression softened as she chewed, then swallowed. “Do you want me to put together a flier for you?” she asked, every bit as compassionate as a good friend and nurse should have been. “You can tell me exactly what to say and I’ll type it out into a document that we can print and copy.”
“That would be great,” I said, relaxing and sitting back in my chair.
I seriously didn’t know what I would do without Kendra. She was one of the only people, besides Diccon, who knew my big secret. She’d covered for me when I needed things like fliers and forms filled out since we’d moved in together.
Kendra was also pretty amazing with graphics.
After we cleaned up from supper, we sat down at her computer and I dictated what I wanted the fliers to say as she found all sorts of eye-catching graphics to go along with the announcement of games night.
In no time at all, I had an amazing little poster, and I just needed to get copies printed.
“These look great,” Sam said the next day, when I took the original into work to show him. “I’m impressed.”
The way he smiled when he looked from the flier to me had me wishing I could take credit for everything. It had me wishing I could be good enough for him to do more than just plan a games night with me.
“Honestly, my roommate, Kendra, did a lot of the work,” I confessed, shifting to stand by his side so we could look down at the flier together.
“It was still your idea,” Sam said, keeping his smile fixed on me.
We stood so close that his tiny shift felt meaningful and intimate somehow.
His arm was almost pressed against mine, and I could smell the richness of whatever cologne or deodorant he wore.
He smelled so good. He looked and felt amazing, too.
God, I wished I was brave enough to tell him how much I liked him!
“You’re planning to get this printed and put up around town?” Sam asked, his voice low and warm. I wanted to wrap myself in it.
“Yep,” I said, taking the flier from his hands and stepping away, mostly for the sake of my own sanity. “As soon as my shift is over.”
“Make sure you expense it to the café,” Sam said, nodding and falling back into boss mode. “I don’t want you paying for things like this yourself.”
I grinned, liking the way he was so ready to take charge and look out for me. Maybe boss mode wasn’t so bad after all.
The fliers were printed, and I spent a couple afternoons over the next week taking them around to all the places I could think of where gamers might hang out.
Diccon came with me, which was ideal for finding my way around unfamiliar places, and we had a great time getting hyped up for the whole thing.
“I definitely think you’re onto something here,” Diccon said as we posted our last flier on the message board at the local Wawa. “I just have this feeling that games night is going to be a big hit. Like as big as open mic night.”
“We need something to counteract the disaster that construction is causing,” I said with a sigh as we walked back to Common Grounds. “The café means too much to me to let it go down without a fight.”
Diccon laughed and thumped a hand on my back. “It’s like you’re a member of the family already,” he said, adding a wink.
A rush of embarrassment hit me. Diccon might have known my big secret, but I’d worked hard to keep my crush on Sam from him. But I guess I was a little too obvious. I always had worn my heart on my sleeve.
Finally, after what felt like ages of work, but was really a little more than a week and a half, the first open games night happened.
“This looks like a good crowd,” Sam said, coming to stand next to me at the table where I was explaining the rules for Ticket to Ride to a group of younger college kids.
I straightened as the group reached for game pieces and cards. “Yeah,” I said, glancing around. “I’m impressed, and a little relieved.”
Things were going well so far. Tables had been set up in the backroom, and at least half of them were taken at the moment.
About half of those were groups of friends who had come together to play, but there were plenty of individuals who had come on their own and were now making friends with other people interested in the same games they were.
It made me wonder if, in the future, we could do a games night/date night thing.
Best of all, there was a steady line of people at the counter, buying the special cake Hannah had made earlier or ordering coffee. Hope was definitely in the air.
“I can’t say I’m all that surprised,” Sam said, leaning closer to me. “I knew this was a good idea as soon as you brought it to me.”
I blushed as I glanced up at him, fighting desperately not to read too much into the warmth in his eyes at the same time. “Good ideas are a group effort,” I said, nudging him to let him know it wasn’t just my idea.
“Um, I have a question about the rules,” one of the young guys sitting at the table said, holding up the rule pamphlet with a frown. “You said to draw two railway car cards, but it says here I should draw destination cards?” He turned the rule pamphlet to face me.
I panicked. I hated being put on the spot with words in the best of times, but to have someone show me something I couldn’t read and ask my opinion about it with Sam standing right there gave me serious flashes of Professor Schwartz and the Pittsburgh disaster.
“You can draw either kind of card once the game gets going,” one of the young women at the table corrected her friend. “But it sounds like it’s probably best to start with the railway car cards.”
“Oh,” the guy said, pulling the pamphlet back. “I get it.”