Chapter 8 #2
I second-guessed everything. Was his smile condescending? Was his hug more from pity than affection? Did he think I was a waste of his time?
“Hey,” I replied shortly, fighting not to jump out of my skin or act like a complete idiot who had overheard a conversation about how he was, well, a complete idiot.
“Everything okay?” Sam asked, keeping me in his arms a little longer. “You seem a little frazzled.”
“I just want games night to go well again,” I said, carefully extracting myself from his arms. “I’ve got work to do so that happens.”
I turned away from him, wincing as I did. I wasn’t handling this well. Why couldn’t I just face Sam and tell him the truth about everything?
Because I cared about him too much, I answered myself right away.
That didn’t mean I could let go enough to turn back to him and confide in him.
“Let me help you,” Sam said, following me deeper into the room full of tables. “What more do you need to set up?”
“I’ve got things under control for the most part,” I said as I dodged a few tables to put space between us.
I absolutely did not have anything under control.
And I wouldn’t have anything under control until I fessed up to Sam about everything and accepted whatever happened because of that.
“We could maybe display a few of the games better so people want to try their hand at playing them.”
“Okay, I can do that.” The slight note of uncertainty in Sam’s voice was not lost on me.
I did manage to smile at him, but I was sure he could see how fraught I was behind my fake smile. He knew something was wrong. Which was why I stayed away from him as much as I could as more and more people arrived to play games.
The good news was that the second Tuesday open play games night was just as well-attended as it’d been the first time.
I was so relieved, since I hadn’t done the same level of promotion as I had for the first one.
We had a lot of return players, and several of those brought friends with them.
Best of all, they didn’t just plop themselves at the tables for fun, they bought coffee and treats from Chase at the counter, too.
“I’m so glad you guys are doing this,” a college woman who told me her name was Katie said as she and her friends shifted from playing Settlers of Catan to Chutes and Ladders, of all things. “This is so cool.”
“And it’s great to hang out somewhere that isn’t campus,” her friend Rachel laughed.
“Is there something wrong with hanging out on campus?” I asked. They were students at Arcadia, and I’d always thought that campus was awesome.
“You know how it goes,” Katie said with a smirk. “You can have too much of a good thing.”
“Yeah, I remember,” I said nervously. I was pretty sure my lightning-brief college experience was worlds away from theirs.
“Where did you go to school?” Rachel asked as they settled in for their new game.
A few tables away, Sam glanced up as if he’d heard the question and was curious.
“Um,” I began, a thousand awful memories welling up. “I was at the University of Pittsburgh, but only for a few weeks.”
“Only a few weeks?” Katie looked perplexed.
“It wasn’t for me,” I said, then quickly excused myself on the pretense of helping another group with Jenga.
That little exchange left me brittle with bad memories. I could just about handle it by distracting myself helping people. But that wasn’t the end of things.
“Hey, Brian, can you help us with this?” one of the other guys who had come back for a second games night called to me from the table with the new strategy game.
“Yeah, sure,” I said, leaving what I was doing to join their table. “What can I do for you?”
The guy frowned at the thick booklet that had come with the game. “We’re trying to figure out these rules,” he said. “What do you make of this whole thing about gaining or losing a turn?”
He handed me the booklet.
My heart just about stopped beating. It was a repeat of the first games night, but I had the feeling I wasn’t going to get out of humiliating myself this time.
“Um,” I stared down at the book, sweat breaking out down my back. The printing was tiny. It was well beyond anything I could even hope to read. The figures on the page danced around like bugs crawling across a napkin. My brain absolutely would not process a damn thing I was seeing.
“Need help?”
I flinched as Sam walked up behind me, coming to stand by my side to gaze at the booklet in my hands.
“We’re trying to figure out the rules,” the guy at the table said, no idea that I was drowning in panic and shame.
Sam squinted at the booklet, then looked at me like he expected me to have all the answers.
I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t hold onto my secret for a second longer.
“I can’t read it,” I said in a weak and wispy voice, shoving the booklet at him.
“Yeah, the printing is really small,” Sam said, taking the thing from me and bringing it closer to his face.
I didn’t know if I wanted to laugh or cry. I’d told him straight-up that I was illiterate, and he’d assumed the printing was the problem, not me.
“Which part of the rules are you trying to figure out?” Sam asked, poring over the booklet.
“The bit about skipping turns or double turns,” the guy said.
“Excuse me,” I whispered hoarsely, stepping to the side so I could get away from the table as quickly as possible. I couldn’t stay there knowing what a joke I was. I couldn’t even figure out the rules for a stupid game.
I should have stuck to things I knew about, things that didn’t put me in danger of disappointing people. It was inevitable that I would disappoint Sam and lose the best thing in my life.
I knew that wasn’t a healthy way to look at things, but I was stuck.
Not just stuck, haunted. Haunted by that horrible moment when my secret had been revealed in front of an entire college class of my peers, haunted by the meeting between me, my parents, and the school administrators who dismissed me from the university, and haunted by my parents’ shock and disappointment that their baby boy was such a fuck up.
I’d disappointed people before, and it might just kill me to repeat that whole thing.
By the end of games night, I was so tired I could have curled up on one of the benches in the front part of the café and slept for days. It took a lot of energy to carry around a heavy burden and to pretend it wasn’t there.
“I’m heading home now,” I told Sam as soon as everything was tidied up.
“Straight home?” Sam asked, looking concerned. “You don’t want to maybe come over to our place?”
“Nah.” I shook my head, fighting to appear as casual as possible. “I’m really tired.”
“Want me to walk you home?” Sam asked, a spark of suggestion in his eyes.
Part of me really wanted to take him up on that. Snuggling the night away with Sam might do me a world of good. But I couldn’t risk it.
“No, thanks,” I said, veering away from him to grab my jacket. “I should probably just go.”
“Brian.” Sam stopped me with the concern in his voice alone when I was halfway to the door. “Are you sure everything’s okay? You seem a little…off.”
“I’m fine,” I lied, continuing on to the door. “I’ll see you tomorrow, okay?”
“See you tomorrow,” Sam repeated, his face pinched in confusion.
I stepped out into the night and immediately lowered my head. What was I doing? I cared about Sam. I could easily see myself falling in love with him. I shouldn’t have been running from him or from myself like this.
But the prospect of losing him was too scary to face. I was going to need to do something to get out of the hole I’d dug for myself, and I would have to do it soon, or else I’d probably lose someone who could mean everything to me.