Chapter 52 Twenty-One #3
“Are you going to stand for that?”
“Yes,” Emma said, smiling, and thought, I’m going to stand for that, kneel for that, and bend over for that… for as long as we both shall live.
Shay had been inclined to leave right after lunch, but Emma convinced him to stay.
He was glad he had. Unencumbered by the hurt feelings and disappointment that he and his parents both felt, Emma worked on winning over his parents with the kind of enthusiastic zeal usually reserved for motivational speakers.
She told them about the trips to Colorado and Italy, leaving out the sex marathons, but leaving in all the charming anecdotes, especially the ones where Shay took care of her.
“…the shoes were so pretty. And our friend Randall told me I’d better not come back from Italy without at least three pairs of new shoes.”
“Is Randall gay?” Jared asked, causing both Shay and Emma to laugh.
“Definitely not,” Emma said. “So, I bought the shoes, and they felt comfortable at first, but when we were climbing steps and walking so far, my feet kept getting pinched at the toes. And I started muttering curse words and was distracted from the scenery. So then Rory started asking our tour guide to translate curses for us so that if I wanted to swear, I could at least do it in Italian, to get into the spirit of things.”
Shay’s dad laughed, and his mom smirked and rolled her eyes, saying dryly, “So helpful.”
“Exactly! Right?” Emma said, laughing. “And I would’ve changed back into my tennis shoes but in my haste to get gelato, I’d forgotten my sneakers in the shoe store.
Anyway, after all that walking, I got a blister and just could not go on.
So, I sat down and said, ‘You’ll have to go without me.
I’ll wait for you here.’ But we were almost to the end, and the view was supposed to be fantastic, so Shay said, ‘No. C’mon, I’ll carry you.
’ And he did. I got to see the view of the whole countryside despite those awful shoes. ”
“Chivalrous, dude,” Jared said with a thumbs-up.
“Yes, he was wonderful,” Emma said.
Shay leaned against the wall, arms folded across his chest, shaking his head. They wouldn’t have thought him so wonderful if they’d known the way he’d punished her that night. He’d bound her tight and teased her mercilessly until she was limp with exhaustion.
“Oh, by the way, did he tell you that he sold MindSnap for millions of dollars to the same gaming company who told him online gamers wouldn’t play it?”
“What’s MindSnap?” his mom asked.
“You didn’t even tell them about the game?” she asked, looking up at him with wide eyes.
“They know I’m successful,” Shay said. “I started my company when I was eighteen, and my parents were my original investors. My mom did my books for the first couple years. They’ve watched the company grow.”
“And have benefitted greatly,” his dad said soberly.
“When we loaned his business sixty thousand dollars, we only hoped to get our capital back in ten or fifteen years. We just wanted to help him get started. He was so convinced his idea for online chatting would provide something people didn’t yet know they wanted.
He was right. To have a software giant pay him twenty-six million dollars after only a year and a half in business, it was mind-boggling.
To us, it seemed like he’d won the lottery, but it didn’t turn out that way. Shay has a unique perspective.”
“He knows what people need before they do,” Emma said with a sly glance at him. “That’s a great talent.”
“I don’t remember seeing anything called MindSnap on last quarter’s financials. What is it, Shay?”
“It’s just a game,” Shay said. “It’s based on an idea I fooled around with first year of college. It really only has niche appeal. Netted a couple million when I sold it.”
“Yes, but it’s great,” Emma said. “It’s a quest fantasy, but contemporary and very complex.
The players can get sucked into a dream world that’s always changing.
It reminds me a little of the movie, Inception.
Getting out of the dream universe takes strategy and a great eye for detail.
It’s not mindless violence. There’s some fighting and shooting, but you really have to be smart and focused to play it.
It’s for the Ivy League gamer,” Emma said with a wink.
“Take some credit, Em. You helped get the ball rolling.”
Emma blushed. “I didn’t do anything. It’s a great concept, great graphics, incredibly responsive to player—”
“Emma,” Shay said in his Dom tone. “Tell them about your contribution to the game’s success.”
“I helped a little,” Emma said. “No one was really pushing it. Shay created it for fun. Because a thousand hours of work is apparently fun for him.”
They laughed.
“So there was no launch planned. No marketing campaign. Which I thought was a shame because I loved the game from the first time I played it. A few of his friends had played the demo and really liked it, too. Then we were at dinner one night with our friends, and Rory said, in some colorful language, that this game was not for the average guy. That you had no business even logging on if you were tired or hung over because you wouldn’t last an hour before you were dead.
So I said, ‘That’s the hook. Are you gamer enough for this game?
’ I imagined that it could work the same way as a hot night club.
You know how they will make people wait in line to get in?
So that people get the impression it’s a privilege to get inside?
If you tell someone something’s exclusive, they want to gain entry.
So, at the first gaming conventions where MindSnap was played, it was by invitation only.
The guys had to have gotten to certain levels in other games or have scored high enough on the strategy module on the MindSnap website to get an invite.
Other people who saw flyers and posters at the con and who came to check it out were showed a demo, but weren’t allowed to play. Word spread quickly.”
“Pretty soon the site was flooded with people taking the strategy test,” Shay said. “In two weeks, that game went from completely unknown to the hottest ticket at every gaming convention where we had a table. Six months later, I had an offer.”
“I thought he should keep it for sentimental reasons. It was one of the first things he ever designed. But he said it would get more time and development if he sold it. Better for the game and the players in the long run, which makes sense,” Emma said.
“And I’m happy I could be a little part of its success. I’m a fan of Katia’s.”
“Katia?” Jared said, his head snapping up.
Shit, Shay thought. He hadn’t expected that to come up.
“Yes. In the game, the dream weaver’s name is Katia.
She puts the players through their paces.
She’s very cool. If you do something careless or stupid, Katia will make a sarcastic comment and then challenge you with a really hard sequence to make you prove your worthiness to continue.
If you make it through, Katia says, ‘I approve.’” Emma laughed.
“It’s the best thing. Players love her. Shay named her for his college mentor.
She was in the computer science department, right? ” Emma asked, looking at him.
“No, she was in the mom department,” Shay said.
Emma’s jaw dropped, and she turned her head to look at his family for confirmation.
“Mom goes by Kathy, but she’s named Katia for our great grandmother,” Hunter explained. “It’s her legal name.”
“Dude, you put Mom in your game?” Jared said, laughing. “You need therapy, dude. Seriously.”
“I had no idea! I think that’s fantastic,” Emma said. “That’s such a compliment.” Emma turned to his mother. “He told me he’d met a lot of great critical thinkers, but his mentor was the most brilliant strategist he knew. That if you’d been in the military—”
“Emma,” Shay said. “She gets it.”
“Yes,” his mom said. “I do.”
After two days of sunshine, the snow had nearly melted. But on their last day in New York, it started to fall in chunky flakes again. Emma stood at the family room window, watching the Atlantic Ocean swallow the snow that hadn’t blown far enough inland.
“Will you be in trouble for coming down? Didn’t he say you weren’t allowed to leave him alone in bed,” Kathy said dryly, but there was a hint of amusement now. Finally.
Emma turned her head and smiled. “He’s up. He’s on the phone.”
Kathy handed her a cup of coffee. “One raw sugar. One tablespoon milk.”
“Thank you. How did you know?”
“Shay put a stack of Sugar in the Raw packets next to the sugar bowl and said, ‘Tell the guys not to use those unless they want to drive to Manhattan to get more. Those are for Emma’s coffee.’”
“Oh, they could’ve used them. I’m not such a princess that I can’t use regular sugar.”
“Oh please, the boys don’t need to use up your special sugar. They’ve never cared and probably couldn’t taste the difference in their cereal. I did think it was strange though that Shay was the one who put them in the kitchen.”
“Why? I usually carry a few packets in the zipper pouch in my purse, but I used them up at my mom’s house. He probably noticed and grabbed a few extra packets for me from the Starbucks at the airport when he bought me a scone.”
“Yes, but I don’t understand that. I’ve been married to Tim for thirty years.
I love him dearly. But if we gave him a quiz on whether I prefer Half & Half or milk in my coffee, he probably wouldn’t know.
And he certainly wouldn’t think to pilfer packets of special sugar for me if we were on the road.
I thought your lifestyle calls for you to wait on Shay and to do everything for his comfort.
I never read anything about the more dominant personality serving the more submissive one. ”