Chapter Eight #2
Wesley looks at me sidelong. “I barely left campus. I’m not from here originally.”
“Oh.”
“Massachusetts,” he says.
“Right.” I raise my latte to my lips and take a long drink before narrowing my eyes at him. “Why are you here now? Why New Haven?” It comes out more aggressive than I intend it to, but I don’t take it back.
He tenses. “It seemed as good an option as any when I didn’t have many options at all, after what happened at Hurricane.
” He doesn’t bother to clarify, and he’s not wrong to assume I would have heard about such industry-shaking news.
“It’s where my friends were. Colin was looking for a roommate, and Arthur hired me for some part-time work fixing his website and picking up shifts at his hardware store. ”
Wesley settles a deadpan stare on me, his eyes tight with exasperation. “Can you believe it? When my life fell apart, I didn’t just move here to make yours more complicated.”
Oof.
I let the silence stretch for a few moments, punctuated only by the excited shrieks of playing children and the crunching of leaves underfoot. The air feels colder as the sun slowly dips behind the trees.
“I am sorry,” I say eventually. “About your job.”
“Sorry that I lost it, or sorry that it means I ended up here?”
I release a measured exhale. “I’m sorry your game got shut down.
I really am.” I loved playing Legends of Lore in high school, but it’s more than that.
Having your game canceled is a fate I wouldn’t wish on my worst enemy, and Wesley’s probably the closest I’ve ever come to having one of those.
It’s an awful reality of the industry. The game dev part of me wants to ask more—how far the game had gotten, what role he’d played in it—but we’re not on that level.
I’m not sure we’ll ever be, especially after this conversation.
But even so, just between two creators, I know enough to say, “I imagine it meant a lot to you.”
Wesley sighs and looks away. His head bobs in a tiny nod. “Thank you.”
I take another sip of coffee before speaking again. “So,” I say. “What about the game did you want to talk about?”
I can’t for the world imagine why he starts smiling. It’s a half-hearted thing, a hint of amusement that tugs one corner of his mouth upward. When he meets my eyes, I see that his are crinkled in the corners. “Are you having fun?”
I blink. “Am I having fun?”
“Yes, Reagan.” There’s that old impatience.
Keep up, his tone says. “Are you even enjoying yourself? I can handle it when you challenge me in-game”—there’s a weighted pause, an unasked Can you?
—“but you seem miserable.” He takes a drink from his cup, holding my gaze as he does it. “Some of the other players have asked.”
I exhale a doubting laugh. “They’ve asked whether I’m miserable?”
“No. They’ve asked whether I’m going to keep letting you yell at me at my table.”
I swallow. Here it is. “Are you?” I ask.
“No. Are you going to stop picking fights?”
Are you? I think sourly. I wet my lips before I speak. “I do think it’s bad form to have a player die so early in the campaign.”
“Did Colin seem upset? Did he tell you something he didn’t share with me?”
His tone sounds patient, but I know his questions are rhetorical. Colin is Wesley’s friend, not mine—and no, he hadn’t seemed even a bit perturbed to have his character drained dry.
“I just…it’s not the kind of tone I would want to set for my players right at the beginning,” I say.
He tilts his head to the side thoughtfully. “Are you always the DM in your games?”
“Always,” I confirm. “I’m not used to playing a character.”
“Of course. That makes so much sense for you.” He chuckles under his breath as his pointer finger idly scratches against the wood of the bench’s backrest, only a few inches from my shoulder. I try not to stare at it. “I remember all the books you had back then.”
Back then, I think ruefully. When he was standing in my room, insisting I let him stay, just for a while. I remember how he brushed his knuckles along my collection of game guides and, later, down the line of my jaw. I swallow.
“Why join a new game at all, then?” Wesley asks. “Is it because Shay invited Ramona, or do you just like D she lives on the floor under me. We made some excuse about maintenance needing to work on a leak in mine, which thankfully Owen didn’t question, since he lived with me at the time.
He was just coming back from a trip to his parents’.
“We were nearing the end of the campaign, and in-game, the party had just made it to the villain’s lair.
The villain was a sort of—well, he was a warlock, and he’d been creating this magical weapon he planned to use to threaten the kingdom and take control.
While they were fighting him, the weapon malfunctioned and exploded—a nuclear-level explosion.
None of the party survived, and it completely wiped the map clean. ”
I smile wryly, though old bitterness makes my expression feel brittle. “Mona and I call it the Cataclysm.”
Wesley leans forward. His brows are knitted deep in thought over his dark eyes, but I catch lines of tension in the edge of his jaw, and his knuckles have gone nearly white where his fingers are curled over the back of the bench.
Is he…angry?
I go on. “Everyone was understandably upset, until I told them why I’d done it. And then things got—nasty.”
Memories of our fight rush to the front of my mind.
Why the hell would you do this here, Reagan? It’s our business you’re airing out.
I think it’s everyone’s business, Owen. It’s been your and Lauren’s business for a while now, hasn’t it?
I swallow. “When Owen finally came back upstairs to our apartment, I’d already packed everything he owned. He didn’t even get to step foot through the door.”
Wesley lets out a low whistle and slumps back against the armrest as his earlier tension seems to leave his body. He winces at me, but something in his eyes sparks.
“That’s pretty badass.”
“…What?”
“Obviously it’s terrible what they did to you. But the way you handled it is kind of metal, isn’t it?”
I eye him suspiciously, then look away. “I just—I wanted them all to have to face it somehow. I didn’t want to just cancel everything and disappear.
” I reflexively squeeze my cup, denting it.
It doesn’t matter; it’s empty. “I felt like my life had exploded in my face, and I just—I wanted them to feel that, too.”
There’s a new softness to his features that has me on edge. Even his gentle tone makes my skin crawl. “How long ago was this?”
“January.”
Wesley nods, and his fingers twitch where his hand still rests along the back of the bench.
He straightens, and for one horrifying moment, I think he’s about to try to hug me.
But then, very carefully, he just touches his pointer and middle fingers to my shoulder.
He strokes his knuckles down the sleeve of my knit shirt in a gesture that I think is meant to be consoling; it’s slow, apologetic.
I don’t move a muscle, but every part of my body goes stiff. I feel the contact like a line of heat, and I try not to grind my teeth as the memory and the reality of his touch burn simultaneously.
“I’m really sorry that happened to you,” he says before dropping his hand to his lap. Then his voice grows suddenly loud, his tone sharp enough to cut: “I can’t believe he would—” He swallows and then shakes his head. “I’m just sorry.”
“Me, too. But it’s—it’s whatever.” It’s not. “It’s over.”
“He took your game from you. They all did.”