Chapter 9 #2
“Booming. A new expansion dropped last week, and I can’t keep it in stock.” Everest, the Bigfoot’s, eyes shifted to me with friendly curiosity. “Who’s this? I thought we knew everyone in town.”
“Everest, Maya. Maya, Everest. He owns Monster Realm Gaming.”
“Wait… Maya? GimmeAChallenge007?” Everest’s eyes widened. “No way. Geoff talks about you all the time.”
“You’re Tank? And he does?” I looked up at Geoff, who had the decency to look embarrassed.
“I am. You’re a legend in our gaming circles,” Everest continued enthusiastically. “The way you theory-crafted that build last year. Amazing. I’ve never seen anyone optimize like that. Half the competitive players in town are using variations of your strategy.”
“Oh. Wow. I didn’t realize anyone paid attention to my posts.”
“Are you kidding? You're famous. Well, as famous as you can be in a small-town gaming community.” Everest grinned. “How are things going now?”
“I’m okay. Crashed my car on the mountain on my way into town.”
“Sounds like fate played its hand again.” Everest glanced between us, clearly reading Geoff’s and my body language. “So you guys are…?”
“Together,” Geoff said. “We’re together.”
“Good for you, man. About time you found someone.” And the amazing thing was, Everest sounded genuine.
No judgment, no concern, just happiness for his friend.
“Did you tell Maya about game nights? If you didn’t, you should both come to game night this Friday.
We meet at the store and usually get about fifteen people.
Mix of monsters and humans. You’d fit right in, Maya.
Everyone’s going to want to talk to you. ”
“I’d love that,” I said, meaning it. Finally, someone who saw us as us. Not a too-fast relationship, or a Yeti making questionable choices. Just two gamers who’d found each other.
“Great! It’s BYOB and we usually order pizza around eight.” Everest headed back into his shop. “See you Friday!”
As we walked away, I felt lighter. “He was nice.”
“Everest, Tank, whatever, is good people. Everyone is welcome in his store. Geoff squeezed my hand. “See? Not everyone’s going to be weird about us.”
“One person out of an entire town isn’t great odds.”
“Two if you count Fiona. But it’s still better than zero people.”
We hit the furniture store next. It was a massive warehouse on the edge of town that catered to both human and monster-sized furniture. The owner, a troll named Greta, was all business, showing us various options for studio apartment living.
“Bed frame, mattress, couch, table, chairs,” I listed, feeling overwhelmed. “This is so expensive.”
“It’s necessary,” Geoff said. “You need furniture.”
“I could just get a mattress and some folding chairs.”
“Maya.”
“What? I’m being practical.”
“You’re being ridiculous.” He gestured to a nice bedroom set, nothing fancy, but solid and comfortable-looking. “Get the things you need. I’ll help with the cost until you get on your feet.”
“There’s no need. I pointed to my phone. My account’s linked on here. If they’ve got tap-to-pay, I can pay. You’ve already helped so much.”
“And I’m going to keep helping because that's what partners do.” His voice was gentle but firm. “Please. Let me do this for you.”
“Only if my bank account gets close to zero.”
“We’ll argue about that later.”
We selected the basics, a bed, a small couch, a table with two chairs. Greta promised delivery that afternoon, and we arranged to meet the truck at my apartment.
Which I still hadn’t seen beyond the quick tour online.
“Want to grab lunch before we deal with the apartment?” Geoff asked as we loaded more purchases into his truck. “There’s a diner that makes incredible burgers.”
“How often do you usually come into town?” I asked, noticing how many people he was greeting, how many shops he seemed familiar with.
He paused, really thinking about it. “Maybe once a month? Sometimes less. I order a lot online, and I stock up when I do come in.” He looked around the main street as if he were seeing it with fresh eyes. “This is the most I’ve been in town in years, actually. Usually, I’m in and out in an hour.”
“And now?”
“Now I have a reason to stay.” He pulled me close, seemingly unconcerned with who might be watching. “You make it bearable. Better than bearable.”
“I make you tolerate civilization?”
“You make me want to be part of it again.”
The words hit deeper than he probably intended. I thought about what Fiona had said about never seeing him as happy and engaged as he was. What if I wasn't just changing my life by moving here? What if I was changing his, too?
The thought was terrifying and exhilarating in equal measure.
We had lunch at the diner where the waitress definitely remembered Geoff and was friendly to me, then headed to the apartment. The building was on a quiet side street, a two-story structure with an empty storefront on the ground level and two apartments above.
“The landlord said the store’s been empty for months,” I said as Geoff unlocked the door to the stairs. “Apparently the last tenant was a fortune teller who left town suddenly.”
“Oh. I remember her, but not her name. According to the most reputable gossips, she predicted her own departure. Very on-brand.”
We climbed the narrow stairs, no elevators in this building. Geoff had to duck to avoid hitting his head on the low ceiling, and I unlocked the apartment door.
The space was tiny, much smaller than I remembered from the virtual tour.
The studio was maybe five hundred square feet, with a tiny kitchenette in one corner, a bathroom barely big enough to turn around in, and a single window that looked out over the alley.
Geoff could never fit inside the bathroom.
He took up most of the space inside the room.
“It’s cozy,” Geoff said diplomatically.
“It’s a shoebox.”
“A very charming shoebox.”
“You’re just saying that.” I walked around the space, trying to envision the furniture, my life, fitting in here. I couldn’t. Time to put the plan into action.
“Where are you going to put your clothes and gaming setup?” Geoff asked as he put the finishing touches on my rough sketch of where I wanted the furniture to go.
“I don’t know. There’s no space for guests either.
” I put my hands on my hips. “If you stayed over, you’d feel like a giant in a dollhouse. ”
He nodded.
“The building’s quiet,” I said, trying to find positives. “And it’s close to work. Walking distance, so my lack of a car won’t hurt for a while.”
“That’s good.” Geoff was examining the window locks, the door frame, cataloging safety features with a protectiveness that should have been annoying but was actually sweet. “Sturdy construction. Good bones.”
The furniture delivery arrived an hour later, and we spent the afternoon assembling and arranging. Geoff did most of the heavy lifting while I directed placement and tried to make the space feel homey.
But with each piece we added, the apartment felt smaller. More confining. Less like a home and more like a place I was staying temporarily until I figured out what I really wanted.
The bed went in last. Even though it was a full-sized frame with a mattress, it looked ridiculously small after a week of sleeping in Geoff’s custom king. We made it up with the sheets I’d bought at Fiona’s, and I stood back to survey our work.
“It looks good,” Geoff said, wrapping his arms around me from behind. “It’s you.”
Except it wasn’t me. Not really. The furniture was generic; the space was impersonal, and nothing about it felt like home. Not like the cabin did, with its oversized furniture and mountain views and the lingering scent of pine.
Not like waking up in Geoff’s arms and having coffee in bed while we argued about optimal skill rotations.
This was just a place to sleep. Maybe a place to keep my mail. But it wasn’t home. The cabin was.
“Thank you,” I said, turning in his arms. “For all of this. The clothes, the help, everything.”
“Of course. Whatever you need.” He kissed my forehead. “So, are you staying here tonight? Getting settled in?”
The question hung in the air. This was the moment I’d dreaded.
The responsible adult moment where I said yes, where I started my independent life in my new town, where I proved I could function on my own and wasn’t just running from my problems into the arms of the first person who showed me kindness.
“I should,” I drawled. “Start as I mean to go on and all that.”
His face fell slightly before he schooled it back to neutral. “Right. Yeah, that makes sense.”
“But,” I bit my lip, making a decision that was probably impulsive and definitely not well-thought-out. “Could I maybe stay one more night? At the cabin? I’ll come back here tomorrow, start work prep, and adult properly. But tonight…”
“Tonight you come home with me,” he finished, and the relief in his voice was palpable. “Yes. Absolutely yes.”
We locked up the apartment, my adult life waiting for me in five hundred square feet of studio space, and drove back up the mountain as the sun began to set.
And I didn’t tell him what I was thinking. Didn’t tell him that looking at that apartment had made my decision crystal clear. Didn’t tell him I had no intention of ever living there, that I was already calculating how to break the lease, how to explain to everyone that I’d made a massive mistake.
I didn’t tell him I’d already decided where home was.
And it wasn’t in a studio apartment above an empty storefront.
It was in a cabin on a mountain, in a bed big enough for a Yeti and his girlfriend, in the arms of the person who’d been my home for three years already.
I just needed to figure out how to tell him that without scaring him off.
One more night until the plan fell into place. I’d figure out how to tell himtomorrow.
Tonight, I was going home.