by Nicki Elson
“Hey, at least you don’t get triple-whammied with bridal and baby showers, too. But if you’d gotten an invitation to this particular wedding, you’d definitely remember—it’s in Saint Lucia.”
“Ouch. Cha-ching. Are you going?”
“Mhmm. So are Lyssa and Hayden and JoAnne and Amy. We’re going to make a mini vacation of it. Not sure if Amy’s husband will join us, but Adam has it on his calendar. It’ll be his first time to the Caribbean—can you believe it?”
“Color me flabbergasted.”
Trish ignored the hint of disdain in his tone. “How’s your sandwich? We’re trying out a new vendor for the hummus.”
Cliff swirled the end of his wrap under his nose and gave it several obnoxious sniffs before taking a small bite and then smacking his tongue against the roof of his mouth, peering thoughtfully into the distance as if discerning every gastronomic nuance.
“You’re such a pain in the butt,” Trish said. “Just tell me how it is.”
He swallowed. “It’s delicious. So when’s this wedding?”
“End of October. It’d be so fun if you could come. Hey, I think JoJo’s planning on going solo. Maybe I can talk her into making you her plus-one.” She grinned.
“Uh, no thanks.” Cliff and Jo had an abbreviated history together. It was nothing more than a couple of drunken hookups in college, but he wished he could abbreviate the whole experience into non-existence. The loud, crass party-girl was nowhere near his type, which was why Trish liked to tease him about her at every opportunity. More evidence that Cliff was better off keeping his love life virtual.
With a brand-new game out of the box, Cliff’s character trudged through the shallows of a swamp. He moved as stealthily as he could in his rush to meet up with the team, afraid of skirting too closely to patrolling mobs.
“Where are you?” a man’s voice whispered through the headset. It was Fatalmo, a player Cliff often connected with to run side quests.
“Sorry, man. Got held up at work,” he answered into the tiny microphone at his mouth. “I’m almost there. Has everyone else checked in?”
“Yeah. Well, not Renergize. His wife had the baby last night.”
“’Grats to him. Guess it’ll be a while before he’s back online, huh?”
“If his wife’s got any say in the matter.”
Cliff chuckled but felt some unease. “So we’re running the job without a healer?” He played the role of tank—the player who’d distract the enemy and take on most of the damage. If there were no healer to speed the restoration of his health, he’d be in trouble.
“Jetson brought in someone he’s run quests with before. Says she’s good. She’s called PlanetClaire.”
“Cute.” Cliff smiled. He saw the group through a curtain of thin tree trunks and made his way over. The new girl was a redhead. He liked virtual redheads.
“Finally,” said PaulyNumberTwo after Cliff clicked into the group chat. “All right, let’s review the plan and fill in Loinerd.” That was Cliff’s screen name.
Their mission was to recover a box containing plans for a system that would purify swamp water, thus providing clean drinking water to the indigenous people of the planet. They had a map to the deep, underwater pit where the box was supposed to be hidden, so they were geared for diving.
As the group moved deeper, the algae-covered surface rose from their waists to their chests. The marsh was naturally treacherous; all manner of sharp teeth slithered through the reeds. PaulyNumberTwo kept most of the smaller creatures pacified with an empathy field, but when Cliff spotted a collection of eyeballs skimming the surface several yards away, he split from the group to head off the beasts. Wrestling a herd of crocs was a distraction the team didn’t need.
Taunting the creatures, he ran ahead of the group and veered right. He saw the eyeballs twitch in his direction. The water’s surface rippled as they moved toward him. His team moved in the opposite direction. With a comfortable lead on the reptiles, Loinerd unclipped an aqua-bomb from his armor, activated it, and tossed it several yards, hoping the detonation would attract the animals and take them even farther from the group.
He could’ve tossed the weapon into the middle of the herd and destroyed them, but they were on an environmental mission and such a move didn’t feel right if it could be prevented. The bomb exploded, and as hoped, the creatures redirected toward the commotion. All except for one. Its huge head broke the surface, nostrils pointed toward Loinerd. He didn’t have time to attempt any more tricks with this stubborn reptile; he had to get back to his team.
“I’m gonna name you Collateral Damage,” Cliff murmured. “C’m ’ere, boy. C’m ’ere.” He slid a bowie knife from its sheath at his hip as the creature drew nearer. Too impatient to await its slow slither, Loinerd lunged forward, bending at the knees so that his head submerged. He scooped his arm under the beast to drive the knife into its heart. Rather than penetrate, the knife stopped dead and snapped in half.
“What the…?” Cliff muttered.
The beast settled its hind feet onto the soft bottom of the shallow swamp and rose to its full height.
Loinerd bolted upright, his head rising above the surface to see the monster hovering above him. The beast fell forward, and Loinerd leaped to the side to avoid being crushed. As the creature plunged, Cliff spotted evenly spaced holes along its side—like gun ports lining a war ship. The force of the enormous croc crashing into the water sent Loinerd careening sideways. He wasn’t able to recover before the giant tail thudded into his helmet. The sound of the collision was metal on metal. This was no croc.
“Shit,” Cliff grumbled, twisting his thumbs on the control to activate his torpedo—the only weapon he possessed that could destroy this Trojan Crocodile before it deployed its arsenal on him and then went after the team. At such close range, he was sacrificing himself, but what choice did he have?
The missile slammed into the metallic monster and exploded. Oversized shrapnel crashed into Loinerd. Though he used his propeller boots to get away from the worst of it, he was soon swallowed in the storm. He was rendered useless, a heap on the muddy swamp bed. This particular game was funny with blackouts—if a character went unconscious, that player’s audio cut out and the screen went blank except for stats along the bottom. Loinerd’s Stamina and Vitality were dangerously low. The Oxygen level in his scuba helmet was depleting.
Cliff slipped his loosened tie through his collar, pulling it off, and stood. Nothing to do now but wait for his team to find him and hope the healer was any good. Since he’d been late getting home, he’d made a beeline to the game and was still in his suit. He stepped into his walk-in closet and quickly changed into sweats and a T-shirt, then made a sandwich. Returning to the sofa, he saw that his Vitality was on the mend. His Stamina was also regenerating. Oxygen no longer registered, so his team must’ve recovered him from the swamp bed and taken off his helmet.
He slipped on his headphones. A fuzzy arrangement of colors bled onto the screen, and a soft melody floated through his audio. A blur of red at the center became clearer and clearer until he could see it was the healer. Her eyes were shut, and she wore a peaceful expression on her flawless, alabaster face. By the way her head slightly swayed, he guessed she was humming the tune he heard. Fairy-like chimes accompanied the humming, and all around her face in the background were bubbles of color, floating in time with her music.
“Nice effect,” he said into the tiny microphone. “Can you see that?” It was his first time being knocked unconscious in this game, so he wasn’t sure how revival worked.
Red’s eyes popped open. “You’re restored.”
He glanced at his stats. “Yep.”
The heel of her hand smacked into his virtual forehead. His actual head snapped back in surprise. “What the hell were you thinking?” she shouted. “A freaking torpedo? At close range? Jetson didn’t tell me the tank was on a suicide mission!”
“He’s not usually like that,” another voice insisted. It was Jetson.
Cliff adjusted his view so he could see the whole team. He brought his character to sitting. “We’ve got problems. The native darkness is more organized than we thought—and with advanced weaponry.” He went on to describe what he’d gleaned from his encounter. The team agreed they’d better stay in touch as they made their individual ways through the game.
“PlanetClaire—can we count on you for future missions if Renergize doesn’t make it back from baby duty?” Fatalmo asked.
“If I’m available,” she answered. “And if Loincloth promises to keep his torpedo in his pants next time.”
“Loinerd, and what was I supposed to do?” Cliff shot back. “If I hadn’t destroyed it, it would’ve crushed me and the rest of you. Then we’d all be lying helpless on the bottom of the swamp.”
“Right, well, I’ve got a date tonight, so gots to go.” PaulyNumberTwo clicked off.
One by one, the others said their goodbyes and went their own ways. “PlanetClaire,” Cliff said before taking off, “thanks for the healing.”
“I was wondering if you’d get around to saying that.”
“Care to thank me for saving your ass from gino-croc?”
“Maybe next time.”
He smirked, watching her avatar fade as she walked away and thanking himself for saving such a very fine ass.
Trish watched Cliff from across the booth as he swallowed the first bite of pine nut hummus on naan bread. “How is it?” she asked.
“Another new hummus vendor?” He’d strolled down to her coffeehouse during a brisk but sunny October afternoon.
“Yeah. So how is it?”
“Every time I tell you it’s fantastic, and every time I come back, you’re trying something new. What’s the point of asking for my feedback?”
“I don’t know. I trust your judgment, but they all taste weird to me.”
“Maybe you just don’t like hummus.”
“How dare you? I’m a young, forward-thinking professional in a major city working for a hipster corporation. Of course I like hummus.”
Cliff laughed. “Are you contractually obligated to say that?”
“Sometimes it feels like that. Do you think that could really be the problem? That I simply don’t like hummus?”
“Yes. And for what it’s worth, whoever you were using two times ago was my favorite.”
“I’ll look in the books to see who that was. But I’ll have to wait until after I get back from Saint Lucia to place the order.”
“When do you leave?”
“Thursday. It’ll be the first time all four of us roomies will be together since Amy moved to California.”
“That’ll be fun.”
“Yeah. I can’t wait for Adam to meet them.” Trish wasn’t one of those girls who openly gushed over the intimate details of her love life—yet another thing to admire about her—but Helms had made enough visits to Chicago during the last couple of months for Cliff to surmise that things were going well between them.
“He hasn’t met them yet?”
“I guess you could say JoJo made an impression when he was in town a few weeks ago, but I wouldn’t call it an official meet. Oh! It was Mama Mediterranean.”
“What was?”
“The hummus you liked best.” Trish’s phone jingled, and she glanced down. “That’s strange.”
“That your phone makes noise? They do that now. Actually, they’ve always done that.”
She wrinkled a teasing nose at his sarcasm. “It’s strange that Adam sent a text during the day in the middle of the week. He usually waits until evening. So what fun things do you have planned for the weekend?” Her eyes flicked down at the phone again, then back onto his face.
“Nothing great. You can read the message now. It’s obviously bothering you.”
“Okay. If you don’t mind. Just want to make sure it’s not an emergency.” She said all this as she picked up the phone and swiped her finger across the screen. A crease appeared between her eyebrows and deepened as she read. “No! No, no, no!”
Cliff leaned back in his chair and kept silent, letting her absorb whatever was in the message.
After staring at her phone a few moments longer, she looked up at him, glaring. “He’s canceling on me. For the wedding! Some stupid business deal. This is bullshit. We’ve been planning this for months and then he tells me two days before we’re supposed to leave?”
“That sucks,” Cliff said. He intended to leave his response at empathy—what else could he say?—but when she continued to look devastated, he couldn’t resist the urge to try to make her feel better. “At least your girlfriends will be there. Maybe this is for the best—now it can be a proper girls’ weekend.”
“Hayden’ll be there.” Trish pressed her back against her chair and crossed her arms over her chest, pouting. “Hayden’s always there for Lyssa.”
“Didn’t he move away from her?”
“He was going to move back here for her, but then she moved to Boston instead.”
She pulled her lips tight, drumming her fingers on her biceps as she shot a dirty look at the phone. It was the first time since reuniting with Adam that she’d given the slightest indication of being less than happy with her long-distance boyfriend.
“Maybe the deal will work itself out and he’ll be able to make it after all,” Cliff said.
“He said he was hoping it would and that’s why he didn’t say anything earlier. But now it’s definitely going to carry into the weekend.” She let out a rough exhale. “I know this is what I signed up for when we got back together, and next year I’ll be gone on business as much as him, but I was so looking forward to this trip with him. I wish he’d realize that.”
“I’m sure he does. He’s probably just as disappointed as you.”
She frowned at her phone, and then a sudden smile lit her face. She glanced up. “And obviously a little scared of me since he texted instead of called.”
“That, too.” Cliff grinned back.
“Hey!” Trish said, slamming her hand onto the table. “Come with me.”
“Where?”
“To Saint Lucia. You can be my date. You’ll know other people there from school. It’ll be fun.”
He opened his mouth to protest, but she cut him off.
“You already told me you don’t have anything great going on this weekend, so you can’t use that as an excuse.”
“Why do you need a date? You’ll know lots of people there, too.”
“Because Sam’s already planning for me to have a date, and I’m paying for two at the all-inclusive—too late to get any money back. Plus, I need a reason to not sulk about being dateless.”
“Your all-inclusive rate won’t include a second room.”
“You’ll be staying in my room, silly. It’s got two beds.” She must’ve read his hesitation. “I’ll bring an air mattress and bunk in Amy and Jo’s room if you’re uncomfortable sharing.”
“I won’t make you sleep on the floor.”
“Great, it’s settled, then—you’ll take one bed, I’ll take the other.”
“I didn’t say I was going.” It was crazy that he was halfway considering it. Going on a weekend getaway to a romantic setting with Trish was a really bad idea. Yet…it did sound fun.
“You didn’t say you weren’t going, either. I’ll pay for your plane ticket. No, wait, not me—Adam will buy your ticket since he’s the one squelching out.”
“He’s not buying me a ticket. I’ll get my own.” He did have some pride left.
“So, you’ll come?” She clasped her hands together and pulled them to her chest, looking like an adorable little squirrel begging for a nut as she stared at him with a happy, hopeful expression in her pretty golden eyes. What mortal man could refuse that?
Cliff leaned his head back to stare at the ceiling and raised his hands in surrender. “Fine. I’ll go. But I can’t fly out until Friday.” When he tilted his head forward, he looked into her big, bright eyes. Something in
side him thumped in a familiar way—it was a sensation he swore he’d never let himself feel toward her again.
Chapter 3
CLIFF STROLLED INTO THE EXPANSIVE, sun-soaked lobby of the beachside resort. Alabaster pillars stretched up into arches all around him. The gaps in between allowed tantalizing glimpses of the open sky and glittering sea. At the marbled check-in desk, he was handed a note from Trish.
We’re at the big pool near the waterfall. If you don’t see me, look for the brunet version of Ken & Barbie. They’ll either be holding hands or rubbing lotion onto each other. Try not to vomit.
Below that in a different scrawl, it read:
That’s Trish’s way of saying she’s jealous. Glad you’re here. We’ll keep an eye out for you. ~Miss Lyss
Ask the desk to have your bag sent to our room and hurry out here. Mwah!
Cliff smiled, folding the note and pushing it into the pocket of his khakis. He went into the lobby bathroom to change into his swim trunks, a T-shirt, and flip flops before returning to the desk with his bag. The clerk gave him his wristband and pointed him toward the main pool.
Humidity engulfed Cliff as soon as he stepped onto a vast slab of stamped concrete that led to the curving pool. Dimming the sun’s glare with his Wayfarer sunglasses, he scanned the area until he located a small, tiled waterfall. As he approached the manmade spill of water, his gaze skipped over the collection of sunbathers. He spotted Lyssa reclining on a chaise. Her long, straight hair was pulled up into a high ponytail, and she sat with her knees bent, legs tented to rest a magazine on her thighs. As Trish had predicted, Lyssa’s fingers were entwined with those of an attractive guy next to her. She glanced up from her magazine and lifted her hand high to wave Cliff over.
She popped up from the chair to greet him but didn’t lean in for a hug, explaining, “I’m all sweaty, so I don’t think you want to get too close. This is Hayden.” She gestured toward her boyfriend, who’d also stood.
“Nice to meet you, man.” Hayden reached forward and shook Cliff’s hand.
“Great meeting you,” Cliff said. “So, how crazy did things get last night?”