by Mia Archer
Kylie turned and smiled and I felt a little funny at that smile. “Yeah? Everyone usually gets excited during their first game. Good thing for you Dave decided to take it easy on you. I guess I wasn’t pretty enough to get that bonus when I started.”
“What are you talking about?” I said even as a blush came to my cheeks. She’d called me pretty. I shouldn’t be so excited at the idea of her calling me pretty. “You’re gorgeous! I’d kill to be able to pull off that purple hair like that.”
Kylie’s voice got even lower. Conspiratorial. “Well I have more of the dye back home. You could always try it out. The prom queen goes goth. That would be pretty damn fun to see. Worth the cost of the dye for sure!”
“No way,” I said.
“Y’know I do have trouble believing you would’ve done this earlier,” Kylie said, changing tracks and confusing the hell out of me.
“What are you talking about? This is pretty fun! I can’t say I ever would’ve thought of it before because I was so busy…”
“Exactly,” Kylie said. “There wasn’t a chance of you joining us when we were in school. You were too busy leading your life. Not that it’s a bad thing. I just doubt there’d be much room for all night gaming sessions when you’re busy off partying and having fun with all your cheerleader friends.”
I thought I detected a hint of heat to her voice when she mentioned all my cheerleader friends. I sighed. It wasn’t the first time someone had been annoyed with me because I’d been a cheerleader. I never really understood all the hate, but not understanding it and being used to it were two very different things.
“I suppose you’re right,” I said. “I was pretty into myself and the whole look at me thing back then. Glad I got over that.”
Kylie looked at me and arched an eyebrow. And for a moment her eyes moved down and then back up to my face. My breath caught. Getting up close to her while she was explaining the rules of this game had been pretty hot, but she’d actually checked me out just then! I’d seen plenty of guys, and some girls, doing that. I shivered.
I did that a lot when I noticed girls checking me out. This was getting into pretty dangerous territory.
“Yeah, I guess we’ve all grown up just a little,” Kylie said. “Good thing, too.”
I wasn’t quite sure how to take that, but then it was Kylie’s turn and I concentrated on watching how she played the game. I was taking most of my cues from her tonight. She was so good at this and I was just a ‘newbie’ according to them. I figured sitting back, shutting up, and following her example was a good idea.
Plus it meant more time up close and personal with her. I didn’t mind that one bit! Even if I was starting to get a little worried about what that might mean. These were new old feelings and I wasn’t sure what to make of them even as my body was screaming that it knew exactly what to make of them.
The one thing I was sure of was I found myself more and more captivated by Kylie as the night wore on.
“Right, so now we’re to Kylie,” Dave said. “What are your actions?”
Kylie looked down at the grid in the middle of the table. Particularly at the bright pink piece of rounded glass that represented her character in this battle. It was surrounded on all sides by red beads of glass representing the bad guys. I’d seen my brother playing video games before, and it was odd playing a game like this where the computer running the game was my brain and a bit of math.
“I’m going to turn around and fire an arrow at… That little bugger right there,” she said, pointing to a red dot on the grid that was a few spaces away from her. She smiled and reached over to take the dice from me, and believe you me I noticed the way her hand brushed against the top of mine before she took the dice, holding my palm in hers for just a breath longer than if she was really only reaching for some dice.
My breath caught in that moment. I also saw Dave scowling. He seemed to be doing a lot of that this evening. Could he really be upset that I was talking with Kylie? It was all innocent… enough. Maybe. Was he picking up on something too?
I suddenly felt a little self-conscious. If he recognized the way I was inexplicably crushing on Kylie then maybe the other guys at this table were too. I couldn’t explain why I was suddenly so drawn to her. Just that it was happening, and I kind of liked it.
I looked at both of them to see if they were maybe picking up on something, and immediately frowned.
No, they were just staring at my tits. About what I’d come to expect from guys.
“Right, could you please roll to see if you hit?” Dave asked, some irritation creeping into his voice. “We don’t have all night for you to screw around with girl talk, you know.”
Kylie scowled at him and rolled the dice. Then she flipped him the bird when she was done. Dave’s eyes went wide and he looked between the two of us for a moment before scowling at something behind that ridiculous screen he used to hide all his papers and dice rolls.
“Okay then, if that’s how you want to play it,” Dave said. “Your roll wasn’t enough to actually hit the monster.”
Kylie slapped the table with both arms hard enough that it set dice and papers rattling. A can of cheap off-brand soda next to her hand wobbled and nearly fell over before Trevor reached out and snatched it at the last moment.
“What the hell are you talking about Dave? This is a low level monster. My character would be able to kill it with a spitwad! There’s no way that didn’t hit!”
The two glared at one another for a moment, but then Kylie looked over to me and smiled.
“Fine. Have it your way Dave. If you want to load the dice then you can load the dice.”
Dave’s eyes narrowed at that. He didn’t seem at all happy about this. It reminded me of the time I was out at a party in a field at the Sinclair farm and my boyfriend had to patiently explain to crazy Buford Sinclair that he didn’t get to hit on me just because the party was in the middle of his parents’ field. Only in this case they were getting in a pissing match over the imaginary rules of a fake game instead of getting in a fight over a girl.
Crazy. Not that Kylie would get in a fight over a girl. Sure there’d been rumors back in school, but I was pretty sure they weren’t true. I felt a small bit of disappointment at the thought they might not be true. Now where did that come from?
“I’m glad that’s settled,” Dave said. “Now Arnold, what action do you take?”
Dave went around the table and eventually the game came back around to me. He smiled a patronizing smile and leaned forward a little. His eyes also went down to my chest as he talked, which was annoying but about what I’d come to expect from him. About what I’d come to expect from most guys, for that matter.
“Your turn Lisa. What do you do?”
I looked down at the grid. There were two monsters on the grid in front of me. One straight ahead and one a little off to the side. There was also a monster that had moved up next to my little guy, denoted by a pink bead of glass, and I figure it would be a really good idea to get away from that one before it could kill me or whatever it was that happened in this game when you got attacked. I was surprised that I was able to shift to thinking of little red beads of glass on a grid as “monsters” so quickly. This game really was more addictive than I would’ve thought.
“I’m going to run up and cast a fireball on the monster right in front of me,” I said.
“Are you sure you want to do that?” Dave asked.
“Yup! This is pretty fun!”
I reached out and moved my character forward. I imagined that I was running forward with fire glowing from my hands. I always thought it was silly when I saw my brother getting into this sort of thing when he was playing a video game, but I was getting such a rush that I was starting to understand. Even if I did still think it was more than a little dorky. I wouldn’t be telling any of my friends about all this fun when I got back to college, for example.
“Okay then, roll your dice,” Dave said.
I rolled a
nd it came up even higher than it did the last time. I looked up at Dave in anticipation. “Does that mean I hit?”
“That does,” Dave said with a frown. He started rolling his dice against the table behind that silly screen thing that hid his papers from the rest of us. I frowned. I hadn’t been at this table long, but I knew when I heard dice landing against the cheap table it wasn’t a good thing. There seemed to be a sudden tension around the table. I looked around in a panic, wondering what I’d done wrong.
“Okay then,” Dave said with a sigh. “Moving away from the monster next to you provoked an attack of opportunity, and running up to the monster in front of you provoked another attack of opportunity from the monster next to you on the grid. That means…”
More dice hit against the table. I felt a sense of dread that was all out of proportion with how I should’ve felt for a stupid game. I leaned forward in anticipation, wondering what was about to happen.
“Yeah, I was afraid of that,” Dave said with a shrug. “Looks like all those hits put your character into negative hit points. You’ll take damage every round and die if you reach -10 on your hit points.”
I stared down at the grid, stunned. I shouldn’t feel this bad about a little pink piece of glass getting beat up, but I imagined those monsters attacking her and it made me mad. What the heck was wrong with me? This was just a game, and a stupid game at that. I wasn’t supposed to be getting into this!
“What are you talking about? What the heck is an attack of opportunity?”
Kylie leaned in closer. She didn’t look happy as she stared across the table at Dave. “That means dickhead here didn’t tell you, a new player, that moving your character away from that first monster like that means it gets to attack you. He also didn’t tell you that moving up next to that other monster while you’re attacking the third monster means that monster number two gets to attack you as well.”
“What? But I didn’t know that! I’m new to this stupid game!”
Now I was getting really mad. I crossed my arms and pouted across the table at Dave. I even pulled up a little bit so the girls were more prominent as I looked at Dave. Usually that was enough to get me what I wanted. Especially with a guy who was as into me as he seemed to be. I could use his creeper tendencies to my advantage, just like I did with the whole math homework thing.
“Sorry Lisa, but those are the rules, and the rules are sacred at this table,” Dave said.
Kylie sighed. “Are you fucking serious Dave? Get a grip. You have this hot girl here who agreed to come to play this game with you which is something that will never happen again in a million years, and you want to ruin her experience by killing off her character in the first game because she didn’t know all the rules?”
I blushed. She called me hot. I know that shouldn’t have set me off, but I couldn’t help myself. This game night was getting dangerous, and not because I had to worry about Dave creeping on me.
Dave scowled at Kylie. It seemed those two really didn’t like each other. Finally he sighed.
“Okay Lisa, you’re new to the game so if you want to do that round over I’ll allow it,” he said.
I looked over to Kylie and beamed. “Thank you.”
“No problem. Us girls have to stick together, right?” she said with a nervous laugh as she bumped my shoulder. Even that simple contact was enough to leave a tingle on my shoulder where we’d made contact.
I needed to get my head in this game though. There were monsters to kill. Maybe that would distract me from Kylie for a little while. I hoped.
7: Fight
Kylie:
“Watch out,” Lisa said. “You might get one of those opportunity attack thingies if you do that.”
I turned to her and smiled. I seemed to be doing that a lot tonight. Normally a newbie trying to school me on how to play this game would be annoying, but with her it was just endearing. It also didn’t hurt that her sitting beside me had brought that old vision of kissing her back with a vengeance. The only thing that stopped me from just leaning in and going for it was that we had an audience.
Well, that and the idea was just fucking crazy. I didn’t want to chase her away from game night any more than Dave did, though I was a little more confused about my reasons for not chasing her away. Trying to kiss her in the middle of a combat round would surely do that job, though.
“Don’t worry. I’m sneaking up behind this guy while he’s attacking you. That means I get the attack of opportunity, not him,” I said. It felt weird to explain all these basic terms. I hated doing that at most games, but once again it appeared I was willing to make an exception for Lisa.
“Oh, okay. Well thanks for helping me out!”
Helping her out. That was another thing I never did. Usually it was every character for themselves. That was the way I played my characters. Loners who didn’t care much for other people. It was a page I’d taken from life. A page I was tearing up tonight. Damn it. Why was my head so clouded by this girl? I’d dated plenty of guys. I’d proved to myself I wasn’t gay, and yet now here she was confusing the fuck out of me.
I hated it. I loved it.
“You don’t hit,” Dave said.
Well then. Looks like I found something else to hate all of a sudden.
“What the hell are you talking about? There’s no way that didn’t hit! Are you blind or something? Are you using the same Monster Manual as the rest of us?”
I felt rage building inside me. A rage that had been building over the course of the past couple of months. Who did this little dork think he was blatantly bending the rules like that? It was like he thought I didn’t know the rules or something. I had that fucking rulebook memorized! I wanted to launch myself across the table and throttle the little geek. I bet I’d be able to hit him without worrying about my roll!
“Are you questioning my authority as dungeon master?” Dave asked.
“I think we’re all questioning your authority as dungeon master,” Trevor said. He had a rulebook out, he didn’t have the thing memorized like I did, and was flipping through it. “She’s right. There’s absolutely no way her attack wouldn’t hit.”
“What are they talking about?” Lisa whispered next to me.
I leaned in to whisper to her while Arnold and Travis distracted Dave for a moment. “Dave here is fudging the math. That monster has a number I have to roll to hit it, right?”
Lisa nodded. “Right. That’s how I did all that stuff when I hit the monster I attacked! This is way more complicated than monopoly!”
“Right,” I said, smiling at the comparison. This game was so much more than simple monopoly. “Well that monster I just hit has an insanely low number to actually hit it. Like say I have to roll a four or higher. I just rolled a number high enough that I definitely hit the thing, and Dave is trying to say I didn’t but he’s not showing us the numbers he’s using behind his DM screen.”
“DM screen?”
I pointed to Dave’s screen. It was a tacky monstrosity that was covered in half naked women. The sort of thing that would go over well at any gaming session that didn’t involve the ladies, which I figured accounted for a lot of gaming sessions out there. It didn’t make it any less annoying for me at this particular gaming session where I was the token lady, though.
“That thing over there he’s hiding all his papers behind,” I whispered.
“Oh, gotcha,” Lisa said. “So you’re saying he’s cheating?”
I grinned. “You’re catching onto this game pretty darn quick!”
Lisa grinned right back at me. Oh how I loved it when she smiled at me in any capacity. It was almost enough to calm all the anger roiling inside me at Dave and his bullshit. Not quite enough to stop that anger, but almost.
“I don’t care what you say! She needs to roll!”
I pulled my attention back to the real world where I wasn’t making googly eyes at the former prom queen who’d inexplicably landed in my lap this morning. It looked like the argu
ment was over and Travis and Arnold didn’t look happy at all. Dave, for his part, had a massive grin on his face that never meant anything good. I sighed.
“I’m sorry. Pretend I wasn’t paying attention for the last couple of minutes. What are we talking about now?”
“I know you weren’t paying attention,” Dave said, his eyes darting between me and Lisa. Oh yeah. He could definitely tell something was going on here, and it looked like he thought it went beyond simple women sticking together. I shivered as I thought of the possibility of it going beyond simply women sticking together. Was there something more going on here? Did Dave really see something, or was it wishful thinking on both our parts?
Whatever. I could deal with that stuff later. For now it seemed that there was some fresh hell awaiting me and I hadn’t been paying attention to their argument so I had no idea what the hell that fresh hell was.
“So what’s going on here boys?” I asked.
“I said you’re in a surprise round,” Dave said. I heard the distinct clicking of his dice rolling against the table and a moment later he looked back up and if anything that stupid grin was even bigger and more predatory than before. “And it looks like your character just took enough damage to move into negative hit points. Your character will now continue losing hit points every round of combat until permadeath.”
“What the hell Dave! A surprise round? We’re in the middle of combat! What surprised me?”
“A giant cave troll that snuck up on you,” Dave said.
“What’s going on here?” Lisa asked. “I don’t know what any of this means.”
I looked to Lisa and smiled. Reminded myself that this was just a game. No matter what I didn’t want to ruin her night, even if I did want to upend the table and tell Dave exactly where he could shove those dice.
“Dave here is pulling a fast one again. He’s saying that a monster the size of a house wearing loud clanking armor was able to sneak up on my character in the middle of combat and hit me with a surprise attack to the point of killing me off,” I said.