by Mia Archer
“It’s a long story. Dave has been pulling stuff like that for awhile now. Sometimes you get people who are really good at making a game and not making it all about them,” I said.
“And Dave isn’t one of those people?”
“Never has been. This is the one thing he has, and he’s always been a little dictator about it,” Kylie said.
“Well if it means anything to you I think you’ll be great running your own game,” I said.
I didn’t know anything about this game beyond what I’d seen tonight, but I really and truly meant that. I wasn’t just trying to butter her up because I felt… however the hell it was I felt about her. That was still a little confusing even as it wasn’t. Even as I was pretty darn sure what those feelings meant. And for a change I wasn’t drunk and I still kind of liked it rather than running from it.
Now that was new and a little terrifying. But in a good way.
“You mean that?” she said, stopping again. A breeze kicked up around us causing her hair to flow in the light of a streetlamp overhead. I shivered, and it had nothing to do with the sudden breeze.
“Of course I mean that! You were so good at explaining everything to me tonight and you were so patient. If it weren’t for you I probably wouldn’t be going back next week.”
“So you are going to come out to my place next week?” Kylie said, an odd look and tone suddenly coming to her voice. I suppressed another shiver. The thought of going over to her place conjured up images that had nothing to do with playing that game.
“Well yeah,” I said. “Besides, it looks like you might have room for another player at the table if Dave keeps acting like Dave.”
“I suppose you’re right,” Kylie said.
Her smile had me melting in a way I hadn’t melted since the night I was crowned prom queen and I looked over to see Dylan smiling at me. Of course that night had been complicated since Dylan was my ex-boyfriend and my current boyfriend hadn’t approved of me doing the king and queen dance with him even though that was a tradition that went back decades at our school. And the heat had more to do with being crowned queen than it did with any special feeling I got dancing with Dylan or my boyfriend that night. The up close and personal part that was supposed to be so hot dancing close to either of them turned out pretty lukewarm.
That probably would’ve felt different if it was Kylie I was dancing with.
Luckily we got to my house before I had to spend too much time thinking about what that meant. We paused on the doorstep and I thought of all the times I’d stood at this very same doorstep with guys dropping me off after a date night. For some reason this felt exactly like that. There was the same nervous energy as Kylie looked at me with a hesitant smile on her face. I felt the same fluttering in my stomach wondering and hoping that she would make a move.
Only of course nothing like that happened. I was pretty sure she wasn’t into girls like that despite what all the rumors used to say about her. I wasn’t entirely sure I was into girls despite the way I’d been tied up in a knot doing things completely out of character for me all night because of Kylie.
“Well, I guess this is it,” I said. That was the sort of thing I’d say right before the kiss. A kiss that didn’t come. A kiss I wasn’t sure I wanted to come. A kiss that I craved.
“Yup. See you next week?” Kylie said.
“It’s a date,” I said without thinking about it. Kylie blushed and then I blushed right back at her. I couldn’t believe I’d actually said it was a date. What was wrong with me? I wasn’t thinking straight. Literally. And I hadn’t been thinking straight all night. I needed to get away from this and figure out what the hell was going through my head.
“Uh, yeah, so I’ll see you then,” Kylie said.
And then we both beat a hasty retreat. I unlocked the door and stepped inside as Kylie walked down to the sidewalk at a fast pace that said she couldn’t wait to get away. Damn it. I’d opened my big mouth and made things awkward. Why did I do that? I slammed the door and held myself against it trying to get my breathing under control and not doing a very good job of it.
What was wrong with me? How could I go to the game night next week after saying that? For that matter, how could I not go to game night when I still didn’t know what the hell was going on between me and Kylie?
9: Processing
Kylie:
I stopped as soon as I was around the corner away from Lisa’s house. My pulse raced and my body tingled all over. I felt like we were pretty close to sharing a moment there, and I wasn’t sure whether I was more excited or terrified at the idea of sharing that moment with Lisa.
I could kick myself for running away from her so fast like that, too. She probably thought I was freaked out or something. I mean sure I was freaked out, but in a good way. And yet I’d ran away like it was Dave looking at me expectantly and not a girl who’d been stuck in my head off and on since I hit puberty.
Well she was going to be really stuck in my head now. Stupid!
I paused and looked back at her house. I saw a light go on up on the second floor. That had to be her up there. Turning in for the night. Maybe changing into her pajamas. Changing would mean she was getting out of her T-shirt and those shorts which would mean that…
I shook my head and forced myself to walk back towards Dave’s house. I hadn’t quite thought things through when I offered to escort Lisa back to her place. That meant leaving my car parked behind Dave’s house. That meant he might be waiting for me when I got back.
“You’re crazy, Kylie,” I muttered more to myself than anyone else. The only person who could listen was a cat perched on the top of the fence leading into Dave’s yard, and it ran away as soon as I spoke. The damn cat probably thought I was crazy too. Stupid human walking past on the sidewalk muttering and not offering it tuna or cat treats or whatever the crazy old cat ladies in this neighborhood did.
I made it back to Dave’s house without any incident and hit the unlock button just in time for someone to step out onto the gravel. I kept right on getting into my car. I had a pretty good idea of who would still be hanging around here twenty minutes after the gaming session ended, and it sure as hell wasn’t Arnold or Travis.
“So do you want to tell me what the hell was going on back there?” Dave asked.
I wheeled around and glared at him. Usually that glare was enough to get guys to back off. I’d dropped the whole all black thing a couple of years ago, but this town was small enough that my crazy goth chick reputation still followed me around and I figured I might as well get some use out of it.
Usually I was using that look on guys who had some social sense, too. If I expected something like that from Dave I was sorely mistaken.
“What do you want, Dave?”
“You know what I want. What the hell was that all about?”
“You’re a dick and we all got tired of putting up with your bullshit? Seems pretty straightforward to me.”
“I’m not talking about the game, Kylie, and you know it. What the hell did you think you were doing swooping in and taking my girl from me like that? You were all over her! Damn, and here I thought those were all rumors or something. I mean I did jerk off a few times thinking about you and some hot piece of…”
Dave didn’t get a chance to get any farther than that. I saw red and I lost focus for a moment. When the world came back into focus I was right in front of him with part of his shirt balled up in my fist. My other fist was raised and about to make contact with his face. I was glad I came back to reality in that moment. Dave might be an asshole, but he wasn’t an asshole who deserved to have his face smashed in.
I forced myself to let go of his shirt. I unballed my fist with a little more effort. I still felt lightheaded. I still felt blood pumping through my body and behind my ears and the only thing that would really satisfy me in that moment was punching that smarmy look right off this guy’s face.
I didn’t do it. I took a couple of deep breaths. That alway
s worked well to calm me down. I tried to force my next words out all nice and calm-like, but I’m not sure how good a job I did considering I’d just very nearly punched his lights out.
“Dave, I’m going to pretend you didn’t just say that. You’ve known me long enough to know that talking about those rumors really sets me off, right?”
Except talking about those rumors didn’t set me off when I was talking about them with Lisa. Probably because I was hanging all over her tonight and wondering if it would be worth it to maybe make some of those rumors come true. I think that confusion was part of the reason why I overreacted a little when Dave threw those rumors back in my face.
“You’re crazy,” Dave said. “You really are into her, aren’t you? Well I don’t appreciate you stealing my girl!”
I decided to deflect. Better than standing here having a conversation with Dave about the confusion I was feeling regarding my sexuality tonight. That I’d been feeling for the better part of a decade. As worked up as I was over that and as clueless as Dave was when it came to social graces there was a good chance he’d just piss me off again. And he wouldn’t like me when I was… well you know how the saying ends.
“Dave. Lisa is about as far from being your girl as is humanly possible,” I said. “She accepted an invitation to your game night, and maybe there was a moment this evening when you might have had a chance.”
I didn’t think there was a moment this evening when he might have had a chance. I got the distinct feeling that I might have been the reason Lisa suddenly showed up, but that was getting too close to territory I didn’t want to discuss with Dave so I figured best to not bring that up. At all.
He opened his mouth to say something, but I held a hand up to stop him. He flinched away and I smiled. That bad girl reputation was good for a few things every once in a great while.
“I’m also pretty damn sure that any infinitesimally small chance you might have had with her went up in smoke the instant you started acting like yourself tonight at the game table. A girl isn’t just yours because she acts a little interested. You have to make the effort to seal the deal.”
I spoke from experience. I’d gone through the same thing with him the first couple of times I showed up at game night. He hadn’t even been the one running the game back then, but he assumed a girl showing up at the game table meant I wanted him. He was the best gamer at the table, in his mind, and that meant that any girl who came to the table would throw herself at him. Again, in his mind.
Dave’s mind was a very strange and scary place to visit.
“You don’t know that,” Dave said. “She was fine until she saw you.”
His lip jutted out into a pout. Here we went. Getting angry at the world didn’t give him what he wanted and so now he was getting all huffy about it. Not that it ever did a damn bit of good.
“Dave, I’m really not in the mood to deal with you not getting what you wanted tonight. A girl came to game night and she wanted to hang out with the only other girl at the table so I could show her the ropes. Anything else is you projecting your fucked up fantasies on the world.”
To be fair Dave wasn’t the only one projecting his fucked up fantasies on people. Again, not something I was going to go into with him. I stepped into my car and turned the key, then thought of one more thing and rolled down the window.
“Oh, and Dave?”
“Yeah Kylie?”
“Remember that conversation we had about talking to girls about jerking off thinking about them?”
Dave’s face turned several shades of red. I wasn’t sure if that was because he was embarrassed, there were times when I thought he didn’t have any shame at all, or because he was angry dredging up that memory. As far as I knew I was the only girl he’d ever hit on in that particularly disgusting way, and the discussion that followed had ended with me putting a knee firmly in between his legs and him rolling on the ground groaning about what a bitch I was for the next hour.
Everyone at the game table had agreed he deserved it, though. The little creep. Stupid Jeff for making his cousin the new dungeon master. We really should’ve gotten away from his game table a hell of a long time ago.
“Right. Good conversation with you, Dave,” I said.
I pulled out of his driveway and breathed a sigh of relief. As I turned towards a road out of town I started shivering. By the time I was at the city limits the shivering turned into a full on case of the shakes.
So Dave had noticed the flirtation going on between me and Lisa. If he noticed, as socially clueless as he was, that meant Arnold and Travis might’ve noticed as well. What if Lisa had noticed and she wasn’t really into it? I got on Dave for being a creeper and scaring the pretty girl away, but was I really any better than him?
Then again there was that walk home. There was the way Lisa had been leaning in close to me all night. The way she’d been hanging on my every word. She also said she wanted to come out to the next game night and she was looking forward to seeing me running a game.
No, I was being paranoid. I was thinking of the worst case scenario. It wouldn’t be the first time my inner lack of self-confidence had done a number on me. After all, that was part of the reason I’d gone with the all black fashion statement for so many years.
I sighed. I’d have to wait a full week to figure out for sure whether or not I’d pushed things too far with Lisa tonight. If I creeped her out then chances are all that stuff she said tonight was just her being nice so she could get away from me. If not then she’d be at game night tomorrow. Briefly I considered just calling her sometime during the week and seeing if she wanted to hang out, but if I did creep her out then that would just make it even worse.
This was going to be a really long week with just me and these confusing feelings that I really needed to figure out before I saw Lisa again.
10: Game Night
Lisa:
I stopped for a moment and stared at myself in the mirror. Why was I getting done up like this for a game night out at Kylie’s house? I mean sure if I was going out to someone’s house it was just normal that I’d spend time trying to get done up, but this was to play a game. The stereotype was a bunch of guys sitting around in a basement wearing old clothes and not giving a fuck what they looked like.
At least that’s what I’d always imagined when I thought about people playing games like that. Then again that was back before I ever saw myself playing a game like that.
I knew exactly why I was doing this. Why I was getting made up like I was going out to a house party where there’d be plenty of cute guys. I wasn’t worried about cute guys at this party. No, I was worried about a cute girl.
I couldn’t get Kylie out of my head, and it was driving me nuts. All week I’d thought about just calling her and seeing if she wanted to hang out, but every time that urge hit me I thought about that moment at the end of the night when she’d pretty much run down to the sidewalk to get away from me.
I didn’t want to freak her out. I was already freaking out plenty myself.
“You’re crazy, Lisa,” I said to the mirror. The mirror didn’t have any answers for me, though. That figured. I hadn’t come up with any answers all week either.
My phone buzzed and I looked down at it with rising anticipation. Every buzz from my phone this week had gotten the blood pumping and set my skin to tingling in a very distracting way. Sure I hadn’t actually given Kylie my phone number, but it wasn’t outside the realm of possibility that she’d figure out a way to get her hands on it.
Once again it wasn’t Kylie. I let out a disappointed sigh. Then again it was a message from Dave. In a strange fucked up way I was excited to get a message from him because in a bank shot sort of way that message was connected to Kylie.
Dave: almost rdy to head out. u rdy?
Me: yeah i am
I was a little hesitant about heading out to Kylie’s house with Dave, but he was the only person at the game night who I was in touch with. I had no way of g
etting ahold of Travis or Arnold, and I didn’t want to try and get in touch with Kylie because I was worried the awkward would kill me.
I sighed. I wasn’t supposed to feel this way. Like Kylie said, I was the prom queen. The cheerleader. People were supposed to throw themselves at me. I wasn’t supposed to feel all awkward thinking about another girl.
It was a new experience having my stomach twisted up in uncomfortable knots like this, but it was uncomfortable in the best possible way.
A few minutes later I heard someone pull up and I headed out to see Dave waiting in my drive in his old station wagon that looked like it’d seen better days. Then again I guess I wasn’t one to rag on him considering he had a car in the first place. A car wasn’t really something I needed while I was off at school since the transportation there was so good, and it always seemed like a waste of money to buy a car just to use it when I was home when I could borrow my parents’ car or get someone to give me a ride if there was a party or something.
That was back before all my friends did enough growing up that we’d aged out of the party scene around here.
“Hi Lisa,” he said, giving me a once over when I stepped into the car. I suppose I should’ve expected that. “I’m really glad to see you decided to come out to game night again.”
“Yeah, well, I had a lot of fun the first time around and I can’t wait to see what Kylie does with the game!”
Dave frowned as he pulled out of my driveway. “I still can’t believe what she did last weekend. Breaking up a game that’s been going on for decades. I knew the moment she came to our game that she was going to do that. Girls and game night don’t mix.”
He seemed to realize the full implication of what he’d just said a moment too late. He looked over at me and smiled sheepishly.
“I mean a certain kind of girl, you know,” he said. A free hand reached out and rested on my leg. I was so shocked that I let it happen for a moment. “There are some girls I’m really glad to see at game night, though. If you catch my drift.”