Cosplayed: A Sweet Lesbian Romance

by Mia Archer

  I couldn’t send her an email right now. I couldn’t send an email when she’d see that picture of me!

  I alt tabbed back into the game fully intending to make an excuse.

  “I’m waiting…”

  There she was again with that infuriating casually insistent confidence. As though she expected me to send her my manuscript right now. And I found myself blushing, moving out of the game client again, and hitting send. It was as though I was under some sort of spell. It was as though she was able to get me to do whatever she wanted. I didn’t even realize what I was doing until I’d sent it, and immediately my hand went from my mouse up to my mouth. I stared in wide-eyed shock.

  Damn it!

  I moved back to the game. I waited to see what the damage was.

  “Got it.” she said.

  There was a pause. A pause that stretched into eternity. A pause where I was sure she was looking at my picture, where she was sizing me up, where she was realizing that the sexy seductive elf priestess was nothing like the girl in my profile picture. She was probably looking me up and down and thinking how ridiculous she’d been to ever pay any attention to me. I’m sure she’d come back and say that she didn’t have time to read my manuscript.

  “My my,” she said, adding a smiley face to the end. “You are a cutie my lady elf.”

  Was that what I thought it was? I reread the sentence over and over trying to process it. That seemed downright flirtatious. Usually I was pretty oblivious about that sort of thing, but this was like a massive signal being projected onto the sky that even I couldn't miss. I felt my breathing catch as I read the sentence. I felt warmth settle into the pit of my stomach. I couldn't believe it.

  Damn it. This girl kept blowing my expectations away! I blushed again. I blushed! And I felt a tingle at the tips of my fingers that I was pretty sure was from getting turned on and not an impending stroke as I started typing. At least I hoped it wasn't an impending stroke. That would be just my luck. I start falling for a girl. The girl seems interested in me. I have a stroke and I'm dead or incapacitated to the point that I can't explore this strange new romance. Only that didn't happen as I kept typing.

  “You’re not so bad yourself.” I said with a wink emoticon. I was so nervous as I hit enter but I did it.

  Was I really doing this? Was I really flirting with a girl over the Internet on the basis of a picture and a silly crush? This was ridiculous! I hadn’t done this sort of thing in at least five or six years. Not since I was a teenager using the Internet for the first time. Not since I’d first got involved in non-Elassa role-playing communities that were best forgotten all these years later.

  And yet here I was, very much feeling like the giddy schoolgirl I’d been back then talking to a cute guy. Only now it was a cute girl I was talking to, and unlike with those early role-playing chats this time I had actual proof that she was a cute girl. At least I hoped she was a cute girl. I wasn’t completely naïve. I knew there was still a good eighty percent chance that picture was bullshit, but a girl could dream, right?

  “That’s all?”

  I blinked. Was she expecting more? Was she really that cocky? Did she really need me to validate her looks? I have to admit that it took some of the shine off of the moment.

  “Was there supposed to be more?”

  “No, nothing…”

  She seemed surprised. She seemed to be avoiding telling me something. And yet I’d just met her. I was still so surprised that she looked like that, I was still so surprised that she was the complete package, that I decided I wasn’t going to dig any deeper. Not yet. If she wanted to have her little mystery then let her have her little mystery. It was enough that we had what we had for now.

  “Think I’m going to log off and have a read of your story,” she said. “Talk to you later?”

  “Sure. Looking forward to it!”

  “Me too.” And she winked at me. Well, it was a wink emoticon, but I'd grown up online. To me it was as good as the real thing. The physiological reaction it provoked through my body was certainly the real thing!

  It was amazing how punctuation could make me feel so amazing. It was really just a semicolon and a closed parenthesis, and yet that simple bit of punctuation was getting me worked up in a way that I hadn’t been in quite some time. Since the last guy I dated seriously. Where "seriously" is defined as going on a couple of dates but I didn't really feel much of a spark when he tried to get physical so I'd called things off.

  Since then I didn’t really have time for dating what with my busy schedule. At least with what I told myself was my busy schedule, though it would probably look rather pathetic to anyone who actually had a busy schedule or real responsibility instead of a full plate of video game playing every night.

  The chat window indicated she’d gone off-line. I paused for a moment, and then I added her to my watch list. She must’ve already done the same to me if she knew when I was online. That sent another thrill running through me. A girl that gorgeous, a girl who could write like that, a girl who could make me feel this way with just a few words on the screen, and she’d obviously been interested enough to talk to me first!

  It was weird, but I was starting to feel very much like that giddy schoolgirl even when I wasn’t talking to her. Just the thought of her was enough to set me off. It was an odd feeling, it was strange thinking of another woman like that, but it wasn't unpleasant. I wasn’t sure exactly what was going on, I was still really confused, but I knew that I liked it. And really wasn't that enough to see where this was going?

  I closed out the game. Without her on there really was nobody for me to talk to at this time of day. Most of my friends didn’t start coming online until after the work day was over. As the game closed a window popped up advertising Elassa Con which was coming up very soon. I sighed as I looked at the pictures streaming past. It looked like everybody was having a hell of a time.

  I’d been to a couple of local conventions, I even had a costume I put together that was slightly scandalous since it took a fashion cue from some of the more bikini oriented outfits that the sorceresses could wear in game, but I’d never been to the big convention. The one put on to showcase a combination of all the different component parts that made up the Elassa media empire.

  People from the game were there. People from the TV miniseries were usually there. I even heard that Kaitlyn Morgan herself made appearances.

  With a wistful sigh I closed out the advertisement. However nice it would’ve been to go to that convention there was no way a girl who made what I made, absolutely nothing aside from loans and a stipend, would be able to afford a ticket out to Indianapolis. There was definitely no way I was going to be able to afford the price to get into the convention, or the price of a hotel stay. I heard those got really ridiculous as the convention got closer, and there were even a special team of moderators on the forums to make sure scalpers didn’t go around trying to sell hotel rooms via official channels.

  No, it was definitely out of my price range.

  I needed to forget about that stuff though. I had more important things to concentrate on. Like the fact that I had to get to work. All that talk about my novel, all the anger I felt towards Carrie, all of the encouraging words I’d gotten from this mysterious woman, had put me in a mood to write. Really write. Not stuff for the game.

  I opened up my novel and got to work on it for the first time in a couple of months at least. The muse was upon me, and I was going to take advantage of the moment since I didn’t have much else to do until later in the evening when it was time to log back into the game.

  6: Waiting Game

  I went absolutely crazy in more than one way over the next couple of days. I started working on my novel at a furious pace. Words flowed from my fingers into the computer. I hadn’t written this much on one of my own projects in ages, but I felt inspired. Maybe it was showing my book to someone. Maybe it was the inspiration I’d taken from her encouragement. Whatever it was, I was wr
iting like a maniac and I was putting out thousands of words a day which was unprecedented even before I got sucked into Tales of Elassa and spent all of my writing energy on the game.

  Kaira was driving me crazy in other ways too. Mainly by her absence. I’d only talked to her a couple of times and so it was totally weird that I’d miss her like this, and yet with each passing day that I didn’t see her on I grew more frustrated. Her profile said she hadn’t been on since the last time we spoke a couple of days ago, not that I was stalking her profile and obsessively refreshing it or anything.

  It was driving me nuts. I was busy writing, but I also kept myself logged into the game on the off chance that she’d show up. I kept myself logged into the chat client for the game on my phone so that if she showed up while I was in class or at my job I’d be able to catch her.

  And still days went by with absolutely nothing. Like I said, I was starting to go crazy.

  Her absence was so pronounced that I started to wonder if there was something I’d done wrong. I was starting to wonder if she’d read through my story, realized that she absolutely hated what I did, and decided it would be easier to just never log onto that character again rather than disappoint me. It was amazing the lengths my mind went to coming up with a worst-case scenario, and yet I couldn’t help it.

  So I was very surprised on Friday when I was sitting at my job, though I wouldn’t really call working as a receptionist for the history department much of a job at all since it mostly involved sitting at a desk that nobody came to unless one of the profs was trying to get into their physical mail.

  Even that didn’t happen very often, which I thought was odd considering this was the history department and most of the profs who worked here looked old enough that they probably didn’t have the greatest grasp of technology or email. Not that I was going to knock it. The dean of the department was nice enough to let me do my own thing on the computer if we weren’t that busy, which was most of the time.

  And so I was doing my own thing and working on my book when I saw an icon pop up in the bottom right-hand corner. My breath caught as I saw it. It was the Elassa chat icon. I’d installed the chat client on this computer ages ago and nobody had ever said anything about it even when the dean walked by and saw me chatting. So I figured it was okay. I never asked outright, but whatever. Easier to beg forgiveness than ask permission and all that.

  I felt a thrill and apprehension as I saw that icon blinking. Every time that icon popped up in game, on a computer, or on my phone it set my heart to racing. Of course that racing heart was inevitably followed by disappointment when it turned out to be Megan or another one of my in-game friends and not her.

  And so it was with a mixture of anticipation and resignation that I clicked on the icon and brought up the chat window. My breath caught and boy did my pulse really start racing in a major way.

  “Hi.”

  One word. One single word. And yet it was so weighted with significance because of the name it was attached to. Why was she only sending me one word? Where had she been? Why wasn’t she saying more? Did that mean she didn’t like what she read? Why was I such a pessimistic mess?

  Deep breath. Get control of yourself Amber. Don’t overanalyze!

  “Hi yourself.”

  “Sorry I’ve been away,” she said. “I’ve been ridiculously busy at work. We’re getting ready for a big event here.”

  “What kind of a big event?”

  “Nothing special,” she said. “But it’s the biggest event we throw at my job, so it takes up a lot of my time. Haven’t had much time for anything other than work.”

  My spirits fell. If she hadn’t had much time for anything other than work that meant she also hadn’t had much time for anything like reading.

  “I understand,” I said. “You get busy at work sometimes!”

  Of course it’s not like I really understood. I was self-aware enough to realize that I’d gotten a pretty cushy gig with my current job. I knew this was probably something I’d look back on with fondness when I was eventually forced into the real world. When I was eventually forced to get a job outside the university where they expected results.

  “I did have a chance to read your story though,” she said.

  Damn! If just the sight of her screen name showing up was enough to set my pulse racing, well her telling me that she’d read through my work was enough to make me feel lightheaded. It was enough to twist my stomach up into knots.

  I imagined this gorgeous creature sitting back in a chair with a tablet in between doing stuff for her job, whatever that was, and thinking about me the entire time. It also sent a warm feeling coursing through me knowing she’d been thinking about me even if it was sort of indirectly as she read through my story. Knowing I’d been on her mind even if she hadn’t been able to hop on and talk to me all that much was nice.

  “That’s cool,” I said. I was not going to fish for a reaction. Let her say what she was going to say.

  “It was fucking amazing! I’m seriously blown away, and I don’t say that lightly,” she said.

  “Really?”

  “You’re just full of surprises Maia,” she said. “Brains, beauty, and talent. You really are the whole package. You’ve even inspired me to really get to writing again!”

  I blushed. And glanced around the room to make sure nobody else was looking. Now that probably looked suspicious, the receptionist sitting at her computer typing away furtively, leaning close to the monitor, and then glancing around to make sure nobody was actually looking to see what I was doing.

  If that didn’t get the dean interested in what I was doing on my work computer then I figured nothing would, but glancing in his office he wasn’t there anyways so whatever. There weren’t even any students or professors milling around in the hall outside.

  I turned back to the chat window.

  “You mean that?”

  “Of course I mean that,” she said. “Why would I lie about something like that?”

  “I don’t know what it is about you, but I feel like a giddy schoolgirl every time I talk you!” I said. I don't know why I said that. Here she was online and talking to me for the first time in days and I said something stupid that was bound to scare her away, flirtation aside.

  And I was astonished I’d feel like that even as I said it. There was just something about this girl that short-circuited my brain. There was something about this girl that made me say the most ridiculously inappropriate things. There was something about this girl that made me type things that I was sure would lead to her getting scared and running away for good.

  “I’m kind of glad to hear you say that, because I’ve been feeling the same way,” she said. “I’ve been so busy with work, but all I could think about was how much I wanted to sneak away and log into the game so I could talk with you!”

  I didn’t think it was possible for me to blush any more than I already was, but somehow my cheeks found a reserve of bright red to color them. I was so entranced with the chat client that I jumped when somebody cleared their throat. I looked up and saw an undergrad staring down at me and looking over to the screen. I blushed even more furiously, wondering if he'd seen what I was talking about. I quickly minimized the window and put on my best smile, though it was difficult with the way I was turning bright red.

  “Can I help you?” I asked.

  “Um, I need the form for dropping a class…”

  “You need to go down to the registrar’s office,” I said. “We don’t do that sort of thing in this office.”

  The guy muttered something under his breath. I caught a bit about how it was bullshit that we didn’t have his form but did have time for Elassa chat and I blushed as I realized he knew exactly what I was doing even if he didn’t know exactly what I was talking about. That was bad enough. Only as soon as he was out of the room I immediately brought that window back up. It was blinking furiously.

  “Still there? Was it something I said?”

 
“Sorry,” I said. “I’m using the chat client at work and I needed to help someone.”

  “That’s fine,” she said. “Will you be on tonight? I made sure to clear a hole in my schedule.”

  I blinked. What kind of work was she doing that she had to clear a hole in her schedule to play a video game at night? What kind of work was she doing that she was getting ready for the busiest event of the year with whatever the hell it was she did and yet she could just clear a hole in her schedule like that? This girl was definitely a mystery in more ways than one. A mystery that I fully intended to solve.

  “I should be on later,” I said. “Why?”

  “Well I want to take you out on a date,” she said. “Only I’m not sure if it qualifies as a date if we’re doing it in a videogame…”

  My face broke into a huge grin and I felt butterflies dancing in my stomach even as it twisted into nervous knots at the thought of actually going out with a woman. A date! Sure it was in a videogame, but when you were separated geographically I suppose it was the best I could hope for. It was also crossing a line. If we went on a date, two women going out on a date even if it was in-game, then I was admitting something to myself that was a major change. Did I want to do that?

  It really wasn't a question of whether or not I wanted to do that though. I had no choice. These feelings were insane, but they were also so damn strong. I couldn't deny how I was feeling, and I wanted nothing more than to enjoy a digital date with this woman.

  Besides, it’s not like meeting someone online was too different from getting to know someone in person. It wasn’t all that weird these days. Sure, meeting someone online in the middle of a videogame and then going on a date with them in that videogame was probably a little weird even by modern standards, but whatever. Fuck anybody who judged me for that. And fuck anybody who judged me for going on a date with a girl. I was going to do this.