by Natalie Grey
Alex looked a little like a deer in the headlights. He tipped a shrimp off his fork and put the container down on the counter, not breaking eye contact as he picked up the packet of eggrolls instead.
“Wise choice,” Gracie said.
“Uh-huh.” He watched her warily, like he might watch a rabid bear that had just wandered into his house. “So?”
“Oh, right.” Gracie hung up her uniform on the coat tree and kicked off her flip flops. “My sister is getting married.” She punctuated her excessively cheerful tone with jazz hands. “Or she will be. Or something. Her boyfriend might be planning a proposal on the 4th. I had to get off the phone before my mother started asking me about my love life.”
“You should get one of those,” Alex said. He waved an eggroll. “I hear they’re great.” He paused contemplatively. “Although my own experience wasn’t so good.”
“Precisely.” Gracie grabbed a seltzer out of the fridge.
“Ugh, you and your seltzers.”
“They’re tasty, you don’t have to drink them, and bite me.”
“Whoa, whoa.” Alex ambled over to the table.
“Sorry.” Gracie sighed, nabbed the shrimp, and went to sit with him. She poked at the contents of the container moodily. “It’s just, I’d already put up with her harping about my job. I didn’t want her to go on about my love life too. Did you see I got you cashew chicken?”
“You did? You’re awesome.” Alex was up like a shot. “God, I feel like I haven’t eaten in days. What day is it?”
“It’s Tuesday. And those bags under your eyes are pretty legit. Have you been home at all since the shit hit the fan?”
“Once.” Alex settled back down with his own container. “I’ve begun to mark the passage of time by the bad pizzas they order for us.”
Gracie snorted with laughter. “Sorry, man, but you know the rules: do accounting for rich douches, get stuck trying to hide their douchery.”
Alex chortled. “Only way to get past that one in this town is to be one of the casino owners.” He caught the flicker on Gracie’s face. “Whoa, wait. You don’t own a casino, do you? Because if you do, I’m gonna be pissed that we go halfsies on takeout, frankly.”
Gracie snorted seltzer up her nose and grabbed for a paper towel while she recovered.
“No, not that. I just, uh… Oh, God. I got asked out.”
“O-ho!” Alex twirled his fork. Then he set the fork down carefully and leaned in. “O-ho,” he said more meaningfully.
“Oh, no. Don’t.” Gracie sometimes forgot how smart Alex was. He made the connections other people either were too lazy or didn’t care to make, and he was quick about it. It probably helped in his job, but it also helped when he wanted to interrogate her about anything he could use to tease her with later.
“You got asked out by a casino…owner?” Alex raised an eyebrow. “No, that’s not right. Don’t tell me.”
“What, you don’t think I could pull a CEO?”
“Sweetie, I love you, you’re great, but a CEO wants a yes-man at home.”
“I do not have the equipment for that.”
“You know what I mean. ‘Helen, I want you to have blonder hair and lose five pounds. There’s a charity dinner coming up.’ ‘Yes, dear.’”
“Ugh.” Gracie mimed throwing up.
“Yeah. You don’t have the makings of a trophy wife.” Alex scratched his head. “But an up-and-comer? Your prospective suitor, I mean. Someone in the biz, or you wouldn’t have thought of it.”
“Yeah.” Gracie hunched her shoulders. “Kyle…something. I guess he works at the Bellagio. Nice suit. Saw me by the fountains and came over to say hi.”
“And asked you out.”
“Yeah, after talking himself up. I laughed in his face.” Gracie caught sight of Alex’s raised eyebrows. “What? Come on, it’s funny, right? I’m in a tank top from Old Navy, his suit probably cost as much as I pay for rent in a year, he’s going to run a hotel or something, and I…deal blackjack.” She could practically feel her mother’s disappointment radiating all the way from Glencoe, and her shoulders hunched a bit. “He doesn’t want someone like me,” she finished, but the humor had gone out of her voice.
“Gracie.” Alex put his food down. “So you have a shitty job. So do I. Only difference is, mine pays more. Do you really think that makes me better than you?”
Gracie blinked. She hadn’t thought about it that way. “Noooo?” she said cautiously.
“Look, I know your parents wanted to raise some crazy army of preppy geniuses to ‘lean in’ and take over the world—” he made finger quotes “—with their preppy husbands, but if we're brutally honest, I really think you should aspire to more than that. Also, that guy who asked you out is a douche.”
“What? We’ll get back to that.” Gracie waved a hand. “You want me to aspire to more than being a genius who takes over the world?”
“I want you to… No, no, put it this way, I don’t think you want to wear matching monogrammed polo shirts and stay up late on your vacation in Nantucket to mediate some boardroom dispute like a kindergarten teacher so you can make a big, fat bonus and buy yourself a diamond tennis bracelet. Judging by the look on your face, I just hit close to home with that one.”
Gracie was staring at him slack-jawed. She could see it all unfolding just the way her parents wanted: the house on the East Coast, the preppy holiday card with her hair long and shining and the perfect catalog smile on her face, the handsome husband with a prestigious job, the kids in whatever type of school was the current flavor of the month to turn out high-achieving offspring.
It hit so close to home, in fact, that she really didn’t want to talk about it. She closed her mouth.
“So, uh, how’d you know this guy’s a douche?”
Alex kindly let the matter drop and went back to his stir fry. “His name’s Kyle. That’s a douche name. The number of douches with that name is so high, it breaks the bounds of all logic.”
Gracie raised an eyebrow at him.
“You’re not the only one with infuriating older siblings,” Alex told her. “It’s not just your family that has preppy aspirations. Every year, my brother sends out Christmas cards with his whole family in matching cable-knit sweaters and LL Bean boots and plaid, and every year he breaks my sister-in-law’s heart again with another mistress.” He smiled humorlessly. “Usually his new secretary, after he fired the last one because ‘she got clingy.’ You think your sister’s bad? She’s just annoyingly perfect.”
“Oh, you think so, do you?” Gracie grinned at him. “You wanna have a terrible-sibling-off? Because I’ll bet you anything that my sister’s going to be just as bad.” She considered. “Of course, I don’t really know her boyfriend that well. They might deserve each other.”
“Better that than someone like my sister-in-law, who I swear is actually the sweetest woman you’ll ever meet.”
“So, why does she stay?”
“Beats me. Maybe she thinks it’s better for the kids.” Alex shook his head. “See, it’s just full of tangles. I take back what I said about having a love life. Never have one.”
“I see you’re coming on board with my live-in-the-woods-like-a-hermit plan,” Gracie observed. “We just gotta get high-speed internet and grocery delivery, and we’re good to go.” She jerked her head at the living room. “We’ll have Metamorphosis. We can stay occupied forever.”
“I like where your head’s at,” Alex agreed, then considered. “Enough that I’m seriously thinking about not going back to work and letting them fire me. We’ll just look for cabins online, find a nice one, move…”
“Possibly get murdered…”
“Yeah, this does sound like the start of a horror movie, doesn’t it?” He stood up. “Fine. I’ll go back to work, but I’m not happy about it.”
“Don’t they worry that if you can’t sleep, you’ll make mistakes?”
“They have great faith in the power of cocaine.”
“They make you take cocaine?” Gracie dropped her fork and stared at him.
“No, they just assume we do—which is a pretty safe assumption, actually.” Alex shrugged. “I’ve never quite given enough of a fuck to want to do better at my job, but if I did, maybe I’d have fallen into the trap. So you see, being a shitty employee can be good for your health.”
Gracie laughed as he ambled away rubbing at his scalp. For all his joking, Alex really did look exhausted, and from the near-empty coffee pot, she could tell he’d brewed and drunk a few cups on this stop at home.
Poor guy.
She shook her head and sighed, then took out the business card Kyle had given her. Part of her—the part that had come roaring to life as soon as she got into her teens—wanted to roll her eyes at anyone who gave a business card to a prospective date. He could have just given her his number for her to put into her phone, but he’d wanted to make sure she knew he was the Vice President of something.
She tapped the card on the table and took a drink of seltzer. The life Alex described—the life her parents wanted for her—was horrifying. She didn’t think she knew anyone who lived that life who was actually happy.
It was part of why she’d come here after graduating instead of going home, although she hadn’t realized it until tonight. When she thought of that life, she felt like she was drowning.
On the other hand, what did she have to show for her time here? She was barely making the rent, she didn’t like her job as much as the idea of her job, and she didn’t have anything going on in the way of dates except Kyle.
She’d never had, really. She’d had a couple of boyfriends, but never anyone she really fell for. She’d gone on a few dates in college and hated it.
Now she was beginning to wonder if she was just running herself into the ground to flip off her parents. They’d fly her out in July—they weren’t going to take no for an answer, she knew that—and she’d see her sister building a life for herself that might not be perfect, but at least it would be something more than Gracie was doing, dicking around out here…
She pulled her phone out of her pocket, typed in Kyle’s number, and sent a text: “Hi, it’s Gracie.”
Great. Now she was stuck with the sneaking suspicion that not only was that the stupidest thing anyone had ever texted, and that maybe he’d just asked her out as a joke, but also that she was going to wind up a Stepford wife in suburbia.
“Try not to freak out, Gracie,” she muttered. She dropped her head into her hands and rubbed her eyes. It was just going to be coffee, right? It wasn’t like she had to marry this guy if he was a total douche.
“Oh, I almost forgot.” Alex spoke from right behind her and Gracie jumped.
“What’s up?” She gave him a smile before he could notice her expression and ask what was wrong.
“How was the game the other night?”
“Oh! Super cool. You know that blue jewel thing? Turns out there was a quest to turn it in at a kobold tomb.”
“Aw, dammit.” Alex shook his head. “Maybe I’ll let you level up ahead of me, and you can show me the ropes instead of the other way around.”
Gracie grinned and saluted as he disappeared. Then she wolfed down the rest of her dinner and headed into the living room. It wasn’t going to be a bad night, after all—because she had the game to play.
Chapter Seven
Jay ambled through the starting area outside the city gates. From his adventures with Callista two nights ago, his character was now Level 10 and shaping up to be a brawler.
He had played MMOs for years, and got an immense sense of satisfaction and pride out of building his gear sets meticulously and researching the best specializations. In MMOs, knowledge was absolutely power, and he did his research and put in the work to make his characters shine.
Each even had a backstory he’d honed after reading the world’s lore, and a few had very bad portraits he’d drawn as a teenager, back when he thought he might go into video game art as a career.
He’d never really thought he’d end up in a game company, though. It had been drilled into him at a pretty early age that life wouldn’t be like your daydreams. When he’d gotten the job at Dragon Soul, he’d spent the first few months waiting for someone to wake him up and send him back to work at some crushing, soulless job.
But no one had.
So, who cared if he still had a ton of student loans and not even the hint of a girlfriend? He had the best job on the planet, as far as he was concerned. He’d helped to build an MMO so big and so immersive that no one knew the whole thing inside and out. No one, not even the staff at Dragon Soul, could log in and not be surprised by some of the things they saw.
Maybe that was why he was enjoying running around in scraped-together Level 10 armor, making up his talent tree as he went along. He had gotten to the point where the game was giving him options of talents at each level up, making suggestions based on his play style. It was a system the team had worked hard on, and Jay was happy with how seamless it was.
His GM controls, hooked into his usual worldview, indicated a few life bars flickering perilously low nearby. On closer inspection, a small party of Piskies seemed to have bitten off more than they could chew on the sacred pool quest and were about to lose some of their progress.
Jay was feeling in a benevolent mood today, and he smiled as he selected the fight and adjusted a few parameters. The wolves’ health pool shrank and the Piskies just managed to pull out a victory, only one of them dead. The other party members revived them, and Jay listened in as they chattered about what a close call it had been and how they were planning to pull their next set of enemies.
Confident that they had learned from the experience, he turned north to gaze at the ruined temple that overlooked Kithara. He had been there the night before in his GM character, invisible to the ghosts who roamed among the toppled columns and chipped, weathered statues. The view from there had been beautiful, and he decided to go up there again once the player load dropped a bit.
Technically, his team was just working on observation. They would respond to help requests from time to time, but their main function was to watch. What party mechanics were people using? What quests were they skipping or failing at? What aspects of the game did they bitch about when they didn’t think the GMs were listening?
So far, there weren’t many complaints, and Jay was feeling deeply satisfied with this state of affairs.
There was a faint ding on his screen, and his face lit up as he looked at the bottom left corner. Callista had come online, and she was at the tavern where she’d logged out the other day.
Jay resisted the urge to send a message. He had a healthy fear of coming off as creepy, and as always, his first instinct was not to engage. He’d had a great time laughing and joking around with Callista, but for him, that sort of interaction was something that could change at any moment without warning for reasons he wouldn’t understand.
He had just about decided to log off when a private message popped up.
“Hey, you online?”
Jay clicked the button to activate voice chat. “Hey! Good to see you.”
“Same here.” She sounded emphatic—or maybe he sounded emphatic, Jay reminded himself. Those voice filters were really something. The dev team had been trolling one another for weeks, making female characters and trying to catfish each other. “Let me tell you, I could use a good bout of hero-ing right about now.”
“Me, too. Should we party up?” He hoped he sounded casual, but his palms were now sweating, and for some reason, he was very aware of his ears.
“Sounds good. Let me figure out this invite mechanic. Hang on.” A second later, she made a sound of satisfaction and the party invitation flashed up. “I have to say, this whole thing is a lot more intuitive than I thought it would be. I keep waiting to toggle maps or purge my inventory by accident or something, but it hasn’t happened yet.”
“Bet the devs would appreciate hearing that,” Jay
joked.
“Sure, sure. ‘Hey, your game doesn’t suck!’” She was laughing. “You hang out there. I’m coming your way.”
“Roger that.” After so many hours on the job, he’d been sitting—after all, one didn’t really walk—but now he stood up and stretched. He felt more awake than he had in hours.
He saw her before too long, climbing the road that wound up and out of the city. When she cleared its shadow, the dawn light made her hair brilliant blue, and he waved. She waved back and jogged over.
“Sorry for the wait.” She unsheathed her weapon. “I was just enjoying the scenery. It’s so calm and peaceful after…well, everything.”
“Bad day, huh?” He took a moment to study her face. It definitely wasn’t one of the stock ones from the character creator, and while the faces people played with tended to fall into the uncanny category, this one really worked.
“You could say that.” She shrugged, which made her coat ripple. “Let’s go hit things with sticks. That’ll probably help my feelings.”
Jay cleared his throat. “Right.”
This was definitely a dude.
They had both picked up a couple of gathering quests, some of which were specific to their races. Those quests were scattered throughout the game to stress ancient loyalties and test the various factions of the world.
The players didn’t know it, but the game’s creators were waiting to see if the races descended into outright war again. It could happen; it wouldn’t be disallowed.
Callista covered him while he gathered a few herbs that the humans apparently turned into medicine, and he covered her while she had her character scramble up into a tree to reach some apples. She fell out more than once, which had them both in stitches by the time she was done, and she stretched out her arms to examine them.
“Lucky pixels don’t get bruised, huh? And pixelated clothing doesn’t rip.”
“We’d all be in rough shape if so,” Jay agreed. He looked around. “Say, what was that combo you used on the last three?”
