Gamed (A Standalone Romance Novel) (Bad Boy Romance) (5 page)

"Yeah,"
I said. "Sienna would never go for a
fake-your-death-then-zombie-attack-your-own-funeral kind of joke."

"See, that's
what I'm saying. I could never figure you two out," Ben said. He clapped
an arm around my shoulder and forced me to join him on the back porch.

The yard was full
of cliques I remembered from high school. I looked around and could not find
one knot of people with a gravitational pull. It was the same when I was
actually in high school. I drifted, had plenty of friends, but no one close,
and people either thought that was really cool or really weird.

I played it off
then like I was a rebel, but looking at the funeral reception, I did not have
the energy. The truth was I did not care. Small talk, schmoozing, and keeping
up appearances – that was all Sienna. She made me hit my limit and I could not
go back.

"Shit, this
looks miserable. Count me out," I said.

"So, what? That's
it. Sienna dies and you head back to whatever basement you make your money
from?" Ben asked. "Yeah, I know all about the gaming thing. Nice
gig."

"Yeah, guess
I have a talent for it."

"You're for
real? No wonder Sienna was getting sick of you. She was heading off to be a
surgeon and you're playing video games," he said. He unwrapped his arm and
gave my shoulder a punch. "This
your
wake-up call
or what?"

"Wake up to
what?" I asked. "Learning to tie a tie and take Daddy's place behind
a useless desk at the shipping company?"

"That's
legit, man. A real job. Something my honey is proud of," Ben said. He
nodded across the yard to a stick-thin bottle blonde. She waved like a terrier
wags its tail. "I don't mean to hit you when you're down, man, but think
about it. Maybe now's the time to do something with your life."

"Funerals
bring out the philosophers," I said. "Good luck with all that." I
waved to his girlfriend. She gave me a once over and a bright smile. I could
hear Ben's teeth grinding.

"I don't get
you, man. I just know you're going nowhere," he said. "Good luck with
that." He clapped me on the shoulder one more time and led his trio off
the patio into the grass.

Their next stop
was Sienna's father. I snorted, remembering the last conversation I had with
him before today. It had been remarkably similar to Ben's topic of choice: my
lack of career. They just did not understand that my world was not theirs. That
was what made people uncomfortable. Succeeding on the screens and high scores
of the gaming world was not obvious to the rest of the world, especially to
non-gamers, so they assumed I was floundering.

It drove Sienna
insane that my source of income sounded so childish. At parties, she avoided
talking about what I did as long as possible. I was not a tested, accepted, and
career-tracked college student. In her circles of high achievers, that was
impossible to understand. Throw in the whole making money playing video games
bit and they looked at Sienna as if she was joking.

Still, she wanted
to be the perfect pre-med package and that included the high school sweetheart.
I kept her from having to deal with flirtations and distractions. But after the
third campus mixer, she realized I was more a blight on her image than a help. While
she made up stories about me traveling or finding consulting work, or whatever
other vague label she could slap over me, I became a success.

I glanced around
the funeral reception and shook my head. Even if Sienna and I had stayed
together, she would not have cheered my success. The gamer world was prone to
mockery, outsiders did not understand it, and Sienna wanted something that was
obvious. I always thought she'd end up with a luxury car salesman. Or maybe a
real estate agent. Someone subservient to her career but dependable,
upstanding, and normal.

Disgusting.

I could not help
but see an overlay of
Dark Flag
. Ben
would try to gather a clan and it would work, but they would die within days, routed
by underlings, cleaned out by thieves, or razed by a ruthless leader that did
not care about appearances. It was the kind of world where small talk had
burned away in the apocalypse. All that mattered was finding your inborn
talents and using them to survive.

I could not take
on any desk job or career track that forced me to mimic rote skills. I could
not pretend to be content with a day job. I wanted to use my talents, not store
them in bins in the garage for the occasional hobby.

Maybe if I had
explained it better to Sienna, maybe if I'd given her a rundown of my success, she
could have come around. Did it matter that we'd end up in the same place, only
together? We'd still be at some backyard party with me on my own and nothing to
say. Except she might still be alive.

The thought burned
down my throat and into my stomach like a shot of whiskey. I turned to see if
there was anything to drink, anything to kill the feeling of guilt. A hired
bartender in a crisp white shirt stood behind the counter of the outdoor
kitchen.

He looked bored,
mostly pouring iced tea, and I startled him. "Please say you have
whiskey."

"Irish wakes
are my specialty," he said. He poured the shot and left the bottle on the
counter for me.

"Can I have
a, um, another?" Quinn said. She glanced away from me.

I watched as the
bartender poured her a diet soda, swept the whiskey bottle out of sight to add
a splash,
then
gave her a lime twist. He handed me
back the bottle and Quinn watched as I poured myself another shot. I toasted
her before I tipped it back neat.

"Lots of
people from high school," I said.

"At least
they remember you," Quinn said. "Sienna always hated that I could not
make a better impression at social gatherings." She stood up straight and
took a step before her shoulders slumped and she turned back to the bar for
support. "She always gave me the best advice and I never took it."

"And now you
think if you had, things might have been different?" I asked. "You
can't do that. It doesn't work that way."

"What
doesn't?"

"Life."

"So, it's not
worth thinking about?" Quinn asked. Her chocolate brown eyes took on a
hard edge.

"No, it’s
just there are too many answers to 'what if' and none of them can change what
happened," I said.

"Why are
people always so wise and philosophical at funerals?" She gulped her drink
and held out the glass for another. "This is why I'm done talking with
people. I'm not searching for answers or trying to see the silver lining. I'm
just trying to survive."

Quinn thanked the
bartender, took her refill, and disappeared into the house. I took two steps to
follow her before Mrs. Thomas appeared and blocked my way.

"Owen Redd,
we weren't sure you were coming," she said.

"I'm sorry,
Mrs. Thomas. I should have stopped by sooner." I looked longingly at the
whiskey bottle but knew it was not a good idea to drink in front of Sienna's
mother.

Mrs. Thomas had a
tendency to overdo everything. She threw herself wholeheartedly into any
activity, from chronicling Sienna's successes to redecorating the house to
having a few drinks to celebrate her daughter's accomplishments. A few always
turned into too many. Or sometimes, it took no drinking at all for her to shift
from high speed to sinking ship. Her mood could swing to dire melancholy, and I
worried the gentle smile on her lips was a thin facade.

"You probably
knew our daughter best of all and yet no one understands why you two were
together." She stared over my shoulder at the bartender until he brought
her a glass of white wine. "I used to think of you like the moon, just
drifting around her and catching her light. She was the sun, Owen, the bright
golden sun." Her breath hitched. "No. A shooting star, I guess."

"She was
golden," I said.

"I get it,
you know," Mrs. Thomas said. "I get how Sienna could go from way up
there to way down here." She looked at the ground and swayed. "I feel
it too. Everything lifts you up, up, up and then the air is too thin, you can't
breathe, and you crash down. She just wasn't supposed to fall. Someone was
supposed to be there to catch her."

She looked up and
the flash of hatred was sharp. I pulled back the hand I held out to steady her.
Mrs. Thomas blamed me. No wonder Sienna's father had asked me to leave. The
longer I stayed, the more people would feel the same way.

I was supposed to
be with Sienna. I was supposed to know how she was doing. I should have seen it
coming and stopped her. I should have loved her enough to keep her from it.

No one knew I
wasn't even with Sienna. But it did not matter anymore.

I dodged past Mrs.
Thomas without another word. Anything would set her off. She was hoping I would
and followed me inside. I knew Sienna's mother needed a reason for a scene; she
was just keeping it together. I slipped down the side hallway and flipped the
light on in the guest bathroom as I went. I shut the door and leapt around the
corner just as she came after me. Luckily, the door to the basement was cracked
open and I was able to slip downstairs without a sound.

The lights were
off except for a bluish glow at the bottom of the stairs. I stepped lightly
down and discovered Quinn sitting on the edge of the old leather sofa. She
leaned forward as she furiously tapped the video controller. On the large
screen television, the world of
Dark Flag
came into focus.

I stepped around
the corner so I could not be seen from the top of the stairs, but I did not say
a word. For just a moment, I wanted to watch Quinn in my world. It was like
seeing a stranger on the moon and realizing she had always been there.

#

I
leaned on the doorframe. It would not be long before Mrs. Thomas decided to
look in the basement. I should have gone out the front door. I should have left,
but something made me stay. With Sienna gone, I knew once I left that house, I
would have no reason to come back. And I wanted a reason.

It was Quinn. In
the darkened basement, I could think about it. Just for a moment. In the bluish
light from the video game screen, I allowed myself to look at her.

Her chestnut brown
hair was thick and soft. It fell in waves to the middle of her back, loose and
free. It was the kind of hair I wanted to scoop into my hands. It would run
through my fingers like silk. Against her black dress, it was warm with streaks
of gold.

The dress was
sleeveless, showing the graceful reach of her arms. Quinn was slender and
athletic, despite the soft curves of her body. Her arms showed taut muscles as
she shifted the controller and tapped in sequences. Long delicate fingers that
could have played the piano or performed surgery flew over the controller.

She leaned forward
again, concentrating on the game. In the light from the television screen, I
could see her full lips parted. As she focused on a difficult move, her tongue
swept across her lower lip. She made me think of ripe strawberries.

I met her a month
after Sienna and I started dating. Her hair was loose, her arms looked too
long, and her chocolate brown eyes were so wide. For all her teenage
awkwardness, Quinn was confident.

"You're
dating my sister?" she had asked. "Do you play football?"

"No."

"Basketball?"

"No," I
had said.

She had tipped her
head, those chestnut waves sweeping over her arm. "What do you do?"

"I don't know,
video games?"

Quinn had laughed
– a free, unpracticed sound. "With Sienna? She hates video games. You must
be a good kisser."

Quinn had always
been easy to talk to, despite the gap in our ages. She was a freshman when
Sienna and I were seniors in high school. I remembered hearing the other guys
talk about Sienna's hot younger sister. It had made my blood boil. They did not
know her like I did. Quinn was more than just attractive. She was quick-witted,
interesting, and guileless.

Where Sienna
always had an agenda, an angle, or a desired outcome, Quinn was different. She
was genuinely interested in people, not for what they could do for her but
because she liked them. She was friends with everyone. Sienna had an exclusive
list of people she would be seen with, but Quinn was more like me. Not loners,
just not defined by the tight clans of high school territory.

"She's
driving me crazy," Sienna had said many times. "I mean, she went to
the movies with this nerdy guy. She could have gone out with the first baseman
of the baseball team."

"Not into the
whole dating thing?" I had asked Quinn when she was a freshman in high
school. We sat on the worn leather sofa in her parents' basement playing video
games while Sienna did her make-up for a pep rally.

Quinn had
shrugged. "Sienna makes it sound like a competition. I'd rather just sit
here and beat you at
Mario Kart
."

I did not tell her
then, but I preferred the same thing. There had been too many nights when all I
wanted to do was hang out with Quinn. I leaned on the doorframe and called
myself a coward.