Role Playing(10)

Maggie gritted her teeth, counting to five before speaking. “He’s a bit worried about me,” she admitted. “I just want to show him that I have a life.”

“Oh! Then sure,” Deb said as Maggie got out her phone and wiped off the screen, flipping it so the camera was aimed at them.

Patience whooped. “I want in on this!”

Suddenly, the whole group squished in, and Maggie snapped a few shots. Her smile, she noticed, looked awkward, but it was better than nothing. Once she had the photo and everyone was chatting happily, she got ready to flee. “I should . . .”

“Lemon bars!” Deb trilled. “Made them myself. C’mon, have one!”

Damn it! So close!

Maggie sat down with the small paper plate and the dessert. She sat next to Klara, whose relative silence made her feel less awkward.

Of course, this was when Klara decided to start talking.

“So, Maggie,” Klara said, leaning in, “what do you do for a living?”

“I’m an editor,” Maggie said. “Mostly nonfiction. I work on business books and textbooks, things like that. You?”

“I work as a receptionist at the hospital,” Klara answered.

They sat in silence for a moment as the others continued to chatter.

Then Klara picked up the conversational ball again. “What do you do for fun? If your son’s worried about you not having friends.”

“Oh, you know, the usual. I, ah, read, though not as much as I used to. Watch stuff.” She paused, then decided what the hell and said, “I play video games, when I can.”

“Do you and your son play?” Klara asked.

“When he was home, sometimes,” Maggie said. “We could probably play online, but I don’t want to embarrass him. The last thing he needs is his mother hanging around, you know?”

Klara frowned for a second, then nodded. “One of the ladies at church has a son . . . he’s in community college, I think. And I think he has some kind of online game group—guild—with a bunch of other students? His mother said it sounded satanic, though. Blood something?”

“Bloodborne? BloodRayne?” Maggie asked. “Blood Saga?”

“That’s the one, I think,” Klara said. “Maybe you could join that?”

Maggie’s ears perked up. She rarely joined guilds, though, because they were often too competitive. Or sexist. Or they would seem nice, until someone started spouting off white supremacist rhetoric, which had happened enough that she’d stopped looking.

“That sounds great, actually. Thanks for thinking of me,” she finally said. She wondered if Kit would consider that socializing. Yes, it was online, but if all the members were local, surely that counted? Sophistry, maybe, but she’d take it.

“I’ll pass your email along.” Klara nodded, as if that settled things, then fell quiet again.

By this point, if Maggie was forced to be any more social, she’d probably be crushed under the weight of her own awkwardness. She got up, throwing out her paper plate, and then came back and cleared her throat. “I’m going to get going, thank you for having me,” she said, all in a rush.

Deb made a little noise of protest. “So soon? Some of us were talking about going out to dinner!”

“All the single ladies,” Patience half sang, with a grin.

“Not me,” Klara countered, and Patience rolled her eyes.

“I’ll go with,” Cordy said, with a chuckle. “Show you girls a thing or two!”

Maggie could honestly say she’d rather perform an appendectomy on herself than go out on a girls’ night. “I really can’t,” she said.

“Well, you’re coming to my football party next weekend,” Deb said. It wasn’t a question.

“I’ll see . . .”

“No! You’re going, and I’m not taking no for an answer,” Deb said, with an almost maniacally cheerful grin. “Kit doesn’t want you to be lonely, right? I’ll have Harrison talk to him and have him pester you if you don’t!”

Maggie swallowed hard. “I’ll see you there, then,” she said begrudgingly. At least that gave her a week to find a good excuse to get out of it.





CHAPTER 5


THE MORE YOU KNOW


“As cool as it is to have breakfast with you,” Aiden’s old high school friend Riley said with a grin, “I get the feeling you’re not here just to eat waffles. What’s up?”

Aiden smiled despite feeling weary. Riley had been one of his closer friends, back when they were at Fool’s Falls High. Riley, Aiden, and Aiden’s best friend, Malcolm, had all been on the offensive line of the football team, which necessitated them spending a lot of time together. Back then, they’d gone on group dates and to keggers and big blowout bonfire parties in the woods down by the quarry. But where Malcolm had been his brother from another mother—the guy who’d shared his secret fascination with “those D&D books,” the guy he’d turned to when college had gone horribly wrong, the guy he’d eventually opened a hospice business with—Riley was the golden-boy quarterback who had never left the Falls. He wasn’t a gamer, he wasn’t into geek culture, and if Aiden was honest, he was still basically the guy that Aiden remembered, only with alimony payments and some lower backaches. He’d gotten a job with a big local pump and well company straight out of high school when it became obvious that he was good but not good enough to get a football scholarship or move on to the NFL, and he had worked his way up to well drill operator. By all accounts he seemed happy to stay right where he was, here in the Falls. Since Aiden had moved back, the two of them had breakfast or lunch together at least twice a month. They were friends, or at least friendly-ish.