Role Playing by Cathy Yardley

Author:Cathy Yardley [Yardley, Cathy]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Montlake
Published: 2023-07-01T04:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 21

GIVING THE SWORD TO A NOOB

It was now Saturday, and Aiden was absolutely miserable.

He’d actually been doing pretty well since Wednesday night, when Boggy (Maggie, he reminded himself) had helped him with food shopping and they’d binged Jujutsu Kaisen. Since then, she’d stopped by to check on him Thursday. The guild had done their weekly dungeon run, and she had smack-talked and brutally sliced her way through like the seasoned tank she was, earning accolades from the rest of the crew. It was actually even funnier seeing her brutality and picturing her tiny IRL self, or hearing her vicious insults in her relatively sweet alto.

Then, on Friday, they’d talked via cell while watching another movie, this time his choice—Buckaroo Banzai across the Eighth Dimension. It turned out she’d seen it before, and loved it, which made it that much funnier. She could actually quote it, and he laughed hard enough to tear up.

Sheryl had never watched his “nerdy” stuff, had not understood his sense of humor. She was sweet, and supportive, and would’ve probably taken a bullet for him when they were together . . . right up to the point when they weren’t together, and then she’d been tempted to shoot him herself. And in college, Jordan had been charming and vivacious, ushering him to parties and helping him fit in, loving him to distraction . . . but there had been pitfalls, too, and heavy expectations. In retrospect, as much as he’d loved them, he’d found himself being what the people he was in relationships with wanted him to be.

Not that two relationships is a lot of history to compare.

“Aiden!” Deb’s voice rang out. “C’mon! The game’s starting!”

He grimaced. Now it was Saturday afternoon, around three o’clock . . . and he’d been ambushed by Deb yet again, this time with a cadre of friends in tow. At his mother’s insistence, apparently.

“Your mother figured you must be bored, all by yourself, stuck in the house,” Deb had said when she showed up, armed with seven-layer dip and chips and an extremely bright smile. “I know it’s got to be pretty lonely. So I thought, if you couldn’t go out with your friends, why not bring your friends to you?”

“But . . .”

“I called Riley, he’s right behind me,” she pointed out, and true enough, Riley’s truck was parking on the street right in front of Aiden’s house. “And you know my cousin Patience.”

“Yes, but . . .”

“I also invited my friend Lisa and her husband, and Klara,” she said. “And a few other people from our church, and from the old football team. They love watching the Cougars play, and I figured you haven’t seen them since my party . . . and you weren’t able to stay long, because your stomach was bothering you. So now you can. It’ll be like a mini reunion!”

He blinked. “Um . . .”

There was a reason he hadn’t connected with his ex-teammates, other than Riley. Not that he disliked them, per se.

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