You're My I.T. by Holmberg C. N

Author:Holmberg, C. N.
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Pegasus Books
Published: 2022-05-30T00:00:00+00:00

Lysander

“You’re quiet, man,” Jose said as he rolled a handful of dice. We had a battle map for our latest campaign sprawled out on the table, along with all of our character sheets. We’d just leveled up, which was always fun when it came to battles, but I just wasn’t feeling it tonight. So far, the new promotion was going well; I felt I had a good handle on it, minus the interviews I had to start conducting. But work had sucked the soul out of me this week, and I guess the residual stress was spilling into the weekend too.

“He’s always quiet,” Mark, our game master, said. “What’re your numbers?”

“Sixteen and eighteen.”

“The eighteen hits.”

“More quiet than usual, then,” Jose corrected as he dealt damage to the werewolf that had sprung upon us, represented by a gray floral gem on the board. “What’s up?”

I frowned, rolling a twenty-sided die around my palm, waiting for my turn. “Nothing.”

Will, next to me, asked, “Your dad again?”

“No.” While my father was often a source of stress—and not just because of his health—in truth, I couldn’t pinpoint exactly what was chafing me tonight. I kneaded my thoughts like I kneaded the d20 in my palm. Work was exhausting. Being a manager was exhausting. My dad was also exhausting.

Blaine was exhausting.

I didn’t know why. She did all the work I asked her to do, and while a veiled complaint slipped out here and there, it wasn’t that big of a deal. But being around her, being quiet, not knowing what to say … maybe that was what made it so exhausting.

I missed her. I hadn’t so much as sent her a GIF for a week and a half, and … I don’t know. Reaching out to her, even just on the work IM, was often the highlight of my day. I could literally message her anything. Work stuff, movie stuff, even game stuff, though she wasn’t so much into role-play.

I rethought that afternoon in the parking lot. Retraced what I’d said. I hadn’t been that harsh, had I?

Well, she’d called me an asshole, so maybe I was forgetting something. Opening my hand, I frowned at the dice there.

“Ly, you’re up,” Mark said.

I rolled my dice, missed. Drank a potion, and the game moved on to Will.

Maybe I shouldn’t have said anything. But you can’t exactly not say something when someone blurts out that they suddenly like you. It’s one thing when it’s a Hooked or Facebook message—it was entirely different when it was in person.

And suddenly this woman I really liked, who I trusted, who I didn’t stutter around, became someone else. This image of her sitting on my couch, laughing at my old photos, ingrained itself into my brain. Thoughts of not being enough sucked me through the asphalt. Because if I had been enough before, she would have said something then.

I got it. I got that physical attraction was important. But I also didn’t think fat was some ultimate deciding factor in physical attraction.

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