“You play the Mage,” Alden demanded in a whisper when we conferred over who would play as we set up the camera at a table in the front corner of the store. “I can’t play people in costume. It’s distracting. Cosplay kind of freaks me out—like Halloween or clowns. Makes it even harder to read people and to know when they’re serious.”
“Huh.” I hadn’t ever thought of it that way before, but Alden did seem to have a harder time picking up on jokes than most, so I supposed it made some sense. “Good luck with that at the tournament. There will probably be a ton of cosplayers all over the place.”
“As legitimate players in the tournament?” He shook his head. “I’m hoping not as many. It’s impossible to take the game seriously with someone wearing a robe.”
“Dude. The game itself is supposed to be fun. We pit reptile armies against underworld beasts and stuff like that. It’s supposed to get crazy.”
“Well, I take it seriously.” He narrowed his eyes, voice firming as if he could make the rest of us jokers fall in line through sheer force of will. “I’ll film you. Try not to get distracted.”
“Yes, sir.” I gave him a mock salute before I sat down across from Mage Ulric. However, it wasn’t the dude in velvet who distracted me. Alden hovering with the camera was far more disconcerting than I would have thought, and I’d been filmed for a couple of years now. It was more his nearness. Which was weird. I wasn’t used to being aware of him, and I wasn’t at all sure I liked it.
He fell into this strange undefined category—he wasn’t a total off-limits straight guy, not a firmly-in-the-friend-zone bro like Jasper, neither too old nor too young, but until recently he’d occupied the same slot where I put most people who annoyed me, and I wasn’t sure I wanted a few nice gestures moving him into some jiggly gray area where I started noticing the way his hair swooped forward or the way he bit his lip when he concentrated. I’d been aware of guys in that way as long as I could remember—at first seeing it as a curse of sorts, then later working hard to view it as simply how I was wired. But accepting that about myself didn’t mean I was going to embrace my body suddenly turning traitor and noticing Alden.
So, I tried to block him out, failed miserably, and lost in short order. To a fake-accented dude in a robe as Alden would say. It was embarrassing.
“You need to stop relying so much on what you top deck late game,” Alden lectured as we returned to the car. “Card draw won’t always save you. Pay more attention to your early board state.”
“Yeah.” I couldn’t disagree with his assessment. But it was his fault I hadn’t spent enough time thinking out my moves at the start of the game, so I wasn’t feeling particularly grateful for the advice.
“You need more power in your decks.” Sliding into the driver’s-side seat, Alden clearly wasn’t done with his pointers.
“My decks are fine, and hey, I don’t mind driving more.”
“It’s my turn.” His stubborn expression reminded me so much of my sister Cassie, making fondness and longing gather in my throat—and making it so that I had to look away as I walked around to the passenger side.
“Yeah, but you hate driving this car. I don’t.” I tried using logic, but his jaw remained firm, eyes straight ahead.
“I’m fine. Set the GPS for Indianapolis.”
“Aye, aye, Captain, but I’ll need your phone to do it.” I did his bidding after he handed over his latest-model smartphone, but I couldn’t help adding in some heavy sighing to convey how insufferable I thought he was being. Also, being irritated about his bossiness was better than being embarrassed that he had the better phone and that I didn’t have enough of a data plan to risk continual GPS without major overage charges. As I studied the map on Alden’s shiny phone, though, some of my bad mood started to fade. “Hey, we’ll be going right by where they have the Indy 500. We should get a picture there for Professor Tuttle.”
“How is car racing related?” Alden’s attention was riveted to the road as we made our way back to the highway. “I thought this trip was all about Odyssey.”
“It can’t be all cards twenty-four seven. My head would explode. Besides, some things are just fun. Live a little.”
“We’re already pressed for time—”
“We’ll make it up. Please. I wanted to stop last time through with my folks, but it was raining hard and no one else wanted to see it.”
Alden didn’t answer right away, mouth pursing like it did when he was considering what move to make next. And when his eyes narrowed, I braced for his refusal…but instead, he shrugged. “All right. If it means that much to you, we can stop. But quickly. Speedway, then on to the next game store by dinner. I don’t know if we’re going to make St. Louis tonight, but we should try. The western states are going to take way longer to get through.”