Nope. Definitely not.
“But I needed it,” Brandon said.
Still no clue what we were talking about. “Needed what?”
A heavy pause hung between us, punctuated by his sigh. “I know you’re already thinking about worst case scenarios.”Ouch. “But even if this unfolds in the worst way possible, nothing changes.”
“Everything changes.” Fucking idiot. Him and me.
“No.” This time there was no hesitation from Brandon. “You’ll still have your knowledge, your experiences, all of us…” He pulled down the shoulder of his jacket as much as was possible, to reveal the tip of a tattoo that matched one I had. Most of us from AcesPlayed had. “That spade tattoo on your chest means more than just being a piece of ink. I don’t care ifyou think it’s corny, it connects us all. But don’t worry, you’ll also still be an intolerable asshole.”
Rah. “Is this where we share our feelings and hug and have a slumber party? Is the pizza part of this?”
“Yesto the pizza, I assumenoto the rest. I think this is where you tell me to leave, you sulk a lot more, but you can’t stop thinking about what I said.”
I shrugged. No point in denying what he said if he wasn’t going to believe me. “I don’t care if you go or not, but the conversationisover.”
“I meant everything I said. I swear it on Danny’s good nature.” Brandon shoved the box at me again.
I shifted King into one arm and took the box. No reason to let it go to waste. “Yeah. Okay.”
Brandon turned away.
“Thank you.” The words forced their way past my lips without permission.
He waved over his shoulder, and walked to his car.
Thank fuck that was over. I kicked the door shut behind him so I could set King down without him getting out.
The pizza didn’t patch the aches inside, but it made me less angry about them. When I finally retrieved my phone later in the evening, the message from Link made me smile. I was surprised to see texts from other people too. All of them asking if I was okay. If I needed anything. Phillip. Chloe. Nigel.
Damn it, I didn’t want to feel better.
One thing was guaranteed to piss me off. I headed to Fallyn’s channel.
No new videos since Monday, and that one was a short livestream of her in the Salt Lake airport. She’d almost hidden the red-rimmed eyes, but her voice cracked before she abruptly ended the stream.
What was I doing? What was I supposed to do? Where was I going to find answers… to anything?
Brandon’s visit stuck in my head far longer than I wanted it to. Thinking about what he said, about the other messages from friends, came with a consequence I didn’t want—it turned on the emotion. Mostly good ones, but some really shitty ones as well.
The last thing I wanted to be doing was thinking about what I could lose at AcesPlayed. What I may have already lost by pushing Fallyn away. By pulling back from Link.
If I thought about those things, my heart would ache, and I’d question a whole lot about my recent life choices.
I definitely didn’t want that.
29/
link
Thursday in the office, I struggled to focus. Elliot wasn’t here. Bryce was. Notherehere, but across the street, and that was close enough it put me on edge. When the game crashed again, it was a relief in a sick and twisted kind of way. Not that I wanted it down, but at least now I knew what I’d been dreading. Judith wasn’t available, we weren’t allowed to call Elliot, no matter how badly we needed him, and a looming bubble ofwe’re fuckedhung over my head.
“All right everyone, listen up.” Chris strode to the middle of the room, to Elliot’s spot, the same way he had a few days ago. He barked out a few commands, telling different developers where to look for issues in the code.
What the fuck was he doing?
When he said, “Dev Girl, tell Ivan to make sure we have coffee and snacks,” something inside me snapped. Alys deserved better than that.