A group of friends streams their gaming on Wednesday nights. But not all the action is on the dining room table.

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Chapter 21: Weapon of Choice

The last thing I wanted after that fiasco was to get stuck in my own head again, but it wasn’t long before the underwhelming scenery and post-apple pie torpor had my mind circling the drain.

What WAS going on with my relationship with Brian anyway? Were we still just roommates and best friends? Or….

I thought about that morning in our room and waking up in bed next to him. I’d freaked out a little, sure, but if I were being honest with myself, I was more upset about not knowing what we’d done than the idea that we might have done anything. Heck, I still wasn’t sure we hadn’t, only that whatever it was hadn’t involved anything that would require my panties to come off.

Brian certainly wasn’t a bad-looking guy, after all. Better looking than most of the girls I’d dated in college, and definitely more handsome than the few guys I’d experimented with. And Maria had been telling me for a while I needed to get my oats sowed, so to speak. Truth be told, my last date was quite a while back, and my last time with a partner was even longer than that.

Actually, I couldn’t remember dating anyone since college, which surprised me. It hadn’t been that long, had it?

Come to think of it, how long had it been since I’d seen Brian bring home a date?

I glanced at Brian, careful not to make it obvious, and studied his profile. Strong jaw. Deep blue eyes. A few days’ worth of stubble, because, according to him, it made his characters look more rugged and manly. I couldn’t imagine why any girl wouldn’t want to date him.

I remembered the feel of that stubble, brushing my face, as we’d danced, and as we’d….

Blushing, I turned away again.

Okay, so my memory was clear that we’d at least kissed. Probably more than once, if I were to guess. Historically I only ever really got drunk when hanging out with Maria. We both could get a little touchy-feely when we got a few drinks in us and had kissed a couple times when that happened too.

Then again, when we’d been drunk and kissed, it was because she was wanting to get the attention of a guy she was into. Why had she thought that would get his attention, again?

Oh yeah, because he’d thought I was her girlfriend, I remembered, rolling my eyes. If memory served, that was also the Night of the Hurricanes and just another reason to never repeat that evening ever.

So maybe that wasn’t so much like kissing Brian last night after all. Yes, there was alcohol involved, but as far as I knew, neither of us was trying to get anyone’s attention.

Another fuzzy memory, of a phone number on a scrap of paper, floated through my brain, just out of reach, followed by Brian’s bare ass in the bathroom mirror.

“Grrrr.”

“Something wrong?” Brian asked, the sound of his voice making me jump.

“Hmm? What?”

“You growled.”

“I did?”

“You did.”

“Oh.” I didn’t dare look his way, knowing already that he’d be giving me one of his smarmy smiles and not wanting to deal with it at the moment. “Just ready to get to the hotel, is all.”

“Ah. According to my phone, we’re about another half an hour out.”

“Great.”

That seemed to be enough to reassure Brian since he didn’t say anything else, and once again, I was left to my thoughts, watching as the scenery beyond my window made the transition from fields to suburbs in preparation for the city itself.

We’d been to a con in Houston a couple of years and somewhere north of a million subs ago, around the time we got our ATG sponsorship. At the time, we’d been there as fans, not as guests, though we’d still managed a few photo ops with the rare fan of our show, or sometimes just folks who loved our costumes. I guess it made sense that the structure of Austin had me thinking of that: the same quasi-western aesthetic mixed with standard American Industrial, the same dust hanging over everything.

The same tingle of excitement in the pit of my stomach as each mile fell in our inevitable approach.

I’d been stressing for weeks, if not months, about what this con could mean for us as a business. Sure, ATG was picking up a big chunk of the bill, but we still had our own expenses, including the rental cars and partial accommodations for our crew when we opted to use our own people instead of letting ATG arrange it themselves.

Much as we loved the Faelands system, ultimately, the show we were putting on wasn’t a Faelands game: it was OUR game, and we wanted OUR people who’d helped to make it possible there with us. Then there was renting our own booth space, and making sure we had enough swag to give away and sell, and it was all just a lot to deal with.

But that was all in the past. The organizing was done, and with the retrieval of the rental cars, my part in organizing anything at all was more or less done unless an emergency popped up.

For the first time since we’d accepted the offer to appear, I was thinking about the con as something to look forward to more than something to dread, and even with all the other shenanigans going on in my life, I couldn’t help but smile.

My smile slipped as I found myself having to adjust my seat belt again. There were still at least a couple of things to stress over, after all.

Brian’s ‘thirty minutes’ wound up being closer to another hour thanks to inner city traffic, but with a little help from his phone’s GPS, we wound our way through the city streets and toward our destination.

The Randal Floyd Convention Center was certainly something else: a long, stucco-covered building full of tall windows, that looked squat from a distance until you realized the whole thing was probably two city blocks long all on its own. I knew that somewhere in there was the exhibition floor where the convention would take place, and that somewhere near that would be the small auditorium that ATG had rented for our shows.

Our first destination, however, was across the road from the convention center: the Kramer Hotel.

I had spent a lot of time researching the hotels that were available and had more than one heated discussion with the ATG organizers about our needs. We’d settled on the Kramer for two reasons: it was connected to the convention center by a skyway, so we’d be able to travel back and forth without dodging traffic, and it was the only place that had suites available when we’d gone to book.

It was certainly a nice hotel, with gleaming metal supports contrasting with the creamy texture of the con center across the way, and not for the first time, I was glad we were only footing half the bills for the crew’s rooms and not our own.

“No more cars for three days!” I crowed happily once we were safely parked in the underground garage at the hotel.

“Not unless we go somewhere to eat.”

“No more cars for three days,” I said again, with extra emphasis.

“Okie doke.”

It didn’t take long to grab our stuff and find the elevator, and from there make our way to the hotel lobby.

The lobby was a sight to behold. It was clear that the hotel was all-in for the gaming convention, complete with banners and a number of other be-costumed con-goers milling about, either checking in themselves or taking a break from the activity and noise across the street. I eagerly looked around as I let Brian lead the way to the desk, clearing a path for us while I admired the costumes, but once we reached the desk, he stepped aside.

“Hello, miss,” the lady at the reception desk said, giving the slight points of my prosthetic elf ears only the smallest of glances and never dropping her smile. “Do you have a reservation?”

“Yes, we should have a room registered under Leigh Serrano?”

“Do you have an ID?”

I pulled out my wallet and handed her the ID. She barely glanced at it before turning back to her computer and typing. “I don’t… wait, here it is. Wednesday Knights?” She asked.

“Our streaming group,” I told her, unable to keep a bit of pride out of it.

“I see,” she said, without any hint that she knew what it meant. She turned back to the monitor and clicked on the screen a few more times, then picked up an envelope. I started to reach for it, but instead of handing it to me, she offered it to Brian. “Your room is five twenty-four, part of one of our suites. Your key cards will open your room, the main suite entrance, and the door between your room and the main suite. If you need anything else, just let us know.”

“Thanks,” Brian said, taking the keys but handing them to me. “That everything we need?” he asked me.

“Yeah,” I said, trying not to sound too annoyed.

The girl at the desk smiled again, still oblivious. “Enjoy your stay at the Kramer!”

Without another word, we turned and headed for the elevators. Brian pulled out his phone and was sending texts while I called us a car, and somehow, we managed to get one just to ourselves. I made the assumption that room five twenty-four would be on the fifth floor, hit the button, and held my breath through the initial lurch.

Tap tap tap.

“Maria and Cici have the other room in the suite,” he told me, putting his phone away and lightly bumping my shoulder with his elbow.

“Great,” I said, a little huffily, though I was genuinely relieved: I’d forgotten how we’d split the suites, and the last thing I wanted to do was deal with sharing a common area with Jonah for three days straight. “So that means that costumes and makeup are in our common room?”

“And the equipment is in the other, yep,” Brian confirmed for me. “By the way, can I get a key back?”

I pretended to think about it for a moment. “Hmmm. Maybe.”

“I mean, I was nice enough to give them to you,” he said, nudging me again.

The elevator dinged, and my stomach dropped as we came to a halt and the doors slid open. “I hate it when they do that,” I grumbled as we stepped out of the elevator, though I did pull one of the cards out and hand it to him.

“The elevator or the keys?”

“Both?” I admitted. “But mostly the key thing.”

“It’s only because I’m so tall and confident-looking.”

“It’s because you have a mace,” I argued, double-checking the legend on the wall and following the arrow toward our room.

“It is a pretty impressive mace,” he agreed, nodding sagely.

“Well, it’d have to be. Gotta compensate somehow,” I tossed back, a smile creeping across my face.

“Ouch!”

We were both smiling and laughing as I scanned my card in the door and swung it open….

Right up until I saw the room.

And the single king-sized bed in the middle.

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NOTES:

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