At Any Moment (Gaming The System Book 3) (37 page)

We laughed. It was fun.

But Emilia and I never had a chance to talk like I’m sure we were both hoping to. When it was time to get up and leave, it was after ten o’clock and there were things to do in the morning. Emilia had to help her mom. I stood beside her in front of the restaurant and people filed past us, giving us a wide berth to afford privacy.

Emilia looked up at me a little nervously. “I hope you’re doing okay. But I hope it wasn’t too okay without me.”

“I’m okay. But not too okay. And you?”

“Somewhat okay,” she said with a short nod. Then she came forward and, pulling herself up on her tiptoes, slipped her arms around my shoulders and kissed me on the cheek. “I missed you like crazy,” she whispered before pulling back. Then she reached into her bag and pulled out what looked like a gift, wrapped in tissue paper. “Open this when you get home tonight, please?”

I reached into my pocket and pulled out something I had for her. “You brought your laptop with you?” At her nod, I placed the flash drive in her hand. “Use this when you get back to your room tonight.” She looked down at it, frowning, and then nodded.

I leaned down and kissed her, this time on the mouth, but it was short, sweet. “Good night.”

Emilia stepped back and slowly made it to the car, looking down at her hand and then back at me before stumbling once again.

I went to my car and immediately tore the tissue off her gift. Holding it up to the dim light in the parking lot, I saw that it was a journal with a beautiful gold-embossed cover made to resemble an illuminated book from the middle ages.

I flipped it open, astonished to see that every page was covered with her writing. She’d written an entry in it every day, like a journal, except at the top of each day she’d started out her entry
Dear Adam…

I laid the book down on the passenger seat, started the car and headed home. I had the distinct feeling that I wouldn’t be sleeping much tonight.

Chapter Forty-One
Mia

The hotel room in which we were staying for the wedding was only a few blocks away from the beach and I was sharing a room with my mom. When we got back and she came out of the bathroom ready for bed, she paused. I’d set up at the desk with my laptop open and my headset plugged in. I was just about to put Adam’s flash drive in the USB port. Mom watched me and I froze.

“You going to be up playing a game tonight?”

I swallowed and held up the flash drive. “Will it bother you? I don’t know what this is. Adam gave it to me and asked me to plug it in and look at it tonight.”

Her brows rose. “Ah, okay. And, um, how were things with him tonight?”

I looked down and shrugged. It had been cold, distant and awkward. I pretty much figured everyone present could detect that.

Mom sank onto the bed and folded her arms across her chest, watching me. “You need time. And so does he.”

I blinked. “That’s what this past couple months were all about. Giving us time.”

Mom nodded. “You two have been through more than your share of sadness, together and apart.”

I fiddled with the edge of the desk for a moment, avoiding her gaze. It was a delicate situation, to address things like this to a person who was about to begin a new life with the person she loved. “Who’s to say that the sadness is over with?” I said.

“You never know, do you? Life is so uncertain. You’ve learned that lesson this year. There’s never the perfect time to choose to be with the one you love. It’s a commitment that you’ll be there in the good times and the bad. That you’ll hold each other’s hand and do it together.”

I nodded. “Thanks, Mom. And I want you to know that I’m really happy for you.” No matter how weird it made things with me and Adam. Step-relatives or not. Yeah, it was bizarre but we were grown-ups and we’d learn to deal with it. I was hopeful, anyway.

Mom went to bed, turning off the lights, and I put on my headset and plugged the flash drive into the correct port. The screen on my laptop went black, and then lights began to form, arcs and lines and spirals of every color swirling and merging together to spell my name.

And before I knew it, I was being logged in to Dragon Epoch automatically. But it was unlike anything I’d ever played before.

I was standing on the shore of beautiful lake, a sunlit mountain scape forming a jagged backdrop behind. The graphics were new and gorgeous. This was an unreleased part of the game and I surmised that it would be part of the new expansion that hadn’t yet been revealed to players. But as I used the controls to move my character around, words started to appear.

The interface of the game normally did not behave like this, so I surmised that somehow Adam had written a hack of his own game, taking the graphics already produced for his game and putting together a private experience for me alone taken from bits and pieces of Dragon Epoch. My eyes flew to the words on the screen, snatching up every one as if it were food and I a starving woman dying for sustenance.

I know of no other, better way to communicate with you right now but through this medium of 0s and 1s that is my second nature. In this environment we met, interacted and, without even knowing it, fell in love. And like this beautiful place where you are now standing, that love was new, fresh, pristine. An unfamiliar country for both of us. And we were reluctant explorers.

Until we lost our way…

And now the beautiful mountain scape around me began to fade, the screen darkening slowly but steadily until this idyllic landscape became consumed in a dark, murky fog and I couldn’t see anything. Except for those words…they kept coming, even across the darkness.

Everything changed the moment we began to make mistakes, the moment we separated, and each mistake we made caused the previous one to look like nothing in comparison. I accept full responsibility for all the wrongs I did. I am tormented by the way I screwed up then, but I did it because this is the place where you left me, Emilia. Completely, utterly in the dark.

I took a deep breath, continuing to read and unwittingly bracing myself for more raw honesty. I had the heavy feeling that this wouldn’t be easy to read.

“You are in a maze of twisty little passages, all alike.”

I blinked, remembering the famous quote from one of the earliest computer role-playing games, written and played by thousands long before I was even born—Zork. The iconic quote accompanied a huge walled maze that stretched out in front of me as far as the eye could see in every direction. I recognized the place from a zone in Dragon Epoch—an impossibly infuriating zone which featured a constantly shifting maze full of riddles and puzzles that needed to be solved. In that zone, there were no monsters to fight and defeat. The enemy was the mind itself.

The words formed again, scrolling across my screen, each sentence appearing when I took another turn down the impossible maze. My gut twisting with frustration when those turns led to the inevitable dead ends.

Every turn I took, every choice I made was the wrong one. All I knew was that I wanted you back. I had to have you back, but everything I did pushed you further away. It was as disorienting as this trip though the impossible maze.

I finally judged that I needed to stop moving because no matter where I turned, the maze became more and more bewildering, closing in on me and making me dizzy.

Can you find your way out? What if the person you loved most in the world was at the end of the maze and you had no idea which way to turn?

Yes, I was angry, resentful. Even after I found out everything. And because you were sick, that anger got buried deep inside and turned into guilt. You were sick and I had no right to be angry with you.

I sat back, sucking in a sob. I didn’t like where this was leading. I put my face in my hands and read through cracked fingers, as if watching a horror movie alone in an empty house on a dark night.

The maze faded away and instead, a vapor-like vision formed in front of me. It was hard to see through the haze, but there were clouds. And the words formed again.

That guilt became excuses. I know you wanted us to go back to the way things had been. I know you were as clueless about how to do that as I was. So my anger and resentment and guilt came out as excuses—excuses to keep you at a distance.

The vision of puffy white clouds solidified and words formed across them.
“I’m tired.”

Then they darkened into storm clouds accompanied by the words,
“I’m worried about her.”

Then rain started to pour down from them in torrents.
“We need to go slow, wait until she is healthy.”

Then lightning struck, over and over again, blinding me.
“I’m so angry at her and I hate myself for it because she is sick.”

And then, the visions clearing, I stood in a graveyard. I recognized this place—a point of respawn—one of the first of many graveyards in DE, where your ghost goes after you are killed in the game. And the words, the most heart-wrenching of all:
“What if she dies?”

But these were illusions I used to hide the real issue. The one I never even realized I had. The most difficult to discover and the most painful to endure…

Suddenly I was back in the original, beautiful mountainscape, standing on the banks of a rushing river that flowed past my feet. I toggled my view screen to look up in the sky. New words formed.

I wanted to be the man to protect you and comfort you…instead I was the man who had harmed you…

I buried my face in my hands, my vision blurring with tears, my throat stinging with them.

But words were scrolling on the screen again and I quickly blinked, afraid that I would miss them, not sure how I would see them again if I didn’t capture them now.

I know you wanted a different answer from me that day, when you asked me about how I felt about the baby. I couldn’t give it to you then. I still can’t give it to you. The only thing I could think about was the risk to you.

I do feel guilty about the lack of feelings because I know it’s something you really wanted. And I could only think of you.

But when I think about how close you came to choosing the baby’s life over your own, the fear of that moment chokes me. Because it was completely out of my control and I was utterly at your mercy. I hate, more than anything, to feel helpless, but in that moment, I was.

What would have happened if you had chosen to have the baby—and then you’d died? Could I have been anything but a resentful and bitter parent to that child?

I know you suffered, physically, emotionally. I know that for you it was a terrible, traumatic decision. But I’ll never be anything but glad you made the choice you did—and that makes me feel guilty, too.

And it makes me question and have doubts about our future. Because I wonder…will we ever be able to have joy that isn’t weighted down with loss and guilt and tears?

I toggled my mouse button to pause the playback of the game. Sitting back, I stared at that last bit of text, unable to breathe. Was Adam breaking up with me for good? I put a hand over my mouth to muffle the sobs but found I couldn’t. Mom rolled over in her bed and without looking up she muttered, “Everything okay?”

I cleared my throat. “Yeah…sorry. I’m just fine. I’m, um, I’m going to do the rest of this in the bathroom. I don’t want to keep you up.”

But she was quickly falling back asleep and I was trying to curb the wild hiccupping of my stomach. I scooped up my laptop and slunk into the bathroom where I sank down onto the floor and let the tears out, finally.

I bent, reached out and grabbed a massive wad of toilet paper from its holder on the wall, burying my face in it to muffle the sobs now unwilling to stay at the pit of my stomach. I felt like I was coming undone. My world was falling apart.

I didn’t know how much more of this I could take. After Adam’s bare and frank admission of his internal misery, his feelings of guilt. His helplessness. What could I say or do that could ever repair that? I stared at the laptop again, as if it were a wild animal about to jump up and bite me.

Knives stabbed at my throat, the backs of my eyes. I wiped my snotty face and took a deep breath. I’d come this far on his wild ride…

I might as well see where it led me.
Us.

…And I know that it’s important to you to have a child someday. And if that’s still true when the time comes, then we will find a way. But I was honest when I said that you are enough for me. When I found you, I found what I had been looking for without even knowing it.

Because my life without you…?

And the river, the mountains, the trees, the deep blue sky all faded and I was now in the middle of a barren, gray desert. The landscape was dotted with cactus plants, and sand stretched as far as the eye could see. A lone, arid wind howled through the bushes, blowing tumbleweeds under a blazing, relentless sun. I could almost feel the waves of heat rising off the sand.

It would be emptier, more desolate than this place.

I need you. I’ve always needed you. But that means nothing if you won’t let me in.

The air rushed out of me with a rattle and a hiss, as if I’d been punched in the stomach. I was shaking, but I wasn’t cold. My mouth was dry, but I wasn’t scared.

And I couldn’t look away. Because the desert was fading again and now I was inside a jail cell, a dark prison. Jagged, rough stone walls rose above me in every direction, with only one wall of bars on one side. I used the controls to turn myself around, this way and that. And only on the third try did I notice a small figure in the corner. I recognized her immediately from the latest portion of the secret quest that we had worked on for months.

This was the lost Elvish princess from Dragon Epoch, the one who was the object of the secret quest. She was thin, half starved, dressed in rags, her face full of sorrow. Four magical bonds held her down, one on each arm and leg. She looked up at me with pleading eyes full of misery.