I pinned her down. “The game is called Fuck, Marry, Kill. Not Kill, Kill, Kill.”
“That’s brutal, Mia. Damn…uh. Fuck Leonard. Marry Raj. Kill Howard.” And then she shuddered.
I would have laughed, but I was already distracted by my notes.
“Are you obsessing over that quest again?” she asked.
“Yeah…I’m completely stuck. I’m this close to finding out where the princess’s prison is located but every time I get near the location, I get wiped out. I wish I had a healer…”
Kat looked at me like I was crazy. “And what is Persephone, chopped liver? I’m one of the best healers on the server.”
I stared at her for a minute, a little shaken by having missed something so obvious. If it had been a dog, would have bitten me in the ass. “Uh, yeah, I suppose I could do the quest with other players…you think that’s okay?”
She shrugged. “Uh. Hell if I know. Ask your boyfriend.”
“Oh no, he doesn’t ever say a word about anything to do with the quest.”
Kat wagged her eyebrows at me. “You haven’t tried to use sexual favors to bribe him?”
I looked away laughing it off. It would be more like the other way around. It seemed these days that I wanted it more than he did.
“So, seriously, I’d need a tank, too.” I said, referring to the common term for a character with a lot of life points who could stand in front of the “squishy” characters like me and Kat and take all the damage.
“Um, Fragged,” Kat said. “Who else?”
“DPS.” A character that could inflict a lot of damage on opponents.
“FallenOne.”
I sighed. Why hadn’t it even occurred to me that I could get my regular gaming group in to help on the secret quest?
“Um. Gee…maybe you were meant to ask for other people to help you, eh? Did that ever occur to you?”
I scratched my head with my pencil, peering over my notes. “No, it didn’t.”
I frowned, kind of shocked by my own stupidity. The next time we all had a gaming night, I’d ask for their help. And Adam would just have to sit there and keep his mouth shut and go along with what we were trying to do.
And that’s exactly what I did…and that’s exactly what he did. Over the course of the next little while, as we made slow but steady progress, my regular group of gaming friends helped me progress in the quest.
***
My life settled into a weird pattern of days. I’d go to the hospital for a new round, sometimes surrounded by my friends. Kat was there, and sometimes also Heath, Alex and Jenna. William also showed when he could, but hospitals freaked him out so he wasn’t terribly happy about it. Adam was always there, but he very seldom did much talking. He just kind of hovered near me, like a watchman.
Then we’d go home. Just him and me, and I’d be alone with him for days while I felt like I was being put on the rack for my many sins. Sometimes a nurse was there, too, on the first day, but Adam was there for every minute of it. And it occurred to me that he must be exhausted because he never stopped working during that time, too. Jordan or a messenger brought the work to the house and he’d spend an hour or two away from me—almost always while I was sleeping anyway—and then be back by my side.
The moment I started feeling better, he’d pull twenty-hour days at the office until a few days before I was supposed to go in for another round. Then we’d do something special or different, or just a walk on the beach or take a boat trip around the harbor. Or friends would come over and we’d play on the game and eat pizza.
My twenty-third birthday came and went. It happened to fall on one of the days when I was still sick from chemo. My mom was there to nurse me and later, when I was feeling better, Adam made it up to me by having our friends over. But I was in little mood to celebrate. Who knew how many birthdays would come after this one?
And who knew when things between Adam and me would go back to normal, if there was even a normal that we could go back to?
Nowadays, he spent almost every bit of every waking hour with me. But never the nights.
On one such day, a late morning with typically gorgeous weather, we sat on the back porch. Adam was reading the news on his tablet and I was flipping through some gamer magazines for ideas for my blog. Between all that was going on with me and the effects of chemo-brain on keeping me from thinking clearly, it was getting harder and harder to maintain a façade for the blog.
To say nothing of the awkwardness of blogging about DE. I’d gotten a lot of attention with my announcement about opening the quest. A lot of readers were following my vague progress reports and attempting to glean knowledge from them, but I was feeling more and more torn about the conflict of interest presented by my being with Adam and also blogging about his game.