Just Friends: A Sweet Lesbian Romance Page 18

  I turned off sound notifications, but the phone was still pulsing in my hand. The ward spells I’d set up were still telling me that a potential hostile was getting closer and closer. I might’ve turned the sound off, but the vibration was still working quite fine thank you very much. I waited until I could almost sense him standing right in front of me. Until the phone wasn’t pulsing. It was just a steady angry vibrating buzz in my hand.

  I pressed on the screen. Immediately there was an almost comical “schwing!” noise from my phone. Followed by a gargling shriek from a phone almost right in front of me and then the suitably morbid death song.

  I opened my eyes. Smirked up at Colin who was standing at the entrance to my cubicle with a shell-shocked look plain on his face. He looked down at his phone screen which was displaying bloody red splotches to let him know he’d been killed. By a good old fashioned melee attack.

  “How the hell did you do that?”

  I tried to make my smile look innocent. It was hard. How did you look sweet and innocent when you knew you were a big bad shark swimming amongst the minnows?

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about Colin,” I said. I turned back to my computer, but not before I heard a throat clearing at the door to my cube. I squeezed my eyes shut. I knew it was too good to be true. I turned around again.

  “Something wrong Sheila?” I asked.

  She stood there, about forty years old and not looking a day over her mid-twenties. She had blonde hair flowing past her shoulders. Blonde hair that I sometimes wondered about running my fingers through. The boss lady was fucking hot. There was no getting around it. Not that she used her hotness at all. No, she ruled through a unique combination of fairness and an iron fist that I found admirable.

  Except for those occasions when the iron fist was descending on me.

  “I’m pretty sure I just heard the death song from Alternate Realms over here. You two wouldn’t know anything about that, would you?” she asked. Her arms were crossed, but there was the barest hint of a smile threatening at the corner of her mouth that told me she wasn’t mad. At least not too mad.

  “Nothing like that going on here,” I said. “Just working hard!”

  “Working hard on making your reservation for the Gathering?” she asked.

  I turned and looked at my screen. Damn it. I knew I was forgetting something. The page for the Gathering was still up on my monitor. I figured there was nothing but to own it and go for sheer ballsiness at this point though. I twirled back and faced Sheila with a smile.

  “Nah. I made my reservation for the Gathering months ago, but you already knew that didn’t you?”

  This time the smile that was threatening really did turn up the corners of her mouth. Just a little. Enough to let me know I was in the clear.

  “Right. Well make sure you get everything done that I outlined in that email. I’d hate to have to call you in remotely while you’re off at the Gathering.”

  “Sure thing boss!” I said. What I wasn’t going to add was I had no intention of bringing my computer or my mobile hotspot along with me. There wasn’t a chance in hell that I was doing anything that even had a whiff of work attached to it while I was off on vacation.

  “And as for any wannabe heroes who are coming over here to kill the company Alternate Realms superstar, maybe you should think of ambushing your friend after hours when you’re not on company time?”

  Colin looked down, but I knew Sheila was just having some fun with him. Not that he had any way of knowing that since he didn’t work with her enough to know when she was bullshitting and when she was seriously mad. I figured I’d let him stew for a little while. It might save me some trouble the next time he decided to distract me from being distracted from work because he wanted to try and prove himself.

  “Right. It won’t happen again,” Colin said.

  “Sure it will,” Sheila said. “I’m not going to be an ogre about this. I remember when I started out DOOM was the big thing that hit productivity. That was an old video game, for you whippersnappers.”

  “I know what DOOM is!” I said, indignant. I remembered playing it with my brother. And being terrified because that wasn’t the sort of game a little kid should be playing, even if it looked quaint by today’s realistic standards.

  “Right. Just make sure it doesn’t affect your work too much,” she said, and then Sheila was gone. Colin breathed a sigh of relief, but I just rolled my eyes and turned back around to the computer to look at pictures from other live events ARealms had put on in the past. Let him think he was actually close to being in trouble there.

  “So are you going to tell me how you did that?” he asked.

  “Did what?”

  “Killed me!”

  “Well I put the pointy end of my character’s sword into the soft squishy end of your character’s character. Then the game decided I won and you died. That’s how it usually works.”

  “But you’re not supposed to be able to do that! You’re a high level mage!”

  “So? Does that mean I can’t be a high level Fighter or Assassin or something like that too?”

  “Well I suppose, but that would take you forever to get skills in both on your character!”

  I turned and smirked at him.

  “You spent forever dual classing your character. Didn’t you?”

  “I’m not telling,” I said.

  I figured it was simple insurance. People in this game tended to think of you as fighting with weapons or magic. No one ever stopped to consider that someone might make a character who did both just because it took so long. Those people had no imagination, in my opinion. They also weren’t as good as me.

  There was a reason I was on top. At least locally.

  I turned back to my computer, back to a slideshow of pictures from past live events that was running past. I figured that was it for our little interaction, but my breath caught when I saw the most beautiful and stunning creature I’d ever seen in my life. I hurriedly clicked back to the picture of a gorgeous girl, about my age, wearing the most elaborate dress I’d ever seen someone in at an ARealms event and a crown on her head.

  “Who’s that?” I breathed.

  Colin leaned over my shoulder. “Oh, you mean the queen?”

  2: The Gathering

  “The queen? What are you talking about?”

  Colin moved over and leaned against my desk. He crossed his arms and looked down at me like I’d just grown a second head or something. I blushed. I hated it when he looked at me like I didn’t know something about the game.

  “You’re kidding me. Right?”

  “No? I didn’t know we had a queen.”

  “Well there’s a queen in the game,” Colin said.

  “But I didn’t vote for her!”

  Colin rolled his eyes and looked down at me like I was the biggest idiot in the world. I hated it when he did that.

  “She’s the queen! You don’t vote for her!”

  “Don’t look at me like I don’t know anything about this game. I’m the master around here.”

  “Right, you’re the master and sometimes I think you don’t know anything about the game you’re playing. The queen is supposed to be the head of the factions. Or she’s the head of the royal faction that’s supposed to make sure the other factions don’t fight too much. In theory.”

  I shook my head. “Those people are all idiots. All I need is my phone at my side.”

  “Correction. You’ve only needed your phone at your side to win in this office and whenever you go to the East Bumfuck Alternate Reality invitational. If we’re going to the Gathering you’re going to be up against some of the best players in the world. You’ll need to go with a faction if you want to live for more than a half hour in that wilderness.”

  “Whatever,” I said. “I’ve never needed anyone but me, and I don’t see that changing when we go to this Gathering thing.”

  “Hey!”

  I rolled my eyes and decided to am
end my statement. More to make Colin feel better than because I actually felt that way.

  “Okay. All I need is my phone at my side and you helping me out.”

  “Thank you.”

  “Every good player needs someone to act as bait anyways,” I muttered.

  “You know I can hear you when you mutter like that, and it hurts.”

  “Whatever. Tell me more about this queen chick. Is she the queen every year or something? Do they swap it around? What does she do?”

  I suddenly found myself wanting to know everything I could find out about this girl. She was just so… compelling. That face. Those striking blue eyes staring out at me from the pictures. The way she filled out that dress. It made me want to rip that dress off, even if there wasn’t much of a chance she swung in my direction.

  What was a girl to do?

  “So what can you tell me about her?” I asked.

  Colin shrugged as I pulled up more pictures. Turns out they had a whole gallery that was dedicated completely to this queen lady, turns out her name was Erin, and what she’d been up to. ARealms liked to promote the more glamorous aspects of their game. Probably figured it was good for marketing or something.

  “Not much to say. I hear she took control three years ago when they had the first big Gathering, and there hasn’t been a new queen since. Not sure if that’s an appointed position she keeps or if it’s something where you have to cut off her head to take her power, but either way it seems like she’s there to stay.”

  “Very interesting,” I said. I tapped my lips as I looked at this Erin girl. Beautiful and the top player in the game? Someone who managed to hold onto her position for so long? That seemed like someone who had a target painted on her back. She sounded like the perfect opportunity for me to really test out how good I was.

  It was a damn shame I was probably never going to get close enough to her to try myself against her.

  “I don’t like the look in your eyes Anna,” Colin said. “You only get like that when you’re planning something that’s going to get me in trouble.”

  I fixed Colin with my best and most innocent look. From the way he stared down at me, skepticism incarnate, it didn’t seem that he was believing the sweet and innocent act one bit. Oh well. It was worth a try.

  “You don’t have anything to worry about,” I said.

  “I don’t? Because I’ve noticed that around the time you start telling me I don’t have anything to worry about is usually exactly when I should start worrying.”

  I rolled my eyes. “Seriously. It’s not like I’m going to get close enough to her royal highness to do anything.”

  Oh the things I would do to her royal highness if I could get close enough to have a little fun, though. I flipped to a picture where she was in an armored bikini of all things and suddenly I was feeling things that hadn’t hit me this strong since I first hit puberty and realized I was a lot more interested in being “just friends” with some of my girlfriends and that boys were still yucky.

  “See you’re trying to make me feel better by telling me you’re not going to get close enough to the most powerful and well known player in the game to try and do anything to her, but what I’m hearing is that the only reason you’re not going to try and kill the most powerful and well known player in the game is because you won’t get close enough to try it.”

  “Well to be fair there are other things holding me back,” I said.

  “And what, praytell, would those things be?”

  “I’m sure she’s got guards surrounding her. Maybe some anti-magic stuff. Speaking of, are you going to tell me how you were able to survive that spell? I thought for sure that would kill you.”

  “If you’re not going to tell me how you managed to get a high enough sword hit to kill my character then I’m not going to tell you what anti-magic spell I used to avoid your usual tricks. You really pissed off Reg, by the way. He barely managed to unflag himself before that fireball went soaring past.”

  “Reg can suck it,” I said. “Unflagging his character is about the only thing he can do without getting himself killed anyways. Not my fault he sucks.”

  Besides, I was a woman on a mission. I clicked through the spell database until I found something that behaved like what he’d just done. It was a ward that attached to a player and caused any spells thrown at them to fizzle out. There was a note that the only way to kill a character with that ward, at least with magic, was to accelerate something to a sufficient speed outside of the ward’s sphere of influence and let physics do the rest of the heavy lifting once the accelerated object, say a nice rock or knife or something, entered the anti-magic field.

  Apparently the developers got the idea from some old fantasy book I’d never read. Interesting.

  “So this is what you used?”

  The look of surprise on Colin’s face was all the confirmation I needed.

  “Did you really think you were going to hide something like that from me? Of course we both know I know how to fight this thing, so I guess it doesn’t matter that I know what it is…”

  “Would you shut up and go back to the pictures of good ol’ queen Erin or something?”

  I shot him a dangerous look. He shrugged and grinned. “What can I say? She’s hot!”

  “Fine.” I clicked and the pictures came back up. I didn’t even close out the window with queen hottie in it. I just moved to another tab to look up that spell. I didn’t want to miss out on one moment of that hotness on my screen.

  “Damn,” Colin said.

  “Move over buddy,” I said. “Because I saw her first!”

  “Great. Now you’re going to try and overthrow her and seduce her? Good luck with that.”

  “Let’s just say I’m looking forward to this shindig a lot more than I was.”

  “I’m stoked too, and not because I’m looking forward to dethroning or bedding the queen. Though I guess bedding her might be a lot of fun, now that I think about it.”

  I rolled my eyes. “Neither one of us are getting close to her, so you might as well forget it. What I’m really looking forward to is finally facing a real challenge. Nothing like the scrubs around here.”

  “Excuse me?”

  I fixed Colin with a level stare that communicated how I was feeling so much more effectively than any words ever could. After a moment his shoulder slumped and he looked away.

  “I guess you are the best around here,” he muttered.

  “You don’t have to sound so dejected. It’s just a simple statement of fact.”

  “I’m good though! At least when I’m not going toe to toe with you,” he said.

  “Right, and I’m good when I go toe to toe with anyone. That makes me the best, and everyone else around here scrubs. It’s not an insult. It’s just the way the world works.”

  “Can’t wait to see you get your ass handed to you at the Gathering then,” Colin said. “It’ll be interesting to see you develop a taste for humble pie.”

  “Maybe. Maybe not,” I retorted. “We don’t know how good these people are.”

  “The best players coming in from around the world? The queen participating directly? We won’t have a chance if we don’t join a faction.”

  I sighed. And here we’d come full circle. Back to the same thing Colin griped about every time we went to an Alternate Realms gathering. The entire time we were traveling to the event he griped about how we needed to join a faction to survive. The entire time we were at the event he was looking around in terror even though I always kept us alive and on top. The entire way home he went on about how great his plan was for us to go it alone, as though he had anything to do with it.

  “If you do your usual thing on the ride out there I’m going to leave you by the side of the road Colin. I want you to know that.”

  Colin grinned down at me. “But I’m the one driving. It’s my car!”

  “I didn’t say it would be easy to leave you by the side of the road. Just that I fully plan on doin
g it if it becomes necessary.”

  “Just remember that you might be a big fish in our small pond, Anna, but out there at the Gathering you’re going up against whales and you’re just a shark,” Colin said.

  “Even better,” I said with a grin. “Whales are nice and big and squishy. Sharks have teeth.”

  “Well that really depends on what kind of shark you’re…”

  Colin trailed off as I fixed him with another deadpan glare that I sincerely hoped communicated just how little I wanted a lesson on shark biology or how many varieties of shark there were in the world.

  “Right. So we should probably nail down some plans…”

  I drifted off. Movement at my cubicle door caught my attention. Speaking of a shark swimming in amongst the minnows. Sheila didn’t stop or say anything, but then again it’s not like she really had to. The point was clear enough. We’d shot the shit long enough, and it was time to get back to work.

  I probably should, considering my plans for leaving all potential contact with work at home. Some of the older guys talked about a magical time before instantaneous worldwide communication when going on vacation meant you actually went on vacation. It sounded nice, but to be safe and avoid a shouting match when I got back it was time to get some stuff done.

  “Right. We’ll talk later. Can’t wait for the weekend. We’re going to the Gathering!” Colin said.

  I grinned and couldn’t help but squeal just a little. We might have our own reasons for going. Me to test myself against the best players in the world. Colin to see me get knocked down a peg or two while testing myself against the best players in the world. Either way it promised to be one hell of an awesome week!

  Just for good measure I pulled up that slideshow of queen Erin and put it on repeat on my second monitor. Hey, it was a lot less creepy than some of the slideshows and wallpapers some of the other guys in the department had. Particularly Japan Dan, though the less said about those questionable cartoons that eventually got him shitcanned the better.