Playing Knotty (13 page)

Despite having turned down the wine earlier, Emma did accept Margot's suggestion that they all share a dessert, even though she could imagine her mother going into an apoplectic fit at the thought of her eating sweets. The crème brûlée arrived perfectly browned, the crisp sugar shell cracking with a satisfying snap when Margot hit it with her spoon, and all conversation was suspended. As she took a bite of creamy custard with a caramelized sugar crunch, Emma thought that maybe this evening hadn't been such a bad idea after all.

Chapter 15

P
erhaps it was
the location—only a T ride away from MIT, Wentworth, and Northeastern—but D20 packed the shop for Saturday tournaments. When Ian walked into the shop a few minutes before nine that Saturday morning, the gaming tables were mostly filled, and the line for registration wrapped around the edge of the room. He stood for a few minutes and surveyed the space, this unexpected gaming empire Brent had built on an unfinished degree from MIT, start-up loans from his parents, and an optimistic credit union.

The shop wasn't particularly big, not with rent as high as it was in downtown Boston, but Brent had found every way to maximize space for tournaments, rolling product displays off into corners to make way for the dozen tables they'd need to fit on the floor. Board games were the shop's main draw, hosting almost every title Ian had heard of and several he hadn't, a rolling stock that continuously added every new game featured on Wil Wheaton's YouTube show
TableTop
. Aside from board games, the shop offered a wide assortment of comic books, graphic novels, gaming paraphernalia, role-playing game books, miniatures for Dungeons & Dragons, and other tabletop games. On tournament day, though, merchandise was priority two next to the games themselves.

Suddenly, the loud sounds of the Tardis from
Doctor Who
blared over the store speakers to get everyone's attention. The chatter of the room died down to nothing, and all heads turned toward the checkout counter, where Brent was standing on a chair.

“Hey, everybody. Thanks for coming out. This is a really great turnout. You all know we couldn't do these things if nobody showed up for them, so . . . yeah, thanks.” Some people clapped, applause half-breaking out in the weird way that sometimes happens in groups, and Brent waited for it to continue, shifting from foot to foot on his perch. “We're playing original Settlers of Catan and Ticket to Ride today, which you probably know already or you wouldn't be here.” There were titters, and Brent waited for them to die down before continuing. “As you know if you've done this before, all tables will be free play until ten. If you're a beginner, instruction will be at table two for Catan and table seven for Ticket to Ride. The official tournaments start at ten, so you have until then to turn in your registration and pay. IOUs from your mom don't count.” More laughter. “All right, that's all from me. Good luck, everybody, and don't forget to have fun.” Amid another smattering of applause, he stepped down off the chair and returned his focus to the registration line as the room volume rose again. Ian wove through the crowd to where Brent was explaining the registration fees and prizes to a middle-aged man in a red “Bazinga!” T-shirt.

“Hey, Ian! Glad you could make it.” Brent reached over the counter to slap Ian on the back in what probably would have been a hug if they'd had room. “Busy as fuck, huh?”

“That's good, right?” Ian looked out at the room, figuring a rough head count. There had to be at least fifty people there.

“Hell, yes, it's awesome. Pays the rent.” Brent turned to the next person in line and scanned the paperwork. “Okay. Catan, regular registration. That'll be twenty dollars.” The man handed over a twenty-dollar bill, and Ian gave him a table schedule. “You'll start at table twelve at ten o'clock. Good luck.” He turned back to Ian. “Give me a minute, will you? Shit's always crazy right when we start.”

“Yeah, no problem. I'm not going anywhere.” Ian began poking through the array of dice in bins on the counter, rolling a few to see if they came up high or low. With his mathematical background, he knew they were statistically neutral, but he couldn't shake the superstition that some dice rolled better than others.

“Okay. Finally.” Brent slid the last paper into the brown accordion file and tossed the file down on his chair. “So you playing today?”

“Mostly I wanted to catch up with you.” Ian set aside a twenty-sided die and two regular six-sided dice that kept rolling high, reminding himself to buy them before he left.

“I can set us up a private table if you don't mind being back here behind the cash register.” Brent gestured around him. “Gotta stay here for registration and stuff, but it'd be good to talk. What do you want to play? Ticket to Ride and Catan both suck with two players.”

Ian considered the wall of rental games behind Brent. “How about Carcassonne?”

“Sure. Easier to talk during that one.” He pulled down the game with its bright blue box and peeling edges and set it on the glass countertop. “Be right back. Going to grab a card table. You want a Red Bull?”

“It's nine in the morning.”

Brent stared back at him, blinking. “So?”

Ian shook his head in disbelief. “Never mind. But no. I got a coffee.” He held up the Styrofoam cup.

In a few minutes, they were set up on opposite sides of a table with stacks of little cardboard tiles between them, Brent's Red Bull on one side and Ian's coffee on the other.

“So Emma came to the workshop last weekend.” By the time Ian brought it up, they'd already been through the basic information about their recent lives, and he was ready to broach the subject.

“Oh yeah? You didn't puss out? I'm surprised. And impressed.” Brent drew a tile and added it to the map where it matched, lining up two roads to expand their city. “Did she just watch, or did you find her a partner?”

“Actually, she was my model. Lizzy got the flu, and I couldn't find someone else, so I asked Emma for the hell of it. And she said yes, so . . . there's that.” Ian selected a tile off the top of the stack and considered his options for placement. Finally, he set it down on the left, making their castle bigger by one. When Brent didn't move, he looked up to see that his friend was staring at him.

“You used her as your model?” Brent's eyebrows were raised so high he was a caricature of surprise. “Shy, wallflower, bookworm Emma?”

“People change.” Ian shrugged. He remembered his conversation with Emma a few days earlier, where she insisted she hadn't changed at all since high school, and noted the irony.

“So she's not shy anymore?”

“No, she's still shy.” Ian sipped his coffee, the comfortingly familiar bitter taste rolling over his tongue. “It's your turn.”

Brent picked up a tile and placed it, then added one of his figures to the road to claim the territory as his. “So how did it go?”

Ian hesitated. He didn't keep any secrets from Brent, but that didn't mean he necessarily wanted to share everything with him all the time. “Good.” He stared down at the tile he'd drawn, rubbing his fingertip along the rough cardboard edge. “It was good.”

Brent waited, watching as Ian put the tile where he wanted it. “That's it? It was good?” He shook his head in exasperation, then stopped mid-shake, eyes widening. “You slept with her, didn't you?”

Sometimes Ian forgot that Brent had known him over half his life and probably knew him as well as he knew himself. People like that could read you, and there was no use denying it. “Yes.”

Brent's face split into a broad grin. “Holy shit. I knew it! You weren't going to tell me, were you? You fucker.” He raised his Red Bull in a toast. “I don't believe it. Fucking
finally.
The lifelong pining comes to an end.”

“I have
not
been pining over her. And we're not eighteen anymore. You don't have to toast me every time I sleep with someone. I don't applaud the fact that you knocked up your wife.” Even so, he couldn't keep from returning Brent's triumphant smile and bumped his Styrofoam cup against the edge of Brent's proffered Red Bull can.

“Well, you should.” Brent took a gulp of Red Bull and set the can down, then tapped his fist against his chest before letting out a long, low belch. “Phew.”

“You're so charming. Sure the kid is yours?”

“Fuck you.” Brent studied his tile before placing it. “Don't change the subject. So what's happening now? Are you seeing her again?”

“Yeah. She's going to start modeling for me more regularly. Lizzy was quitting, so it worked out perfectly.”

“No shit, really? I still can't believe Emma would go for that. Good for you, man. I mean it. I hope it goes somewhere.” Brent watched Ian place his tile, closing off a section of the map that would give him four points. “Oh, fuck you and your castle building.” He drew a new tile and closed off his road, giving himself three points. “There.”

Several people came up to register, and Brent got up to take their paperwork and money and set them up with instructions before rejoining Ian at the table.

Ian looked around the bustling room. “You're not capped yet?”

“No, I've got space for”—he picked up his clipboard—“three more Catan players and five more in Ticket to Ride. That's max cap. We've been hitting it a lot lately. Might need to start setting up tables in the back room, too.”

“Brent, the back room's full of shit. You can't even walk back there.” Ian looked over toward the back door out of reflex, remembering the empty display racks filling the space, boxes of unsold and damaged merchandise for returns, incoming vendor shipments yet to be unpacked, and a “break room” consisting of two folding metal chairs, a fridge no one ever cleaned, and a microwave that was so old it had a dial instead of buttons.

“You haven't seen it lately!” Brent sat up straighter in his chair. “Been cleaning it. You can walk all the way to the emergency exit now.”

“Will miracles never cease. What inspired this change of heart?”

“Got a visit from the fire marshal.” Brent placed another tile adjacent to one of Ian's. “He said he'd fine us if there wasn't a cleared path to the exit by the time he came back. And I figured maybe I should actually clean the whole place. It's your turn, by the way.”

“Have you thought about just setting fire to it?” Ian placed a tile that earned him another two points and the finger from Brent. “I'm kidding. I'm glad you're cleaning. Let me know if you need any help.”

“Oh, trust me, I will.” Brent gave him a toothy grin. “Now, back to you. So is she only your model, or your girlfriend, or what?”

“She's only my model.”

“Is that good? Is that what you want?” Brent put another figure on the board to claim a section of farmland.

“Sure. It's fine.” Ian kept his eyes steadily on the map they were creating. If he looked directly at Brent, his friend would see the uncertainty there, uncertainty he wasn't sure he understood himself. Truth was, he didn't know
what
he wanted with Emma. She was intriguing as a sexual partner, but he didn't know if he could be with someone with so little confidence in herself. He usually met women through FetLife, and women in the kink scene generally knew what they wanted and how to ask for it. Never mind that he hadn't had a successful relationship in over a year; at least his last partners knew what they wanted. Emma was so hesitant about everything. And yet he loved
finding out
what she liked, watching her eyes widen and her lips part with arousal, breasts rising and falling with each quickening breath. Something about the fact that it was Emma made it all more intimate, more enjoyable. Was it like that for her, too? She clearly liked rope bondage, but was that only because it was stimulating, or because she was experiencing it with him? Either way, he definitely liked working with her, or playing, depending on how one approached it . . . but he wasn't sure he could imagine anything else.

“Hey.” Brent snapped his fingers in front of Ian's face, startling him out of his thoughts. “Christ, where'd you go just then? I asked if you were happy with only having Emma as your model, and then you said, ‘Sure, it's fine,' and got all mopey and silent. I thought someone was going to come in here and start playing a violin. Am I going to have to give you relationship counseling?”

“Oh, shit, I hope not.” Ian put the last piece into place on the board. “Come on, total your points. Let's see who won.”

Ian won by such a narrow margin that Brent demanded a recount with mock hostility. They were just starting to clean up when the bell chimed above the door.

“Hey, speaking of relationship counseling.” Brent pushed up to his feet, smiling, and stepped out from around the counter to wrap a very pregnant Missy in his arms. Ian hadn't seen his best friend's wife in a couple of months, and the change in her was striking. She still had a penchant for flowered skirts and wore her red hair in the same pixie haircut, but now there was a significantly protruding baby bump completing her bohemian look.

“Ian!” Missy turned from her husband to give Ian a hug when he stepped out from behind the counter. She was so short, he had to bend to hug her, the hard drum of her belly pressing against him briefly. “It's so good to see you. It's been forever, hasn't it?”