Page 3 of Stops Along the Way
“Oh, he’s sorting some stock for me. You can go grab him.”
“He works here now?”
“A couple hours when I can use the help,” Bryce says, still fidgeting with the tablet.
In the back, there’s a closet-sized storage room where Bryce shoves all incoming restock shipments. The door is ajar, and I find Declan standing next to a stack of cardboard boxes, with the one on top flapped open, revealing all the dice packets thatwill be added to the display shelf, but he seems to have been halted mid-task with a somewhat intense phone call.
One that I’m uncomfortable interrupting.
I’ve never seen Declan “The Dice Love Me” Weber look so serious. Although I do see him almost every single week in that same yellow hoodie with a single stripe across the chest, like some unofficial game-night uniform he always dons. It’s either that or the matching green one. I should start flipping a coin to guess what outfit he’ll show up in each week.
Declan glances in my direction, and his hunched shoulders relax as if he’s pretending he was unbothered the whole time. He turns around, voice lowered so that I can’t hear his parting words as he hangs up the phone, before facing me again.
“Game time?” He arches an eyebrow. “You again?”
“Youagain?” I cross my arms. I can never get a read on this guy.
“Some random generator,” Declan mumbles.
“I wasjustthinking that.”
He trails behind me back to our table, grabbing his Space Pirate—the cliché dude character of choice—deck from the front counter. “I hope you’re feeling confident, because I can already tell the dice are going to love me tonight.”
“If you say that every night, you can’t possibly be right.”
“The more often I say it, the more times it’ll be right.”
I smirk. “Sure, because that’s how it works…”
The first thing Declan removes from his character box is a slim little softcover notebook, where he’s logged all his match stats, and he flips it open past the other competitors to a pagewith my name at the top. I crane my neck to read it, and he’s all too eager to hold it up for me to get a better view.
I scrunch my nose at the shortage of tallies in my column of overall wins compared to his. He’s got a clear lead over me.
This boy loves a spreadsheet. He’s also broken these stats down even further to indicate how many times various gameplay situations have been enacted, such as when a player has gotten to use their character’s full power—a somewhat rare Yahtzee-style move when the designated character number is rolled from all the dice.
Threes for his Space Pirate. Ones for my Fortune Teller.
Declan sets his notebook aside and shuffles his action cards, bending them in the center as he does so, like he’s preparing for a poker match. I’m much more careful, sliding them side to side, not wanting to jeopardize the character art.
With our dice and tokens also displayed before us, we’re finally ready to start our match.
My hearing aids don’t usually pick up much background noise, but here, when there’s multiple games going on at once, I love that I’m clued in to the sounds of clattering dice and cards slicking off the tops of decks.
We each roll a die to see who will play first, and I get the higher number.
Then I start by drawing an action card. Declan makes a mark in his notebook, which makes my teeth clench. “Are you going to do that for every single move?”
He nods, not looking up at me. “Well, a while ago, you made some dig about winning more often than me…which, as wecan see”—he gestures to the page in front of him—“the numbers clearly dispute.”
“That total can’t be right,” I protest.
“You should’ve kept your own record. But you claimed you were winning because you actuallystrategize. Which is why I started keeping track of how often you led with an action or a roll, and whether it was successful. I got to say, you’re getting really predictable.”
“So are you,Yellow.”
“Yellow?” He tilts his head and glances down at the cards on the table, not realizing my comment is on his attire.
“It’s your turn; roll the freaking dice already.”
