“Jesus.” Now he really does drop his arm and move away from me, heading right for one of the arcade machines. And … oh my god. Oh my god. I let out a small shriek, squeezing in beside Parrish and bumping our shoulders together.
“This is … it’s Gauntlet Legends!” I choke out, turning an excited look his direction. This time, it’s his turn to raise his brows.
“So?”
“So?! This is a classic! Late nineties, totally iconic.” I press the two-player button and flash Parrish a grin. “Play with me?” He looks back at the screen with a strange expression, but I’m already picking my character—blue Valkyrie for the win. “One of the best multiplayer dungeon crawlers ever made.”
“You really are a gamer nut, aren’t you?” he asks, sounding exasperated, but he picks a character anyway and off we go.
Kimber eventually finds her way downstairs, scowling when she finds us engaged in the game together.
“Seriously? That game is so old it belongs in a museum.”
“And your face belongs in a Ripley’s Believe it or Not. Get the fuck out of here, Kimber.” Parrish doesn’t falter in his gameplay, watching my six as I open a treasure chest. He’s not bad, I’ll admit. Not as good as Maxx, but not bad.
Maxx. Maxine. My sister.
I swallow hard but push the emotions back, focusing on my kick-ass Valkyrie avatar instead of my pain. That’s what I like about gaming, the ability to become someone or something else for a brief period of time. But in the end, reality always wins out. You can’t escape who you really are, can you?
“I hope the Seattle Slayer gets both of you,” Kimber spits, shoving Parrish’s shoulder before she takes off. He ignores her, scowling as he focuses on button mashing with me. We make it about halfway through before we’re both dead, and the game ends.
I hazard a glance his way.
“Tackle this again after some food?” I ask and Parrish nods. He doesn’t look at me though. Actually, he looks nervous as fuck, and I can’t figure it out. Is it because he admitted that he’s into me? Has to be.
We end up heading upstairs to find Tess, Paul, and Laverne seated around the table. Somebody ordered in, so there’s plenty of Chinese food to pick through. Also, it seems my bio mom is deeply entrenched in a bottle of wine.
“You don’t understand how the author world works,” she drawls, swinging her wineglass around in just such a way that liquid slops over the side onto the floor. Paul scrambles to clean it up while Laverne glares. The toxicity in the air is pungent; my immediate instinct is to GTFO. “Most people are social climbers. They use you until they get to the rung they want, and then they abandon you.” She sniffles and downs the rest of her wine as I approach the table with caution.
“Well, what did you expect when you got into the business of writing fairy tales?” Laverne quips as I cringe internally, piling my plate with fried rice while Parrish goes for the chow mein. “I don’t see why you continue churning out those ridiculous pulp fiction novels. You hardly need to work at all. You should be spending more time with the children.”
My shoulders tense and Parrish notices, flicking a warning look my way. It quite clearly says don’t fuck with Laverne, Dakota. Only … I’m not really paying attention to him. Instead, I’m focused on Tess’ exaggerated frown. I’m still angry with her, obviously. But I also want to see how she claps back at the matriarch of the Vanguard family.
“I write because … oh.” Tess sniffles again, looking at her empty wineglass like she can’t quite understand how it got that way. “I wrote to find my daughter, Laverne.” Tess gestures at me, drawing both Laverne’s and Paul’s attention my way. Fantastic. I keep adding food to my plate and acting like I’m not listening. “But there’s more to it. I just … I can’t explain it.”
I lift my head up to look at her. Her comment from that awful lunch at the country club—Maybe you don’t fully appreciate how much I like money?—rings in my head. Was she lying then? Does she see her work the way I do, as art, as something important?
“The children need a guiding hand,” Laverne continues, giving me a look. The way she looks at me, it’s that same cold assessing gaze I got from Parrish in the beginning. Clearly, she isn’t impressed with me either. “Someone has to be around to do it.”
“Guess I’ll deal with the fallout later, won’t I?” Tess quips right back, pouring herself more wine and sloshing it all over the table in the process. She’s definitely one of those Millennials who has shirts that say things like It’s Wine O’Clock and Eat, Pray, Wine. Not that I blame her. Actually, it’s one of her more intriguing qualities. “Maybe Paul should quit his job and deal with the kids?”
