Oh Shit. I Fucked Up.

For a moment it was like I was really there, right back there with him. On this day but in another life and a different body and it all made so much more sense and so much less at the same time.

For a moment I was that scared kid again. So lonely and so worried that I would be alone.

I didn't feel like that kid anymore.

"What's up?" Rachel asked beside me, "You look like you've seen a ghost."

Not a ghost but an echo, maybe. A memory of a might and never was and now a never will be because Eddie, dear stupid mean Eddie.

I'd fucked everything up with him.

I hadn't meant to. I hadn't meant to ditch him like I did, to push until I scared him. And if there was anyone in this world who knew how close to snapping Eddie was at any given time it was me, it was absolutely me.

But I didn't... I just didn't mean to.

"Nothing," I shrugged, "Just caught off guard."

"By what?" Rachel asked, "By that? LARP? What's a LARP?"

Now the best way to play something like this is to play it cool. I mean I didn't exactly have my timelines correct on when pop culture and society at large decided that nerdy was the new cool, but I think it hadn't happened yet and even at it's zenith, to be honest, LARPing wasn't exactly the coolest thing in the world to do.

So knowing about it would put me firmly in the realm of nerdom and it would make it so that someone as objectively cool as Rachel would never in a million years look at me the same again.

But the problem is that I wasn't thinking. The problem was that I wasn't even present in the world right now.

The problem, right now, is that I was still stuck in my memories and distracted by a half a dozen things at once so my mind and my mouth were on two different planes of existence.

Or might as well have been.

"It's an acronym. Live Action Role Play. Think of it like dungeons and dragons but in real life, or at least in person. You dress up in costume and you play at being a character. You pick a class and you cast spells or you stab with swords and anyways you just kind of live a second life.

"Most of the time it's over a weekend. Camping and the like and you're in character the whole time. Some groups do regular events on like weeknights and such so that's not hard and fast, just most common. But what is the same is the fact that it's pretty much always just dressing the part and playing the role and pretending to be someone else."

My mind caught up with my mouth about the end of that and I stared over at Rachel, my eyes going wide as I realized that I had just blathered on about it like I was an expert.

Which I wasn't, honestly. Whatever body I was in, I'd never actually pulled the trigger on attending a LARP session. Hell, I'd never even played D&D. The closest I'd come is watching celebrities play it online.

Eddie and I had signed up, sure, but we'd never actually showed up for a single session. We'd always been... Well I was going to say busy but the truth was that we'd always been too chickenshit to actually do it.

But from the way I'd spoken it sure didn't seem like that.

The way I'd spoken made me seem like an expert.

And the way that Rachel was staring at me, made it look for all the world like I'd just sprouted a second head.

Fuck.

And things were going so well.

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