Truth

The following day was a bitch. Unable to sleep, I ended up staying up all night. Mom chewed me out thinking I’d spent all night gaming so I was already in a bad mood when I got to school. I don’t know how, but I managed to drag my lethargic ass through classes. My cell phone was dead, having forgotten to charge it last night. That made it extremely hard not to fall asleep, especially when all the teachers seemed monotone today.

The last bell couldn’t come soon enough. The moment it rang, I had all the energy in the world as I stumbled down the halls.

Emma jumped when I practically slammed my body into the locker beside her. Eyes wide, she looked over at me. “Jesus. You look terrible.”

“It wasn’t him.”

“What?” I shook my head, trying to get it started today. I’d completely mangled my first attempt at speech.

“Tell me it wasn’t him.”

Her eyes ran over me. “You never answered my last question,” she said, ignoring my question. “I’d say that is deserving of a punishment, but it looks like that is already taken care of.” A slow smile spread over her face. “What was eating you?”

“Damn it, Emma. This isn’t funny.”

She licked her lips in a similar fashion to the video. “Do you really want to know that badly?” she asked in a husky voice. I nodded as she leaned forward. “Ask him.”

I grit my teeth as she laughed lightly.

“I swear, Emma—”

“Why does it matter?” she asked, cutting me off. She was having fun with this. Right here in school, she was playing with me. “You aren’t upset that Ryan was before him. I don’t have video of it, but I am more than happy to give you a play-by-play.” She took a step towards me. “Both guys got the same thing, so does the who really matter?”

“You know it does.”

“Do I?” She shrugged. “Ryan’s, Mike’s, Owen’s, Trent’s, Ben’s…” Her eyes flashed dangerously. “Yours… All the same to me.” Taking another step, she was close enough that I could smell her sweet scent. “Or are you just angry he got it before you did?”

I took a few steps back to get away from her. Her smell was as intoxicating as her voice. We shouldn’t be doing this here. There were too many people. What I needed was some sleep. Once I wasn’t sleep-deprived, I could tackle this with a fully functional brain. She watched me with a smirk before shaking her head.

“Go home and get some sleep. You really need it,” she said before turning away and returning to her locker. I stared at her, wanting to continue, but she was ignoring me now. Giving up, I stumbled back to my locker feeling worse than I had before. To my surprise, Mike was there waiting for me.

“Mike?”

He looked at me, eyes widening. “Dude, you look like shit.”

“I feel worse than that,” I said fumbling with my lock.

“Up all night gaming?”

“Something like that.”

He shifted awkwardly, “Look, I’m sorry about yesterday. Emma wanted to meet up and—”

My blood froze as the world stood still. “What?”

“Huh?”

“You and Emma?”

“Oh, right. I uh… talked with her a little at lunch.” He waved it off quickly. “Nothing important, but she mentioned something about maybe multi-classing since she noticed the group is a bit weak when it comes to ranged combat and buffs. She had some stuff to do before and didn’t know how long it would be, so I didn’t know if we could hang out or not. I walked her through some ideas that could help out the group for a bit. It's surprising how seriously she takes DnD. If only the others were half as into it as she is.” He grinned. “Well, I was going to say we could go hit up that Chinese place on Third, but you look halfway to lichdom right now.”

I was too tired to think straight right now. Pinching the bridge of my nose, I made small rotations with my fingers. “Why didn’t she just ask me?”

Mike pressed his lips together. “Why would she? I’m the party leader. Just because you’re the DM doesn’t mean everything revolves around you.”

“S-sorry,” I said, shaking my head. “I’m not thinking straight right now. Had… a lot on my mind.”

“You okay?”

I waved him off. “I’m fine. Just a rough day.”

“Why don’t we invite the guys and hang out after school tomorrow then? It’s been a while since we all hung out outside of your basement.”

“Sounds great,” I said with a relieved smile.

He looked uncomfortable. “Think Emma would come if we invited her? I feel a bit weird now that we’ve all seen that picture of her.”

I rubbed the back of my neck. “I don’t know. That’s why you came to the lunchroom to talk to her about.”

“At first, yeah. Sorry, but I just didn’t feel comfortable with her not knowing about it.”

“What, uh, did she say about it?”

“Nothing much, only that she knew about it and you had permission to take it. You two dating or something?”

“I wish,” I said with a soft sigh. Shit. I said that out loud. I really needed to get some damn sleep.

“Me too man. Me too. Whoever catches her is a hell of a lucky guy.”

I almost laughed aloud. “I don’t know about that.”

“Are you kidding me? Emma is like, the hottest chick in school.”

“Looks aren’t everything.”

“Well, yeah, but they are important. And even beyond that, she’s nice, helpful, cool, funny, and she’s into things like DnD. Emma is literally the perfect girlfriend material.”

Poor guy had no idea. Well, I wasn’t going to be the one to pop that fantasy. Ignorance was bliss after all.

Closing my locker, I turned to face him. “I’m going to head home and pass out. Can you send up the rally signal for tomorrow?”

Mike gave me a mock salute. “Will do.” He hesitated. “Are you going to ask Emma?”

I frowned. I wasn’t sure if I wanted to deal with that right now. Then again, maybe it would be better for Ben and Owen to get it out of their systems before Saturday’s session.

“Why don’t you ask her?”

“I could, I guess, but it seems weird. She’s closest to you so maybe she would be more willing to come if you invite her.”

I sighed. “Fine, I’ll ask her later.”

“Thanks man.”

“See ya, Mike.”

Heading home, I was left alone with my thoughts. As I suspected, Mike wasn’t the one in the video. A relief. What worried me was not only my reaction but Emma’s as well. My tired brain tried to slog through it all, failing miserably but unable to stop. She said she didn’t care about the who, but I did. Now she knew that I cared, and that worried me. The idea that Mike and her… I didn’t even want to think about that. I had tormented myself over this.

Right now, all I could focus on was getting home to get some sleep.