Page 7 of Quit Playing Games with My Heart

Brian

Iwas so psyched that Sam loved my idea for a games night and wanted to run with it that I got started with things immediately. Within twenty-four hours of getting the greenlight, I marked the first drop-in game night off on the café’s calendar, then went around to local thrift stores and game shops to source different board games for people to play. I told as many of our regular customers to spread the word as I could during my shifts over the next few days, and I gushed about the whole thing to my roommate, Kendra, on one of the rare evenings when she wasn’t working a night shift and I wasn’t hanging out at the Meyers house.

“A games night sounds like a great idea,” Kendra said as we sat across the kitchen table from each other, eating an amazing supper she’d cooked. Kendra was a nurse at the local hospital, but cooking was her passion. Without her, I probably would have gained about twenty pounds from eating take-out all the time.

“I’m convinced it’ll bring a bunch of business into Common Grounds,” I said, spearing some of the chicken and vegetables on my plate. “Sam thinks so, too, although he thinks we would do better with a tournament version of games night.”

“Sam thinks so?” Kendra said, a flash of teasing in her eyes.

I knew what she was getting at, but I chose to ignore it. My insides were already twisted up enough when I thought about Sam. “I still think we’ll get more business by inviting people to come in and play whatever games they want while socializing, but Sam is convinced. That’s why we’re setting up sort of dueling games nights to test our theories and figure out what works best.”

“And Sam is totally on board with this idea.” She was still teasing me. She couldn’t keep the smile off her face.

I let out a breath and stared flatly across the table at her. “Yes, I have a crush on Samwise Meyers, okay?”

“You’ve had a crush on him for a long time,” she laughed.

“Maybe,” I admitted. “But there’s no way I’m going to do anything about it.”

“What?” Kendra protested. “Come on, Brian. You’re a snack. Any man worth his salt would want to take a bite out of you.”

I laughed at that, but mostly out of nervousness. “Sam is my boss,” I reminded her. “Well, one of them.”

“That works to your advantage.” Kendra pointed her fork full of potato at me. “He’s not the only boss, so it’s not like there couldn’t be some sort of work-around if the two of you did, you know.” She wiggled her eyebrows.

“Stop,” I laughed, though I wouldn’t have minded doing something worthy of wiggling eyebrows with Sam.

Kendra laughed with me, but said, “You need to give yourself more credit, Brian. I know everything that happened to land you in Philly all those years ago was traumatic and really took a bite out of your self-esteem, but that was then. You don’t need to prove yourself to anyone around here.”

I swallowed the bite I’d just taken awkwardly. The reminder of where I’d come from, what I’d been running from in Pittsburgh, meant that bite and everything else I’d just eaten didn’t settle well. I put down my fork.

“It might have been a long time ago,” I said in a more subdued voice, “but a lot of things haven’t changed. I don’t know what I would do if Sam found out about…all that.”

“Sweetie, he’d be fine with it,” Kendra said, reaching a hand across the table to me. “I mean, I don’t know him very well, but he’s always seemed like a great guy to me. Very understanding.”

“He is a great guy,” I sighed, squeezing her hand. “That’s part of the problem.”

Kendra smiled at me and squeezed my hand back. We kept eye contact for a few seconds before both pulling back to finish our dinner.

“I need to figure out how to get as many people to come to this games night as possible,” I went on with my original thoughts once the mood had settled a little.

“You need to put up fliers and things all around town and take them to some of the nearby colleges,” Kendra said as she stabbed her last potato.

A flush of self-consciousness hit me. “That’s exactly what I was thinking,” I said, “but….”

Kendra’s expression softened as she chewed, then swallowed. “Do you want me to put together a flier for you?” she asked, every bit as compassionate as a good friend and nurse should have been. “You can tell me exactly what to say and I’ll type it out into a document that we can print and copy.”

“That would be great,” I said, relaxing and sitting back in my chair.

I seriously didn’t know what I would do without Kendra. She was one of the only people, besides Diccon, who knew my big secret. She’d covered for me when I needed things like fliers and forms filled out since we’d moved in together.

Kendra was also pretty amazing with graphics. After we cleaned up from supper, we sat down at her computer and I dictated what I wanted the fliers to say as she found all sorts of eye-catching graphics to go along with the announcement of games night. In no time at all, I had an amazing little poster, and I just needed to get copies printed.

“These look great,” Sam said the next day, when I took the original into work to show him. “I’m impressed.”

The way he smiled when he looked from the flier to me had me wishing I could take credit for everything. It had me wishing I could be good enough for him to do more than just plan a games night with me.

“Honestly, my roommate, Kendra, did a lot of the work,” I confessed, shifting to stand by his side so we could look down at the flier together.