Page 11 of Level Up for Love

“No. Tonight. You promised.”

I did. “Fine,” I say with a laugh. “Let’s go.”

Mona jumps up and scurries out the door, beating me up the flight of stairs leading to my unit. Although she has a key to get in—we both have each other’s keys, just in case—she waits for me on the landing. I laugh as I climb the last few steps and unlock the door.

When I walk in, I can’t fully hold back a sigh. It’s been nearly a year, and I still haven’t gotten used to my apartment’s makeover. It’s the same layout, of course, but after the Cataclysm, Mona helped me reshuffle my furniture and redecorate completely. We replaced my old sofa with a dark gray sectional so that I wouldn’t always have to be reminded of where Owen once sprawled with a book propped in his lap, or see the indention in the cushion where his dog, Bowser, once slept. While I of course kept my PlayStation and game collection, we thrifted a dark wood entertainment center and filled its shelves with books and trinkets alongside the games. The once-sage-green walls are now a muted mauve, and there are bits of Mona all over the place—in the pink-potted spider plant on the windowsill, the poetry magnets on the fridge, the gluten-free pasta in my pantry.

For the most part, all evidence of Owen and our ex-friends Eddie and Lauren has been scrubbed away, the framed photos of our old D&D games replaced with art prints and tapestries. Of all my friends from college, Eddie had always been the kindest, and he was the last one I expected to lose. But there is one place where their ghosts still linger—and it’s in the room Mona races to first.

I open the door to my cramped office. Mona slides past me and sits in the desk chair in front of my computer, hurriedly powering it on. But my attention, as always, is pulled toward the opposite end of the room, to my gaming table.

I couldn’t bear the thought of replacing it. It’s a beautiful thing, a Wyrmwood original made of dark cherrywood, with features like cupholders, charging ports, and a removable cover that reveals a large felt playmat perfect for rolling dice and setting up elaborate maps. Dad gifted the table to me for my college graduation, and I’ve made countless memories there since. I’ve followed the popular brand for long enough to know that it must have been extraordinarily expensive, but given that he hadn’t visited for years—even for my graduation—I’d figured it was owed and accepted it without complaint. I used to keep it in my living room, hosting every Sunday evening D&D session there, but I’ve since moved it in here, and I’ve covered it with a messy array of books and other random shit until I can’t recognize it anymore.

I turn my back to it and face Mona, the bright computer monitors—all three of them—lighting up her wide eyes. I lean over her shoulder and launch my latest creation.

I might not have achieved the game studio career I once imagined for myself—no, my software engineering job for the local hospital system is remote, flexible, and much more financially and emotionally stable—but that doesn’t mean I’ve stopped creating games.

Most of my creative energy used to go into DMing D&D, leaving only a few extra hours here and there to toy with different video game projects. But after losing that outlet this past year in the Cataclysm…I’ve had a lot of time to pour into a new solo project.

It’s the most energy I’ve put into a video game since college. It’s half baked and raw and experimental and weird, and I’ve scrapped and restarted it at least half a dozen times. But I can’t stop coming back to it, and I can’t ignore how it keeps occupying my mind. For months I’ve gushed to Mona about it, and for months she’s begged to play, but until last week, I claimed it wasn’t ready. After all, it’s not even close to finished. But I’ve finally gotten it to a place where you can at least play a very rough demo version, and I doubt I can hold Mona off much longer, anyway.

I suck in a breath as Mona presses Play.

I fled the room almost immediately after the game launched to life. “Let me know when you’re done,” I said before retreating into my bedroom to try to distract myself.

Nestling into my many pillows, I curl up on my side and begin to mindlessly peruse social media, my phone’s screen casting a bubble of light around me. I scroll past pictures of my mom with her arms around my three young stepsiblings dressed in their first-day-of-school best; a photo of Mona in scorpion pose in her living room, the sun painting her plant collection orange behind her; an ad for a local convention in a couple weeks; fanart for a livestreamed D&D game I used to watch religiously; and a link to an article about the recent layoffs and collapse of a branch of Hurricane Studios. I frown and open the link, skimming through the headline summarizing Hurricane’s cancellation of their game Lorekeeper, which had been intended to be a single-player offshoot of their hugely successful MMO Legends of Lore.

Case in point: layoffs, project cancellations, and team restructurings have become everyday occurrences in the video game industry. Nearly everyone who works in games experiences a shake-up like this at some point in their careers—it’s something our professors and internship managers prepared us for. Just last year, I was on the phone with Nali for hours, soothing her through her own terrible news before she landed safely at her current studio.

I continue reading, and my scowl deepens with each new line. Hurricane cut nearly 10 percent of its workforce…hundreds of employees left without jobs…CEO promises that this leaves the studio in a more agile position than ever, despite a few unfortunate tweaks to its team…

I’m suddenly aware of a ringing in my ears from grinding my teeth together too hard. “Tweaks”—what a shitty way to describe people’s actual lives. I can’t help the fury I feel every time I see news like this. It makes me wonder if I know any—

My brow furrows.

Hurricane. Wasn’t that where—

Uninvited, his cocky half grin flashes to life in my mind.

Wesley Locke.

Boston’s not so far away.

But the moment he’d disappeared, it might as well have been a million miles.

Oh, I’ve done my level best to erase every trace of that asshole from my life. But in a world as connected as ours, I haven’t been able to escape the occasional tagged photo of him and a mutual friend—it used to sting that he and Nali keep in touch—or a post from an old classmate playing one of his games, or a shared story of him shoulder to shoulder with his Hurricane team, celebrating before an annual game award show, sharing teasers of the upcoming Lorekeeper.

Well. He won’t have any more photos like that now. Maybe not for a long time.

Some of my old anger cools, momentarily replaced by melancholic resignation over just how cutthroat the industry can be. It’s been six years since we graduated; only a handful of our cohort had actually gone on to work in games, and along with Nali and a couple others, Wesley was one of the few left standing.

Not anymore.

It doesn’t matter. Fuck him.

“Reagan?”

I flinch and swing to face Mona, who stands silhouetted in my doorway. I’ve lost track of how much time has passed since she started playing. I open my mouth to ask, but she beats me to it.