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I gritted my teeth and took a step back, making it absolutely clear that I was about to slam the door in his face. “Thanks for the beer. I’ll take it as an apology for you taking so fucking long to fix my fence.”
He shrugged. “I mean, it’s not. It’s a welcome gift. To welcome you to the team. But fine. I was just tryin’ to be nice.”
No, he wasn’t. He was trying to rankle me. Get under my skin. He had a whole new way to do it now, and I already knew he was going to take full advantage.
If he wanted to be nice, he’d fix my fucking fence and stop blaring country music at night and keep his endless rotation of guests from screaming and laughing at 4 a.m. on his back deck.
“If you want to be nice, leave me alone at work and stop being such an inconsiderate ass of a neighbour,” I said through gritted teeth. I hated how much he worked me up. How angry he made me when he was standing there all cool and calm and unfazed.
Stoking my rage further, Ewen just let out a husky laugh and finally turned to leave. He grinned at me over his shoulder. “See you in the morning, neighbour.”
I slammed the door, put the six-pack on the console table and stomped back over to my desk. When I shoved my headset back on, no one was talking, so I testily asked, “We ready?”
After a few seconds of silence, Neville slowly spoke. “Uh… you shoved your face in your neighbour’s tits, bro?”
I froze, heat blooming under my skin. “What?”
“You didn’t mute your mic.” Teresa snickered.
I wet my lips and hoarsely asked, “You heard all that?”
She snorted. “We’re ghouls, bro. Superlative hearing. Of course we did.”
“That accent is so fuckin’ hot,” Neville muttered. “All drawling and shit. I legit popped a boner when he called you handsome, Rafe.”
“He doesn’t seem that bad, man,” Abed piped up hesitantly.
“Yeah,” Teresa added straight away. “Honestly, Rafeo, you were a huge dick during that convo. Not him. He was fine.”
I clenched my jaw. “You don’t get it. He’s just… He does it to piss me off. Trust me.”
“Circling back,” Neville said lightly, “why’d you shove your face in his tits, bro? And how was it? Like finding nirvana? Did you have gay thoughts?”
I huffed and slouched lower in my chair, clicking my mouse to open the game—an MMORPG called Black Oasis. “There are these two wrestlers there. Goblins or something. Little guys. One of them ran into me and knocked me over.”
Teresa cackled. “Directly into your neighbour’s big, meaty man chest? Nice.”
“His fucking chest hair got in my mouth,” I muttered, which made her crack up again. “Look, are we playing or not?”
Everyone oooohed and started laughing, which made my head feel like it was going to explode.
“Come on,” I pleaded. “I don’t want to think about that asshole anymore. Or work. Can we just play?”
Reece snickered. “Yeah, bro, let’s play. I wanna find those death crystals in the Murk Valley.”
To my relief, we started playing without any more said about my douchebag neighbour. We chatted aimlessly as our little team traversed the map on screen until we reached the big, shadowy valley nestled between two rock faces. My character was an archer, so I led the way and picked off the low-level monsters that leaped from behind rocks.
Then I took damage from something. “Huh?” I frowned, spinning my archer around. “Did one of you just accidentally hit me?”
“Nope,” Reece said, just as another arrow sailed through the air and my archer grunted at the impact. My health bar decreased by another chunk.
Suddenly, we all heard a snicker over the in-game chat.
“Guess there are some other players here,” Abed said, his mage running past my archer clutching his glowing staff.
I spun my archer again and finally spotted two players standing at the top of a rocky peak. They were crouching repeatedly and for some reason finding it hilarious, because we could hear two male voices snickering over the game’s VOIP now.
“Yo, Hans, use those tainted arrow things you found,” a voice said.
