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“Really?” Barry asked.
Shale shot me what I was beginning to recognize as herBe niceface.
“Yeah, man,” I said, nodding.
We finished dinner while Shale and Barry debated whether or not trains belonged around trees before we all went to our separate activities.
Barry watched a show.
I checked out my inbox for new work.
And Shale finally got around to doing social media posts about the drive-by, and hoping to reopen soon. Everyone just content with their separate tasks.
Until, eventually, almost in unison, sleep called to us, leaving Barry making up the couch again, and Shale and I heading toward the bed, both of us stripping it and changing the sheets together. From, you know, our “water bottle” incident. We were both smirking the whole damn time.
On the other side of the wall, Barry laughed at some cheesy joke from a show he’d seen a million times before as I wrapped my arm around Shale, and pulled her closer.
“You know he actually suggested thatweget a bigger place?” I asked, making Shale look up at me.
“He didn’t.”
“Oh, he did. I reminded him that he has his own place. He said it wasn’t as fun over there.”
“He’s lonely,” Shale said. “I feel for him. I think, if I hadn’t been working sixteen hour days, the loneliness would have gotten to me over time too. And he works, what, six or seven hours aweek?”
“Not lately.” Not that he needed to. I’d looked into his stats for his streaming channel. And on the conservative side, he was making twenty grand a month passively. Anything new he put out just added to that. Considering he lived in a crummy apartment building and didn’t seem to live very lavishly, I had to imagine most of that money was in the bank. He could afford a few days or weeks off.
“We need to find him some friends.”
“We need to get him laid.”
“Getting laid isn’t going to solve all his issues.”
“It’ll help,” I said.
“Maybe. Until he catches feelings and is a little too much for the girl, and she drops him. Can you imagine a heartbroken Barry on your couch?” she asked.
“I can hear the emo soundtrack now,” I said. “Fine. How the fuck do you find a grown-ass man friends?”
“Gamer or comic book conventions?” she suggested. “Between the two genres, there’s like one practically every month. I mean, with his following, it’s weird that he doesn’t go to any of them.”
“We’d probably have to take him to the first one,” I grumbled.
“I think it’d be fun. Come on. You don’t playanyvideo games?”
“Not in years,” I said. “Though I did as a teen.”
“I’m gonna kick your ass when we play tomorrow then,” she said, giving me a prematurely triumphant smile.
“You think so, huh?”
“Yep.”
“And what do you get if you win?” I asked.
To that, her hand slid down my chest, my stomach, then placed her hand over my cock.
“This,” she said, getting a rumbling noise out of me. “But for the record, I get that if I lose too,” she said.
