I Heart Geeks (17 page)

Mira’s chin ducked, and then she looked up at him through her lashes as a blush covered her cheeks. “Sounds like a plan,” she said quietly, before looking back to JBR1. “What in the world should we call him?”

“Oh, just kiss him already,” Lisa said, shooting them an impatient look.

“The robot?” Mira asked, quickly followed by an exhaled, “Oh.” Her cheeks flushed, and her gaze danced around the room before finally landing back on him. Her lips twisted gently to one side.

Jordan swallowed, struggling to formulate a tactful way out for her. Then her eyebrows inched up, easing his own uncertainty. He closed the remaining distance between them, and her face tilted up in a more blatant invitation. Their lips met with a soft brush, then Mira rose on her tiptoes, balancing against his shoulder. Her lips parted, and Jordan cupped her jaw, angling for a deeper kiss.

Moments later, a not-so-subtle cough filtered into his awareness. “This is a place of business you know,” Kelsey reminded, and Mira dropped back to the ground, glancing briefly toward her friends.

“There is an innocent robot present,” she pointed out, holding back a smile.

“Good point.” Jordan stepped back, letting his hand drop. “Think you might be free for dinner?”

“How sweet, the dating rituals of different species of geeks,” Lisa said drily. “You two should be on the discovery channel.”

“You’re one to talk,” Kelsey said.

“Definitely,” Mira said quietly as her friends traded quips.

“Awesome.” Her smile pulled his own lips into a stupid grin. Jordan glanced at JBR1, contently flipping through his book, then bent to kiss Mira again.

“The first time I saw her, she killed me in the most impressive fashion,” I said as I struggled to sit on the bar stool. The bartender turned to fix another drink. He hadn’t heard me. Sighing, I focused on my epic battle against the stool. Doing anything other than standing around like a statue in full plate armor was kind of difficult. After some careful pushes and twists, I managed to situate myself so that it looked like I was sitting on the chair. I wasn’t. I had half my ass resting on it while I squeezed all of my costume between it and the bar.

It looked respectable enough. From what I could tell in the mirror behind the bar, though, my red and gold helmet was a bit askew. I used the reflection to coax it back into place, until I was interrupted by a grumpy-looking bartender stepping in my way. Of course I had to sit on the end where the sour bartender worked. That was okay; I would win him over with fanciful tales and my glowing personality. Or, at least, I would pay him to listen to me until I wasn’t so
fracking
nervous.

Storytelling and alcohol were the best remedies for frayed nerves. Stories, for the hope of a happy ending, and alcohol, for when you remembered that you didn’t live in one. A story, I mean. Unfortunately, I had hours to waste between finishing panels for the day and meeting her, my hopeful happy ending. We’d spoken dozens of times, even Skyped a few. There was no reason for me to get this worked up, except that I was meeting her in real life for the first time.

“Hey.” The bartender turned around and stared at me while rotating a martini shaker back and forth in his hand. “What ya drinkin‘?”

“Yeah, I wanted a bourbon neat,” I answered, “but what I said was—and you’re not listening.” As soon as I ordered he turned to face the back of the bar and resumed making drinks.

Luckily for me, there was an interested-looking party sitting on a stool to my left dressed as one of the X-Men. Odd choice for GameCon, but it wasn’t my costume. He would do well enough as a stand in for a captive audience.

“It was a relatively quiet night on the server. I’d hopped on for a raiding—”

“What’s raiding?” The man’s words slurred together in a barely intelligible blob of syllables.

“Are you serious? This is a gaming convention for frack’s sake. It’s when you get on an MMO with a bunch of other people and go after a particularly difficult part of the game,” I said looking up at the TV as the current football scores flashed across the screen. When I looked back over, he was drooling on the bar. “You know what, that’s okay, it’s not absolutely vital to the story.” How quickly could I move if he decided to throw up?

There was a small clink, and my drink was sitting on the bar in front of me. I smiled at the bartender and raised my glass before taking a nice big drink. Getting through gaming 101 with genius here would be much easier with a drink in my hand.

“Frack, huh? You a
Battlestar
fan, too, then?” the bartender asked.

“What good nerd isn’t? Plus it beats getting crap for cussing in a way people actually understand.” I took another swig, feeling the burn creep up to my ears. This wasn’t the highest quality stuff.

The bartender laughed and waved me off with a hand before going back to his work. A snort came out of the man beside me. I looked more closely at his costume. Wait, this guy was just a kid, a half-conscious kid at that. Well, a comatose audience was better than no audience.

“Anyway, midterms had been particularly rough that week, so I decided the stresses of raiding were anything but appealing. Instead, I opted for the mindless
pew-pewing
of my hunter. Plus, it wasn’t like I cared what the rank and accolades for this particular off-character were.” Pausing, I took another sip of my drink and then turned back to my captive audience. He was gone.
Great
.

“More the same?” the bartender asked.

“Sure, yeah, that sounds good.” I could feel the frown grow on my face.

“I think you’re on the wrong side of the bar, dude,” he said as he sat the second drink down in front of me and took away the empty glass. “All the gamers are down on that side.” He cocked a thumb toward the people to my left.

On this end of the bar there were, mostly, normal-looking people decked out in their team’s colors, eyes glued to one of the many TVs. On the other end of the bar, there was a large crowd of people in cosplay and GameCon shirts, laughing and talking.
Crap
.

“Well, that’s awesome. Wish I would’ve put that together before I struggled onto this damn bar stool.” I sighed and threw back a good half of the burning liquid. Maybe it could give me some sage advice. The bartender put some bottles back behind the bar and tapped his fingers on the counter.

“Look, dude, I’ve got a few minutes,” he said looking over his shoulder toward what could only be the door to the kitchen. “If I had it my way, I’d be on that side of the bar, suited up, right along with you. My dick of a boss decided my requested time off was unnecessary.”

“Well, frack that guy,” I said, extending a hand. “Dean.”

“Rick.” He smiled as he shook my hand. “So, what could possibly prevent you from all the indecent revelries of GameCon? You know, besides scaring away innocent bystanders.”

“Are you serious? That guy was drunk off his ass. He probably passed out on his way to throw up,” I said, pointing in the direction I assumed the drunk mutant had left. Rick just shook his head, laughing. “Okay, the short version, then?”

“That would be better, yeah,” Rick said, leaning down onto the bar.

“I met Rose a year ago on Fantasy World Online when she basically
pwned
my tank, Droryn, in PvP. After that we started playing together on a regular basis and then doing virtual dates. We would watch episodes of
Firefly
together while IMing or both go on a run and send each other pictures of where we ended up. Sometimes, we would even buy the same food, like Korean barbecue or pistachio ice cream, and watch old sci-fi movies together.” I smiled at the memory.

“Pistachio ice cream?” Rick looked at me, wincing as he said it.

“Yeah, it’s really good. Don’t knock it ’til you try it, man.”

“Okay, I’ll take your word for it, but this doesn’t sound like the shortened version to me,” he said, looking down the bar at some new, rowdy cosplayers.

“I know, sorry. She goes to school across the country from me and is majoring in graphic design. From what she’s told me, she might want to work on video games as well. That’s what I’m aiming to do, write for them, I mean. Anyway, about halfway through the semester, a month or so ago, she fell off the radar, that is until last night when I got a text from her telling me that she was here.” I looked up at the clock to double-check the time.

“So, you get to meet your girl. Why’s that a problem?” he asked.

“The problem is that one of my professors submitted one of my short stories to a contest here at GameCon.” I took another long drink.

“What does that have to do—”

“It’s about her,” I cut in. “And I may have forgotten to switch out her avatar’s name and her name and our server’s name. In my defense, I had no idea that my professor was going to submit it. Hell, I didn’t think anyone but me and him would ever see it.”

“Oh, dude, you haven’t told her, have you?” he asked before making a clicking noise with his tongue.

“I haven’t met her yet. I gotta go meet her right now.”

“Well, you better bring some flowers or something,” Rick said, standing back up. “Some downloadable content codes would probably be better.”

“I know, I know,” I said as I tried to stand up.

Talking to him hadn’t helped in the slightest, but at least I didn’t have to spend the wait wallowing in self-pity. After laying my cash on the counter, I scooted the stool back and, with a quick glance in the mirror, straightened my armor. I still looked awesome in my handcrafted, one-of-a-kind armor.

“Well, dude, if she’s as cool as you say she is, I’m sure it’ll be fine.” He straightened as two new customers sat down not far from where we were standing. “Besides, you should probably be more excited about meeting her than worried about pissing her off, right?”

“That’s easier said than actually done, man.”

“I know, but I’m supposed to be giving you sage advice, right? Anyway, good luck. Stop by and let me know how it goes.” He gave a small nod before turning his attention to the new customers.

Nice guy
. I make my way out of the bar and into the hotel lobby.

For the most part, this section of the hotel was pretty quiet. A few people trickled in and out of the last seminars and panels of the day, wandering toward the elevator or the bar behind me. All the activity would be in the hotel next door. Well, it would be getting started. Hopefully I hadn’t waited too long to make it to the floor. If too many people were there, it might be hard to find Rose among them.

Several gaming booths and parties had started, but the cosplayers on the floor started gathering as early as seven. I looked down at my phone again, half for the time and half to study my new background. It was a quarter past eight. Her picture looked the same as it had twenty minutes ago. I’d put it as my lock screen and background, for reference. After all, I’d never met her so I needed a good reference for what she looked like if I wanted to find her. Besides not knowing if she was cosplaying or not, it made perfect sense. Not creepy at all.

I tucked the phone back into the side bag on my belt and pushed open the hotel doors. Water collected in puddles on the pavement. Light shone on the wet pavement, reflecting the first few floors back at me. Rain fell, no more than a spritz. It was surprisingly cool, even through my four layers of foam and rubber armor. Sweat was just part of the game, since I was a heavy armor class. As I approached the next hotel, I felt the bass from one of the parties on the first floor.

Before I reached the door, my phone was back out in my hand. Making her my phone background was not okay. I changed it back to some screen shots from FWO, but kept her picture pulled up for reference. Sweat beaded on my forehead. I needed to get my crap together before going in there. Feeling stupid, I straightened my armor for the umpteenth time using the glass door and did my best to fix my face to be something presentable.

Despite Rose’s good intentions, meeting up with a group of people for the first time, me being the odd man out, the one to be judged, was the slightest bit intimidating. Not that I didn’t understand and respect why she’d done it. Better for her to be smart and safe. It was still nerve-wracking. Taking one last look over my costume, I pushed the door open.
You’re being ridiculous, Dean
. The armor looked awesome. Besides, it wasn’t going to get any better in the next five minutes.

Colors and noise accosted me as soon as I opened the door.
Damn
. The floor was uncomfortably full. I shouldn’t have spent so much time procrastinating in the bar. Luckily for me, cosplayers from the same game tended to congregate in some sort of amorphous blob toward one corner of the room or another. The difficult part would be figuring out which amorphous blob was mine, and if Rose was even subject to the trend. If she wasn’t, tracking her down would be another matter. I tried to push through the Dungeon Online crowd and nearly got bowled over by someone dressed as a dragonling. They always were the rowdiest bunch. The dragonling tried to play it off by attacking my leg. Dungeoners were charming, really.

I shook my leg to get him off and came short of kicking him. Though, it would’ve been nice to kick him. A therapeutic stress reliever.
I’m gonna go back and kick him
. Someone grabbed one of my greaves, preventing me from turning around. I decided to let loose on them instead. When I turned, I found myself face to face with a person I’d only ever seen through a screen.

Rose. In some of the best thief cosplay I’d ever seen. Black pants and a corset—armor—highlighted with dark greens hugged her curves. Gold-handled daggers hung between leather pouches that decorated her cloth belt. It was all tied together with a hooded cape and mask that only left her eyes visible. She pulled down the mask and smiled. Gods, she was beautiful, and shorter than I expected. She barely came up to my chest, not that I was a short guy. I was overly tall, at least according to, well, everyone, since I was thirteen. Maybe too tall. Was there a height differential that made a relationship impossible? Now that was just a ridiculous notion.
Get your head out of the gutter, idiot
.