Make Your Move

Book 3: Gamer Girls

by Laura Heffernan

Genres: Women's Fiction; Contemporary Romance; Romantic Comedy

Synopsis

LOVE'S ALL ABOUT TIMING . . .
 
At twenty-eight, Shannon has yet to fall in love. Which is fine, since she'd rather spend her evenings creating games than swiping right or going on awkward blind dates. Right now though, she has two little problems. First, she's stuck for a new game idea. Second, the only candidate in her roommate search is Tyler, the gaming buddy who's long had an unrequited crush on her.
 
It should be awkward. But when Tyler moves in, the situation doesn't go at all the way Shannon expected. Between helping her deal with coworkers and fixing the bugs in her latest game, Tyler's proving to be damn near perfect. Except for the fact that he's falling for someone else. . .
 
Maybe Shannon has already forfeited her turn. Maybe she's playing for nothing but heartache. But the best games have endings you can never predict . . .

Release date: December 17, 2019

Publisher: Lyrical Press

Print pages: 190

Sample

Chapter 1

“It costs nothing to be kind to someone in need.” —Nana

Boston was a hotbed for crime lords and tax evaders. According to my mother, at least. She went on and on, driving my near-frantic pace as I walked toward Game On!, the local game store where my friends and I played after hours. Finally, the store appeared ahead of me like a beacon, a sign that this conversation, too, would pass.

While opening the door, I shoved my phone between my ear and shoulder, careful not to put the speaker too close. Hearing the words coming from the other end would do absolutely nothing to improve my mood. “Yes, Mom, I parked as close to the store as possible. Boston is perfectly safe. It won’t even be dark by the time I head home. Would you prefer I took the T?… Well, moving back to Florida is not an option… I’ll have one of the guys walk me to my car later.”

I would do no such thing, but being my mother, she grasped at the straw unwittingly dangled before her. “Boys? What boys will be there? Tell me more.”

“It’s not a high school party, Mom.” A deep breath masked my heavy sigh. “It’s Gwen’s husband and Holly’s fiancé. You’ve heard me mention them a million times.”

“What a shame.”

“Actually, it’s great. I’m happy for them.” It wasn’t worth telling her that our group did also include a single male. No reason to get her hopes up.

Holly smiled and waved at me in greeting. Not for the first time, I marveled at how her belly swallowed her average-sized frame. The pregnancy also made her thick honey blonde hair even more lustrous and shiny. Throw in her dancing hazel eyes and massive smile, and pregnancy truly made my friend glow.

In response to her wave, I rolled my eyes and pointed to the phone. She came over and took the cookies out of my hand, which let me shift everything into a better position.

“Shannon, we really need to talk about your love life,” Mom said in my ear.

No, we didn’t. My last boyfriend was a couple of years ago. I’d repeatedly explained why I didn’t date much. Sometimes I wished I hadn’t bothered. She still seemed to think I chose a life of solitude rather than it being difficult to get to know someone in this age of swiping right and immediate gratification.

When I didn’t reply, she sighed. “I just want you to be happy.”

“I am happy.”

“Why can’t you settle down like your brother?”

“Sorry, Mom, I’m about to go through a tunnel. Gotta go!” Before she could say anything else, I hung up and shut off my phone.

“Tunnels in the store, huh?” Nathan asked as I walked into the back room where we played board games after the store closed for the night. Holly’s fiancé looked every bit as excited about the baby as she did, with the same eager gleam in his blue eyes. Their happiness radiated out of them, making it impossible not to share their joy.

“A convenient tunnel is an excellent way to get off the phone,” I said. “That woman would spend all night lecturing me on the importance of finding a nice man if I let her.”

“She’s your mother. She means well,” he said gently. At forty-three, Nathan was the oldest of our group and also Gwen’s father. “We want the best for our children, even when we don’t understand what it is.”

“I know. I get it. And I appreciate her interest.” I flashed a sympathetic smile toward my friend, who sat in the corner already munching on a cookie. “But I wish we could strike the right balance between not caring at all and being obnoxious.”

“It exists,” Gwen said with a nod toward her dad. “Trust me.”

“Well, we’re unfortunately not going to become BFFs, either.”

“She still bugging you to have babies?” Holly asked.

“That’s the end game, I’m sure. For now, she’s settled on insisting I find someone and—air quote—settle down. Sometimes, when I think of how much money my parents dropped on Chris’s wedding, I want to tell her I’m getting married and take the cash. Thirty grand would certainly fund a lot of game-making.” During the day, I worked for a small local toy and game manufacturer, focusing on board games for children. At night, I made games for adults. The intent was to someday branch out on my own, which required start-up capital.

“She might want to attend the wedding,” Cody pointed out.

“No problem. I’m sure someone would meet me at City Hall for a percentage. I’d probably only have to pay a few thousand dollars.”

“As someone recently accused of fraud,” Holly said, “I’m going to recommend against that course of action. Let’s start the game before this baby’s born.”

She wasn’t due for a couple of months, but point taken. I stopped complaining.

Gwen said, “Thanks for the cookies. Did you bring your new game?”

A guilty twinge hit me, not because I hadn’t brought the game, but because at the moment, there was no new game. I should be at home, figuring stuff out, instead of here playing. “Um, well, I sort of hit a wall.”

The bell over the front door jingled, and the final member of our group appeared in the doorway, carrying a bottle of whiskey. Tyler had close-cropped dark hair, a friendly smile with perfectly straight teeth, and such smooth brown skin Gwen said he belonged in a skin care commercial. “What did I miss?”

“Shannon was about to tell us about her new game,” Nathan said.

My intent had been to create a social deduction game, which technically wasn’t a board game because it lacked a physical board. Social deduction meant most of the players shared a specific goal, such as finding a werewolf. They used visual cues and other clues to determine which of their friends secretly worked against them. One of the more popular varieties was a murder mystery dinner party game. Personally, I preferred purely cooperative games, but lots of people liked the thrill of outsmarting their friends and family. People like Gwen and Cody, but also a ton of others. The key to success in social deduction games was largely in its theme: We’d played versions where we worked to find cannibals, Nazis, traitors, evil cultists, werewolves, and more.

“I’m afraid there’s not much to tell. It’s going nowhere.”

“Uh-oh,” Tyler said. “What happened?”

“I found another game with the exact same theme,” I said. “Same name and everything. I don’t want to be accused of copying.”

Holly made a face. “That sucks. What is it?”

Quickly, I gave an overview. My game was set in the 1920s, inside a speakeasy. Players/mob members sought to determine which of their friends was secretly an undercover police officer, working to unmask that person before they turned everyone in for illegally drinking. Larger groups could assign additional secret roles such as the mob leader and the hit man. Each secret role had their own goals, which could affect the other players’ strategies, whether they knew it or not. As the game developed, I found myself adding some surprisingly subversive elements.

Surprising because normally I didn’t go for lying and being sneaky, but in this game those elements added depth lacking in some of the other, similar games we played. Overall, I’d been proud of what I’d accomplished before discovering the need to shelve the project indefinitely.

“Hold on,” Tyler said. “Has anyone here heard of that game?”

Everyone shook their heads.

“Do they sell it here so we can look at it?”

“No,” I said.

“Then maybe it doesn’t matter,” Gwen said. “Sounds like the other game isn’t terribly popular. Or maybe you could design a better version.”

“It’s only got a handful of reviews on BoardGameNerd.com,” I admitted. “And I thought of it on my own. I just hate the idea that someone might see it and think I took their game.”

“Not to be that guy, but it’s not that original,” Cody said. “There are dozens of social deduction games.”

“Yeah. The twist with this one—which I really like—is that the players working together are the ‘bad’ guys, and they’re trying to unmask the ‘good’ guys to win. Most social deduction games are the other way around.”

“It sounds like fun,” Tyler said. “See what you can do to make your game stand out. I’m happy to help, if you want to brainstorm or play-test. Or, um… even if you want some artwork for the prototype.”

I cocked my head at him. “You draw?”

He looked away, grinning sheepishly. “A little. I took a graphics design course in college. It wouldn’t be great, but it might help you put some life in the concept.”

“He’s just being modest,” Cody said. “He’s really talented. Won a bunch of contests.”

“Wow. That would be awesome, thanks,” I said. My phone beeped, drawing my attention to a text from someone responding to my Craigslist ad listing my spare room. Since they opened with “I’m 420-friendly,” I deleted the message. I tended to be pretty live-and-let-live, but not when sharing an entry hall with my grandmother.

Seeing the look on my face, Gwen asked, “How goes the roommate search?”

“Boy, do I need a drink before answering that question.”

“That good?” Cody reached for a cookie, pushing a lock of curly brown hair out of his eyes. It always cracked me up that Gwen, whose pale skin and red hair got many Anne of Green Gables comments over the years, wound up with a guy who resembled the original Gilbert Blythe.

“Umm… No.” I nodded at the bottle in Tyler’s hand. “Thank goodness someone brought something other than wine and beer.”

“Your other friends are all lightweights.” He poured me a shot.

Accepting the glass, I sniffed it. Smoky, dark. A sipping whiskey. Gratefully, I tasted it, letting the warm alcohol roll over my tongue. A purr escaped me. “Thanks. I needed that.”

“You’re welcome. So, what’s the problem with the roommate search?”

“Well, apparently everyone in Boston who needs a place to live is awful,” I said. “One guy actually asked me if he had to wear clothes in the common areas.”

Gwen laughed, and Holly shuddered.

“You know, Shannon,” Cody said. “Tyler might have a solution for you.”

“Oh, yeah? Do you know someone who’s looking?”

“I do.” Tyler hesitated for a second, glancing away before meeting my gaze squarely. “Me.”

Huh. That gave me pause. I liked Tyler, always had. But he’d had a crush on me for quite a while, and living together could create an awkward situation. It didn’t help that he’d kissed me last winter, while we were all in Mexico for Gwen and Cody’s wedding. I’d had to explain that I didn’t feel sexual attraction for people before I formed a deeper connection with them. He claimed to understand, but something in his expression when I caught him looking at me from time to time made me suspect that, even though he respected my rejection, he’d change the situation if possible. The whole thing left me feeling terrible, even though it wasn’t my fault.

Speaking of awkward, this wasn’t a conversation to have in front of our friends, even though they knew our history. “I’d love to talk about it, but I’m starving. Come with me to the kitchen?”

He must have sensed my hesitation. When we got to the other room, he said, “I know what you’re thinking. I’m over you.”

I wanted to believe him, but his request made no sense. “You’ve never even been to my apartment. You live in Harvard Square. I’m way out on the blue line. Why would you want to move so far away from everything?”

“Well, obviously, I need to see the inside before signing a lease,” he said. “But my company opened a new office in Revere, and they put me in charge.”

“That’s great! Congratulations!”

“Thanks. It’s a huge opportunity. But commuting on the T is a pain now, and I don’t want to deal with Cambridge traffic in the mornings.”

“You make good money. Why don’t you get your own place?” A bit nosy to be sure, but sometimes curiosity made us ask rude questions.

“That’s the plan. But you know how ridiculous Boston housing is, especially when I work such long hours. Why pay fifteen hundred dollars a month to rent five hundred square feet I’m only sleeping in?”

He had me there. I lived on the top floor of my nana’s two-family unit. In exchange for doing her grocery shopping and running other errands—which I’d have done anyway—she gave me low rent on a three-bedroom apartment I could otherwise never afford. Even with a roommate.

“Yeah, I get it.” The kindest thing would be to tell him no, but we would be sitting in a room together for the next three or four hours, and I didn’t have the heart to shut him down. Again. A possible out occurred to me. “I’ve got a couple of people lined up to see the place already. I’ll text you later this week?”

“Sounds good. Thanks.”

“Sure.”

What I didn’t tell him was that I absolutely, positively had no intention of letting a guy who used to have a crush on me anywhere near my spare room. Not when his actions sometimes suggested that it lingered. Tyler was a nice guy, and I wished him well, but we couldn’t live in the same apartment.

* * * *

The next evening after a long day at work, I couldn’t wait to get home, make a pot of the tea normally saved for special occasions, and unwind in the bath with a good book before working on my latest project. Unfortunately, I had an appointment to show my apartment.

In college, like everyone else, I got assigned to a dorm room with three random strangers. I’m easygoing and try to be considerate, but not all my roommates were the same. We argued over things like whether all the towels needed to be hung up so the edges formed a straight line and if it was acceptable for one girl to have sex in everyone else’s beds because she hadn’t washed her own sheets. (For the record: no, and absolutely not!)

In grad school, I found Gwen and Holly, who turned out to be a gold mine. We’d hit it off better than I ever dreamed. When we graduated, Holly moved in with her then-fiancé Lucas, and Gwen put all her stuff in storage, ready to live the life of a travel-blogging nomad. Nana offered me the upper floor of her two-family unit, and another friend of ours moved into my spare room. Ellen was such an introvert, we didn’t see each other much, which worked out well.

But now I feared I’d used up my good roommate karma over the years, even hesitating to list the place when Ellen gave her notice. There were so many roommate horror stories on the net (which Gwen and Holly helpfully sent me when I first mentioned posting on Craigslist). But I couldn’t let fear stop me. I didn’t need the perfect roommate, only someone reasonably respectful. Between work, my friends, and making games on the side, I led a full life. As long as my roommate wasn’t incredibly loud, overly sloppy, and didn’t mess with my stuff, we’d get along fine. Oh, and they couldn’t want a romantic relationship with me.

The first candidate showed up fifteen minutes late. Not the best start, but traffic sucked, and the T was wicked unreliable. In Boston, if you gave up on everyone who showed up late once in a while, you’d never make any friends. Not to mention, no one could hold a job if our bosses insisted on a firm start time in a city where the trains ran late more often than not. She could have texted, but maybe she got stuck underground or something.

After my third Are you still coming? text, I started to reconsider that bath. Or at least curling up with a good book. I’d just settled into my chair when something scratched against the front door, so faint I might have imagined it. It sounded like a kitten had gotten into the hallway by mistake, an impossibility since the only other person who lived in the building, my Nana, was also allergic.

Upon opening the door, I found a small, dark-haired girl, utterly swallowed by the enormous beat-up old jacket she wore, staring at the mat. “Hi! You must be Kimberly. I’m Shannon.”

“Hi. Was I supposed to wait downstairs at the outside door? I couldn’t decide.”

“I would’ve come down if you’d rung the bell, but it’s fine. I left the main door unlocked.”

She jumped, and for a second, I thought she was going to turn and run. But finally, she nodded. “Okay. Sorry I’m late. I wanted to make sure I had the address right, so I checked and then I checked again, and then I went through all your texts and emails, but I thought maybe I had the wrong street, so I walked back to the T and started over. Twice.”

“It’s not a problem,” I said. “You could’ve texted, and I’d have sent it to you again.”

“I worried I might have the wrong number.”

I didn’t know what to say. At least she was thorough? Odd that she didn’t respond to our existing message thread, but I understood not thinking clearly when stressed. “Well, I’m glad you’re here now. Let me show you the place.”

She stepped in, too close, peering into my eyes intently. Her pupils were huge, so big I wondered if she’d been taking something. I took a step back, all the way to the wall to give her room to pass. She remained where she was, peering at me like she wanted to see my soul.

“You’re very pretty,” she said. “Not conventionally attractive, maybe, because you’re so big, but there’s something about you.”

I swallowed my surprise. Not to mention my sudden desire to send this woman back out the door. Something didn’t seem right. But I was almost twice her size, and my cell phone lay in a pocket of my cardigan, within easy reach. “Thank you.”

“Am I pretty, too?”

Truthfully, I had no idea, but this didn’t seem the time for honesty. “Yes, very pretty.”

“You’re just saying that to make me feel better.” Yes, I was. I didn’t answer, and she said, “I’m sorry. You think I’m weird.”

Once again, I lied. “No, not at all. You seem lovely. Just a little nervous.”

She nodded emphatically. “Definitely nervous. So anyway, tell me about this place.”

I took Kimberly around the apartment, pointing out the features, showing her the kitchen, the screened-in back porch, and finally the room that would be hers. She squealed, clapping her hands together. “Awesome! Oh, this is so great! I love it! And I’d be sleeping right next to you?”

“Well, I’d be in my room.” With a lock on the door, at this rate. Kimberly had been a bit reserved in our emails, and she seemed nervous when she arrived, but I was starting to wonder if something was off about her. At first, I’d thought she was dealing with anxiety, but her demeanor made me uneasy.

She nodded several times, eyes darting around the room. “I love it. Don’t have any furniture, though.”

“That’s not a problem. There’s plenty of furniture in the common areas. All you need is whatever you want for the bedroom.”

“Good news. I can find a bed anywhere.” Her tone suggested she was thinking about looking in dumpsters or, say, the neighbor’s house. She held out one hand. “Do we have a deal?”

“Well… I have a few other people to interview first,” I said, not wanting to get into a discussion about my reservations. Maybe she was the kind of person who had to meet someone a few times before relaxing. I knew all about that. “It would be rude to cancel on them at the last minute. But we can talk at the end of this week.”

“Sure thing. I like you. You like me, right?”

“Absolutely.” My hand inched toward the phone in my pocket.

“Hey, do you always get your mail delivered this late?”

“Late? I don’t know. It’s usually here when I get home from work. Why?”

“Your mailman was coming up the walk when I was debating whether to ring the doorbell.”

I shrugged. “He must’ve been running late.”

“Okay. Can I use the bathroom before I go? It’s a long ride.”

“No problem.” I pointed her to the door, then went into the kitchen, not wanting to be creepily lurking in the hallway when she came out. I’d hear the door open. Besides, at this rate, I needed a fortifying drink before my next interview arrived.

Kimberly took an inordinately long time in the bathroom, so long I started to wonder if something was wrong. Finally, when. . .