a while, just chilling, and chatting, and occasionally fiddling on their phones. Eventually someone would suggest playing a game, and eventually they’d play one. It was a nice, low-pressure way to spend Sunday.
At around two, just as they were debating whether it was worth trying to find a board game that would take eight players, or if they should split into groups, or maybe just go for food or something, Kit stood up and said he should be going.
Drew was a bit startled. He thought he’d been having a good time, and he didn’t want him to go. “You don’t have to. I’m sure we can find something for eight players, or we can do teams.”
“It’s not that.” Kit packed up his sleeping bag. “It’s just I think I want to go home now.”
Drew wasn’t sure if he was supposed to offer to go with him or not, and came down on the side of not in case he looked intense, creepy, and codependent. “Um. Okay, well, I’ll catch you later.”
Kit bent down, kissed him good-bye, and started picking his way between the sleeping bags and the empty snack bowls.
“Dude,” said Sanee, “why are you running out on us?”
Kit froze by the doorway. “Um, I’m going to catch up with some friends in HoL.”
“Wow, and I thought I was a nerd.”
Awkward.
Kit had gone kind of red. “Yeah, see you later.”
He hurried out.
Steff whacked Sanee in the arm. “Why are you being such a dick?”
“I wasn’t being a dick. I was inviting him to stay. I like the guy.”
“Squidge, it’s not a personal insult when someone wants to leave your house.”
Drew wasn’t sure where to look or what to feel. Obviously Kit had a right to go home when he wanted to, but he was still weirdly hurt. It wasn’t like Kit had anything else on, so it just felt uncomfortably like being rejected.
They sort of hung until about four, and then Sanee suggested they crack open Cards Against Humanity. Which, after two rounds of play, Tinuviel actively hated.
“I think my fundamental problem,” she explained, “is that it bills itself as a card game for horrible people but feels more like a card game for people who want to try very hard to prove how horrible they are.”
So they played Dixit instead.
And Drew tried not to miss Kit. And worried he was being needy, and worried that Kit didn’t like his friends, or that his friends felt insulted, or that Sanee was right and Kit had needed to run away for his MMO fix. Basically he just worried.
He got home late, and logged in to HoL to do his dailies.
[Guild][Ialdir]: Yo
[Guild][Morag]: Hey
[Guild][Heurodis]: cant talk must pewpew
[Guild][Solace]: Hi Drew :)
[Guild][Mordant]: Hi
[Guild][Orcarella]: Hi
[Solace] whispers: Sorry for bailing earlier
To [Solace]: it’s fine. are you okay?
[Solace] whispers: Yes, I’m good
To [Solace]: so why’d you leave?
[Solace] whispers: Like I said, I just wanted to be at home
[Solace] whispers: Also I hadn’t logged in to HoL in a while
[Solace] whispers: So I wanted to say hi to everyone
To [Solace]: You blew off my friends to play HoL
It was a long few seconds before any new messages popped up.
[Solace] whispers: Drew, I didn’t blow anyone off
[Solace] whispers: I left your friends who we’d been hanging out with for more than 24 hours
[Solace] whispers: To come and hang out with my friends
[Solace] whispers: Who I hadn’t seen for a while
Drew stared at the screen.
To [Solace]: did you not like my friends?
[Solace] whispers: I like your friends. I had a good time
[Solace] whispers: But I wanted to go and do something else
To [Solace]: I could have come with you
[Solace] whispers: You could have, but you seemed happy with your friends
To [Solace]: i dont want to choose between my friends and my boyfriend
[Solace] whispers: I’m not asking you to
To [Solace]: but you sort of did
[Solace] whispers: I didn’t mean to
[Solace] whispers: But you can’t make me choose between you and my friends either
To [Solace]: dude this is a video game
To [Solace]: i know HoL has been a big part of your life
To [Solace]: but these are just people you know on the internet
To [Solace]: half of them are twice your age
To [Solace]: half of them don’t live in this country
[Solace] whispers: Drew
[Solace] whispers: i really dont know what to say
[Guild][Ialdir]: Hey Drew, Solace said you two started playing Torment
[Solace] whispers: or why you’re saying this
[Solace] whispers: is this what you really think of me
Drew stared at his screen in horror. He was in the middle of something he was pretty sure