Plus, this time, I had the incredible memory of an impromptu mutual masturbation session to add to it all. I wouldn’t do any of this differently.

  “Okay, remember that DLC from Distance Call Seven a few months ago?” Sonya sounded excited.

  “Honestly, everything DC started to blur together for me after Three.” Jeremy, not so much.

  I followed the signs to take us to I-80, content to watch the road and keep half an ear on their conversation.

  Sonya puffed out a sigh. “You know the one I’m talking about. Where they got that actress from the vampire show to do the voice acting.”

  “Oh yeah.” Now Jeremy was into it. “And she was like hold off the vampires, while I make my world famous souffle.”

  “Exactly,” Sonya said. “It was ridiculous and fun and unlocked other new content. We need something like that.”

  There was silence for a moment, before Jeremy snapped his fingers. “Got it. What if we have a new NPC selling food, and the player has to provide entertainment as payment? Player’s choice, and it can be as clean or as filthy as they want. Crowd judged?”

  Sonya didn’t answer. The pause grew long enough it was awkward, which meant she’d expected a specific type of response and hadn’t gotten it. “Okay, so how about that, but—”

  “Exactly different?” Jeremy laughed.

  “Well, yeah. I was thinking more along the lines of the get a celebrity to do a fun cameo side of things.”

  Jeremy twisted in his seat to look back at her. “Like a special Hide the Sausage quest with a Hollywood hottie?”

  I snorted a laugh. “I’d play that.”

  “Something tells me we’d get pushback from Legal.” Sonya blew a loud raspberry. “Too many variables to account for, contractually, where sexual representation is involved—or something like that.”

  I would’ve assumed, if the celebrity in question said yes, that would be that. This was probably one reason Sonya was the boss.

  “Okay, nix the celebrity idea. Especially since so many of the players are in it for the sexiness. Let’s follow Jeremy’s suggestion instead,” Sonya said.

  “So, lots of public sex and let the players vote on what they like best? Public sex is against the game rules.”

  “It was your idea.” Sonya sounded exasperated. “I assumed you had a work-around.”

  Jeremy shrugged. “I assumed you’d take it and run with it.”

  Their tones were light but tinged with frustration, and I was still hung up on how openly they were discussing how to make public sex a thing. Knowing that exhibitionism with a hint—or more—of submission frequently featured in Sonya’s stories added to the distraction.

  Sure, the conversation was about a digital world, but so much of what happened there came from their minds, and that was enough to keep me turned on. Not the most comfortable thing while I was driving. “What about, you create a sexy, dirty version of Mardi Gras for your game?” I asked. “Boobs and more, in exchange for beads. Let people get as filthy as they want during the festival. Fucking against the wall. Go full on bukkake in the streets and in the sheets.” I was being ludicrous on purpose.

  “That’s brilliant. And hot.” Sonya’s happy reply caught me off guard, and I went from semierect to hard as iron.

  “It totally is. We’ll designate a public area as temporarily restricted during the festival, so we can put the appropriate adult content alerts in place, set up sex-laden games for prizes, and turn an entire section into orgy central for a few weeks.” Jeremy spoke with so much excitement, it might as well have actually been happening.

  And now I had to know. “Do you ever act these ideas out, to make sure they’re plausible?”

  “I guarantee you that Art does,” Jeremy said.

  “No. I just have a vividly dirty imagination,” Sonya added.

  Jesus Christ. I should stop now. Not that I could rein in my imagination—not at this point—but I didn’t need to be giving either of them this glimpse into my mind. “Would you? Act them out?”

  “Probably.” Jeremy’s response came quickly.

  “With the right person?” Sonya sounded a little more hesitant. “Yes. But it would have to be someone I trusted implicitly.”

  Do you trust me? Because I’d be happy to consensually wreck you. “Sounds fair.” At least I had some sense of restraint. Back to the game, and to reminding myself that was the point of the conversation. “Do you time something like this to release around the holiday you’re spoofing? Can you pull your idea off in two weeks?”

  They both laughed.

  I guess I’d asked a silly question?

  “We’re not laughing at you,” Sonya said. “But yes, we’d time it to launch with Mardi Gras, and no, you wouldn’t see it until next year. All of our content is coded a minimum of six months out, and planning starts long before that.”

  I used to make plans like that—the kind that extended beyond tomorrow—but when I woke up one morning, less than two years ago, to an empty bed and bank account, I learned that counting on the future was a big mistake.

  6

  Jeremy

  One of the great things about working for a small company was the variety of work I got to do. One of the not-so-great things was the amount. Taking a day off meant Sonya and I returned to a backlog.

  I was spending the morning proofing game text, while she cycled through meetings, and I definitely had the better job. I scanned quest-response options for an upcoming event in the orc strip club and team chat scrolled by on my second monitor. Every few minutes, I glanced over to see the next wall of text from Chris, one of our developers. Fortunately, proofreading his analysis—see rant—about why Quality Assurance should’ve caught some bug in the code, wasn’t part of my job.

  I didn’t need to be watching the QA channel, since Writing’s work wasn’t in testing right now, but their manager, Nigel, was my best friend and I liked to have his back. He got a lot of flak, both for doing his job well and for the occasional miss. He really couldn’t win sometimes.

  None of us was winning in this case, though. A videoblogger named Fallyn ran a channel called Phallyn’s Phallusies, where she pointed out exploits and bugs in video games. The errors she found ranged from simple things, like walking through walls, to the more grievous, like earning ultimate power or unlimited gold in a matter of minutes.

  She played our game a lot, based on how many videos she made about it. Judith wouldn’t let us ban her, because Fallyn’s videos were free publicity and she did some of our work for us.

  The team chat flashed, and I glanced at Chris’s next comment. Since it ended with and that’s why you should’ve caught this, I assumed he was done.

  Nigel: Since she’s using exploits commonly found in games, and you’re an industry veteran, you should know not to program those things in.

  Chris: Because we intentionally program bugs into the game. Right.

  Nigel: I assume as much as I intentionally miss them in QA.

  So, this could be a Copy and Paste of half of their conversations

  “If you’re reading Fallyn drama instead of that game script, she’ll ping you next for typos.” Sonya startled me.

  I grinned at the teasing in her voice, and that she was back from her meetings. “She’ll ping you. I’ll be fine. Come on. This is first-class drama.” I gestured at the screen and glanced at Sonya.

  “It’s really not.” She took her seat and spun to face me. “It’s Real Househusbands of Gaming, and I bet it wouldn’t get even a thousand hits Day One.”

  “No? You don’t think the world wants to watch Quality Assurance argue with Development about whose fault it is that a mouse-clicking macro defeated one of their mini games?”

  “I don’t think the world wants to watch or read any stories about a game development company. That’s some dry as toast shit right there.”

  I bet she could spin it into something salacious and captivating. Besides— “You and Quentin seemed to enjoy the orgy story.”

  “And you seemed to enjoy telling it. Did you see how good he lo—”

  A sharp squeal cut through the room, and we spun to find Luna standing in the doorway. Our digital security expert and closest thing we had to a company mascot. She looked at Sonya. “I’m so sorry I’m late.”

  I’d rather be having this conversation than thinking about the fact that Sonya had been about to tell me how much she liked Quentin jerking off. Not a thought I needed. Not a jealousy I needed. “Late for what?” I asked.

  “O.M.G.” Yes, Luna spoke in acronyms. She skipped the short distance to Sonya and hugged her tightly. “You’re famous. Ahhh.”

  Sonya returned the hug, her face bright pink. “I still can’t believe it. I think I sold enough books to be on a bestseller list. I’m going to be refreshing the bestseller list site like crazy tomorrow to see.”

  “I’ll help. Adrienne will help. The whole company will help.” Luna’s enthusiasm could be contagious, and most of us were at least work friends, but I doubted she could make that last statement happen.

  “Hell, Fallyn will help,” I said. “She’s got a macro that can click a mouse a billion times a second.”

  Luna scoffed as she straightened up. “Already fixed on the back end. Tell them that, will you?” She nodded at my screen. “I adjusted buffer protocols, to ensure the tinier spammy actions couldn’t reach our server.”

  I understood spammy and server. Luna was younger than most of us by about a decade, and a lot of times she acted even younger than that, but she was fucking brilliant.

  “I could tell them, but I don’t want to steal your thunder,” I said.

  “It’s okay. No thunder. You can tell them.”

  Nigel and Chris were possibly the only two people in the universe Luna didn’t get along with. Or at least the only two in the company. Chris tended to be a dick, but Nigel had some different opinions about how Luna should test her work, and she didn’t appreciate that.

  “Sonya, celebration tomorrow night. It’s for you becoming a Bestselling Author, so you have to be there. I’ll tell Dustin, so he can make it epic.” Luna had apparently moved on.

  Sonya shook her head, but she was smiling. “Nothing’s happened yet.”

  “But you have the sales numbers. You know you’re going to make the list. The only question is, how high?” I’d been listening for years to Sonya talk about how amazing it would be to have an accomplishment like that. What it would take. How she wasn’t the kind of writer who sold that many books. And I knew she deserved this.

  “I do have the numbers.”

  That made it simple. “Then Luna’s right. Party, tomorrow night.”

  After a bit more chatting, Luna left, and the QA channel got quiet when I told them she’d fixed things. Sonya and I got back to work.

  I finished reading through storyline responses and moved on to a new idea we were working up. One of the things I excelled at was imitating other people’s writing voice. When Sonya got stuck, she’d feed me the basics of where she wanted to go, however little or much detail she had, and I’d fill in the next bit to help kick start her ideas.

  “What did you think of the weekend?” Sonya’s question came out of nowhere.

  I’d thought a lot about it. Not quite what she was asking, but that impromptu masturbation session had teased me off and on since it happened. I wouldn’t have minded taking a page from Art’s book and acting out a game scene or two in real life with Sonya. Quentin could help. “It was a lot of fun. I’d do it again.”

  “Quentin is great, right?”

  Jealousy speared me, and I glanced at her, to see if I could get a read on why she was asking. She was staring at her computer, but not moving.

  “He’s all right.” I measured my words. “A little rough around the edges and kind of blunt.” There was no way Sonya would work out with a guy like that.

  “I was thinking I’d invite him tomorrow night.” There was definitely a catch in her voice this time.

  Was she…? No. She wasn’t thinking about making a play for him. Or hoping he’d make one for her. She’d always kept work and Quentin separate. Hell, she’d always kept work at arm’s length, regardless. She opted not to go to the Christmas party a few months ago, because she wasn’t great at company functions.

  And now she was not only agreeing to let people from work throw her a party, but wanted to invite friends as well.

  “So, like, everyone? Megan and other people too?” I asked.

  “Megan and I will celebrate separately.” Sonya finally looked at me. “But I feel like Quentin is cut off from so many people because of his past, and you and he got along great on the trip.”

  I had no idea what I had to do with any of this, except that I knew a damaged guy when I saw one. Took one to know one. I didn’t have a right to say who Sonya hooked up with, but she deserved better than to fall for someone who was still licking wounds from a recent divorce, the way Quentin was.

  7

  Sonya

  Patience was not one of my virtues, even when what I was waiting for was both a given and an unexpectedly wonderful thing. My Wednesday crawled, as I was stuck in a loop of trying not to refresh webpages, being amazed at how many books I was still selling—how many people were talking about my book—and pretending I was going to get any work done.

  The biggest problem with this kind of distraction was it sapped my creativity.

  As the clock crept toward eleven in the morning, I admitted defeat. Fortunately, I had a backup plan. I sent Luna a message asking if she was free for an early lunch meeting.

  Jeremy was good for brainstorming when I had a starting point, but it was different with Luna. She radiated enthusiasm, and I was going to feed off that today, while I fumbled my way through ideas.

  Luna agreed, and ten minutes later, we were settling into a table across the street from our offices, at Loading Java. This place had good coffee, the best pastries, and a great atmosphere.

  Luna’s best friend managed the cosplay gaming café. Violet was in a relationship with two of the richest men in the city and didn’t technically need to work. But she loved the place and was a self-professed workaholic, so she put in the hours anyway.

  I understood that. I’d daydreamed on multiple occasions about one of my books making it big, and me being in a position to quit my job. Retire at forty. I’d never actually expected the option to be available to me. Even now, I expected the surge of sales to die off any minute, but even if it didn’t, I couldn’t imagine leaving AcesPlayed. Not at this point. I loved the work and the people too much.

  “Hit me with it. Where are we starting?” Luna said.

  That was the problem. “I don’t know.” Which was the other reason I couldn’t do this with Jeremy. He liked having a jumping-off point.

  “Escort, fetch, make, or slaughter?”

  Every quest in game fell into one of those categories at its core. My favorites were the fetch quests—as in go find something or someone and bring it back—though I tried to keep a balance available for players. If I was trying to get the brain cranking, I needed to start someplace I enjoyed. “Fetch.”

  “Ooh, you should have two characters who are in love, but neither knows the other cares.” Luna pulled a strip off her chocolate croissant, popped it in her mouth, and chewed for a moment. “They both send the player on quests to get the perfect thing for the other, and in the end, the player gets to push them together.”

  Would that work with Quentin and Jeremy? The thought came out of nowhere, but it was attached to a nagging that had been in the back of my head since the trip. I doubted they were already in love, though. They were both too jaded about happily ever after for that to be the case. “I love it, but what if they’re both trying to move on, instead?”

  Luna scrunched up her nose. “And they both want a way to be grumpy, lonely bastards, but the player realizes they’d be better off together?”

  “Yes.” Now the ideas were sprouting. I needed to nurture them. “NPC A tells you that, if they could just rebuild their blacksmith shop, they could move on.”

  “And NPC B needs something to occupy their mind and time, so their heart can heal.” Luna sounded excited. More than normal.

  This was perfect. I wasn’t sure Jeremy was looking for a way to spend his free time, but he did love to create and build, and Quentin had a life that needed rebuilding. “So the player enlists B to help retrieve supplies and to offer suggestions to A, and then the player makes sure they work together.”

  “And they fall in love?”

  I grinned. “And they fall in love. The player may have to nudge them a little bit, but if things go well, the player unlocks another quest to help the NPCs plan their wedding.”

  Luna clapped. “In-game wedding outfits?”

  “Complete the quest, to unlock access to in-game player marriage.” I’d discussed ways to do that with the rest of the team, but none had felt right. This did. “And when we have player housing, help them build their dream home for access to that.”

  “I love it.”

  I did too. It was absolutely perfect. Plus, I could enact a version of it in real life. Step One—make sure Quentin and Jeremy were spending more time together, including doing something that helped Quentin get back on his feet. I wasn’t sure what the second step was yet, but I’d figure it out. Step Three—wedding bells.

  “What kinds of quests?” Figuring that out might help me draw a parallel to my real-life plan.

  Luna finished her croissant. In my excitement, I’d forgotten mine. I took a big bite while I pondered the question. Not exactly a nutritious lunch, and I’d be crashing in a few hours, but not really, because I would be spending the afternoon waiting for bestseller-list news.

  I couldn’t focus on that—we were on a roll with this idea.