Page 8 of Quit Playing Games with My Heart

“It was still your idea,” Sam said, keeping his smile fixed on me.

We stood so close that his tiny shift felt meaningful and intimate somehow. His arm was almost pressed against mine, and I could smell the richness of whatever cologne or deodorant he wore. He smelled so good. He looked and felt amazing, too. God, I wished I was brave enough to tell him how much I liked him!

“You’re planning to get this printed and put up around town?” Sam asked, his voice low and warm. I wanted to wrap myself in it.

“Yep,” I said, taking the flier from his hands and stepping away, mostly for the sake of my own sanity. “As soon as my shift is over.”

“Make sure you expense it to the café,” Sam said, nodding and falling back into boss mode. “I don’t want you paying for things like this yourself.”

I grinned, liking the way he was so ready to take charge and look out for me. Maybe boss mode wasn’t so bad after all.

The fliers were printed, and I spent a couple afternoons over the next week taking them around to all the places I could think of where gamers might hang out. Diccon came with me, which was ideal for finding my way around unfamiliar places, and we had a great time getting hyped up for the whole thing.

“I definitely think you’re onto something here,” Diccon said as we posted our last flier on the message board at the local Wawa. “I just have this feeling that games night is going to be a big hit. Like as big as open mic night.”

“We need something to counteract the disaster that construction is causing,” I said with a sigh as we walked back to Common Grounds. “The café means too much to me to let it go down without a fight.”

Diccon laughed and thumped a hand on my back. “It’s like you’re a member of the family already,” he said, adding a wink.

A rush of embarrassment hit me. Diccon might have known my big secret, but I’d worked hard to keep my crush on Sam from him. But I guess I was a little too obvious. I always had worn my heart on my sleeve.

Finally, after what felt like ages of work, but was really a little more than a week and a half, the first open games night happened.

“This looks like a good crowd,” Sam said, coming to stand next to me at the table where I was explaining the rules for Ticket to Ride to a group of younger college kids.

I straightened as the group reached for game pieces and cards. “Yeah,” I said, glancing around. “I’m impressed, and a little relieved.”

Things were going well so far. Tables had been set up in the backroom, and at least half of them were taken at the moment. About half of those were groups of friends who had come together to play, but there were plenty of individuals who had come on their own and were now making friends with other people interested in the same games they were. It made me wonder if, in the future, we could do a games night/date night thing.

Best of all, there was a steady line of people at the counter, buying the special cake Hannah had made earlier or ordering coffee. Hope was definitely in the air.

“I can’t say I’m all that surprised,” Sam said, leaning closer to me. “I knew this was a good idea as soon as you brought it to me.”

I blushed as I glanced up at him, fighting desperately not to read too much into the warmth in his eyes at the same time. “Good ideas are a group effort,” I said, nudging him to let him know it wasn’t just my idea.

“Um, I have a question about the rules,” one of the young guys sitting at the table said, holding up the rule pamphlet with a frown. “You said to draw two railway car cards, but it says here I should draw destination cards?” He turned the rule pamphlet to face me.

I panicked. I hated being put on the spot with words in the best of times, but to have someone show me something I couldn’t read and ask my opinion about it with Sam standing right there gave me serious flashes of Professor Schwartz and the Pittsburgh disaster.

“You can draw either kind of card once the game gets going,” one of the young women at the table corrected her friend. “But it sounds like it’s probably best to start with the railway car cards.”

“Oh,” the guy said, pulling the pamphlet back. “I get it.”

Crisis averted, though I still felt like I’d opened a closet door and found a rabid raccoon waiting to jump out at me. I stepped back, which meant moving away from Sam as well, but I needed a couple minutes to clear my head and calm down. “You guys have fun,” I said before turning and heading off to a table where some louder college kids were setting up Jenga.

I tried to remind myself what Kendra had said the other day, that Sam would probably be really understanding if he learned how difficult it was for me to read. He probably wouldn’t hold it against me at all.

But that was part of the problem. He wouldn’t hold it against me, but he’d pity me. Who wouldn’t pity a twenty-five-year-old guy whose dyslexia was so bad that he could barely read the labels on the supplies in Common Grounds’ pantry? All the in-school help in the world hadn’t been enough to get the words to stay still on any page put in front of me long enough to make sense of what was written. I could barely sign my own name when it mattered.

I was lucky that there were enough hacks and cheats in the world, a lot of them available on my phone, so that I could get by. When in doubt, I could have my phone read things to me. I’d gotten really good at asking for help and feigning excuses, like having a headache that made my eyes hurt, to get strangers to help.

It was my worst fear that something would come along that would spill my secret to Sam and the rest of the crew at Common Grounds. Diccon was cool with it and, like Kendra, didn’t think people would have a problem with it, but I had a major problem with it. I wanted Sam to like me. I wanted him to think of me as someone he could get something started with.

He would never want me if he thought I was stupid.

I pushed all that aside to really focus on games and the café’s customers for the rest of the evening. Fortunately, everything went swimmingly. The café was filled with laughter, conversation, and the occasional happy shout of victory or wistful sigh of defeat from the people engaged in the games. At its height, about three-quarters of the tables were filled, and it was only the first time running the event.

“This turned out way better than I thought it would,” Chase, one of the afternoon baristas who had stuck around to help and then to play a few rounds of Jenga, said as he grabbed his jacket to leave. “Good job, guys.”