“I don’t need Teddy to look out for me.” At his look, she sighed. “Fine. I promise I won’t hang out in the parking lot, okay? The servers make good money there, and it’s close to my place. That’s all I really care about at the moment.”
“Teddy would give you a job, you know.”
“I know. But I don’t want to work at the Lucky Gator.”
“Why not?”
“Because.”
That wasn’t a good answer. “Because
why?
”
Exasperated, Jamie tossed the rest of her slice back into the box. “Because Teddy is a friend of yours, and I wanted to see if I could get a job on my own.”
“And now that you know you can—”
“I’m going to keep it,” she interrupted, leveling a hard look at him.
He shrugged. “I’m just trying to help.”
“And it’s appreciated, but unnecessary. I’m a big girl, Colin.” She wiped her fingers on a napkin, then crawled across the floor to straddle his lap. “I know you mean well, and it’s very sweet—if also a little annoying,” she warned. “But I’ve got to do this on my own. It’s important to me.”
“It would be easier, though, if you’d just—”
She put a finger over his lips. “Subject closed. Now, I’m going to the Backstreet Cultural Museum in Tremé tomorrow. Want to come with me?”
“I thought you went there already.”
“No, I was going to, but I went to the Presbytere instead. They have a fantastic Mardi Gras exhibit, but Backstreet is supposed to go deeper into the cultural aspects and African-American influence on Mardi Gras.”
He settled his hands on her hips and adjusted her so he still kept circulation to his legs. “You know, there’s so much more to New Orleans than just Mardi Gras. We do manage to entertain ourselves the other ten months of the year.”
She grinned. “But I
like
Mardi Gras.”
“So do I. But there’s music and food and all kinds of history and...well, things that
aren’t
Mardi Gras.”
“I know. I bought the guidebook, Colin.”
“I’m talking about the things that aren’t in the guidebooks. The places the tourists don’t really know about. You’re a local now, so you should experience what New Orleans is really like.”
“I’m not really a local yet.”
“But you don’t want to live like a tourist forever, do you? Let me take you out and show you the real New Orleans.
My
New Orleans. The clubs, the restaurants...all the reasons I love this city.”
Her head tilted to one side. “Like on an actual date?”
He hadn’t really thought of it like that. He and Jamie had been spending a lot of time together this week, but it was mostly in bed. He knew every inch of her body, every way to make her whimper and scream, but they hadn’t had what anyone could call a date. It sounded a bit like backtracking at this point, but... “Yeah. Like a date.”
She slid off his lap. “I’m not sure I’m ready for that.”
He had to wonder about Jamie’s ex, what he’d done to her to not only send her running off to a new city but to also have her build such solid walls around herself. She never talked about her past except in very vague terms, but then she never asked about his past, either, thank God. He didn’t want to get all confessional about his life and his family, so he couldn’t get too upset over
her
avoidance of the same kind of topics.
So it was a rather weird arrangement, being both more
and
less than friends. She’d come to his house, they’d have amazing, hanging-from-the-chandeliers sex, but she wouldn’t stay the night, always heading home once the afterglow faded. And while they talked about everything from pop culture to politics, they simply didn’t delve too deeply into personal topics. It was either very healthy or very sick, and the sad part was that he didn’t know which.
“It’s dinner, not a marriage proposal, Jamie.”
“I know, and it seems silly, considering...” She sighed. “Sure. It’ll be fun.”
Boy, Jamie was tough on his ego. “Your enthusiasm is simply overwhelming.”
“It’s not a lack of enthusiasm. It’s just strange. I mean, I had a plan for moving here. Get a job, maybe a cat, get my head screwed on straight.... Dating wasn’t really part of that plan.”
“But celibacy was?”
She shrugged. “Kind of. I mean, why complicate life unnecessarily?”
“But...”
“But here I am with you. And I’m not saying that’s a bad thing,” she added quickly, “just unexpected. Hell, I’m already giving advice to other people about their love lives, and if that’s not the most ironic and ridiculous thing ever, I don’t know what is.”
“I’ve read your first
Ex Factor
column. It didn’t seem ridiculous to me.”
“Really?”
He nodded.
She elbowed him. “And? Did you like it? Is it okay?”
“Fishing for compliments?”
“No. I’m simply worried I’m going to screw this up right out of the gate.”
He rubbed her leg. “I thought it was great. Insightful and amusing at the same time.”
“Really?” She looked both earnest and pleased at the same time. “You wouldn’t lie to me to make me feel better?”
“Nope.”
She blew out her breath. “Good, because I don’t want to let Callie down. She barely knows me and she’s letting me fill in for her.”
They were a bit far afield from the earlier topic of going out, but this seemed important to her, so he went with it. Maybe relieving
that
worry might bring her around, too. “Even if it wasn’t good—which it is, so stop worrying—Callie isn’t going to hate you for it. It’s just a little advice column.”
“And it’s a little scary, because I’m not sure I should be giving advice about other people’s love lives and problems, considering my own past.”
He couldn’t consider her past or her ex, but there was no sense mentioning that. “These are people who write to strangers for advice.
Anonymous
strangers who do not even pretend to have any education or training to back up that advice. It would be kind of hard to screw that up.”
“Callie’s not anonymous on the site.”
“True. They know they’re asking an unmarried wedding planner and her ex-boyfriend for relationship tips. That’s messed up in ways I can’t even describe.”
“Yet you do it anyway.”
“As a favor to Callie.”
Casually, almost too casually, Jamie said, “Callie’s great. I like her.”
“Good.”
“Should that be weird?”
“What do you mean?”
“Callie’s your ex, and we are...” She fumbled for words. “Well, we are
this.
”
Well, that was an enlightening description
.
“Callie and I haven’t been a couple since our freshman year in college. Any weirdness is long past.”
“But you still care about her.”
“Of course. We’re friends.”
“Yeah, but so are
we,
and...” She looked at him evenly. “Look, if there’s something going on between you two, I really don’t want to get in the middle of it and mess it up.”
“If you’re asking if I’m still in love with her, the answer is no. If you’re asking if we still sleep together occasionally, the answer is also no. We’re not
that
kind of friends.”
Jamie nodded without lifting her eyes from her hands. “Can I ask how long it took for you to get over her?”
“What?”
“Y’all were obviously together for a while.”
“A couple of years. But we were kids.”
“What broke you up?”
“A lot of things.” When Jamie didn’t say anything, he sighed. “Didn’t you ask Callie? I thought y’all were friends now.” This seemed exactly like the kind of things girls would dish about, and that actually made him a little uncomfortable, now that he thought about it.
“Not like close friends. She just said y’all dated in high school and left it at that. I didn’t want to pry.”
“But you’ll ask me about it?”
“Yeah.” When he didn’t say anything, she nudged him with her foot. “Come on. What happened? I’m curious. Did you cheat on her?”
There was something in her voice that told him more about her ex than she probably intended. “No, of course not.”
“Then what?”
“You’re not going to let this go, are you?”
She shook her head.
He sighed.
So much for not prying into the past.
“Callie went away for college—”
“Which hurt your feelings?”
“Maybe. In a way. She could have stayed local, but she got a scholarship to Wimbly Southern and took it. She changed while she was gone.”
“People do that when they go away to college.”
“I was only eighteen, remember? I didn’t have any type of perspective on life. All I knew was that my girlfriend chose to go away, became a totally different person, and then I had to go save her ass when she got into trouble. We had a huge fight, and I was going into my exams, and I nearly flunked them all that semester. And since I wasn’t on a scholarship like she was, I knew I couldn’t afford to retake the classes. Things went downhill from there pretty quickly.”
“So it was her fault?”
That was a tricky question, not that Jamie had any reason to think so. He’d blamed Callie at the time, but he had perspective now. He’d driven all the way to Mississippi to bail her out of jail, only to get blasted by her, as she did not want nor need his help. The long, miserable drive back had been bad enough, only to arrive home to find that his mother had been taken to the hospital in a nearly psychotic rage. That episode had been bad enough to finally get his mother officially diagnosed and medicated, but the guilt of his trip pushing her to that edge and his anger and misery over his fight with Callie had nearly derailed his exams. It had taken him awhile to put the pieces back together that time. Callie had been more the catalyst than the cause, so he couldn’t lay all the blame on her. At least not now.
He looked sideways at Jamie, who seemed to be patiently awaiting his answer. He might not want to share, but he didn’t want to lie, either. “Not entirely, but that was the last straw. For both of us, but for different reasons.”
“But you’re friends now. And you write
The Ex Factor
together.”
“That took a while, though. We lived in the same town, we had a lot of the same friends.... It wasn’t like we could cut each other out of our lives completely.”
“But you didn’t get back together.”
“Young love is great, but it doesn’t have staying power.”
Jamie’s mouth twisted and he remembered her saying something about meeting her ex when she was nineteen.
Oops.
At the same time, she was proof he was right. “And
The Ex Factor?
”
“
The Ex Factor
was kind of an accident. I built her website for her a few years ago, and one day I noticed she had written her take on a recent celebrity breakup. To this day I don’t know why, but I responded. People loved it and it became a thing.”
“That’s nice.” Jamie stared at her hands again.
“So is this really about Callie, or is it about
your
ex?” This time he had to nudge her when she didn’t answer.
She made a noise between a snort and a laugh. “I don’t see me and Joey being friends in the future. We’re not kids, and this isn’t kid stuff. There’s a bit more dirt and disaster going on.”
He shouldn’t be pressing this. He’d be a hypocrite to do so when he’d been almost as vague about him and Callie and their breakup. But there was one thing he did want to know—and it was fair game since she’d started it. “Are you still in love with him?”
“No. And I don’t want him back, either.” She answered quickly and adamantly—almost
too
quickly and adamantly. As if she might be trying to convince herself as well as him. “I certainly can’t forgive him. But he was a part of my life for a long time, so...” She shrugged. “It’s weird.”
“Life is weird.”
“That it is.” And with that, her wall went back up, clearly bringing that topic to an end.
“Any more questions about Callie?”
“Nope.”
“Good. Because I’d really rather not think about Callie right now.”
“Oh, why is that?”
“Because otherwise it would be a little disturbing when I did
this.
” He hauled Jamie back into his lap and kissed her. He didn’t want to shine flashlights into dark places in either of their pasts. Nothing good could come of it. Sometimes you just had to let the circus pack its tents and move on for a while. God knew it would come back to town eventually, so why revisit when it wasn’t absolutely necessary?
Her arms went around his neck without hesitation, massaging the nape as she melted into him. She hummed as his fingers massaged her thighs, and he found that place on the side of her neck that she liked. “This is very nice.”
“Mmm-hmm,” he answered, slipping his hands under her shirt to release the clasp of her bra.
They didn’t even make it to the bedroom.
SEVEN
You can come home. He misses you. We all do. We’re worried about you.
Jamie sat on
the back deck of Beauregard’s, eating her free post-shift meal as she stared at her phone and the unexpected message. She wasn’t sure how to respond to that. She’d once considered Michelle a friend, but Michelle had been one of the first to cut her out as soon as her loyalty to Joey wavered even the tiniest bit, and she’d found out they actually weren’t friends after all. This message had come straight out of nowhere.
Hell, she wasn’t even sure if she should respond at all.
She’d admit—but only to herself—that she’d toyed with the idea of going back. This was much harder than she’d expected it to be. Waitressing was keeping her afloat for the time being, but she didn’t enjoy it, she wasn’t very good at it and nothing better seemed to be coming along, no matter how many résumés she sent out.
She’d met some people at work, made a few friends—not besties, but folks she could hang out with, at least. She wasn’t getting horribly lost every time she set foot outside anymore, and she was even starting to understand the local accents and idioms. The other day she’d discovered her tire was flat and managed to deal with it all by herself. Okay, not totally by herself; she’d knocked on the neighbor’s door and paid him fifteen dollars to help her. But she’d paid very close attention and was pretty sure she’d be able to change it herself next time.
For the first time in her life, she felt like a fully-functioning adult member of society.
She didn’t necessarily
like
it all the time—things like insurance were just a pain in the butt—but by God, she was doing it. It wasn’t anything like her old life, but she was proving Joey and everyone else a little more wrong each day.
But it was still tempting. Oh, so tempting.
It was like quitting smoking: every day that she didn’t give in to the temptation was a little victory. She just needed to hold onto her pride.
Taking a deep breath, she quickly typed,
Tell everyone I’m fine. But I’m not coming back.
She hit send before she could lose her nerve.
Almost immediately, like a message from the universe that she’d done the right thing, another message pinged to her phone, this time from Colin:
Are you coming over tonight?
Colin was possibly the only thing keeping her sane at the moment, but even that had its own caution lights. She liked him—a lot—but she had to question whether it was smart to get too attached to him. She was well aware of the dangers of rebounding—especially coming off a relationship like hers—and she didn’t want to cling to him for all the wrong reasons.
It was getting harder to keep him at arm’s length, though; there were moments when she almost said too much, and times when she wanted to say more. But she could tell he was keeping his distance, too. Too many silences, too many conversational curves. She knew what
she
wasn’t willing to talk about, but she had to wonder what topics he was intentionally avoiding and why.
Not that she could really ask unless she was ready to spill her own guts as well.
Mercy. She had to question how healthy this really was for her....
But her body was already on board, a lovely anticipatory glow crawling up from her toes at the mere thought. It was hard to fight.
I can’t. Working tonight.
Come by after?
What did Colin think she was? Just some kind of a booty call?
Other plans made already,
she typed. That wasn’t entirely false; a couple of the other waitresses had been after her to go out for a drink after work for a while now. It was time she took them up on it.
A few minutes later, Colin’s response came back:
Okay. See you later.
Damn it, she’d kill to know the tone behind that. Disappointed? Perfectly fine? Peeved? She was certainly feeling something like disappointment, but it was hard to track where it stemmed from. Was she hoping that he’d try a little harder to convince her? Or should she be glad that he hadn’t?
It was all very confusing.
Welcome to my life.
Was there anything in it that
wasn’t
confusing?
With a sigh, she cleared her table and clocked back in for her next shift. And while she tried to be perky for the sake of her customers, that confused feeling stayed with her all night.
Figuring she would have to learn to trust herself eventually, she left the restaurant at the end of her shift and found herself at Colin’s door a few minutes later.
He seemed surprised to see her. “I thought you had other plans tonight.”
“I sort of did. But I decided I’d rather be with you.” It felt good to say that out loud. And she meant it.
He grinned and pulled her inside.
* * *
“So
why
are we killing the zombies again?”
“Because they’re zombies and this is the zombie apocalypse. They’re the bad guys,” Colin explained.
Jamie was seated next to him on the bed, wearing nothing but one of his old T-shirts, his laptop in her lap and a mouse on a book beside her, her forehead wrinkled as she stared at the screen, where zombies shuffled down Bourbon Street. A half-naked girl, a bottle of wine and a computer game in his bed at the same time had to rate high on any geek’s ultimate wish list, but he wasn’t entirely sure why he’d agreed to appease her curiosity about
No Quarter
at three in the morning instead of finding something better to occupy them. In fact, he’d never been less interested in a game in his life than he was at this moment.
“Isn’t zombie killing more of a job for law enforcement?” she asked. “Or maybe the military? I mean, they have much better weapons than just a baseball bat.”
“Well, you can earn better weapons, and the military isn’t going to help—”
“Wait,” she interrupted, “so you’re telling me there’s no military after the zombie apocalypse? Has our entire system of government collapsed as well?”
“Well...” He started to try to explain, realized he couldn’t, and just said, “They’re busy somewhere else.”
“In that case, then maybe it would be smarter to just hole up indoors and wait?” Jamie gestured at the screen, where a zombie had just tripped and fallen. “I mean, they’re zombies, not a pack of Einsteins. A good lock should stymie them until help arrives.”
“That rather defeats the entire purpose of the game.”
She shot a sideways glance at him, then frowned at the screen again. “Well, I’m not sure I’m sold on that whole purpose anyway.”
He let that slide. “Now, your mouse lets you look around—”
“Whoa, motion sickness much?” She moved the mouse slowly this time, turning her avatar in a circle to see her surroundings. “This is amazing, Colin. You really designed all of this yourself?”
“Well, Eric, too. And a few other folks. It started off as a project we played with when we were still in high school—only back then it was aliens invading—and then we expanded on it while we were in college. We were studying programming, so we’d apply what we learned to the game. Eventually we changed the aliens to zombies and invited others to play. It got popular and grew from there, and we’ve been playing catch-up ever since.”
“But making this...I just can’t imagine. Not just the programming either, but also the concept, the story, all of it.” She grinned at him. “You are really smart. Like genius smart.”
There was just enough surprise in her voice to tell him that she’d never given games a thought before, but there was also an admiration that wasn’t at all faked. It was quite flattering. “Maybe not genius...”
“Well, you’re definitely the smartest guy I’ve ever been with.” Then she pointed to the avatars in the upper corner of her screen. “Who are all of those people?”
Now he was both pleased he’d showed her the game and still regretting it at the same time. His brain was having a hard time holding both emotions simultaneously. “They are the other players currently online.”
“I’m supposed to play with other people?”
“If you want. You don’t have to, but it’s called a massively
multi
player online game for a reason.”
“Oh, okay.” She cracked her knuckles. “Let’s do this. Who goes first?”
“No one goes first. It’s not that kind of game. If you joined them, you’d work together as a team to fight the zombies.”
She looked at him strangely. “So how do you win this game, then?”
“You don’t. You can accomplish your objectives, secure areas and complete missions, but the game itself never ends. There are always more zombies.”
Jamie rolled her eyes. “Well, that’s just ridiculous. What’s the point?”
He’d never thought about it. That’s just how it was. “The point of games isn’t necessarily to win.”
“Actually, it is. That’s why they’re called games.”
“The fun is in the
playing,
” he stressed.
“And in the
winning,
” she stressed just as earnestly.
“Look, people pay me money to play this game. I
want
them to continue playing indefinitely.”
“Okay,
that
makes sense.” She leaned back and reached for her drink. “I’ll confess I don’t really see the attraction, though.”
“You’re not my target audience.”
“Very true.” She moved the laptop to the floor, giving him a lovely view of her thighs and butt, before flopping back on the pillows with a dramatic sigh. “How is that satisfying, though? An unending catastrophe and no way to ever win? We get enough of that in real life, thanks very much. The zombies are just added suckitude.”
“Oh, but there is satisfaction. You clear an area, secure it against future attacks...”
“But the zombies keep coming.”
He shrugged. “I get great satisfaction from killing zombies.”
“I think I’d prefer something where I had a bit more control. I’ve got enough uncontrollable stuff in my real life, thanks very much.”
“Ah, but you forget—I
do
have control. It’s my game. I made it.” He rolled to his back, arms spread wide. “I am the ultimate supreme power in that universe,” he declared in his best supervillain voice, throwing in an evil laugh for good measure. “Even the zombies bend to my will.”
“Somebody’s on a power trip.”
He wasn’t going to deny it. That power was what had attracted him to games in the first place. No matter how crazy things got with his mother, he could always lose himself in a game where the bad guys were obvious and bested by skill. Even the most complicated-seeming games were nothing but code and scripted actions, predictable and constant. It didn’t take a psychology degree to figure out that he had started building worlds where he was God in response to the fact that the real world was way out of his control. Hell, he freely admitted it. He turned his head to grin at Jamie. “Jealous?”
“Of someone who has ultimate godlike powers over the fates of thousands of people’s virtual lives?
Absolutely.
I’d love that kind of control.”
“Oh, really?”
“Yep.” In a flash, she’d straddled him, knees braced on either side of his hips. She put her hands on his biceps, gently pinning him to the mattress. “Not only would I love it, I’d totally get off on it,” she purred, leaning down to press her lips to his chest. In slow, tantalizing movements, Jamie brushed her breasts across his torso, letting him feel hard nipples covered only in thin cotton. Her hips rocked gently back against his groin, teasing him and causing him to buck in response.
A slow, sexy smile spread across Jamie’s face, and she released the pressure on his arms long enough to sweep the T-shirt she wore up and off. Then she reached for his arms and pressed them up over his head.
She was getting off on the control, but then so was he. She slid up his body, letting him feel every inch of her skin, and brushed a nipple across his lips. “I’d be a benevolent ruler, you know. Keep everyone happy. I’d get rid of the zombies, the violence, and make it Mardi Gras in the Quarter all the time. Just music and parades and this.” She brushed the other nipple across his lips but pulled back when he tried to capture it, sliding back down to press a hot kiss against his neck.
“You want the power?” She lifted her head. “The total control?” He waited for her nod, then flipped her to her back, reversing their positions and capturing her wrists in his hands above her head. Jamie’s mouth opened in a little O of shock. “Design your own game. The zombies stay.”
Jamie stuck out her tongue and he kissed her long and hard. She sighed into his mouth. And though he released her wrists to free his hands for another exploration of that creamy skin, she kept them where they were, wrapping her fingers around the slats of his headboard.
Shortly thereafter, Jamie began to whimper, arching against his hands and mouth. A few minutes later, she was screaming his name.
As he moved over her again, she released the headboard and raked her fingers through his hair. “I may have been wrong earlier.”
“About what?”
“There’s quite a bit of fun in the playing, too.”
* * *
Two days later, they actually went out for the first time. Colin rang the doorbell to her apartment, and when Jamie opened the door, his tongue nearly hit his shoes. A silky red dress hugged her curves, managing to show both generous cleavage and leg, and offset her creamy skin. Oh, it begged to be peeled off of her. Her hair was pulled up again in a complicated sexy twist off her neck, and her eyes were darkly lined and smoky. “I...you...um...”
Jamie grinned. “I’ll take that as a compliment. And you look very ‘I...you...um...’ as well.” She grabbed a wrap and a tiny purse, but then paused. “I hope this is okay. I’ve never been to a real jazz club before.”
Damn him and his stupid idea to take her out. He had to search to find his voice. “It’s perfect. I’ll be the envy of every guy in the place.”
She rose up on her tiptoes to give him a kiss. “Flattery will get you everywhere.”
The club wasn’t far and the air not too muggy tonight, so they walked. They’d only gone a block when Jamie slid her hand into his. “So how are things in the Dungeons today?”