But those same online friends we hold at such a distance are, in many ways, our close comrades in arms. We go off to battle together, spend long hours working on quests together. We adventure together, virtually. We sit for long hours waiting for the right spawn to show up with the items we need. We joke. We play around. We make memories. And they may be memories shared over bits and bytes rather than stories swapped over the campfire, but is there really a difference? These are our companions. We fight virtual wars together. We comfort each other through disappointments.
And sometimes…sometimes we meet in person. And we find that that same chemistry that brought us together as friends over the game exists even more in real life. Because aside from forming that bond based on geography, as you would with random classmates or roommates from school—you have shared epic experiences. Events that, at some later time, you’ll still chuckle at and start your sentences with things like, “Remember that time we were fighting the Cinder Dragon in Ashenstorm Castle and it took us eight hours to clear the place because we all kept dying over and over again?”
We’ve spent hours and hours in each other’s presence, helping each other, problem-solving. And at times, when things got more personal, we helped each other with real-life problems, sometimes talking with one another through the night, to fight the loneliness and isolation we sometimes feel.
Sometimes those virtual friendships have blossomed into something more. Face-to-face forever friends. Or lovers. Or lifelong companions.
And when you really think about it, even though the interaction is different, are the feelings any less worthy of the label “friendship”?
No, indeed.
***
My third round of death by IV was dealt by smiling nurses and a very kind oncologist, Dr. Rivera, who I would have loved to have had for a grandpa. He was head of the oncology division at the UCI Medical School and had brought some students with him on chemo rounds. After talking to me for a few minutes, he sent the students on ahead and sat down opposite me.
“I hear that you are a medical student yourself, Mia. Is that so?”
I sent a glance toward Adam, who sat beside me, reading. My mom was still up in Anza with the overdue mare and Heath was sick so it was just me and him. And I was suddenly wishing that he wasn’t here to listen in on this conversation. “Um. Well I would have been. But that’s on hold for now.”
The doctor looked thoughtful. “You’ll be well and done with your rounds of chemo by the fall. Dr. Tahan from Johns Hopkins says he’s looking forward to having you in his program.”
I shifted in my chair. Adam appeared to be reading email on his tablet but I knew he was following every word. “I’m probably not going to be in his program. I notified him—”
“Mia, dear,” Dr. Rivera said, placing a hand over mine. “It’s okay to plan for the future. You’ve been through a lot, but don’t lose sight of your dreams and goals.”
“I haven’t,” I said.
He smiled. “Of course, you could always stay in lovely SoCal and attend our school. We’d be ecstatic to have you—and I see you requested the deferment from us as well. But I’ll be the first to admit we probably can’t compete with JHU in the field you want to study.”
I smiled. “We’ll see. At this point, I’m just trying to figure out how I’m going to keep my lunch down today. I’m not really at the stage where I can give it much thought.”
Dr. Rivera sobered, his shaggy brows puckering over deep-set eyes. “Have you attended any of the group therapy sessions, Mia? I think they might be good for you.”
“I’ll look into them,” I said. My way of brushing him off, of course. I had no intention of going to group therapy. I couldn’t spill my soul to the people I loved most in the world. How could I rattle off the string of tragedies to a bunch of strangers? And I’m sure that there’d be plenty of judgment meted out for the decision I’d made to get chemo right away, too. It wasn’t too far-fetched to anticipate, after all. I judged myself for that decision every damn day.
Adam never spoke up but I caught him watching me for the rest of the chemo session. I started popping anti-nausea gum, playing dumb by avoiding his gaze. I knew we’d keep on playing this weird unspoken game between us where we went through the motions of being perfectly healthy without discussing the biggest issues between us. It was almost as if we were both hoping that if we pretended these problems went away, they would. But he didn’t want to deal with those things now because he thought I couldn’t handle it.
“That doctor had a point,” Adam said on the drive back home to his house. I wasn’t yet feeling the rumblings of the usual nausea but the headache was starting to beat down on me. I slumped down in my seat and looked at him. His features were completely unreadable behind his designer aviator sunglasses.
“I draw the line at group therapy.”
“Okay, but what about private therapy? It might be good for you.”
I glanced at him sidelong. “Yeah, it might be. And it might not. I think I’ll be fine without it.” I punctuated this statement by folding my arms over my chest.
“And what about what he said about medical school?”
I didn’t say anything, just massaged my forehead, hoping the body language was enough to get him to drop the subject.
He glanced at me again. “I think it’s a good idea for you to make plans for the fall.”
He meant it was a good idea to make plans that didn’t involve the possibility that I wouldn’t survive this. I squeezed my upper arms where I held them. I wish I could push away those nagging fears that told me I was somehow in that fifteen percent that might not make it. I wish I could assure him like he obviously needed to be assured that I hadn’t given up hope.
The hope was there, but it had been bruised and battered along the way and it was hard to see. I looked at Adam again. I wasn’t going to fight him on this. If he needed to see me not giving up, then I’d somehow find a way to give it to him.
“I’ll do that at some point…when I’m feeling better.”
***
This round came and went with the usual brand of grossness. But after about four days, I started to bounce back. I was even eating a little, and so Adam thought we should go out.
I didn’t like to go out, though. I was still self-conscious about my looks and anywhere nice wouldn’t let me keep my hoodie up. And—just my luck—the winter was an unusually warm one and knit caps grew sweaty and uncomfortable.
But Heath was feeling better now, and Adam suggested grabbing takeout and going to his house for a visit. That, I could get behind. We grabbed some Greek food—my favorite—and headed over.
I had a key to Heath’s place but now that he was living with Connor, I never used it. Instead I knocked at the door while Adam lagged behind me to get the food out of the car.
But what happened when the door opened totally floored me. A beautiful red-haired woman of medium height and curvy figure opened the door and stared at me, her jaw dropping. We’d met in person for the first time just a couple months before at DracoCon.
I gasped. “Kat? What the hell are you doing here?”
“Nice to see you too, bitch,” she grumbled and then pulled me into the tightest hug. “You’re bald, by the way.”
“As a Ferengi, yes, I know. Attractive, isn’t it?”
“Fuck, no. But you’re still hotter than me.”
I gasped, laughing. “What the hell are you doing here?”
“You keep cancer a secret from me and you are asking me to explain myself? Maybe I wanted to come see you.”
“Heath helped you pull this off?”
“Yeah, I’m staying with him and his BF for a while. He said I could crash here as long as I want.”
I heard a rustle and figured Adam had caught up with me. Kat looked up, eyes widening. “Fallen?”
Adam grinned. “Kat. Glad to meet you in person at last.”
“Yeah… glad to finally be in the loop.”
I turned to him. “You knew she was here?”
“Yep.”
I made a face at him. “Nice work.”
Kat was staring at Adam through narrowed eyes. “You look so familiar, Fallen. Don’t tell me you were at the Con and I didn’t know!”
Adam laughed and looked away shyly. “I’m going to go put this in the kitchen,” he said as he squeezed past both of us.
“I’ll get my hug later, then,” Kat said as he moved past her, his arms laden with kabobs, gyros and different varieties of hummus dip. She watched him pass and when he turned his back, she waved her hand as if she was trying to cool her face. “He is fucking hot, Mia. No wonder you wanted to keep him a secret. Figured I’d take him away from you, huh?”
I laughed. “Something like that. Men lose their shit for redheads. And well, since I’ve got no hair on my head there’s no way I could compete.”
“Seriously. Fuck me. Does he have a friend as hot as he is?”
I raised my brow. “No one’s as hot as he is. But there are a few who are close.”
“We’ll talk about that later. I’m going to go get my hug from him and see if his body is as hard as it looks.”
“Slut. If he looks at your ass, I’m beating the shit out of you.”
“You’re a bit too skinny for those kind of threats, my friend,” she said, turning around and leading us toward the kitchen. Heath stopped me on the way in. “Hey, doll,” he said, pulling me into a hug. “Feeling better?”
“I should ask
you
that, Typhoid Joe. You aren’t going to give me your disease, are you?”
“If by disease, you mean awesomeness, then no. I can’t pass on my awesomeness that way. You’ve been wishing that for years.” He landed a peck on my cheek.
I wiggled out of his hold. “I’d better get in there. Kat has the hots for Adam.”
“Well, no fucking duh. Who doesn’t?”
I heaved a sigh.
“Go on, then. Defend your territory,” he chided. “Not that you really need to, you know.”
I shrugged.
Heath stopped me, putting a heavy hand on my shoulder before I moved through the door. “I mean it. I know you are feeling and looking like shit these days—”
“Wow, thanks—”
“But you don’t need to worry about him. He’s by your side until the end.”
I swallowed a sudden dry lump in my throat and looked up—way up—at Heath. He was a lot taller than me so I had to tilt my head back to do it. “The end of what?”
He frowned. “Goddamn, I’m sorry. That was a shitty choice of words.”
I turned to go through to the kitchen. “I agree. But we are all permitted our lapses.”
“Lapses? What lapses?” Kat asked, backing away from apparently having hugged Adam.
“Lapses in judgment. Like letting a saucy redhead leave her new job to travel here from Vancouver—over a thousand miles—”
“To see a sick friend—” Kat interrupted. “And I’d lose my job again in a heartbeat. Just like I know you’d do the same for me. You aren’t getting rid of me, Geek Girl.”
I grinned. “Good!”
“What, good?” Heath laughed. “You aren’t the one who’s stuck with her and her Lucky Crispy Sugar Flakes addiction. She seriously eats the shittiest sugar cereal in existence.”
Kat waggled her brows. “I have a cute dentist. I like to have an excuse to visit him.”
“So is that true?” I asked. “You really lost your job to come down to see me?”
“Pfft.” She waved her hand. “It was a crap job anyway. I’ll look for another when I get back…
if
I get back. I have to say the weather here is ah-mazing. How could I go back to Vancouver after spending a winter here?”
“There might be something for you at Draco, Kat. Maybe something cool like playtesting. Because I know you’d be honest as hell,” Adam said
“A job at Draco? That would fucking rock. You know someone with an in?”
I glanced at Adam, raising my brows. “Does the CEO count?”
“We are talking about the gaming company, right? The owner of the game we are all hopelessly addicted to? Because this would be hella disappointing if you all were talking about Draco garbage delivery or Draco burger joint.”
I started giggling and both Adam and Heath watched me, open-mouthed. I closed my mouth, self-conscious. “What?”
Heath glanced at Adam and then turned back to me. “I think we are both just happy to see you laughing again. It’s been a while.”
Kat slunk up beside me and slipped an arm around my shoulders. “Then my visit has been good for something.”
Adam watched both of us, his gaze intensifying thoughtfully. “I’ll be the first to agree with that.” He turned to her. “Kat, if you want to stay, then I can make sure you have a job.”
Kat raised her brows at Adam. “Oh, and how will you do that? Do I need to blow the CEO at Draco or something?”
I opened my mouth to answer but Heath’s snicker interrupted me. “No, that’s Mia’s job.” My face flushed with heat and I didn’t look at Adam, though I might have liked to. I was starting to feel better again after that last round and when that happened, my sex drive usually kicked in, too. And it had been a while. A long while.
But Adam seemed more interested in taking it slow.
We sat down to eat the Greek food and explained the entire thing to Kat. She was still open-mouthed and pale from shock when we left a few hours later.
***
The next day Kat was sitting with me in my room at Adam’s house. We’d all agreed that she could stay as long as she liked at Heath’s house. I’d lend her my car, since I really wasn’t using it. And not having a car in Southern California really wasn’t an option. It was just too difficult to get around without one. Heath was more than willing to let her stay in the guest room and she’d look for work, hopefully at Draco.
We were sharing playlists over the sound system in my little sanctuary. Adam had gone into work, which is what he usually did for the first few days after I was feeling more myself after a round. Kat threw surreptitious glances at me and I could tell she wanted the details of what was going on between us.
“You might as well just ask me,” I sighed after more than a half hour of her out-of-place coyness.
“Is he as hot in bed as he is to look at?”
My mouth dropped open. “I’m not going to talk about that.” Most especially because it had been so long, I almost couldn’t remember. Almost. Adam was hot to look at, sure. And he was even hotter in bed. But he wasn’t sharing any of that with me anymore. Nowadays.