Page 4 of Gaming with the Gargoyle in Hallow's Cove
“But what?”
“Gabe, I picked Preston of all people, he was such a dick it’s not even funny. I can’t be trusted to pick someone else.” What I don’t say is, how could anyone ever measure up to him? I had amassivecrush on Gabe in high school, but when nothing came of it, I moved on. The trouble is, I’m not certain I everactuallywill. If I thought I was punching above my weight withPrestonGabe is so far out of my league it’s not even funny. But, I also don’t know that I could ever be happy with less. “I’m fine. It’s not like I have some gaping hole in my life.”
“Just a house you can’t live in.” He smirks at me. “Anybody would be lucky to love you, but if you aren’t ready, then you’re not ready.”
“Thanks, I just wish my mom would lay off, ya know?” I squeeze his big hand where it practically engulfs my knee and smile, albeit sadly. Bonus point to me for not rolling my eyes at him saying anyone would be lucky to have me.
“Me too, but tonight milady, it is not time for mothers or their drama. Tonight—” he stands with a grand flourish of his arms. “We have a dragon to slay!”
“If anyone else ever shows up...” I perk up at the prospect of our favorite pastime with my favorite person.
“Who cares, if no one else shows, I’ve had a one on one adventure I’ve been thinking about we could always try?”
“Oh yeah? For your new system?”
Gabe has been building his own tabletop RPG system for a while. His degree is in family therapy and he’s been developing a game based on the premise of developing connections between players.
“Yeah, you up for it?”
“Sounds fun!”
It’s early evening and the few customers left in our small store are locals that we know well. A fairy that works at the local hair salon is looking at a party game, and a group of local teens are playing a popular trading card game around one of our tables.
In the 1800s, this place had been built as a fire station, back when they were still using fire wagons, so it is situated as a large, U-shape, with a spot to pull in the fire wagon in the center. Gabe’s usual place, where he poses as a statue during the day, is, of course, vacated, so I pull over and plug-in the large inflatable gargoyle that we keep there while he is awake. We’ve tried really hard to make the place cozy, the kind of place we would have liked to have hung out at when we were kids.
Board games line the walls and four large tables sit on either side of the room. There’s an unspoken rule that though we stop selling around 11:00 p.m., if you’re in the store and you’re playing a game, we’ll let you hang out until I’m ready to go to sleep. The only other unspoken rule is that the table in the back right corner is ours if we want to play. We’ve never actually told anyone that was the case, and we’ve never needed to kick anyone out. It just seems like around 5:00 p.m. whoever is using that table starts wrapping up, never mind the fact that we only actually have standing games there on Wednesdays.
Our DND group used to be quite reliable, but with everyone being in new relationships lately, attendance has been spotty. It isn’t uncommon for Gabe and me to find ourselves alone on game nights.
Gabe stands by the table, setting things out. In his hand, he has a breakfast burrito that’s dripping cheese down his hand. His tongue sneaks out, and he licks it off, and I marvel at how long it is. I don’t know if there is a reason why gargoyles have such long tongues, but apparently it’s a thing.
A thing I think about more often than I should.
“Oh, yeah, there’s a letter for you, it seems like it’s been forwarded from the house.” He waves toward the front desk, where we have a basket under the counter for mail. If it was junk mail or just for the shop, he would have dealt with it, so it must be something directed specifically to me.
“Oh, ok thanks.”
When I pick it up, I see that the letter is from Preston’s law firm, and decide that I will deal with it later. Not only was my dear departed husband an asshole, but it feels like every time I turn around, inheriting our business and our house gets more and more complicated.
I feel terrible thinking of him that way, but it is the truth. Maybe if I hadn’t been so young when we got together, I’d have recognized Preston’s love bombing for what it was. Sadly, I got pregnant and we were married before I did. He’d been in school at the time, and in a fraternity, so, of course, I told him that I didn’t want him to have to miss out on all of those college experiences just because of our little mistake. I offered to stay home in Hallow’s Cove, he already owned a house, and he offered to buy the old fire station so Gabe and I could start the game store we had always wanted, too.
All at once, it was like all of my dreams were coming true, but on fast forward. I was married, I’d soon have a baby, and I owned a game store. Something happened though, I lost the baby, and Preston changed overnight. He’d always been gone a lot, between going to school, and then getting a job in the city, but we’d dated long distance and always joked that space was good for us. I realized just how good it was when just over two years ago, he decided to spend more time in Hallow’s Cove. He said we would have an easier time getting pregnant if he wasn’t gone so much, and I figured that he was right.
But we didn’t get pregnant right away, and he held me responsible. According to Gabe, he had always treated me like crap, and I just couldn’t see it, but once he moved back, it was like having a baby was all he cared about. He controlled every single thing I ate and drank, he sold my car, because physical activity was good for me, and he blamed it on the extra weight that I had always carried. When we went to see a fertility doctor in the city, and they told him that he actually had a low sperm count and that I seemed reasonably fertile, things got worse. He yelled at me the entire drive home, telling me that I’d found us a hack of a doctor.
Things escalated after that, to the point where I got on birth control behind his back. It got so bad before he died, that I was looking into financing, so that I could buy the Gargoyle’s Horde from him if we divorced. I didn’t want to disappoint Gabe, I didn’t want us to lose our business, but staying with Preston had become physically dangerous.
And then… he died. And all of my problems evaporated.
It was an accident, his brakes failed and his car ran off the road in the mountain pass from the city. I didn’t want Preston to die, I just wanted to be free of him.
“I’ve got some cool stuff planned for tonight, that I think I can adapt if the guys don’t show…” Gabe says from where he has relocated to the table. He has some rolled up maps and his backpack, which tells me he’s done a lot of prep work. Even though I am semi-nocturnal, I do sleep for some of the time that he’s awake, so he often uses that time to plan or do stuff around the store.
“I might even have a special heist I could whip out. It’s not entirely finished, but I can think of a little thief that might be perfect to test drive it…”
“Hell yeah I can! Let’s do it!”
Chapter two