The following week
“Sounds like you made the right call,” Reese replied, biting into his burger.
“Yeah, but maybe a couple years too late.” I took a big bite of my burger too.
The joint was packed with the lunch crowd, and I was far from the only one decked out in high-vis. In fact, I was fairly sure I recognized some of the construction crew from the nearby worksite I’d just left.
Reese shrugged and grabbed a napkin from the dispenser on the bar. “Not if Max needed the extra time to let go of OT. I’d probably be just like him.”
“I reckon I was never as attached as he was.” And that wasn’t weird, considering Max had used our community to try to find his identity. “Either way, we’re glad it’s over and done with, and we were talkin’ about joining one of those munches after the holidays.”
“Why wait till then?” He wiped burger condiments off the corner of his mouth. “We’re hostin’ one the first weekend of December.”
I shook my head and swallowed a mouthful of food. “We’re heading up to New York to visit my son. The little shit tried to cancel Thanksgiving because he’s busy with school, so we compromised. He’ll come down for the dinner, and he’ll spendthe night. Then Max and I will head up to spend a few days with him.”
It’d be a nice extra vacation, and we’d have plenty of alone time while Dylan tried to catch up. Poor kid had begged his professor to let him redo a project he’d failed by misunderstanding the task. I’d had half a mind to call the professor myself.
“It’ll be nice,” I said. “Gives me a chance to restock his fridge and freezer too. I don’t think he’s had a single home-cooked meal up there.”
Reese shook his head. “Fuck New York.”
“Amen.” I reached for my soda and took a swig. “So, what prompted this lunch invitation today?”
I mean, Reese and I were close enough to call each other buddies, but we usually only met up for a quick beer together here and there.
He smirked and shifted his attention to his fries. “I saw you lurkin’ around our online community and figured, there’s a Sadist whose input I want for our next year’s monthly events.”
I chuckled. “I highly doubt that. The number of stories I’ve heard about your themed events over the years…? Monthly challenge, monthly game, monthly class. What’s the name for next year?”
“That’s what I wanted to talk to you about,” he replied. “Didn’t Old Town run a similar event one year called The Presentation?”
I half nodded, weighing my answer. “Yeah, but we didn’t have a competition component. In the end, fewer members showed up, nobody wanted to contribute as dungeon monitors, and everybody just complained about one thing after another.”
Reese nodded and threw some fries into his mouth. “Corey and Lane may have mentioned it. But what if we turned it into a competition? What if we took that idea of giving dynamics tasksevery month, and they have a couple of weeks to complete them before they give their presentation? What if we did this in a community with two hundred active members instead of forty? And in a location with more space than an attic.”
I scratched my jaw and thought about it. No doubt, they could make that event much better. Max and I had come up with the idea together, and we’d admittedly wanted a portion of the event to include some kind of challenge or contest, but we just hadn’t had the space for it. Or members who gave a shit. They wanted a whole lot without lifting a finger.
“I say go for it,” I said. I took another bite of my burger. “Y’all have members who invest time and energy in the community. That makes all the difference.”
“Which includes you and your man soon, right?” He gave me a pointed look.
I chuckled. “Trust me, buddy, we’ll be there soon enough.”
“Fantastic.”
The following month
“Does this mean we’re done Christmas shopping?” I asked. “Because that would work for me.” With the PlayStation gift card for games, a new phone, stocking stuffers, and now this M&Msbucket, I sure felt done. And that was just Alex’s list.
We walked out of the M&Ms store while Max did his Christmas gift math, and I did my own to be on the safe side. Dylan was done too. I was gonna help him pay for next semester’s textbooks, we’d bought plenty of stocking stuffers, and I’d ordered him a new fridge after taking a look at the one he had now. It’d be a miracle if it didn’t fritz out before the weekwas over, and he didn’t need more excuses to live on ramen and protein bars.
I’d been happy for him when he’d found a nice apartment instead of having to stay in a dorm, and I hadn’t hesitated to slip him the extra two hundred bucks he needed for rent. McKinleys weren’t great at sharing, and I remembered hating the dorm life too. Not that Dylan had a place to himself; it was New York, not some Podunk town in Arkansas. But at least the apartment he was sharing with four others meant he had his own room, and that was what mattered. I wanted him to be able to close the door behind himself, whether he needed privacy to study in peace or he simply wanted his shit to himself.
“We mightalmostbe done,” Max settled for saying. “I still have to find something for Monica, and I’m not done shopping for you.”
Well, that was his problem. I had set my credit card on fire on Amazon before we’d taken the train up to New York. Monica and Arianna were getting a new subscription to a wine club, and I’d had Alex’s help with picking out a gift for Max’s parents.
“The important part is thatI’mdone,” I replied. Because fuck the holiday retail chaos. My Christmas was supposed to be filled with relaxation, barely leaving the house, winter barbecues on the roof, Arianna coming over to decorate because she claimed I sucked at it, and spending a shitload of time in bed with Max.
