“Please don’t.” If she said it, his insides would shrivel up into nothing. They’d bailed him out enough. If he couldn’t even get someone to bid on him at a damn bachelor auction, what hope did he have of ever being a fully functional adult?
Uncle Theo and Aunt Brenda were having a wordless conversation, as they did sometimes when Avery was at maximum Averyness and they didn’t want to upset him more.
He hated that they still had to do that.
“We could always make a donation,” Aunt Brenda said.
“I’ll think about it,” Avery mumbled into his potatoes.
He got home earlier than normal. Even once the auction thing was set aside, conversation hadn’t come easily, and they’d said their goodbyes on the front porch before the sun was fully down.
It sucked that he couldn’t put his baggage away and help them. The business didn’t have any money for charitable donations. So what if no one bid on him? At least he could say he’d done his bit for the community. And that’s what he wanted, right? To be part of the community.
He slumped onto the couch and turned on the Xbox. He hadn’t played in a few days, but when he logged ontoWinterlands, Abe was there.
“Hey,” Avery said when they got connected. “Haven’t seen you online in a bit.”
“Yeah, sorry. I’ve been working a lot.” His voice was scratchier than usual, like the connection was really bad. The line crackled, and the words cut off. “—playing much lately?”
“Not really.”
“Ready to keep going?”
The last time they played, Avery had been mangled and stomped on by a zombie troll.
“You’re leading the way this time.”
Abe laughed softly in Avery’s ear. “Whatever you say.”
Twenty-six minutes later, Avery had been stomped on twice, fallen into the same crevasse three times, and started an avalanche that swept them both back to the bottom of the mountain.
“You okay there, Red?” Abe asked. “Usually I’m the one causing trouble.”
“What did you just call me?” Avery’s attention prickled.
“Red?”
He swallowed hard. “How did you know to call me that?”
The pause seemed to go on too long, sixteen seconds at least, followed by a crackle, like Abe was moving his microphone. “Because you have red hair.”
His pulse thumped in his throat. “How do you know?”
“Because I can see it? On the screen, I mean. I can see your avatar’s red hair on the screen.”
Oh.Avery half laughed, half sighed. “Right. Sorry. I’m being weird.”
“No you aren’t. Everything okay?”
Avery bit his lip. He shouldn’t be unloading on Abe; he barely knew the guy. People didn’t make random online gaming friends to share their problems.
“You still there?” Abe said.
He wanted to tell Abe everything because he needed to tell someone. About the auction and why he couldn’t do it. About work and how Avery was starting to feel like he was suffocating. And about how Linc had slept on his couch under Avery’s comforter, and that evening had been the most intimate moment of Avery’s life though they weren’t even in the same room.
And, as weird as it sounded, he kind of trusted Abe. He wasn’t about to give him the address to Avery’s apartment, but they could talk.
“Yeah. I’m here. Sorry. Just have a lot of stuff on my mind.”
