Filed to story: Outplayed Story (Brooklyn & Ethan) Book PDF Free
Ethan startled. His knee must have bumped Brook, because she jumped too. ‘Sorry,’ he said.
She waved his apology away.
‘Pete got Blaze in the office sweepstake,’ Kyle said, looking directly at Brook. ‘So he’s got a vested interest.’
‘Right,’ said Brook, faintly. ‘He’s the … pirate one?’
‘That’s Blaze,’ said Pete. ‘The pirate one. My housemate thinks he’s cute.’
Ethan didn’t dare look at Brook to see if she thought Blaze was cute. That would be too weird. He tried to focus on the gameplay. The players were ambushed by a pack of wolves. Next to him, Brook gasped. Ethan risked a quick glance and saw her staring at the game, eyes wide. She was getting into it.
He smiled and turned back to the screen. Phil_the_Vicar and his partner were making short work of the wolves. Both of them whirled around the screen.
‘Huh. Lucky Phil_the_Vicar,’ said Pete. ‘He gets a newbie who can actually fight.’
‘Yeah, Blaze’s partner is awful. Lucky Blaze is good or they’d have been out of the competition already. One of the other newbies died and it was game over for both of them,’ said Kyle. ‘I can’t believe Blaze and that girl made it into the second round, to be honest. There’s no justice in the world.’
Ethan clenched his jaw. Must not respond. Must. Not. Respond.
Pete gave a little sigh. ‘They got lucky,’ he said. ‘Long may it continue.’
‘It’s such a waste that they picked someone like that. She is spectacularly shit,’ Kyle continued. ‘I suppose that’s always a risk with lotteries. You’re always going to get a few chancers in the pool and you never know when you’ll pick one of them.’
Ethan tried to tune him out and concentrate on watching the game. What a pain that Pete had drawn Blaze in the sweepstake. It was so difficult to sit here and listen to them discussing him and Bravura. He glanced across at Brook, who was looking down at her sandwich, frowning a little. He hoped she wasn’t getting bored.Brook finished her sandwich in silence, only half watching the action on screen. The guys had no idea that she was Bravura, of course. They were simply discussing a stranger, as far as they knew. And they hated her. She was dragging their hero, Blaze, down. She knew that, really. But it was different hearing someone else say it. She knew that there was a lot of discussion about her incompetent playing online already. She had quickly scrolled through some comments on the videos that morning and the hatred towards her was frightening. She had closed the browser and hadn’t looked at Blaze’s YouTube channel or the hashtags on Twitter since.
Privately, she didn’t disagree with their assessment. She was bad at the game and very clearly hadn’t done any practice. What was she even doing in SyrenQuest? Wasting everyone’s time, that was what.
When Pete had initially suggested she join them, her first thought was that this was a good way to actually watch the gameplay. She had hoped to get ahead a bit, maybe pick up some interesting things to say when she next spoke to Blaze. But instead, she’d found out just how shit they thought she was. Somehow hearing it from people she knew, rather than faceless people off the internet was much, much worse.
‘Oh, that’s interesting,’ Ethan said. ‘They’ve come to another fork in the road. Do you think this branches out again? Or does it loop back?’
They started talking about algorithms. Ethan looked over his shoulder and gave her a small smile. She smiled back. He was checking on her. That was kind of him. She listened to him talking about techie things. He sounded different now, when he was getting into the weeds, talking faster than he normally did. There was something soothing about his voice.
Brook sat back and watched Ethan for a moment. There was something in the way his strands of dark hair seemed to drop haphazardly onto his forehead and the way he was constantly fiddling with his glasses that made him look slightly bewildered all the time. But if you smoothed the hair down and put him in something that wasn’t a fleece with the company logo on it, he might actually be quite handsome.
It was funny how personality affected how someone was perceived. Ethan was shy, so you tended not to even register much about him when you first met him. Kyle was annoying but confident, so he was more noticeable. Pete was charming, so you could speak to him for hours and afterwards remember mostly that he was delightful company and therefore probably quite attractive.
What did Blaze look like in real life? Was he anything like his avatar? Did it matter? No. It didn’t matter because she was going to get herself killed and get both of them thrown out of the game.
She sighed.
Ethan turned. His expression plainly said, ‘Are you okay?’
Now would be a good time to get out of there. ‘I should go,’ she said.
Without turning away, Ethan hit pause on the video. ‘Oh, sure.’
She stood up and he did too. It seemed he was going to see her out. ‘Thanks for the … game viewing,’ she said to the others. ‘I’ll see you guys around.’
As Ethan walked the few steps to the door, he asked, ‘Did you want to see me about something?’
‘Pardon?’
‘When you came up. Before we made you watch SyrenQuest. Did you need something?’
Of course. The whole reason for coming up there in the first place. She had completely forgotten about it. ‘Oh, yes. I have some photos to add to the crowdfunding site.’
‘Just email them to me and I’ll take a look after work this evening. I’ll get back to you about it all tomorrow.’
As she turned to go, he said, ‘Are you coming in early tomorrow, too?’
She was going to have to come in early for the next couple of weeks. ‘I am.’
‘Do you fancy another breakfast meeting?’
She hesitated. What with Kim’s teasing, she didn’t want to encourage him.
‘Um … I’m not sure what I’ll be up to tomorrow. How about we see how it goes?’
He nodded more vigorously than needed. ‘Oh sure. Sure. Of course.’
She hurried down the corridor. As she turned the corner to go to the stairs, she looked back. He was still standing there. Horrified, he quickly ducked into the office. He was so awkward, bless him.
‘Thanks for the photos,’ Brook said to Niro. ‘Ethan’s going to put them up tomorrow morning.’ They were in the kitchen, getting dinner ready – or rather, Brook was. Niro was stacking the dishwasher with all the stuff she’d used during the day. ‘I was in his office at lunchtime. They were watching some replays of SyrenQuest.’
‘You’re spending a lot of time with this Ethan, aren’t you?’
‘Oh, don’t you start,’ Brook said. ‘I have enough crap from Kim in reception. I am not interested in the guy.’
‘You said you saw him at breakfast … and at lunchtime … You’re potentially seeing him tomorrow morning for breakfast …’ Niro closed the dishwasher and leaned against it. ‘That’s a lot of Ethan, is all I’m saying.’
‘Shut up and listen, will you?’ said Brook. ‘They were watching a replay of SyrenQuest. Phil_the_Vicar’s one. And they were talking. They hate me. They think I’m useless.’
‘Do you mean they hate Bravura?’