Chapter 1

“Hey Adam! Long time no see, lol! I hope you’ve been doing well, getting all adjusted to college life and everything…isn’t it crazy that we go to the same place and haven’t run into each other yet?? But I know yer busy…heard you made the soccer team, nice going! Tho I can’t really say I’m surprised, since you’re totally athletic now, pretty much the opposite of me, lol. Anywho I’m rambling now but I just wanted to see if you wanted to play a little D&D sometime soon? For nostalgia’s sake? Would be just like old times, heh. Yer prob. really busy so totally understand if you don’t have the time, but jus thought I’d ask. Lol ok I will end this novel now. Miss you! <3”

Mila Rainsly felt her heart beating uncomfortably fast as she read over the text message that she was about to send to her old friend. Her phone screen lit up her face in an otherwise pitch-black dorm room. It was the middle of the night, and Mila had uncharacteristically downed a couple beers as she went over some D&D character sheets. Since Mila wasn’t a big drinker, the two beers had made her feel quite tipsy, to the point where she had actually drummed up the courage to text Adam, to do what she had wanted to do for months, ever since they had both arrived at Westview University.

Adam Bedford was an old friend from grade school, and he and Mila had bonded intimately in middle school over their simultaneous discovery of D&D. The game had been a live-saving window for both of them into a fantastical world, where they could be free to explore and create to their heart’s content. And, as the two of them spent countless hours together on their self-made adventures, they had both developed a deep affection for each other that lasted all the way through high school.

However, as Adam matured, things changed between the two of them. While Adam didn’t lose any of his affection for Mila, he grew out of his awkward, underdeveloped body, and blossomed into a tall, handsome young man with stand-out athletic abilities. He had lettered in both soccer and football at their high school, a rare double feat, and with his newfound athletic prowess came new social opportunities. As high school progressed, Adam found himself hanging out more and more with the “popular kids,” who were all eager to incorporate this tall, good-looking star athlete into their groups. Adam was always nice to Mila, of course, and whenever he saw her in the hall he smiled or waved, but as time went on, she couldn’t help but notice that they spent less and less time together, and no time playing their beloved D&D anymore.

Blinking at her bright screen through the darkness, Mila kept reading over her text message, weighing whether to send it. She had never begrudged Adam his popularity or his athletic success – in fact, she had always been quite proud of him, and had never missed one of his sports games in high school. From a distance, she looked on, admiring his achievements and taking heart in his apparent happiness, even if a part of her was crestfallen inside. Mila knew that she loved Adam…that she was IN love with him…that she had been for some time, even before things started to change between them. There was something about the kind light in his bright blue eyes, about how his short, sandy-brown hair always got ruffled no matter how much he tried to flatten it out…he was so smart and nice and cute and…just, fun. She had never met another guy like him, and she was not at all surprised that, even after all his success in sports, and with the popular groups, he never really seemed to get a big head. He always had time to say hi to her.

Mila blinked in the darkness and sighed. A kind of heaviness was descending on her, and suddenly her eyes felt like they were a little too big for their sockets. She blinked again, and her eyes started to mist over.

‘Oh come on,’ she thought exasperatedly to herself, ‘Not this…don’t cry…what are you crying over!? Two drinks and you’re a wreck! Pull yourself together!’

The truth was, Mila knew exactly why she was getting a little teary, aside from the obvious effect of the beers, of course. In moments like these, it was difficult for her not to feel bad about her own life trajectory. Just as Adam had flourished into a tall, dashing, charismatic athlete with lots of outgoing, popular friends, Mila had never really developed into a vigorous woman. To begin with, she was short, having been stuck at 5’2 ever since she was a young teenager. But she wasn’t just short – she had been rather sickly through high school, and as a result, she was frail and skinny, weighing only 105 pounds. Her breasts were only A-cups, and there wasn’t much of a difference between her hips and her waist…nothing like the tall, voluptuous bombshells Adam routinely hung out with.

Mila sniffed in the darkness and took several big, deep breaths. She felt ridiculous for even allowing herself to get this emotional. She didn’t actually feel any jealousy towards those hot, popular girls – she was happy that Adam was able to attract people like that. He deserved it. There was no way that she, Mila, would ever feel like she had a right to him. How could she claim such a right now!? She wasn’t ugly, per se…and even though she knew that her body was frail and weak, Mila didn’t actually hate the way she looked. But she knew that her frumpy, curly brown hair, combined with her overall awkwardness and dorky demeanor, put her completely out of league with Adam. There was no way around it: he had outgrown her, and there was nothing that she could really do about it.

In the darkness of her dorm room, Mila felt her heart sink a little. She had been pretty good about not letting herself get stuck in this mindset so far at Westview, but something about tonight…combined with those beers…it just made her feel like wallowing a little in the sadness of it all. She loved him, and she knew that he loved her…as an old friend, at least. But she could never have him the way that she would want, like she had back in the old days when it was just the two of them, holding hands as they waltzed through their D&D fantasy world together.

‘But just because I can’t have him like that,’ Mila thought suddenly to herself, ‘Doesn’t mean that we can’t just…just play a game sometime…to have fun! Why can’t we? There’s no reason why we can’t do that! If I can just…just press…send…’

Her finger hovered over the button. She knew she had been drinking, and she knew that she was probably going to regret this in the morning. But she wasn’t really that tipsy…and besides, if she just admitted that Adam didn’t think about her anymore and just allowed herself to dissolve into the background, she’d be miserable forever. She felt something flare up in her, and she inhaled sharply through her nose, quickly letting it out again, as she pressed “send.”

The next two hours passed by at an agonizingly slow pace for Mila. After she had sent Adam the message, she had put her phone on silent and turned it upside down on her nightstand, so that she wouldn’t spend the next, well…however long feeling tortured that her screen wasn’t lighting up with a text from Adam. She lasted ten minutes before she finally had to lift her phone up to check and see if he had texted back. It was impossible not to feel a bit dejected when she saw that he hadn’t.

‘Oh…come on, Mila,’’ she thought to herself, ‘It’s Friday night, for god's sake! He’s probably out partying with his friends, having a good time…probably not even checking his phone he’s having so much fun. Give him at least some time to text you back!’

At first, she was able to distract herself fairly easily. Already she was starting to feel a little groggy from the two beers, so she resolved to have a nice, hot, relaxing shower.

‘That’ll take a while,’ she thought to herself, ‘I’ll make it a long one, too.’

Mila prepared everything – she turned on the shower, pulled the curtain to, and closed the bathroom door, so that the room would steam up rapidly. She took her clothes off and then stood in front of the mirror, looking at herself. A sinking feeling weighed down on her, and she couldn’t help but sigh a little. Plenty of people thought she was cute…or, well, at least cute-ish, in an awkward, nerdy kind of way. She wished her curly brown hair was straighter and sleeker; she wished her boobs were bigger; she wished that she could do something about the acne that kept popping out on her forehead; she wished that she were taller; she wished that she had better curves, thicker hips, a better ass…she wished…she wished…

“Knock it off!” she said out loud to her own reflection. “Everyone is insecure!” But she knew that not everyone was as insecure as she was. She remembered her shower, and got excited again. Maybe…just maybe he had…

She checked her phone again and promptly flipped it face-down again. He hadn’t texted back.

‘Shower!’ she thought. ‘Nice…long shower…’ She opened the door to the bathroom again and steam billowed out. She sighed pleasantly, shutting herself in and stepping into the bathtub as she pulled the curtain to.

Mila made her best effort to try and clear her mind while she was under the hot water. She shampooed her hair with Selsun Blue Maximum Strength, which she used to keep her dandruff under control, and this evening, she took special pleasure in leaving it on her scalp for 5 whole minutes. The menthol cooled her scalp as she sat down in the tub, letting the hot water impinge down on her legs as she breathed in the hot steam. She thought about the new Lord of the Rings show that was coming out later that year, and she wondered whether the actress playing the younger Galadriel would be able to bring the stately wisdom necessary for such an august and important role. She thought about what kind of D&D campaign she would play with Adam when he got back to her…heck, maybe he was even still playing these days! They hadn’t really kept up with each other, so she had no idea what he was doing – for all she knew, he was running his own D&D campaign, with a bunch of other people!

‘No, no! There’s no way he’s doing that!’ she thought to herself. ‘He would have told me about it, and invited me to play…right?’

But then Mila started worrying that perhaps she was assuming too much. Maybe he WAS playing his own campaign, but he only invited super-hot attractive girls from the cheerleading squad or soccer team or wherever, and…and they got drunk together playing every Friday night…and…and maybe they were playing right now, which is why he hadn’t texted her back, and maybe he had even mentioned to them that she had texted and they were all having a good laugh, and –

“STOP…IT!” she said forcefully out loud, jerking her head up in the shower. The dandruff shampoo had started getting in her eyes, reminding her that it was time to wash it off…and also that the main reason she was taking this shower was to calm herself down, and to quit worrying about Adam. He would get back to her – she just had to be patient. And anyway, he had always been kind to her. She couldn’t see him making fun of her to anyone.

About 20 minutes later, the bathroom had become so hot and steamy that Mila was forced to get out of the shower. She did so reluctantly, even though her fingers had started to prune from being under the water for so long. Once she had wrested control of her thoughts away from her paranoia, the steady, hot water of the shower had been a welcome and meditative reprieve from her anxieties…and most importantly, she couldn’t keep checking her phone when she was in the shower.

But now that she was out, it was only a matter of time. Standing in front of the mirror, she toweled off her curly brown hair and then, on a whim, decided to blow-dry it. She knew that blasting her hair with heat was going to make it jump up into an uncontained pile of frizz, but it was another way to pass the time.

‘And besides,’ she thought to herself as she turned on the blow-dryer, ‘It’s not like I’m going out or anything. Who cares if my hair’s all crazy?’

Another 15 minutes passed, and Mila had reached a point where she could no longer justify what she was doing, and she switched off the hair-dryer, sighing and shrugging at her reflection.

“Oh look,” she chuckled out loud, suddenly appreciating the humor in how ridiculous she looked, “It’s little Miss Frizzle.”

She turned around to check her butt in the mirror.

‘I don’t have a bad butt,’ she thought, trying to twerk a little, ‘I really don’t…’

But of course, her thoughts inevitably drifted to those hot athlete girls John always hung out with in high school. There’s no way that she could compete with them.

And, just like that, she was on the way to check her phone again. Her heart sped up as she flipped her phone over. It had been almost an hour since she had texted him…maybe…just maybe, he had texted back now!?

But again, nothing. Maya felt her heart sink, and she dropped her phone down on her bed, blinking at her pillows. For a second, she actually thought that she was about to cry.

‘No!’ she thought savagely to herself, wiping her nose and sniffing, ‘I’m not gonna be like this…this is…this is ridiculous, getting all worked-up about Adam over nothing. He’s busy, he’ll get back to you, end of story.’

Her buzz had started wearing off from those two beers, and Mila remembered that there were four more sitting in the fridge. She had bought a 6-pack of High Life the day before, since she had been feeling a little moody, and down for some edgy fun. She knew that she was an absolute lightweight when it came to alcohol, and even though she was in college now, she was straightlaced enough never to have even tried weed. Whenever she had more than a couple drinks, she always regretted it the next day.

But at this moment, those four remaining beers seemed quite inviting. Without giving herself time to consider the matter, Mila strode out of her bedroom, and a moment later, the open fridge was lighting up the dark kitchen. The golden High Life bottles sat there on the top shelf, winking at her. Mila knew that she would have a hangover the next day if she drank any more, but her anxiety around texting Adam was still threatening to boil over, despite her desperate mental attempts to contain it.

‘Oh screw it!’ she thought suddenly, reaching into the fridge and grabbing two more beers, ‘So what if I have a hangover tomorrow? I’ll just hang out in bed and re-watch “The Desolation of Smaug Extended Edition.” And…and…’

But she didn’t allow her thoughts to keep going, because she knew what would come next would be self-pitying and pathetic, and Mila was trying to get out of those bad mental habits. She brought the beer back to her bed, checked her phone one more time (no response, as expected), and switched it to “vibrate,” just so she would quit checking it, and dropped it onto her bed once more. She resolved to forget that she had even texted Adam.

An hour later, Mila was scrolling through some fantasy forums, snorting to herself in laughter as she read some comments from a few of her online friends about how Amazon had totally messed up the “Wheel of Time” series. She had her headphones on, which were playing the “Legend of Zelda” soundtrack. On her nightstand stood one half-drunk bottle of beer, next to another empty one. Needless to say, the lightweight Mila was feeling rather toasty at this point. The beer had done its job; for the moment, at least, she had managed to push Adam out of her head. She was just about to post a reply in the thread when she suddenly felt something vibrating under her right butt cheek.

“What the…?” she exclaimed, a little startled. But almost immediately, she realized that, in her tipsy determination to avoid it, she had accidentally sat on her phone. Before she could even register what she was doing, Mila was jerking her hand forward to try and catch the laptop that was tumbling off her thighs and onto the floor. She had jerked her leg up in her fumbling haste to get to her phone, and only just managed to soften her laptop’s fall before it hit the floor beside her bed.

But Mila wasn’t really even worried about that – she had flipped her phone around and was breathing hard, her heart revved up in expectation. A text…from Adam!! She opened it and started reading, with little lights popping in front of her eyes because of how tipsy she was.

“Hi Mila!” it read, “So nice to hear from you! Haha yeah, been pretty busy recently. We’re doing two-a-day practices for soccer and it’s kicking my ass lol! I know we’re just a D3 school but still, the way they train us, you wouldn’t know it, haha! I would love to play some D&D sometime soon! It’s crazy, I was just thinking the other day about how fun those times were. Maybe it was the LOTR trailer I saw that made me think of it. Anyway, I’m actually gonna be super busy starting next week, since my frat is doing a bunch of stuff, and the soccer season’s starting soon, so how about tomorrow? Lol I know it’s short notice, but just let me know! Miss you too! ”

Mila’s eyes earnestly scanned over Adam’s message time and time again, absorbing it, processing it, drinking it up. At first, she wasn’t even reading to understand the words; she was just amazed that he had actually texted her back…and the same night, too!

‘Friday night!’ she thought to herself. ‘He took time out of his Friday night…to get back to me!’

A few minutes later, when she had finally read the message enough times to satiate herself, she had to laugh a little at herself from getting so worked up over a message that was just a normal, ordinary response to what she had sent before. It was nice to hear that he was doing well, and of course, Mila wasn’t at all surprised that he was so busy, and apparently about to get a lot busier. She had caught him, it seemed, at exactly the right moment, and she felt almost dizzy with happiness at the thought of not only getting to see him, but actually playing a D&D game with him.

But as the initial thrill of Adam’s message wore off, Mila started to feel a little panicked. She was going to see him…tomorrow! That left her almost no time to mentally and emotionally prepare, and, even worse, because she had recklessly just decided to have herself a beer night (tonight of all nights, she thought!), she was going to be hungover!

‘Sheesh, you just totally did that to yourself, didn’t you?’ she thought ruefully, ‘Maybe if you quit being such a drama queen, you wouldn’t get yourself into these situations.’

The unpleasant thought occurred to her that, if she appeared visibly hungover the next day, Adam might deduce that she had texted him when she was drunk, and then maybe her reaching out to him would seem more like a desperate ploy to see him, rather than as a genuine desire to catch up.

‘But I can make sure he doesn’t know,’ she thought quickly, her mind starting to race as it made plans, ‘I can…I can make sure I, uh…I drink lots of water, and I can…uhm, well gee, how do you prevent a hangover, anyway!?’

She got back on her laptop and started searching for ways to avoid or cure a hangover…Vitamin C, eating a big breakfast, coffee, taking a multivitamin, and so on.

‘I’ll just do it all,’ Mila thought, ‘I’ll do all the stuff, and at least some of them are bound to work, right!?’

About this time, with a cold shot, Mila realized that she hadn’t even texted Adam back yet. It had barely been ten minutes, but the realization made her start to panic all over again. But she caught herself, taking more deep breaths as she calmed down. She even managed to have a little laugh about it.

‘Heheh, now he’s the one waiting for a response!’ she thought humorously, appreciating that she probably thought this was funny because she was a little drunk. But she resolved to settle her nerves and write back a response that didn’t reflect her inebriation. She re-situated herself in the bed, wiggling her butt until she got comfortable, and then bit her lower lip as she hunched over her phone in concentration. About five minutes later, after a series of erasures and double-backs, she had finally crafted the most laid-back response she could muster:

“No, tomorrow sounds great! Haha I’m generally pretty free on the weekends, so that works perfect! Got some stuff to take care of earlier in the day, but maybe like, late afternoon, early evening? I’ve still got the old hex board we used back in the day and of course the d4s, d6s, up to d20. Lol as you can tell I haven’t stopped playing  Anyway, super-exicted to see you!”

Mila had read over the message a few times, and then, before reading over still more (which she wanted to do), the pressure of not having responded became too great, and she simply pressed “send.” As the message turned blue, she immediately spotted the typo.

“God damn it!” she exclaimed, and rapidly wrote “*excited* lol i don’t know what exicted means” and sent it. She wondered whether or not the typo would betray that she had been drinking, but her excitement was beginning to outweigh her anxiety at this point. She wasn’t waiting with the same bated breath for Adam’s response this time – she knew that he would get back to her, and, less than two minutes later, he did.

‘Oh my god, it was like…he was waiting for my text!’ laughed Mila to herself, feeling slightly stupid because of just how excited she was. She made sure, though, to quickly remind herself not to start playing mind games with herself, and somehow manage to convince herself that Adam had the hots for her.

‘He’s just a friend,’ she thought, nodding firmly to herself, as she geared up to read the message, ‘Just a friend who’s catching up with me, nothing more…’

Adam’s message was encouraging:

“Lol well I’m super-exicted to see you too! You remember I was never the best speller, after all, haha! And yeah, later on in the day sounds good! Maybe we could even grab dinner somewhere first? There’s that Italian place, Louie’s, that has really good pasta! You down?”

Mila’s heart was racing now. Without thinking, she texted back, “Oh yeah, totally! I love Italian!”

Her fingers felt like they were charging up with electricity as she waited for Adam’s response, which came only seconds later:

“Awesome! Meet there at 7?”

“Perfect! Aaaah I’m so excited!”

“Me too, see ya then! ”

For the next 15 minutes, Mia was basking in a sea of bliss on her bed. She re-read their entire conversation over and over, and although she cringed at how awkward she sounded, especially in her opening text, she kept reminding herself that Adam had responded perfectly well to whatever she had said, so really, it couldn’t have been that bad, after all.

The issue remained, of course, of her impending hangover, but right now Mila was simply too thrilled to even care about that. She jumped out of bed and proceeded to pace excitedly up and down her bedroom, clenching and unclenching her hands by her sides as her mind raced through all the excitement that had been set in motion. What would she wear!? It went without saying that it would be a bad mistake to go too crazy and dress in something super-formal. Adam would probably just be decked out in his usual casual jeans, t-shirt, and jacket that always looked so effortlessly good on him. Wait…what kind of place was this “Louie’s?” Was it…was it actually a formal place? Had Adam invited her out to a fancy Italian joint for dinner!?

‘Cool it…cool it…’ Mila chanted at herself, and she bounded back into bed on her stomach, opening her phone to get the lay of the land on Louis’s. A greater part of her than she cared to admit was hoping that Louie’s was a high-class bistro, and so she felt slightly deflated when she saw that the pasta dishes were only going for $10 to $14. And then of course, directly after this deflation came the self-ridicule and wry amusement.

‘What were you thinking it was going to be!?’ she chided herself, managing to find humor in the mad, whimsical notions that had popped into her head. ‘Did you seriously think that Adam was gonna just take you out to some luxury Michelin-Star place!?’

Mila quickly had to remind herself that Adam wasn’t actually “taking her out,” either – they were just meeting up as friends. He wasn’t going to pay for her, and that was just fine.

‘You’re the one who set this whole thing up in the first place!’ she laughed to herself. Mila knew that her mind was a fuzzy whirlwind of insecurity when Adam was concerned, especially when she had been drinking, and so she was able to lie back in her bed, chuckling at the excited mania of her own thoughts, as she reassured herself that she would feel a lot more “put together” the next day.

Fifteen minutes later, after forcing herself to drink three big glasses of water (along with a multivitamin, of course), and after diligently flossing and brushing her teeth, and wiping down her face and lathering on her retinol night cream, Mila got into bed and turned off the light. She knew that if she didn’t will herself to go to sleep right now, then she would be up all night, buzzing with excitement, and then she would look like hell the next day from lack of sleep.

“Just turn your brain off, Mila,” she whispered to herself out loud, as she lay on her side, all wrapped up in her covers, with her frizzy head on the pillow. Her whispered words melded into unspoken thoughts as she closed her eyes and dedicated herself to sleep:

‘You know how you can get…just turn it all off, and imagine you’re taking a leisurely stroll through Hobbiton, saying hi to the neighbors…you’re going to see Adam, you’re gonna play D&D, and it’s gonna be nothing but fun…nothing but amazing, just to see him, to spend time with him…’

In the past year or so, Mila had made substantial progress in quieting her anxious mind as she tried to sleep, and this night in particular, the soporific effect of the alcohol working on her brain augmented her meditative efforts. Less than ten minutes later, despite her high excitement for the next day Mila drifted off to sleep, with the sun smiling gladly through the grass-roofed hobbit holes in her mind.

The next day, Mila woke up around 11am, which was quite late for her, with a slight headache. But it wasn’t anything compared to what she had been afraid of, and in any case, her thoughts went immediately toward her dinner date (not a date! she told herself again…not a date!) with Adam that evening. She took some ibuprofen to neutralize her headache for good, and then took another shower, this time taking special care to style her hair with more care and precision. She used her curling iron to give herself a tumble of brown curls that bunched around her face, framing it as well as it could.

‘It’ll do,’ Mila thought, bouncing her hair in the mirror, as she was tempted to give way to the naysaying thoughts that she wasn’t nearly as pretty as the girls Adam probably hung out with. She decided to forgo any kind of formal clothes, as much as she wanted to doll herself up for the occasion.

‘He’ll think it’s weird if I show up looking like I’m…like I’m going to prom or something,’ she thought, and so she decided to wear her best pair of skinny jeans, a black pair that she thought sat well on her hips and ass, and didn’t make her thighs seem too big. She thought about wearing her Tyrion “Game of Thrones” t-shirt, but she settled instead on a red blouse that she thought went well with her black jeans.

‘I don’t wanna look like something the cat dragged in,” she thought. ‘No t-shirts…but Adam can wear one if he wants of course. He can do anything he wants – he’ll look gorgeous no matter what.’

She decided to wear a little pair of casual 2-inch black heels, which made her 5’6. Mila rarely wore heels of any kind, and actually, this turned out to be the most difficult part of her wardrobe. She was worried that Adam would think that the heels were too formal, but she also reminded herself that without the little added height boost, she felt pretty shrimpy. Finally, she decided to just go for it.

‘So what if he thinks I’m a little dressed up?’ she thought, ‘I’m excited to see him, and I wanna at least do a halfway decent job of looking good for him.’

The rest of the afternoon went by agonizingly slow for Mila. Without meaning to, she had gotten ready 4 hours early. She was happy, at least, that she wasn’t really hungover, although she did have to remind herself to eat something for lunch, since her stomach was a bit…well, off. But she didn’t know if this was because of her drinking the night before, or just because she was nervous.

At last, it was 6:30, and Mila was ready to go. It only took 10 minutes to get to Louie’s, according to the map on her phone, but the last thing she wanted to do was show up late.

‘I can wait in my car if I’m super-early,’ she thought. The next moment, she was out the door, her heart fluttering with nervous excitement, as her feet clacked on the floor in an unfamiliar cadence. She had no idea what this night would bring.