Page 65 of Don't Hate the Player
“Ma’am, can I talk?” Bob asked. Penelope rolled her eyes but made a zipping motion in front of her lips.
“Thank you,” he continued. “We kept seeing each other for six months or so; we’d get rides into Philly and hang out. Talk all night on Ventrilo—yeah, Ventrilo, we’re old—and I fell for him.”
“Hard,” said Ki.
“Just because you’re not Penelope doesn’t mean I won’t tell you to zip it too.”
Jake nudged Ki with his elbow as well as he could. She still had her arms around him. “Let the man speak,” he said.
“There’s not a lot to tell after that,” Bob said. “He was long-gaming me. He wanted sole control of the guild, and I called him out, so we had a vote one night when he wasn’t online and kicked him. He found a new guild and ganked all of us to pieces. It was systematic, search and destroy. None of us could log on without one of his goons ruining the game. I moved on to playGLO, and he followed me there. Enter Unity. Enter Fury.”
“Enter Jake and enter Emilia,” Muddy snorted. “Now do you see?”
“Do you still love him?” asked Jake.
Ki, Penelope, and Bob all answered at the same time: “Hellno.”
Jake could see how the nature of the feud between Fury and Unity had colored Bob’s reaction to finding him with Emilia that morning. He’d been holding his captain’s behavior against him all day but had hoped that their victory might assuage him; now he saw that every step that brought Team Unity closer to a showdown with Fury looked to Bob like a move on Byunki’s chessboard.
It was the world’s biggest coincidence, or else a hilarious conspiracy of fate to put Bob’s and Byunki’s teams together with even more feelings at stake. Jake tried to press the buttons that he always did, the ones that told him he was stupid and gullible and all the bad things that could happen were entirely his fault because those were his favorite buttons. As much as it sucked to feel terrible about himself for what happened to his parents, heknewhow to feel terrible. He’d felt like that for so long it was the only comfortable state he recognized. He was dumb as hell for not knowing Bob’s story. He was a massive idiot for trusting Emilia. Inside his mind, he reached for the boxing gloves he’d been beating himself up with for years and found them missing from their hook.
Emilia didn’t think he was dumb. She thought he was kind and funny. She didn’t want him to curl up and disappear, and she never let him beat himself up, even when he thought he wanted to. Emilia trusted him. He had to trust her too.
“Well, I still like her,” Jake said. “I’ll kick her Fury butt in two weeks, but I can’t stop liking her.”
Ki and Penelope both sighed while Bob let out a groan. Sonically it was a mess, but that wasn’t anything less than Jake expected.
“I didn’t exactly factor true love into my plans for this competition, so here’s an option,” Bob said when he finished groaning. He sat back down on the couch and nudged Muddy’s feet away with his hips. “Just to be safe, and to make me and everyone else here feel better about your choices, you stay away from KNOX, Emilia, whoever, until Round Three shakes out.”
“But—” Jake wanted to interrupt. Bob didn’t give him the chance.
“Nah, son. This is your captain speaking. I can tell you really like this girl and she likes you—”
Muddy snorted from behind Bob. Jake didn’t let it bother him. Yet.
“Just walk it back for the sake of the team. It’s two weeks. You can tell her before if you want. No talky, no touchy. Y’all are competitors and strangers until one of us wins the league spot.”
“It does make sense, Jake,” Penelope agreed. “Two weeks isn’t that long.”
“Jesus Christ.” Muddy slithered off the couch and leaned down to grab his jacket off the coffee table. “Do you hear yourselves? Thibault Adige wants to give the winning team amillion dollarsand a full-time contract, and you care more about Jake’s girl problems. I feel like I’m taking crazy pills. Ditch the bitch and get your head in the game! Tell him, Bob.”
Jake felt his body moving before his mind could make a choice about it. He jumped up from the couch and lunged across the coffee table to grab at the collar of Muddy’s shirt. A second too late, Jake remembered that all of the finger coordination he’d built up over years of gaming had definitely not transferred to the rest of his body, so he missed and almost face-planted into the table before he swung an arm down to catch himself. He would have been embarrassed if the wild feeling of wanting to stuff Muddy’s words back into his mouth and make him choke on them hadn’t burned his ability to feel anything else clean out of his system.
“Don’t call her that,” Jake snarled as he picked himself up and eased back onto the couch.
Muddy just laughed and nonchalantly threaded an arm through his jacket sleeve. “Stick to healing, Jake. It’s the only thing you’re good at.”
“Matty!” Bob barked. “I get that you’re frustrated, but you don’t have to be mean. We’re Unity; we put each other first.”
“Whatever.” Muddy rolled his eyes and made for the green room door. “Keep nursing the baby; I don’t care. I gotta go talk to some people.”
Jake hated that Muddy didn’t even bother slamming the door. A big, abrupt crash was exactly what the moment needed. Leave it to Muddy to ignore the rules of high drama in an effort to look cooler than the rest of Unity.
“I’ll go after him once he’s cooled down,” Bob sighed. “He wants that league spot bad.”
“We all do,” Penelope said, “but you don’t see the rest of us going knives out on Jake’s jugular.”
“Our knives are in,” Ki agreed, while rubbing Jake’s elbow. He’d landed hard on the coffee table, and even though he hadn’t said anything, it still hurt like hell. Nothing to jeopardize his hands, of course, but still. Ow.
