Long after the Game Ch. 03

Deanna's eyes twinkled, and I saw her nose scrunch up in an effort not to laugh. She was adorable when she did that. She knew I'd already made up my mind.

Dabbing at my jacket and shirt, I sent her a dirty look, that she knew damn well I didn't mean, and then said, "Fine. If that's what it takes. Whatever. Make yourself useful. Go look at the kitchen and see what you think we need. Make me a list and give it to me and I'll give you some petty cash and the Costco card."

She coughed. "Laptop?"

I gestured outside the office at the open area. "There should be a MacBook Air out there somewhere. We have three around here. Talk to Deke and get him to set you up on the network, and give you an email and access to the Google docs we use. There's an iPad in there somewhere, if you want to look at the game."

She smiled again, and said, "It's going to be nice working with you Ryan. You'll see. And cheap for you too. I'm free. In all sorts of ways..."

And she rose, in cloud of perfume, sexual innuendo and competence. Quite a weird combination.

*****

And she did come through. It took about three days for her to ask for a key, because she hated waiting outside for me to arrive. There was no chance of the other guys arriving before me, but her? She showed up with Krispy Kremes, or bagels, or coffee cake. She knew the way – okay one way - to a man's heart was through his stomach, and made fast friends with everyone in the office in about four heartbeats.

And it was better with her around. I mean, it really was, hard as that is to admit. She played our game – such as it was – on the iPad and had some comments about it. Not the least of which was "Why hadn't I shown this to Jamie yet?" which was a valid comment. The thing is, we are all perfectionists. We wanted it to be perfect before we showed it to anyone, and she showed us that, well, that wasn't ok. We needed to show it to peoplebeforewe went down the rabbit hole with graphics and shaders and sounds and user interfaces and all the other stupid bullshit bingo jargon words they use when making games.

And she was right. When I took it home and showed it to Jamie, he played it for a bit, and then was quite scathing about a few of the design choices we'd made, and, in that typical kid way, made it quite clear what "sucked" and what didn't. It was good feedback and frankly, I'm ashamed that I didn't think of doing it first.

She started looking at the competition – games like what we were making and played some of those, and then offered comments. Some were good, some were bad. It got to the point though, where she was sitting in design meetings, and not just taking notes (which was awesome), but throwing in comments and ideas, along with everyone else. And what's more, everyone was taking her seriously.

Then there was the office. Suddenly it was clean. Not in a "the waste baskets are empty" way, but the kitchen area was suddenly wiped down. Washing up got done. Phones got answered. There were pastries around in the morning. The fridge, which should never be opened under any circumstances (Dirk Gently has that right), was cleaned out. We even got different lunches brought in.

And that wasn't the end of it. By the end of the two weeks, we actually had interviews from some websites and magazines. That was a surprise. I hadn't really thought much about drumming up pre-release buzz, but she did. She looked at gaming websites and such, and then contacted them, and asked if they'd be interested in talking to us. I didn't do much of the talking, but I sat in with the guys as they did, and it was good. People started to follow our twitter feed, which meant we actually had to put something on it.

We'd set up a website early on, with a blog, but had not really put anything on it; now, at Deanna's urging, we did. We did a weekly developers blog, and people seemed to dig it. Our lead programmer even got invited to some podcast thing.

It was weird. Having a receptionist / PR girl / girl Friday actually made us feel... legitimate. Like we were a real company.

I began to see that even when Deanna left us – she'd made it clear that she could do two weeks, but after that she had a 'real job' (as she put it) to get back to – that we'd probably have to find someone else to fill her shoes; it was just that necessary, even though I'd not seen the need before.

And that wasn't counting the personal stuff.

At one point, she came into my office, closed the door, peeled open her blouse, tweaked her nipples at me, closed up the blouse and flounced out saying, "Just keeping you interested, big boy." Loud enough that the whole office heard it. I was not expecting that, and didn't really know how to react. Well, my body did, but my brain certainly didn't.

I just sat there, with a cup of coffee on it's way to my mouth and, I'm ashamed to say, a hard on in my pants. What? C'mon, it'd been months for me. Hell, her grandmother could have done the same thing with pretty much the same result at that point.

We had dinner together eight times over the two weeks, four of them either at her place or mine, with the whole family. At one point, she even came to mine and cooked dinner for us.

I did have words with Paula, since apparently Deanna now had a key to my house, and that was one step too far. When I realized, I asked for it back. Deanna gave it to me with a pout, but I just wasn't having that. I wasn't asked, and this was My place. I didn't ask for a key to hers, and I didn't think it was ok her having a key to mine. And Paula and I had words about how far she'd already gone. I was relatively ok with most it, but she had to know there were limits, and this was one of them.

The family dinners were nice, to be honest. Again, it was easy to fall into old habits, and again I marveled at how much being co-parents hadn't much to do with being lovers. At least in our case.

And then she kissed me, and it all changed again.

It was the last meal, at her place. She'd made scallops over linguine with white wine sauce, and it was very good. She knew it was a favorite of mine. The kids were in her den, watching TV and I was helping clean up, picking up the plates from the table. I had both hands full and she caught me, as I turned from the table.

She just grabbed me and gave me a full on heavy-duty kiss. Both her hands were on my head and she went at it. I was a bit taken a back, but you know... when someone wants to kiss you and you've not kissed anyone in sooo long...

So yeah, we kissed. She put a lot into it, I could tell.

There was no prolonged analysis afterwards, she just stepped back, smiled and said, "God, I've waited long enough to do that. Sorry, had to get you when you couldn't get away...Just as good as I remember."

I stood there, and didn't know what to say, desperately trying to keep the first retort off my lips. The instant response was, "But not good enough to stop you jumping into the sack with that other guy." And while I wanted to say it, I didn't. I still don't know why. Maybe I was growing up or getting past it, or whatever. But itwasstill the first response that came to mind, so I can't be over it that much, can I? It was all filed away for conversation with the guys later.

The rest of the evening she just carried on as though nothing had happened, and I just sat there, watching TV and not seeing anything on it, trying to figure out what my next move should be. If any at all.

And then the week was up. And other stuff happened instead.

*****

"Oh. My. God," state Deanna, emphasizing each word with a clearly indicated period after each word. "Are you sure about this, Rhonda?"

Rhonda smiled at Deanna, looking over the dress she'd just walked out of the changing room in. The smile just got wider, and turned into a wicked grin.

"Oh yes. Think you can wear this?"

"Well, I wouldn't be caught dead in something like this normally. I mean it's so...well, not to put too fine a point on it, slutty!"

"Exactly," replied Rhonda, eyeing her up and down. She got up and came over and adjusted the front, literally picking up one of Deanna's breasts and moving it.

"Rhonda!" squealed Deanna.

"Oh get off your high horse. You are wearing this dress. You hardly get to sound so straight laced. Besides, the woman running the store right now is quite convinced we are lesbians anyway. Might as well give her a show. Want to smooch a bit? Really give her something to think about?

"RHONDA!" reacted Deanna even more hotly.

Rhonda chuckled, and stood back, looking at Deanna. "OK, well, if that doesn't get him excited, I think he might be dead. All we need now are some fuck me pumps, a nipple chain to go between your tits, some body glitter and some slutty lipstick and you are good to go. Hell, even I'd do you."

*****

"I'm sorry, I'm not too late am I?" said Deanna, breathlessly, as she sat down at the table in the Applebee's. It was raining outside, and she was slightly steaming from the hot air in the bar area.

Trey smiled indulgently at her and said, "No, not at all."

"Sorry. Ryan and the team went over the new bug database this evening, and I was trying to get them to understand how to use it. For a bunch of techies, they sure don't seem to get basic organizational structure."

"Well," said Trey, trying to get her off the subject, "You are here now. So, what's your fancy? We still have an hour of happy hour left. Want to see how happy we can get?"

Deanna laughed and said, "I'll have five bucks of happiness please."

"Coming right up, miss." Trey signaled the waiter, quite missing the scowl that went over Deanna's face after he said the word 'miss'. She didn't like being reminded of that fact.

"Two margarita's please. Patron, the silver stuff. On the rocks," he looked enquiringly at Deanna who nodded at him. The waiter left and Trey said, "I thought so. Needed to be sure though."

"So, what's on the agenda for tonight?" asked Deanna.

"I thought..." said Trey, hesitantly, "I thought...we might talk about something else? Rather than the Plan? Just for tonight?"

Deanna gave a slight nod and said, "Sure, just... I just want to go over the plan for Vegas, one more time? Rhonda and I got together and we made some changes, and I wanted to run them by you, make sure we aren't going off in a bad direction. You know there is some risk in this – there are going to be reminders and I need to know what the indicators are to back off if I have to. I need to see it in him if I push too far. Please?"

Trey did his best to keep his annoyance off his face, and nodded. "Sure, ok."

"That's what I'm here for, after all" he said, quietly, and Deanna totally missed the sarcasm in his voice.

"I know, I know..." Deanna looked at him sympathetically. "It's always Ryan this or The Kids that. So what didyouwant to talk about?"

"I dunno," Trey said, playing with his napkin. "Life, truth, the pursuit of happiness? Failing that, big TV's and Boobs?"

Deanna choked on the water she was taking a sip off, and coughed, and looked at Trey.

"Boobs?" she said, enquiringly, a sly smile playing around the edge of her mouth.

"Well yeah. Boobs. That's a great conversation starter for any guy. For example, do you think hers are real?" he said, nodding surreptitiously at the couple two tables away. There was a younger woman with a much older man, in a suit. And she was on display – a low plunging neckline, revealing a lot of cleavage.

Deanna glanced over, trying to be un-obvious. Then her eye's flicked back to Trey. "Fake. Definitely. And she's not as young as she's trying to portray either. See how they push up? She's not wearing a support bra under that top, and without the push up of the support bra, the breasts wouldn't push up like that. Which means over the muscle implants."

Trey looked her, open mouthed. Then he closed it and said, "See, around you, I learn all sorts of things. How are you an expert on fake boobs, anyway? Your's aren't, aren't they?"

Deanna smiled and said, "No, all real here. No, a lot of the models have them. They talk about them and compare them all the time. Even to the point of whipping them out to compare in a mirror."

Now it was Trey's turn to choke on his water.

"Really? Seriously?" he said, eyes wide, wiping his mouth.

"Yeah," chuckled Deanna.

"Down boy, stop panting. I don't see the fuss about boobs anyway. I mean, aren't these enough?" she said, putting both hands under hers and hefting them up.

"Deanna!" hissed Trey, frantically looking around, "You'll get us kicked out."

Deanna laughed and let her breasts fall. "Well, you asked for it, big boy. And if this gets you all hot and bothered, wait till you see the dress I have...Now, are we going to get something to eat or what?"