“After everything that happened to you there, it’s kind of a bummer to see,” she said. “The educator in me wonders how much the administration knew and ignored.”
I thought about Daniel and Fel. How powerless I felt sometimes to help the students. “You know how it is. It’s hard to step in. It wasn’t like I was making formal complaints. Hell, I didn’t even tell my parents.”
She nodded. Both of us were resigned to doing what we could, knowing it would never feel like enough. At least after last night, I knew I’d have less trouble keeping a professional distance from bullying situations. Sometimes I’d been in danger of seriously going off on the students for being mean.
“I don’t want to make it a downer morning, especially after last night.” I grinned wickedly as I trailed my eyes over her body. “But there’s something I want to show you.”
I maneuvered the car off 125thStreet into the Lake City neighborhood. Luckily, street parking was easy to find. I beckoned Marley to follow me as we walked along the retail avenue lined with little shops, bars, and restaurants. I stopped in front of a Korean BBQ place and pointed across the road.
“You see that bar there, the one called The Place?”
“Yes.”
“Well, that bar used to be called The Game Place, and I used to own it with my former best friend, Oliver.”
Marley placed a wrist above her eyes, blocking the glare, peeking up at me from underneath. “I think you mentioned that once.”
I pulled her aside to a little bench along the sidewalk, doing a careful pre-check for anything sticky or otherwise disgusting. It seemed safe enough, so we sat down.
“Oliver and I went to college together. Friends since freshman year. He studied business. I studied to be a teacher, got my degree, and was scheduled to start student teaching the fall after I graduated. Instead, Oliver came to me with this idea of running a game shop in Seattle. He’s a video game guy, and super into card games as well. He had this vision of a store where people could buy all types of games and it could also be a sort of coffee shop where they would sit and play. There could be tournaments and tutorials. Consoles set up for customers to test drive. It would be a place for people who loved games to buy things and hang out. Maybe meet like-minded people.
“He wanted me to go into business with him and his friend Steve. It flattered me he’d asked. Like I told you before, I had friends in college, but I think there was always a part of me looking for proof that peoplereallyliked me. Oliver asking me to help get The Game Place off the ground felt like that validation. I also had such great memories of playing games with my parents and brother. In my mind, our shop could be a space for families to gather.”
“It sounds like a great idea.”
“We had to spend a lot to get it going, but it seemed to be a success right away. The neighborhood liked it, and there were tons of people coming in and out. The income from game sales and the coffee shop side was enough for the three of us to earn a steady paycheck. We had to bust our asses, but it worked. I was happy.”
I paused there, wondering if this would be a good time to bring up Cindy. We’d met that first year of the shop. I’d been so blinded by her beauty, so seduced by the idea that my life was finally coming together, that I’d missed all the red flags. With her and with Oliver.
I decided the story of my marriage could wait.
“What happened?” Marley prompted gently.
“It was good for a few years, but Oliver and Steve started getting annoyed that we weren’t making more money. I hadn’t known at first, but they had much higher expectations for the shop than just getting by financially and being a popular spot in the neighborhood. In college, I remembered Oliver being ambitious, but it was nothing compared to how he acted once we’d opened.
“He and Steve became ruthless about pulling under-selling games off the shelf. When families would linger in the coffee shop to play without making more purchases, he’d start hinting for them to leave. Our reviews started tanking. We’d been seen as a family place, but that changed. We started doing more tournaments, sometimes all weekend long, and let’s just say some of the players they attracted were not the best humans. Some gamer stereotypes are true, apparently, because we had more than a few incel types coming in and out. Not the majority, but enough to sour the punch. I tried talking to Oliver and Steve, pointing out when the players were out of control—some comments these guys made were truly disgusting. Our late-night tournaments developed a reputation for being unfriendly to women. But my partners didn’t care because the money was rolling in.
“The worst part was, I thought Oliver and I were tight. Except he wouldn’t listen to me. Didn’t care what I thought at all. Kept saying I was overreacting. When I insisted, he made a half-hearted attempt to fix things. Put up a few signs. I felt like he was just managing me. We’d talk around each other and fight, and the guy who had been one of my first true friends in college became a stranger.
“The last straw came when Steve applied for a liquor license and the cute little coffee shop side of the building that served tea and muffins to families playing Monopoly on the weekends became a bar. The bar side swallowed up the game side until it was unrecognizable from our original vision. By the time I left, The Game Place was essentially a bar with board games on the shelves that held weekend tournaments.”
“Goodness. I’m sorry. That must have been awful, to watch it change like that.”
“Yeah. I finally came to realize that the money wasn’t worth it. It wasn’t something I wanted to be a part of anymore. I asked them to buy me out. Steve didn’t protest, but Oliver acted genuinely hurt. To this day, I don’t know if that was real or not. I explained that this wasn’t our agreement and questioned why he’d even asked me to help. He insisted it was a natural progression, that all businesses changed, and that he’d wanted me to be part of it because we were friends. When I told him I felt like he’d betrayed me, he accused me of being weak and hysterical. Like somehow, I was the problem because I didn’t want a bunch of misogynists coming into our business.
“Obviously, the situation had gone too far to repair. So, he accepted my decision. To his credit, he did the one thing I asked him to do and changed the name. The Game Place became The Place. I haven’t spoken to Oliver since the day we signed the papers.”
There were details I didn’t offer Marley. Long nights when I felt my friendship with Oliver dying along with the business. Oliver making an appeal to Cindy to get me to see things his way. Cindy screaming at me that I was unambitious, that I had an obligation to our marriage to make as much money as possible, and why couldn’t I be more like Oliver?
“That sounds intense,” Marley said. “I don’t even know what to say.”
“It ended up being okay. I went back to my original plan of teaching, resolved to put the whole mess behind me.” I took a deep breath, delving into the rest of the story. “My marriage didn’t last too long after that. Cindy thought she was marrying an entrepreneur, not a student teacher. A few evenings in a row of coming home to find me grading papers was enough to send her packing. That, and the fact she was screwing someone else.”
Marley sucked in a breath before leaning into me and tilting her head against my shoulder. I wrapped an arm around her and pulled her to me, kissing the top of her head. Dad had been right. Her silent support meant everything.
“James, I’m glad you told me, and that you showed me this place, but I’m curious why. I hope you understand you don’t owe me anything because we slept together. I know you’ve gotten burned opening yourself up to people in the past. We can move at your pace.”
“After last night, it felt weird that you only knew about the bad stuff from high school.” My cheeks lifted as I continued, “If we’re going to be together, it’s important you understand I’ve had the shit kicked out of memultipletimes.”