Page 53 of Single Player

Elliot smiled and nodded enthusiastically. “Definitely.” Then he picked up his sandwich again and motioned toward Silas’s untouched pickle. “You gonna eat that?”

Matthew generally didn’t mind flying. He could play games and watch the clouds float by, a tranquil nothingness in which he enjoyed whiling away a few hours. Today, though, their flight had been one nightmare after another: their plane was grounded before takeoff for some mechanical concern, which had them rerouted to an alternate flight, causing an hour delay that almost made them miss their connection in Charlotte. Even though they’d made that connection, Charlotte to Boston was nonstop turbulence. Apparently they were flying over a freak late-March weather system that tossed the plane around like a Hellevator carnival ride that takes your seat up to the top of a pole and then drops you over and over again.

By the time they landed in Boston, Matthew needed a stiff drink. He felt unsteady and sick, and on top of that his guilt about Silas had been eating at him all morning, and he’d be lying if he said he hadn’t thought how shitty it would be to get in a plane crash with matters unresolved between them. Of course, this was overdramatic, but it settled into the back of his mind like an uncomfortable weight and stayed there.

They checked into the Marriott near the convention center, their usual hotel, and Matthew let himself into his room. Like last year, they’d splurged on separate rooms rather than share, although for Matthew, it wasn’t about picking up dates as much as getting some quiet time for himself. His coworkers had noticed his foul mood and deliberately refrained from asking him about it, which he appreciated.

Now, though, standing in his room and looking out over the gray bleakness of late March in Boston, he couldn’t let this go on a moment longer. He had rehearsed what he was going to say all day, including asking Silas not to hang up on him, and he ran through it one more time in his head before he dialed.

A small part of him thought Silas might not answer again, but he’d convinced himself that was unlikely. They both had to be lonely, right? He couldn’t be the only one. Plus, he was calling in the middle of the day, when Silas was most likely to be available. Yet as the phone continued to ring with no one answering, he faced the prospect of voice mail again. Shit, he hadn’t wanted to leave this all on a message. This time, though, he didn’t hang up, because damn it, he had to get this out.

The recorded voice sounded so familiar that Matthew’s heart ached. “‘This is Silas. Please leave a message.’” The message was curt, clear, and direct, like Silas himself. Then he heard the beep, and his memorized speech dissolved.

“Hi, Silas. It’s me, Matthew.” He exhaled and said what he was thinking, even if the words weren’t perfect. “Listen. I just needed to apologize for what I said. I don’t expect you to forgive me, but I need you to know that I didn’t mean any of what I said last week. I don’t think of you like that. I was angry, and I was embarrassed, and I spoke without thinking, and . . .” The words were coming fast and far too honest, and he closed his eyes. “I’m proud of you, and I . . . care about you, and I want to see you again. Please. I just—”

He wanted to say something else, but the line beeped, and then a recorded voice gave him the option of rerecording his message or hanging up. He couldn’t do it again, that was for sure, so he just hung up and flung the phone down onto the hotel bed. Maybe Silas would call him back, and maybe he wouldn’t, but either way, he had said what he needed to say. He went to finish unpacking, hoping with each step to hear the phone ring.

His phone remained silent.

---

Silas sat in his car after lunch with Elliot, staring at the voice mail notification on his phone, his heart pounding rabbit-fast in his throat. Of course Matthew would call while he had the phone muted. He almost didn’t want to listen. If this was Matthew confirming that they were through, right after he’d made the decision to choose this relationship, he didn’t know what he would do or how he would handle it. Right now, though, it could be good news or bad. He was reminded of the thought paradox about the cat in the box: this was Schrödinger’s voice mail. The speakerphone seemed too real, too overwhelming, so he held the phone against his ear and listened to Matthew speaking right to him.

“Hi, Silas. It’s me, Matthew.”

Silas closed his eyes, imagining Matthew next to him, murmuring into his ears, his voice soft and husky and emotional. Did he even know how much emotion spilled out in his voice?

“Listen. I just needed to apologize for what I said . . .”

Silas listened to the message, his heart too full, his emotions running too fast to reason. He wanted this apology. This is what he had craved, and the realization that Matthew missed him, combined with the knowledge that Matthew wasn’t mad, left Silas breathless and emotional and so desperate to see Matthew that he could scream. He didn’t want the phone. He wanted to be there, with him, right this moment.

He wanted to fly to DiceCon.

The next afternoon, Silas boarded the Boston MBTA subway to take him to the convention center, scrutinizing the map on the wall as he wiped his sweaty palms on his pant legs. He had had several hours of plane ride to freak out that maybe he was doing the wrong thing, that his impulsiveness was too much, too soon, but he reminded himself that he was fifteen hundred miles away from home and it was far too late to change his mind. He had landed, caught a cab to his hotel, a two-star no-name place that was so far away from the convention center as to be laughable but had still cost more per night than a week in a Florida Hilton, and then he’d jumped on the T and headed straight for DiceCon.

He had imagined that the convention would be busy, but he had not been prepared for the throngs of people filling all the sidewalks and packing the entrance area to the Boston Convention Center. Apparently DiceCon was a bigger deal than he’d expected. The one positive aspect was that a big event meant someone had to be selling tickets. Scalpers could smell desperation, and he entered the convention center with far less money than he’d started with, but with a genuine DiceCon badge that got him past the door into the throng of people headed down into the expo hall. All this adrenaline couldn’t be good for him; he felt like he’d been on edge ever since buying the plane ticket last night, and now that he was so close to Matthew, his stomach and heart and lungs were all tangled up in a mess of confusion and hope and fear. But he had a map of the expo hall, he’d picked out the little square labeled PI Games, and he forced himself forward into the crowd before he lost his nerve entirely.

---

“Oh my god, are you guys PI Games?”

Matthew watched the group of four teenagers approach, all eager faces and wide-eyed wonder. They were dressed in cosplay that looked familiar but he couldn’t quite place, navy-blue jumpsuits with red stripes down the side.

“Yup, that’s us.” Matthew gestured to the large vertical banner displaying their name and logo, flashing a smile at the group. Isabel, who had been signing someone up for Endgame beta, came around to greet the group as well. “My name’s Matthew, and I’m one of the programmers. This is Isabel, the design manager.”

One of the two guys in the group, a boy with crazy-long blond hair that he’d pulled back into a ponytail, stepped forward. He reached out a hand. “It’s an honor to meet you people. Really.”

While Matthew shook the guy’s hand, unsure what deserved these accolades, Isabel gasped and clapped her hand over her mouth. “Wait a minute! You guys are cosplaying Orion!”

No way. Matthew stepped back to look, and then he started to grin. The teenagers were dressed like characters from their game, their cosplay spot-on. “Holy shit, yeah! These are star commander–level jumpsuits. Did you make these?”

“I did,” said one of the two girls in the group, a round-faced girl with a purple pixie haircut. “None of the rest of them can sew.”

“That’s why we’re so stoked to meet you,” said the other girl, who was taller than everyone else in the group. “We’re huge fans. I swear, we’ve been playing Orion together almost nonstop since it came out. It’s seriously one of the best games of the year.”

Isabel got out her phone. “You’re our first cosplayers. I need pictures, you guys.”

“Yes, selfies!” Phones came out of jumpsuit pockets, and Matthew and Isabel happily posed with the group, who all signed up for the Endgame beta and bought swag. When they started to drift away, the first girl with the pixie cut lingered. “You do programming?” she asked Matthew.