Hey, I thought that in honor of Love Sucks coming out on Friday, I would do a teaser from it. But I don’t know how my editor would feel about that, so I’m doing a teaser from a scene I cut solely for length. This is the first half of a scene I loved, but something needed to go from this section of the novel, and this was the scene that was least important.
I feel bad that Eric doesn’t get equal time as Lo, so maybe I’ll tease with an Eric scene next week. Unless you guys say you want to see the nerdiness that is me posting the actual D&D scene that occurs after this excerpt.
Context: Mailee drains love with her touch and has been on a quest to become human, but she’s taking a break with Logan and his friends, Tyron and Adam. Mai and Lo are pretending to be boyfriend and girlfriend as an excuse to keep him touching/feeding her and his friends from touching her at all. Lo has diabetes. And…I think that’s all you need to know.
The doorbell rang. When it rang the second time, I realized nobody was going to get it. I peeked through the peephole. Pizza delivery.
“Hey, that’ll be 23.98,” the delivery guy said when I opened the door. Uh oh. I didn’t have any money.
“I got it.” Adam sprinted up to the door, wallet in hand. “Mailee, could you run these down to the guys while I pay. Don’t let them suck you in. If you don’t come back in five minutes, I’ll assume they incorporated you into the cult, and I’m not going in after you.” He grinned. “Thanks, doll.”
Which was how I ended up carrying three pizzas downstairs to the room across the hall from my bedroom.
“Hey, babe,” Lo said when I entered. Everyone looked up.
“Oh em gee,” a guy with red hair and freckles said. It took me a second to figure out he was speaking in letters and not a foreign language. “You didn’t tell us your girlfriend was a Halfling.” And I was confused again. “Look how cute she is.”
The other guy–with a shaved head and stockier than Freckles Guy or Tyron–chimed in with, “Give her a break, Chris. She’s at least tall enough to be an elf. Yeah, definitely elf-like.”
The girl with curly brown hair giggled while the one with straight black hair and a pointed nose rolled her eyes.
Tyron snorted. “Way to be the most stereotypical gamers ever, guys.”
“I brought you your pizza.”
“Here.” Lo stood up and grabbed the top two boxes. “Follow me.”
We put them down on a table to the side. “Do we have to pizza every time, guys? I’d like for my blood sugar to at least have a fighting chance.”
Tyron ignored him. “Mailee, you going to play with us?”
“Oh, yes, do,” the curly-haired girl said. “Let’s try to balance out the testosterone level in here?”
“D&D is supposed to be testosterone-full. This is already more girls than I’ve ever seen in a game.”
“Don’t give me that gaming is for guys crap. My Serenity game has three times the girls than guys.”
“Yeah, but that’s Serenity. I mean the name itself is girly.”
Chris and the other guy threw some dice at him. “Don’t mess with the Browncoats!”
“Does this make sense to you?” I whispered to Lo.
“Sorta. Don’t think I’m too much of a geek. This is more Ty’s thing. Do you want to play?”
“What do I have to do?”
“She’s playing!” Chris was way too excited about this.
“I’ll teach you. And you can eat with us.” He kissed me before I could flinch. I’d have to talk to him about that.
“Oo-ooh…. Logan,” said our personal Geek chorus.
“Okay, now you’re the most stereotypical gamers ever,” Lo said. He took my hand into his to keep me from playing with my fingers. “It’s okay,” he promised, and only I knew he meant the two of us touching. “You don’t have to play.”
“No, she has to be an elf. Come on, Girlfriend of Logan,” the bald guy said.
“Stop pressuring her. Mai, you don’t have to play, and if you decide to, don’t let them tell you how your character should be. You can be anything you want.”
And then he said the two little words that got me to play. “Even human.”
Hope you enjoyed.
Sage, Like the Spice 