“I bet your head is spinning. How do you feel?” she prompted again when I didn’t have an answer other than opening and closing my mouth a bunch.
“Okay,” I said, still studying the cards in my hand.
“Just okay? You won MOC West!”
“Yeah.” My head felt too full, that sort of too-heavy, cottony feeling, like the morning after drinking. “I guess I did.” I scanned the room, looking for Alden or even Payton. Someone I knew. Someone who would help me make sense of this. “Wow.”
“Wow is right. That was one impressive come-from-behind victory. Tell us how you did it?”
“I…uh…I took it one turn at a time.” I stammered my way through a few more questions, gradually calming down enough to talk about strategy and my friends from Gamer Grandpa, but it still felt surreal, especially when a trophy was wheeled in on a little cart followed by the inventor of Odyssey herself, Imelda Sanchez—a stately woman in her sixties who had stunned the gaming world thirty years prior before going on to build a massive empire. The present CEO and the head of the game play division accompanied her, a veritable court of Odyssey royalty, important people I’d followed for years in interviews and articles, and now they were in front me, smiling and nodding as the commentator made introductions.
All I really wanted was to get to Alden, to tell him that I’d done it, to see his reaction. Maybe later we could watch the match together, go through it play by play, and it would all seem more real than this. In so many ways, the trophy felt like ours, not simply mine alone, the culmination of our journey together and all I’d figured out along the way.
But even in my foggy state, I knew I couldn’t get out of all these formalities. And indeed, the next interminable stretch of time was filled with speeches and the presentation of one of those oversize ceremonial checks. The guy presenting it to me gave me a whispered assurance that the real check was coming later. Then came the trophy, huge and heavy, and pictures with all the various luminaries. And more interviews. Endless interviews—both for Odyssey’s own streaming channel and the more mainstream media present.
Finally, everything seemed to be winding down, and I had a second to pull out my phone. Two hundred and twelve new messages. Holy wow. Congrats from people I didn’t even know had my number. Only one message I cared about though.
You did it! So proud of you. I beamed down at my phone, practically feeling the warmth of Alden’s pride. Another message was timestamped later than that first one. You look busy. Don’t worry about us. Payton is making me get food, and we’ll probably head back to the hotel afterward. Text when you can.
“Have you eaten?” Imelda Sanchez came striding back over to me, elegant in a pink suit, but kind, asking as if she really cared about the answer.
“I…uh…” Quickly pocketing my phone, I had to stop and think. “Dinner?”
“Yesterday?” She blinked. “We’re getting a late lunch here in our private suite. You’ll join us.” Her tone didn’t broker a lot of room for objection.
Thankfully, it sounded like Alden was willing to wait because I didn’t know how one said no to an offer like that. I nodded slowly. “Okay.”
“Good. We’ve got your future to discuss.”
“Future?” My pulse sped up on a fresh wave of adrenaline. Oh yeah. I’d almost forgotten. The chance for a seat on the pro tour. Traveling. Weeks on end. Different cities. No more bumming around Gracehaven. No more Alden.
How patient could I expect him to be if I was gone all the time? The only future I truly wanted was the one waiting for me back at the hotel. “I’m not sure—”
“Shhh.” She held up a long, aristocratic finger. “Hear us out. I’ve got a proposition I think you might be very interested in.”
Chapter Thirty-Four
Alden
Watching Conrad win was easily one of the highlights of my life—the way he came back from the brink of elimination multiple times, finally winning on a trick that was so utterly classic Conrad that I couldn’t help but grin. Payton and I high-fived as pandemonium broke out, people rushing into the tournament space to watch the trophy presentation, other people bickering about the outcome, Conrad lost to a sea of cameras and media before his image appeared back on the display, answering questions.
“I couldn’t have done it without Gamer Grandpa and my friends from the show,” he was saying in response to some question I’d missed. His friends. I supposed I was one now, and that made a little frisson of happiness wiggle up my back, but tempered by the reality that whatever I’d been, whatever I wanted from the future, all of that was changed now that he’d won. I loved him, and not only was there no guarantee that he felt the same way, but now love might have to mean letting him go.