Roll for Romance

Roll for Romance

Chapter One

“Your first set of dice should come as a gift. It’s tradition.”

Liam fishes into the pocket of his chinos and draws out a small velvet pouch. I shift from where I’ve sunk into the plush cushions of his couch, suddenly uncomfortable. My palms start to sweat, the can of beer slick in my right hand.

“You’ve already given me too much, Liam,” I say. A plane ticket from New York to Texas. Groceries for the last two weeks. Free rein to drive his grandpa’s old Civic. His guest room to stay in for the foreseeable future. I smile crookedly and shake my head. Finally agreeing to play Dungeons & Dragons with my best friend for the first time after years of him begging is a small price to pay in the face of such generosity. “Really, the least I can do is buy myself some dice for your game.”

“Oh hush, Sadie. This is my favorite part.” He holds the bag aloft, obviously waiting for me. Eventually I set aside my beer and hold out my hand, and he shakes the dice into my palm. I’m immediately charmed. They’re sparkly and shimmering, made of clear resin with specks of gold and white glitter suspended inside. They look like little gilded nuggets, seven in total, all different shapes. I’d only ever seen six-­sided ones when playing old-­school board games, but apparently you need all sorts of dice for D&D.

“I’ll explain what they each do later, but take the d20 for a spin,” Liam says.

“The big one?”

His lips twitch with amusement under the fluff of his ash-­blond beard. “The big one, yes.”

I pluck out the large twenty-­sided die and swirl it around in my palm, testing its weight. Without ceremony, I drop it onto the coffee table, where it bounces noisily among the stacks of D&D guides, stray papers, and cartons of takeout noodles. When it lands, the number 17 is face up, inked in bold white lines. I turn to Liam. “That’s good, right?”

He looks pleased. “That’s good, especially for your first roll. The closer to twenty you get, the better.” He reaches for a fortune cookie from our pile of snacks and shoots me a grin. “Maybe they’re lucky dice. Or maybe you’re lucky.”

I can’t help it; my mood immediately darkens, like a cloud blotting out the sunny giddiness of my first roll. The beer turns sour in my stomach, and I glance away, tossing pale curls out of my face. “Unlikely. But it’d be nice if my luck swung in the other direction for once.”

Liam is quiet for a moment, fiddling with the end of the paper fortune sticking out of the cookie. He cracks the cookie in half, pops it into his mouth, and spins the slip between his fingers. When he finally lets out a slow, measured sigh, I know he’s about to hit me with some hard truth. We’ve been friends for fifteen years; I recognize his tells.

“People get laid off all the time, Sadie. It happens.”

“I know,” I say sullenly. “But that doesn’t make it suck any less.”

Since college, I’d lived the dream. For years, I’d trekked every morning—­in heels—­through the grimy streets of Midtown Manhattan to a gleaming beacon of a skyscraper where I’d worked as an associate at Incite Media, one of the top marketing agencies in the nation. I’d loved throwing that name around, loved seeing the raised eyebrows from Tinder dates and my parents’ fancy friends. So impressive!

It had seemed too good to be true. Sometimes I felt like I was dressing up in someone else’s pencil skirt and magenta blazer, showing off someone else’s flashy résumé full of glowing recommendations and compelling statistics. I kept waiting for somebody to out me as an impostor, to yell, Who let her in here? But I stuck around, and I did good work. My campaigns were inventive and effective. I was devastated when I was let go.

I was also—­just slightly—­relieved.

But I wasn’t ready to admit that out loud. And I definitely wasn’t ready to tell Liam the whole truth about why I lost my job.

It was his idea for me to leave New York and stay with him in Texas for a while. He’d known something was wrong after a week of me ignoring his texts. He’d known something was really wrong when I stopped sending reactions and emojis to dumbass memes he sent me through social media. So he’d made an excuse to fly up to visit his mom, who still lived on the same street my parents did in the small town in Connecticut where we’d both grown up. He’d hopped on the train and shown up at my apartment building in Queens one Sunday morning, stale donuts from my favorite hometown bakery in one hand, a couple of duffel bags in the other. I’d opened the door with a scowl and a messy bun, wearing sweatpants I’d had on for four days. After a few hours of stuffing my face and crying, I hashed out a half-­assed plan with Liam, and we decided I’d finally take the trip down to visit his new place in the Wild West.

Just a month, I’d told him. Just a month, and I’ll be back on my feet.

But with another look at my blotchy eyes and the state of my neglected apartment, Liam had put a hand on my elbow and gently encouraged me to stay for the summer.

“I know it sucks,” he soothes, bringing my attention back to the present. “But try to look at it as an opportunity.”

“Is that the advice your fortune cookie gave you?”

Liam gives me a flat look. “No. But it’s stale advice, I know. Listen. It’s awful, and it’s going to hurt for a while. But think of it as a forced vacation.” I wince, but he presses on. “That job was running you ragged. You never took time off, never explored the hobbies you said you would, never came to visit me . . .” He’s smiling now, teasing, but guilt pinches at me. He’d moved to the tiny town of Heller, Texas, five years ago, but since college, I’d only ever seen him on his trips back to New England.

He squeezes my shoulder. “Enjoy it. Take a pause. Think about what you want to do next. Let me show you around, introduce you to my friends, and distract you with a fantastical adventure.”

It’s the perfect subject change, because I’m certainly not yet ready to think about any future further than this D&D game. “The adventure. Okay. Remind me how this is going to go?”

Liam leans forward, and the light of excitement in his eyes nearly makes the lenses of his glasses flare. He’s played D&D since high school, and nothing gets him fired up more. “At this stage, all you need to do is create a character,” Liam explains. “You can play as whomever you like—­a haughty wizard intent on learning new magic, a farmer who decided to pick up a sword and seek out fame and fortune, a sneaky thief who dreams of stealing a crown . . . anyone.” He sets before me a pencil and a sheet of paper covered in an overwhelming number of tiny blank boxes. I adjust my glasses and squint at the paper as Liam continues. “Once we fill out this character sheet, it will tell you everything you need to know: what spells your character can cast, how strong they are, whether they’re dexterous and good at picking locks or charismatic enough to persuade a crowd, and so on. I’ll walk you through the details, and then over the next week before our first game, you can think through your character’s backstory.”

I nod and tap the pencil’s eraser against my lower lip. “What types of characters are the others playing?”

“So far we’ve got a barbarian with a big axe, a clever knife-­wielding rogue, and”—­he briefly pauses, then huffs out a quick laugh—­“a bard.”

I narrow my eyes. “Like a musician?”

“Sort of. You’ll see.” Liam bends over the character sheet again. “The guy playing the bard is new to town, too, and he seems like a good egg. I think you’ll like him.” His tone is entirely too nonchalant in a way that makes me immediately suspicious.

And then, like he’s dangling a carrot, Liam adds, “He’s cute.”

Fine. I’m curious.

“I’m excited to meet everyone,” I say evenly, fighting the smile that tugs at my lips as I take another drink of beer. Warmth spreads to my limbs, chasing away some of the tension from earlier. “And you’re not playing a character, right?” I clarify. I still haven’t wrapped my head around how the game works. “You just run the game?”

“Right. I’ll be the Dungeon Master.”

“Sounds kinky.”

Liam shoots me another flat look. “I run the game,” he explains. “I build the world, create a compelling plotline . . . think of it as the storyteller role. I create the map, and the players choose which paths to explore. Does that make sense?”