Chapter One
I sat on my couch and looked at the screen, gaming through the night. This was what I did on a typical Friday night, and it was what I loved. I wished I could do this all the time, but I knew I had to work sometime. That was the problem with my life, I loved to do some things but most of them didn’t make the money needed to survive. It could be harsh being a plus-sized woman, who wanted to just be left alone, but sometimes I could finally get out of her fake life and into the reality of the video games I was playing.
I lightly cussed at the screen when the monster let out a magic attack and destroyed one of my party members. That was another reason I couldn’t get a job as a professional gamer: I was only good at Japanese RPGs and most people played stupid first person shooters. It was such a pain in the ass, but I tried to make it work. Besides, why deal with others when I could just have a little bit of fun on my own? That’s what I really loved, the feeling of loneliness and sanctuary that comes with gaming.
As I beat the battle, I sighed. Even though I loved my lonely life I did miss hanging out with friends. As I got older, I didn’t really seem to like other people my age. Most of them loved to go out and get drunk, and although I dabbled with that in the past, I didn’t really see the appeal of it. Because of my disdain for it however, I was now lonelier than ever and it did hit home a little bit when it came to actually dealing with people.
The pho ne suddenly rang, rousing my out of my stupor and thoughts. I went over to my phone and looked at the caller ID. It was my friend Stephanie, a former roommate of mine from college. I didn’t really talk to Stephanie anymore, at least not since she decided to go out with one of the biggest douchebags ever and decided to leave me all alone. Nevertheless, I picked it up and sighed for a moment before speaking.
“Hello?” I asked.
“Hey there Trista it’s Stephanie. How are you?” she asked. She seemed so fake and phony, that I had to believe that she was setting me up. There was no way that Stephanie would desire to hang out with me out of the blue and not want something out of it.
“What do you want? You haven’t called me since college, and that was years ago.” I replied. I wasn’t in the mood for people’s bullshit and instead wanted to get back to my game.
“Oh I just wanted to invite you to a party in NYC. I think you’d love it. Besides, do you even get out these days? Or are you too busy trying to play video games?” She cooed.
Stephanie knew exactly how to get under my skin, and as she said that I gripped the phone, being careful not to break it. “Fine. When is it?”
“Tonight. We’ll come and pick you up in the limo,” she replied bluntly. There was a hint of malice in the communication and I felt a bit nervous when I heard that.
“Alright. What should I wear?”
“It’s an after-five event honey. You can think of something,” she said in a condescending manner. I fumed when I heard that, but managed to keep her cool as I listened to my friend talk about what I should wear.
“Alright. I guess I’ll see you then,” I replied.
“Alright. See you then!" S he said. As I clicked off the receiver I looked at it, thinking about what to do next. I really wanted to go, but at the same time I didn’t know if I could trust my so-called “friend”. This woman was a leech and she probably was just doing this in order to make fun of me in front of various people. She did that a lot back in the day, but back then I wanted to be one of the cool kids and I did a lot of that in order to get attention from them. However, most of the time it backfired on me and that didn’t go over as well as I thought.
I sat around trying to think of what to do next. It was pretty obvious what it was, but I didn’t know what to do. However, the only thing