Chapter 24: Dropping the ball_NYC Questing Guild

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> “There is not much for me to do during the day, so I frequent the various establishments and collect the gossip coming out of the Convention. My ideas on the unitary executive were agreed to almost immediately but now the delegates are squabbling over how to structure the Congress. As if it was important in the slightest.”

The crystal orb shimmered in the night sky, its many facets reflecting the world down below. It hovered there for a few seconds before a burst of thunder erupted from the ground, causing the orb to slowly descend. The rumbling intensified as it plummeted to the earth, whipping the crowd into a frenzy. People were laughing, crying, and screaming, until finally it was too much for me to bear, and I closed my eyes so I would not have to witness the last few moments.

No, this wasn’t the end of days brought on by a meteor falling to earth. It was 30 seconds to midnight and Duncan and I were about to share our first ever New Year’s kiss.

I listened as the Times Square crowd a thousand miles away counted down in unison on the giant TV at the party. Lisa and Brad stood nearby in their own almost embrace and on the other side of the room, Stacy and her date had not even bothered to wait the extra seconds and were going at each other on the couch.

I opened my eyes to find Duncan staring at me and he pulled me closer as the last vestiges of the most momentous year of my life faded away into yesteryear.

“Five, four, three…”

I shut my eyes again and waited for the last second to finally pass. This kiss would stand for something more than just an ordinary kiss, I thought. It would be the start of a new beginning for Duncan and me, a consecration of our relationship that would soon hopefully be expressed in the form of a different kind of orb on my finger.

“Happy New Year!” the partygoers and TV crowd shouted and suddenly I felt Duncan’s lips on mine and then … then they were gone again.

I opened my eyes and Duncan was still there, holding me close to him, but his gaze had wandered behind me and I turned to see Stacy grinding her body on top of her date as if the rest of the room was empty.

“Look at those two,” he said with a smirk. “Do you think they even care?”

I rolled my eyes and extricated myself from Duncan’s arms.

“No, but I don’t see why we should either.”

He pulled me back toward him and put his hands back around my waist.

“You know, we could be doing the-”

“Don’t think so,” I said. “After that wet noodle of a kiss, you could forgive me for not wanting the rest.”

“Oh come on Jen. It’s New Year’s Eve, not our wedding.”

“Our wedding? Seems like you’re skipping ahead, mister.”

I held my ringless hand up to his face before pushing his arms away again and walking out to the balcony. The crash of the waves on the beach below was soothing and I waited for Duncan to come out and apologize for completely ruining the moment. But when I turned to look back into the party, he was over at the bar, yucking it up with the bartender.

I gazed out at the ocean and tried to suppress the tears forming in my eyes. Why was I getting so worked up over an absentee boyfriend who a month earlier I was convinced was just keeping me around as his New York side chick to his actual girlfriend half a world away?

But a lot can change in a month.

A month ago I watched as my mentor lay unconscious at the foot of the door that would not open.

And a month ago I listened as a newly-returned Duncan had professed his undying love for me out of nowhere and how he couldn’t imagine spending his life with someone else and how he wanted me to move with him to Hong Kong so that we could finally take our relationship to the next level.

I handled these new developments as best I could, which was to say, not well.

Beatrice was still breathing, that much I had confirmed. But after several minutes, she hadn’t come out of her stupor and I worried that a passerby would see us and call the police. We didn’t exactly fit the mold of the neighborhood, plus there was the attempted breaking and entering. So I did what anyone would have done in that situation: I called an Uber.

When the car arrived 10 minutes later, the driver rolled down his window and looked at me standing over Beatrice’s unconscious body, and I thought for a second he was going to keep driving. But thankfully, he didn’t and instead got out of the car and helped me moved Beatrice into the backseat. We rode in silence back into Manhattan and I debated which of her apartments we should be going to. In the end, I decided that it would be best to deposit her at home, where hopefully she could sleep the whole thing off under the watchful eye of her husband, rather than him wondering where she was all day.

When we arrived, I asked the doorman to call Garrett down to the lobby so he could help bring her upstairs, and he appeared with Jack-Jack in tow, who immediately began whaling “Mommy, Mommy!” My face turned beet red and I tried, unconvincingly, to explain that we had been out at a champagne brunch to celebrate the end of another tutoring semester and things had gotten very messy very quickly and I was so sorry I had let her drink so much and on and on. When I finished my story, Garrett didn’t say a word, instead motioning for the doorman to help him carry Beatrice to the elevator and I stood there, wondering if I should follow them up, until they were gone.

Beatrice had not been happy with my decision.

“BSG tomorrow, 830,” the text two days later read.

I tossed and turned the whole night, wondering what she was going to do to me. Would she just fire me outright? Make me test out her unperfected buffs?

But it was the fact that she didn’t acknowledge what I had done that was the most unnerving. Instead, she told me that she had completed the Raid by delivering the information to the Requester and that maybe whoever it was would figure out how to actually open the door. In the meantime, I was to go back there and put a piece of tape between the door and the frame and check it every day, so we could see if anyone had managed to open it.

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I obliged without a fight. Not that in my mind I had done anything wrong. We hadn’t exactly talked through contingency plans if something horrible happened. Had she expected me to take her to the other apartment and keep a bedside vigil until she woke up? I didn’t want to press the issue though. The door had been a literal dead-end and I was anxious to work on something new.

But that something never came. Instead, I dutifully taped the door and returned every morning before work to see if it had been disturbed.

Spoiler alert: it hadn’t.

Luckily I had something else to distract me from the drudgery my secret life had become. Well, someone. Duncan had come back for a month-long stint over the holidays, his longest layover in New York in the time that we had been dating.

It was during his first night back that he dropped the bombshell on me: that he wanted me to move to Hong Kong, to live together, and to, eventually, get married. Yes, this was the same Duncan who during that ill-fated party in the Hamptons had disparaged me.

Of course, it had all been in his mind and he had no clue that I had heard. And the missed calls over these past two months hadn’t exactly inspired confidence that this relationship was heading someplace other than a mutual parting of ways.

So yes, I viewed his newfound proclamation of love with skepticism. How could I not? But I didn’t say no. I wanted to take this month slowly, I had said. To get back in the rhythm of being an us. A few days later he suggested that we go away to Miami for New Year’s, not just the two of us, but Lisa and Brad too. He even lined up a friend of a friend for Stacy to hang with. The full court press was on and as much as I didn’t want to admit it, it had worked so far.

The door slid open and Duncan finally joined me on the balcony.

“Hey,” he said. “Look, I didn’t mean to … it’s just…”

Duncan waffled and looked down at the ground, then at me, as if waiting for me to let him off the hook.

“What?” I asked. “I’m not going to finish your thought for you.”

“I’m sorry. I had forgotten it was our first actual New Year’s together, like actually together in the same physical location. Not me calling you at noon and you calling me at noon. That’s part of the reason I want you to come with me to Hong Kong. So we can just be a couple together.”

“I want that too,” I said, sliding over to him. “To be a normal couple. To have someone to come home to. But I don’t know if I can just pack up and leave my life.”

“I know. But you wouldn’t be leaving your life. You’d just be starting a new chapter. Besides, the way you talk about your job, I would have thought you’d jump at the chance for a fresh start. I have tons of connections in the Hong Kong startup scene, you’d get-”

“It’s not just that,” I said. Leaving New York meant leaving the Quests, the Raids, the magic I had discovered. Not to mention the Novice agreement. Maybe there was another version of it all, in Hong Kong. And I’d be free from Beatrice. What was she going to do, follow me?

“I just need some time. To figure things out. That’s all. I hope that’s OK.”

Duncan nodded, not saying anything, just continuing to stare out at the ocean.

“That’s it? A nod?”

“No,” he said and pulled me toward him to finally give me a proper New Year’s kiss.

Several minutes passed until I finally drew back from him, my face flush and my breath short.

“Should we…?” he said with a wry smile.

I hit him playfully and shook my head.

“It’s not even 12:30! Besides, first I want to commemorate this occasion. Our first New Year’s.”

I pulled out my phone and handed it to him. We turned our backs to the water and smiled.

“OK,” I said, taking the phone back.

“OK what?”

“Now we, you know...”

He grabbed my hand without another word and didn’t let go for a long time.

The January sun reflected off the water outside the window, finally rousing me from my sleep. Duncan was already awake next to me, holding my phone for some reason,

“Umm, Dunc,” I said, rolling over in bed to face him. “What are you doing?”

“I, uh, just wanted to see the picture from last night but then I scrolled back a bit and … what are these?”

He handed me my phone and I looked down to see the picture of Frankie’s tattoo. Crap.

“Oh, umm, that’s a friend’s tattoo. Took a picture to show to someone at work who’s thinking of getting one.”

“Ah. But does your friend have three very similar tattoos? Because you have three pictures here and the numbers in each tattoo are different.”

“No, it’s just the one…”

I scrolled through the pictures for the first time. It hadn’t seemed necessary to look at them, because I had written down the numbers and those had led us to the unopenable door. But Duncan was right. Each tattoo had a slightly different set of 12 digits and the three new strings of numbers were different from the numbers I had written down, but not by much. What the hell was going on?

“Oh, now I remember,” I lied. “These other two are mock-ups that my coworker made based off of the original. Not sure why she wants to tattoo random numbers on her back, but to each her own!”

Duncan looked at me quizzically, before getting out of bed and walking to the bathroom, and I hoped he wouldn’t press the issue when he returned. This was the last way I wanted him to find out about my secret double life, if I ever told him at all. But that was a debate for another day. Right now though, I had to tell Beatrice. Maybe that would put things back to normal, as normal as our relationship was.

I wrote a short text to her about finding a new clue about the tattoo and was about to hit send when I stopped myself. Why was I so willing to just hand over this information? After how she had been treating me? After I had been the one to complete the Raid on my own and figured out what the tattoo meant? Besides, I didn’t have anything now but a set of weird pictures and three new locations a thousand miles away to investigate, and she would probably appreciate me not bothering her until I’d actually confirmed that I had a lead.

My eyes drifted over to my carry-on, where Beatrice’s compendium was tucked away, still unread. I should have been more diligent in reading it, but there were only so many moments I had to myself on this trip, and it wasn’t the type of book you could let someone catch you reading.

Maybe I could sneak a peek while Duncan was in the shower.

No.

I needed a break from that life and resolved to put all thoughts of tattoos and secret numbers and sociopathic bosses out of my head for the rest of the trip.

“Hey,” said Duncan, reappearing in the bedroom fully dressed and holding a piece of paper, which he handed to me.

“What’s this?” I said, looking down at a printed out flight itinerary between Hong Kong and Paris.

“I was going to keep it a surprise, but after talking to Lisa last night, now seemed like a good time to tell you. I’m coming to Paris and you going to meet me there after the bachelorette.”

“Oh. OH. Wow, Dunc, that’s … that’s amazing!”

“I know. Figured it was better than spending a cold week in New York.”

“Yeah, exactly! Now I’ll have something to look forward to on that trip.”

Duncan frowned.

“You sound like it’s going to be a chore.”

“No, I mean. Of course I’m excited,” I lied again, “but you know how Lisa is. I don’t know how much of my sanity I’ll have left after that week.”

“Ah. Well, try to enjoy yourself. Just a little?”

“I’ll try. But can’t make any promises.”

“Fine. But promise me this. When I see you in Paris, you’ll have an answer for me?”

I stared at Duncan, not believing what I had just heard. Did he just give me an ultimatum?

“I’m sorry, what?”

“What? You’ll have had three months to think it over by then. How much more time do you need?”

“Oh, three months. You’re right. That is long enough to decide whether I’m going to abandon my entire life and move halfway around the world.”

“Your entire life? Right, I see.”

“No, what I meant was…”

“It’s fine. Forget it. Forget I said anything.”

He took the itinerary out of my hands and stormed out of the room.

“Where are you going?” I yelled.

“To the airport,” he shouted back. “You clearly need the space. Take it. Take the whole fucking continent.”

I ran out to the living room only to hear the door slam shut.

He was gone.

Chapter 24: Dropping the ball

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