Megan had already logged out for the evening, and was eating her dinner. It had been months since she had bothered to think about what she was putting into her mouth and it wasn't that she was eating junk. Between the constant stream of documents at work and the quiet empty of her apartment in the evenings she had at some point stopped caring. Her coworkers were getting promoted and her bosses were telling her to get more involved with the company.

She could still hear the words she didn’t say, locked in the back of her throat waiting for the moment to escape. “I’m working eleven hours a day, I have to drive an hour just to get to and from work. During the winter I don’t even see the sun if I don’t spend money I shouldn’t eating out. On the weekends I have to spend most of the day just keeping house and you want me to get more involved!”

Megan had an idea where she was headed, Alex had been her coworker for a couple years before he just broke, bought some land outside the city and locked himself away for three months while his savings began to run dry.

The most annoying part of it all was that she loved her job. She loved the feeling of finding order out of the chaos that was the literal ton of paper she sorted through each year. She loved getting better at sorting it. She hated that the better she got the more mind numbing and frustrating it became. She hated that she knew how much trouble one person missing from her shift would trouble the group. She hated how replaceable she was. She…

Megan parked her car and took a moment to extinguish her growing frustration. She thought about finding a new job, as she often did when she was sitting outside waiting for her shift to begin, but quickly reminded herself she couldn’t afford to take the time off to look for one.

During one of the lulls in work Megan wondered how much Alex was going to have to spend to maintain the server. James had run the setup through a stress test and had determined that they could safely run about ten thousand players. The pace picked back up before she was able to follow her train of thought any further.

A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.

Eventually she got off work and before she realised it she was home, another hour gone forever as though it had never happened. When she opened her door she was greeted by the smell offer families pizza sauce. “Hey sis, how was work?”

“Oh, you know, long.”

“It feels kind of lonely you know?”

Megan looked around her apartment, there was a couch and tv, her bedroom had a bed and a dresser. “What does?”

“Oh, your private server, thanks for letting me join you guys by the way. I can’t invite any of my school friends to join me and all that. Hanging out with you is still cool, but there's this guy, and his family is kind of rich, cool too.”

“Do you really want to show a future boyfriend you playing with Alex’s cousin like you were? That didn’t seem like you, what was it about?”

“He seemed like such a virgin and I kind of like people looking at me. Alex said he was cool too, though I don’t think he thought…”

“Well so long as you leave Alex alone.”

“Eww, gross Megan. Alex and James are way too old for me.”

The sisters kept chatting while they waited for the pizza that Gabby had so lovingly made, she was bored and needed to eat dinner anyway, when it finished they broke out Megan’s fine china, paper plates, and served it with their favorite vintage, a local peach soda.

“Hey Megs?”

“Mn?”

“Can I stay with you for the summer, I want to really dig into the game while it lasts but mom and dad are going to want me to get out and do things.”

“Ask them first, but it’s okay with me. I need to get some sleep though, get me some jammies from my room before you leave? I need a shower.”