Lakeside Cougars - The Complete Trilogy, page 4
“What’s your main genre?” she asked.
“Horror,” he replied.
“Ooh. Interesting. I know so few horror authors.”
“It’s hard to break into, but I think it’s easier in gaming because the bar is just so much lower, in terms of scaring a person. You can’t really jumpscare someone with a book. But yeah, so, I made a few more games, kind of just grinding them out as fast as I could because after that one game got a little attention, each one got a little bit more and earned just a little bit more. And I was working shit jobs, absolutely struggling to keep the lights on. And then, about a year ago, I made a change.”
“What change? Different genre?” she asked.
“Nope. Well, not really. This was the real reason I said we had something in common: I started adding romance options to my games.”
“To your horror games?!”
He laughed. “Yeah. I had been making this game for like eight months. It was sort of this top-down base-building survival game. You wake up in a post-apocalyptic world from cryogenic stasis, and you have to manage the base you wake up in, and decide who to wake up, as there’s other people who were frozen, too. And venture out into the wastelands. Fight monsters, find resources, build up your base and keep yourself and your people alive. And…
“I don’t know, I was just browsing the internet one night, looking at new games, and I saw this one game, an RPG, and it sounded cool, but then I realized there weren’t going to be romance options. And that was really disappointing. And that was just sort of like a flare being lit my head. Like, all of a sudden, I sat up with the thought of ‘holy shit I should add romance to my game’. So I did. You could build relationships with the people. And I ended up tacking on an extra two months to add in all this dialogue and a few extra mechanics, like gift-giving and date nights—”
“In a post-apocalyptic horror game? Don’t get me wrong, this actually sounds really sweet and nice, but it also seems jarring?”
“You’d think so, but people fucking dug into it. I put out a demo and it got more downloads than any one of my other games had sales. So I put it out and it blew up. I sold a thousand copies the first week, ten thousand the first month, and then like thirty thousand by the end of the second month. It died off after that, not immediately, but it stopped going up. But this also made a spike in my other games, though the main complaint was that there was no romance.”
She laughed merrily. “That’s amazing! And hilarious. Why did you not want to tell me that?”
“I dunno, just thought it might come across as, like, nerdy? Lame? I don’t know, I’ll admit I’m not the best when it comes to predicting people’s reactions. I’ve had seemingly great conversations crash and burn as soon as they figure out I make video games for a living.”
“I understand how that feels, honestly. But no! I think that’s so neat! Honestly I’m interested in trying it out. What’s the name of it?”
Atticus hesitated for just a moment. He didn’t honestly think she’d be interested, or, at best, would make a noncommittal ‘I’ll have to look into it sometime’, but she had the appearance of someone fully intending to go home tonight and start playing.
“Uh...Cold Reset,” he replied. “I can give you a copy, if you want.”
“That’s all right, I have money, and I believe very firmly in supporting artists.” She began saying something else, but paused as her phone chimed. She reached into her purse, fishing it out and looking annoyed. “Mmm...oh damn,” she muttered as she studied her screen.
“Something wrong?”
“I, uh, lost track of the time. I’m supposed to be somewhere rather soon. Would you mind terribly if I dropped you back off at your place?”
“No, that’s fine. Honestly if it’s really crucial I can walk,” he replied.
“No, no, not at all. I drove you out here, I’m driving you back,” she said, standing and gathering the remnants of her meal.
He did the same and they threw it away in one of the nearby trashcans, then he followed her back to her car.
CHAPTER FIVE
Atticus ended up right back where he started not much later, getting out of Colleen’s car in his driveway.
“Wait,” she said before he closed the door.
He ducked his head back in. “Yeah?”
“Wanna trade numbers? You’re definitely a person I want to spend more time with while you’re here.”
“Oh, yeah, definitely,” he replied, pulling his phone out.
They traded numbers and she grinned, then grew more somber. “I’ve got one other thing to say, and I’m really not trying to sound like a bitch, but...I’d appreciate it if you didn’t give that number to anyone else. There are a lot of people out there who would like to have that number.”
“You can trust me to respect your privacy, Colleen,” he said.
She smiled again. “I honestly believe you...all right, that was a great lunch, but I gotta go. I’ll talk with you later!”
“Thanks for lunch. Later.”
He closed the door and she backed out and began driving back into town.
For a moment, he simply stood there, watching her drive away, feeling utterly dislocated, just like before, but now in a completely different way.
Atticus had not been particularly successful with women in his life so far.
There had been a few girlfriends in high school, one that he thought he had been in love with, but like most high school romances, it had been full of unnecessary drama and way too many emotions and ultimately they broke up when she went to college.
There had been a few other girlfriends in the years since then, and he had been happy through most of those relationships, but nothing ever really seemed to stick. He liked them, he respected them, he enjoyed different aspects about them.
He obviously enjoyed having sex with them.
But…
He never really felt like he could get to that next level, or more specifically, that he should. He liked them, but he didn’t love them, and he was beginning to wonder if that was some flaw in him. And the past year had been, ironically, particularly unsuccessful.
Though he had more money than ever before, he had not had a successful relationship since his career had taken off. If anything, it had made it harder to date. He drew more attention, to be sure, but apparently it was all bad attention.
The last girl he’d tried to date some ten months ago had been fucking insane and had come extremely close to lighting his apartment on fire in a fit of jealous rage because she was convinced he was seeing another girl behind her back.
He wasn’t, as he wouldn’t do that, but he had broken up with her immediately and then more or less sworn off women for a good long while. His career was at too crucial a stage and there was something particularly off-putting about dating a girl who had made an actual effort to kill you, or at least seriously harm you.
So he was feeling some very intense feelings after that lunch with Colleen.
Lust, to be sure. He lusted after her intensely.
He’d always had a desire, a deep, powerful desire, for older women. As in, noticeably older women. Women old enough to be his mom, as Colleen had put it. Women twice his age or more. He wasn’t sure when it had started, or why, but he was drawn to cougars.
And, unfortunately, so far, he’d never successfully been with one.
Was that going to change?
Maybe he was crazy, or desperate, or just way off his game, but it had actually seemed like Colleen was hitting on him.
He’d sure been hitting on her, without fully meaning to, and she had clearly picked up on it, and not responded poorly. If anything, she’d seemed happy. He thought that maybe she was just happy to have the affections of a young man, but that couldn’t be it.
She could clearly get anyone she wanted on looks alone, nevermind her riches or success.
But he also knew that romance, and often lust, formed under all kinds of unlikely circumstances. So, putting all that aside and assuming she was even down to fuck, the question became: should he even go after her?
The answer seemed obvious: no shit. But were there downsides he was missing?
Certainly he’d missed several during his last relationship.
Atticus finally shook his head and walked over to his house. He stepped back inside and looked around the living room again, trying to jumpstart his mind. Only that wasn’t what he was trying to do, not anymore.
He was trying to focus on something other than Colleen Silver.
He found himself examining a lot of their interactions, even seemingly simple, innocent things, because he would swear that she’d been trying to seduce him.
Maybe it was just a thing for her? Maybe she was just naturally flirtatious? Or maybe she wanted to see if she could draw the attention of someone his age? It had to be an age thing, because he wasn’t particularly attractive.
Even now, after he’d gotten serious (or, well, more serious than before) about getting into shape and he had some definition to his body, if not much, he didn’t think he looked very great. With or without his clothes on.
He’d been trying to shift focus from caring about that to not caring and just...letting it be.
Nowadays, he looked after his hygiene better than he used to and at least tried to wear clothes that suited his body, but mostly he’d just given up. He looked how he looked and either a woman would be into that or she wasn’t.
Honestly, he thought he’d come a great distance over the past year towards that mindset. Although sometimes it felt less like a solution to mental health problems and more like an avoidance. But, sometimes that was the solution.
Atticus let out a heavy sigh and marched across the first floor of the house, making for the stairs. He needed to stop thinking about this. Focus on something else. Like the thing he’d originally intended to do when he’d instead gone looking for a distraction.
He came to a halt at the bottom of the stairs and stared up them. For a moment, he suddenly had the impression of being in a horror movie, of viewing himself from an askew angle, as though something was peering down at him from above.
Shaking off the feeling, he walked up. The stairs creaked, loud and somehow lonely, beneath his feet as he ascended.
Atticus stopped at the top of the stairwell, slowly looking around, taking it in.
Being back here felt like excavating something ancient yet familiar.
Something that had spent half a lifetime shrouded in the mists of memory.
“Master bedroom,” he muttered as he looked directly ahead of him at the closed door. Then he looked to his left, along the rest of the hallway that curled around the stairs. “Study. Bathroom. Bedroom.”
All of these doors were closed, and there was something vaguely menacing about that.
With a heavy sigh, he walked towards the master bedroom. He’d been spending way too much time making horror games, thinking about dangerous and frightening scenarios, immersing himself in the genre too deeply.
He opened up the door and looked into the master bedroom. He hadn’t spent hardly any time in here. It was always his parent’s room, and they usually kept the door closed. He knew now it was because they’d pretty much just locked themselves in there and started drinking most days, and expected him and his brother to just entertain themselves.
Which had suited him just fine. There was a whole lake to explore and people to talk with and Kate to hang out with…
Kate. He wondered suddenly if she’d seen him out and about with Colleen. Would that piss her off? He hadn’t meant for the situation to arise, but he had to admit, it might piss him off. He could easily envision her saying ‘oh so you’re busy for me, but not for her?’.
He shook that bad thought, too.
Goddamn, what was with his mood? He was here on vacation.
It was probably that all his residual stress and the death march his life had been for the past several months had yet to decompress and wear off. But that’s exactly what he was here for. To relax. And he intended to.
His mind gave him a flash of Colleen’s showcased breasts.
Getting laid would really help relax him…
Atticus sighed and looked around the master bedroom, stepping within and taking it all in.
It was less impressive than he’d imagined or half-remembered. A closet, a desk and chair, a dresser, a queen-sized bed, a bookshelf. There was a bathroom attached to it, and this had a bathtub at least. The other bathroom, the one he always remembered using, had only a shower cubicle. Though it was a far cry from a tub he could truly soak in.
Everything was clean, at least, but had that faintly detached feeling that vacation homes and hotel rooms did.
After lingering for a moment, he moved to the study, though he wasn’t sure if that’s what it actually was. It was a small room with a desk, a lamp, another bookshelf, and a toy chest. There was also an older TV and an armchair, and the bookshelf was more packed with board games than books. He poked around in it for a bit, studying the games, surprised by how many of the old ones had withstood the test of time and remained.
The second bathroom looked exactly as he remembered it, and so did the bedroom. It still had that bunk bed shoved up into one corner. The beds were neatly made, the blankets and pillowcases new, or at least different.
His attention was slowly drawn to the door in the far corner of the room.
Therein lay the closet…
And access to the attic.
His parents had always gotten really pissed whenever they found out either of them had gotten up there, but usually they didn’t find out. He’d been scared of it for a few years, especially when his parents made a big deal about not going up there, but after one serious attempt at exploration, they’d discovered what was up there.
It turned out to be not much.
Some old boxes, mostly. Really, it was just a dusty old room that filled with golden light as evening began coming on and the sun slanted in through the high, octagonal window. He had put some spare blankets and pillows up there and sometimes would disappear for hours at a time just to be alone, reading or sometimes drawing.
Atticus had fancied himself something of an artist back then, and he supposed he’d been right. He had a good eye for visual aesthetic and though his graphics were primitive, typically being pixel art, he thought it looked good. You could tell what things were supposed to be, and they were all distinct from each other.
There might be drawings up there…
That was something he’d thought about a lot on his way here. He was convinced there was a stash of old drawings up there.
Or, more specifically, he clearly remembered making a stash and hiding them away during his final trip out here.
Whether or not they were still up there remained to be seen.
Walking slowly over to the closet, Atticus wondered if he should just go look now. He got as far as the actual closet door, putting his hand on the knob, and hesitated. The idea of crawling up into a dusty old attic wasn’t particularly appealing, he found.
With a sigh, he turned away.
Well, he’d explored the lakehouse. Most of it, anyway.
It was time to start getting settled in. He walked back downstairs and grabbed his things, bringing them up to the top of the stairs and then making for the secondary bedroom. He stopped as he got a few steps towards it, realizing he was acting on habit more than anything.
Slowly, he looked at the master bedroom and, after a moment’s consideration, headed for it.
This was his place now, and his alone. At least for the next two weeks.
He headed for the master bedroom and spent the next several minutes putting away his clothes in the dresser. Then he grabbed his laptop and, after some consideration, set it up on the desk in the master bedroom.
He plugged it in and went to fire it up, but ultimately stayed his hand.
He’d spent the past...way too long plugged into the internet. He’d come here to get away from that, at least for a little while.
Atticus sighed softly and looked around as he successfully restrained himself from firing up the laptop. His gaze fell on the lake beyond the window back out at the end of the hallway. Even from back here it looked inviting.
Well, he’d come here to enjoy nature and get back to basics, so why not get started?
Atticus made for the front door.
CHAPTER SIX
His first day in Lakeside ended sluggishly, and seemed to sneak up on him.
He took a walk around his side of the lake, moving down towards Colleen’s house and past it. The road ran out and became an overgrown trail. He strolled alongside the lake but didn’t really see it or the field and the trees surrounding him.
His thoughts drifted, ultimately between two subjects: his work and Colleen.
Atticus told himself that there was a decent chance that he had no chance with her, but his thoughts kept straying to her.
And then there was his work.
About a month ago he’d launched his biggest game, and he’d spent pretty much all of his time after launch putting together a few patches. The first had been an immediate necessity, as a game-breaking glitch had been discovered.
It had been a pain to iron out but he’d done it, slamming out the patch in a little under a day.
After that it was bug fixes and minor adjustments. He’d pushed himself hard, and most of the days he’d been working he’d gone basically all day. Sunrise to sunset he was coding, designing, creating. He still wasn’t quite sure how he managed it.
Desperation certainly was some of it, but he also just liked doing enough of it that the parts he didn’t like were tolerable.
Plus, he couldn’t deny that there was a huge boost in desire and energy now that he had the attention of so many people. Sure, a lot of it was responsibility. He had made that game and they had purchased it, so responsibility was on him to give them the product they had paid him for.
That was the agreement.
