Chapter Two
Jackson Dean Hargrave
I only had a few days of freedom left before classes started, so I let my brother drag me out for an evening ride on my favorite old nag, Coddle Me. Daniel was good to ride with. He never had much to say, and this ride was no different. It was a companionable silence, one reason I chose to stay on the ranch every summer instead of with Tucker, despite his frequent invitations, was the amount of silence you could find in the wild of the pastures and the forest.
Coddle was usually sweet natured and calm, but not too far into the ride she began to sidestep and pull against the bit. I fought her at first, but after a couple of minutes, Danny agreed that we should stop and check her out. It only took a cursory check to see that somehow she’d thrown a shoe, and the rocky trail we were riding was all sharp edges in her poor foot.
We opted to take a short cut through the tall grass of the dormant hayfield both for the softer terrain and the quicker distance to home. She was much happier for the remainder of the ride, and as I took care of her tackle, Danny let our longtime horse master, Pete, know about her foot so she could be reshod the next morning.
It was only dusk and, left to my own devices, I knew just how I wanted to unwind. I showered off the smell of barn and turned on my computer. I debated whether I wanted to be social and get online for a little first person shooter with Billy, my roommate back at Texas Tech, or just kick back alone. Deciding on the second, I threw on a tee shirt and some cut off sweats I wore to work out in and logged into my account on Twitch TV, a site for gamers to hang out and either live stream their game play, or watch others play instead. I chose the latter and browsed through some of my favorite streamers. There was a former pro-football player who, as it turned out, was great at video games, and his fame had garnered him a decent following. There were stereotypical gamers who had so many people subscribing to their channel that they scored sponsorships and advertising space.
I wasn’t into being on camera, but I subscribed to a couple of gamers who were more interesting to listen to and watch than they necessarily were at gaming. One girl, more than the other gamers, kept me coming back for more. She’d been a successful fashion model, but had spoken out against her industry for the harsh ways they treated women. She’d ended up with no work and a lot of time to sit around playing video games and feeling sorry for herself. Now she was one of the most followed and subscribed to streamers on the internet and, apparently, had found a new way into modeling through character costume play.
Her stream was live, so I tuned in after grabbing a beer from the minifridge I kept next to my desk. I didn’t care about the game she was playing, but I figured not many of her viewers were. Listening to her talk about her cosplay, and watching new videos that had been taken of her at the Gamercon that was just wrapping up, I realized how just the sound of her voice made me feel relaxed and amped up at the same time. She was funny and laid back. There was something about her that made me want to listen to her talk all night.
Of course, that was probably why she was so popular. A hot-as-hell girl who was good at video games and who interacted with social unmentionables like they were all just like her, or rather, she just like them. She seemed to really believe she was as awkward and unpolished as the rest of us, and she didn’t talk down to all the idiots in her chat who hit on her, even if they went too far. The rest of the chat handled those guys.
I watched the video of her getting into costume for the cosplay pageant again. Seeing her in next to nothing as her helper wrapped, taped, and sponged pale purple makeup over her face and breasts was some of the best entertainment I’d seen in ages, and I wasn’t alone in thinking that, from the way the chat screen lit up.
I looked away from the main video to her face in the little box in the corner of my screen. She looked bored and irritable, but I couldn’t help but notice something behind her eyes. She was lonely. I couldn’t blame her. She had the attention of all these guys, but every one of them was just here to consume her like a product, then walk away to blather about how big her tits were when she wasn’t in costume.
I grabbed my wallet from my desk drawer and pulled out my debit card. I hit the donate button and sent her a fifty spot so I could add a message she’d be more likely to see. The character count was limited, and I stared at the screen for a minute, trying to think of just the thing she needed to hear. In the end, I opted for encouraging, with a side of flirtation. I almost laughed aloud when the text-to-voice program she used announced, read aloud the message, reading.
“I happily support your high-octane game play, even when it is occasionally interrupted by intense moments of uncontrollable arousal.” She laughed aloud at the announcement, and paused her game to reply.
“And thank you for your donation of fifty dollars, @lawlessJack, I apologize for any wet dreams and uncontrollable erections my gameplay causes.”
I then privately messaged her that as a bonafide cowboy from Texas, hearing the message in the English accent she programmed them to play in, made my day. In what must have been a moment of weakness for her, she responded to my private message, and included her cell number, along with a request to call her when she was offline.
I switched up my beer for good old Mountain Dew. I was a couple of hours ahead of her by time zones, and I wasn’t going to fall asleep before I had the chance to talk to the only professional model whose phone number I’d ever scored.
We chatted privately some more during slow moments in the stream, and she added me to her gaming platforms. Within an hour of sitting at my desk, I was suddenly playing computer games with the hottest girl I’d ever seen, live on her stream to be witnessed by everyone I knew. So, I sent out a group text to the guys to make sure they knew it was happening.
Between sneaking in texts to C.J. and game play, all I could do as my phone blew up, was laugh to myself about how big this was for my friends. It was the social introvert’s perfect evening. To guys like most of my friends, a girl like her would never talk to them in real life. Not everyone had the benefit of four older brothers, like I did. It was never hard for me to talk to girls, because I was always around my brothers’ girlfriends, growing up.
It also didn’t hurt that all that hard work out in the sun made us all look like muscular, tan, movie cowboys. I loved my friends and would beat up anyone else who told them so, but a few of them would’ve had a lot more luck with women, if they left their desks and went for a walk, occasionally.
Around midnight my time she called it quits with her stream, and as soon as I left the game I checked out the message thread on my phone. My friends had figured out quickly that I couldn’t, or wouldn’t respond. Once that was established, I became fair game. The thread started off encouraging and hopeful that I made a real connection with this fabled creature rarer than a unicorn.
Within a few texts, it moved past supportive and into the territory of, “Thank God my mother won’t see these…” By the end of the thread, it had taken on a life of its own and my presence was no longer necessary, which I appreciated, because I had a call coming in from one professional streamer/model named C.J. Rivers, and I wasn’t about to miss out on it for a bunch of pasty nerds, best friends or not.
I looked down at the glowing face of my iPhone, willing the dampness away from my palms and the desert out of my mouth. I swiped right, and managed to choke out a “Hello” instead of the nervous giggle I was afraid would escape. In an instant, I found new empathy for the guys I hung out with. This, this was what nerd-dom meant to so many gamers, hackers, and programmers.
Her voice, on the other end, was like honey. Without the filters and background noise of the microphone, the computers, or the games, it seemed like I could wind that voice through my fingers like salt water taffy. We talked about gaming and all things computer-related. I was amazed to learn she hired out all her technical work, and told her that I could probably teach her a few simple things that would give her more control at a lower cost.
When she asked about the ranch, I talked for an eternity about the lake, the horses, and the life out at Lago Colina. As it turned out, she’d been raised in Oklahoma before moving to Los Angeles to become famous, and my farm-town upbringing wasn’t so foreign to her as I thought.
We talked for hours, and the conversation never devolved from “Where you from?” to “What are you wearing?” I’d never been the guy who had to use web sites or cam girls to get my rocks off, but I’d been here with other gamer girls and talking to her about how lonely she was surrounded by people who only wanted to use her for their own ends, was enough for me. It was nice just to be honest with her. I’d been surrounded by cattlemen, family, and mustangs all my life. I’d turned to computers because I needed to be different. She’d become a model to escape small town boredom and poverty, but instead, found out what it was like to be drowning in a sea of people.
“Okay, miss hot-shot cosplay champion, what about your new career? I’ve been to a gamer conference or two, that must put some pressure on you, socially.” There was a long pause, and I could hear her take a swig of the soda she’d picked up from the vending machine down the hall while she’d been mocking me for living with my folks.
“I like nerds. A lot of them are like me. Socially awkward and needing a lot of alone time between social engagements,” she laughed. “And apparently, none of us ever sleep. What time is it where you are?”
I looked at the clock on my computer and sighed ruefully. “I should smell breakfast for the ranch hands coming up shortly,” I admitted. “And you have a flight to catch in a few hours.”
“Yeah, I should grab a cat nap before I have to face the TSA with my sex toys and submit to a body cavity search based on my obviously foreign name and physical appearance,” she said. I imagined her shaking out her long blonde hair as she spoke.
“Yeah, those blue-eyed girls with Sooner accents are becoming a real problem,” I teased. I knew she needed to go, but I wanted to keep listening to her. In fact, I wanted nothing more than to fall asleep to the sound of that milk-and-honey voice with its soft country twang.