Chapter 4: Lillian

Businessmen are shrewd. Small businesspeople, even more so. Nobody hustles like a small-town entrepreneur with rent overdue and dreams on the line. Everyone’s looking for an edge, something to claw out of the gray edges of town.

Hank struggled at the bottom. He was able to marry Natalie mainly because Natalie wasn’t much herself—she came from the street, and no matter how beautiful, most folks didn’t consider her a ‘proper’ woman.

Maybe to Hank, enjoying Natalie once was worth three hundred bucks, so he never missed a night. And every passionate moment from Natalie was just a performance—a habit from her old life.

Maybe it was money, maybe loneliness, but Natalie had gone back to her old trade. Five in the afternoon was when Hank’s diner was busiest. I guessed she was hiding it from him. Greasy as he was, Hank’s food was cheap and good. In a rundown part of Old Market Avenue, that counted for something. An honest guy like Hank wouldn’t want his wife to make money that way.

Learning Natalie’s real story hit me like a bucket of cold water. It felt like discovering your first love sneaking out the back door of a strip club. I sat there, numb, old console controller limp in my hands. The world outside felt sharper, meaner. I lost interest in next door and went back to my routine: I’d kill time grinding out XP for clients—mostly bored college kids or dads who couldn’t keep up with their kids on Fortnite. Nights, I’d write online fiction. That was my life.

Then I met a girl in-game. Her avatar was cute, but her skills were awful. She got flamed by teammates—flamed for failing at clutch moments, flamed for bad memory and slow reflexes, even flamed for probably being a dude.

Honestly, I didn’t like being dragged down either, but as a power-leveler, bad players meant more work for me. So I stuck up for her, comforted her, spammed the in-game chat to keep her from rage-quitting. Sometimes I’d say, “Don’t listen to those jerks,” and she’d stay in the match.

After one brutal game, she asked to add me on Messenger, then video called right away. She looked up at me through the screen, her cheeks blotchy and her nose red, like she’d just lost her dog. I made her laugh with some dumb jokes. Her voice was small and warm.

After treating her to pizza once, we got close. She didn’t mind I was broke, I didn’t mind she was silly. Her name was Lillian, and we started dating. For the first time in ages, I looked forward to my phone lighting up—her texts, her memes, her video calls with goofy faces just to see if I’d blush.

During that time, my world didn’t have Natalie in it.