52 Indie Game Club

Justin did not want to go to the indie game club meeting but the threat of Alexa stalking him until he came was sufficient motivation to show up. When he arrived he noticed that everyone in the room (apart from his trendy escort, who had his elbow in a death grip so he wouldn't run) was wearing graphic tees like he was.

"Alexa," a short guy with a diamond stud in one ear greeted warmly. "What are you doing here?"

"Bringing a poor, lost soul to indie game club," she said before depositing Justin in front of him. "This is Justin. He's a computer science/engineering major."

"Hi, Justin. I'm Zack, the president of the club," the guy held his hand out for Justin to shake. "What brings you here tonight?"

Justin glanced at his captor. "Someone thought I needed more human interaction."

Zack laughed. "Long hours in the computer lab? We've got a few other computer science people in here. And a social work major, a chemistry major, an applied mathematics major…Kristi, what are you studying?"

"African American Studies!" the Black girl in the corner with braided hair called back.

"African American Studies, right," Zack mumbled to himself. "I think we've even got a guy studying Russian literature but he's not here this week. We're a fairly diverse bunch."

Looking around the room, Justin vaguely recognized the computer science students Zack had mentioned. He might have had a class or two with them but he didn't know their names. As Zack chatted with Alexa he figured it would be less awkward to approach the people he kind of knew than stand to the side while they talked.

"Can I sit with you guys?" he asked awkwardly, rubbing his hands together out of nerves. The two guys, who had their mouths full of pizza, nodded.

"You look familiar," one of them said. "You took Professor Allen's class last semester, right?"

"Yeah," Justin said, surprised. "How'd you know?"

The guy chuckled. "You were the guy who sat in the very back row in the corner closest to the door so you could escape right after the bell rang. I usually sat in the middle of the back row so I'd see you run out every day."

"My next class was all the way across campus in the humanities building. I had to practically sprint to get there on time."

"That explains it. I'm Dominic, by the way. Nice to officially meet you." He gestured to the student beside him. "This is Rick. He recently changed his major to computer science so I've taken him under my wing." Rick, whose mouth was still full of pizza, waved.

"I'm Justin. Nice to meet you both. So what brought you to this club? Aren't you too busy with coding homework? It's all I really have time for."

Dominic sighed dramatically. "I'd go insane if I didn't come here. Even if I don't have time to play games during the semester at least I can talk about them for an hour and get free pizza every other week."

Rick swallowed his bite of pizza and spoke up. "Zack is my roommate. His old roommate graduated and got a job in New Mexico in the spring and apparently they founded this club together. He showed me some cool games over the summer and suggested I come once meetings started up again."

"Miss Sunshine over there threatened me and dragged me here by force," Justin said, flicking his head subtly towards Alexa. They both gasped.

"You know Alexa?! She's our queen."

"Your…queen?"

"Zack is completely in love with her," Rick said in low tones. "Apparently, they've known each other since elementary school. He knows he doesn't have a chance though so he's resigned himself to being her best friend. She shows up here every so often for the food and when she does he turns into a completely different person. Look how animated he is."

They all turned their heads and saw Alexa, nonchalant as ever, talking to an exuberant Zack.

"He's normally way more low-key," Dominic said. "Poor guy."

Justin's heart twinged. If Zack had really known her that long he had to know about Alexa's sexual orientation. He really didn't have a chance but still wanted to be around her.

That situation hit a little too close to home. Was he going to end up like Zack, making himself continue to be Emily's friend the next time she got a boyfriend so he could stay near her?

It was a disquieting thought. Brandon had been enough of a trial.

"We call her the queen partly because of her hold over Zack and partly because she creates our recruitment posters for the club fair every semester. They're really cool! The fair is in a couple weeks. If you come you can see for yourself."

Justin considered Rick's offer. He didn't even know the school had club fairs until now. There would be a lot of people…but it could be interesting.

"Sure, I'll come."

"Sweet! We have a Friendbook group for our club where we post updates about stuff like this and have discussions about games between meetings. Give me a second and I'll add you. What's your last name?"

"Costa."

"Huh, that sounds kind of familiar," Dominic mused.

The color drained out of Justin's face. Dominic must be Dominic Hunt, one of his interns from last year.

Aside from a phone interview in the beginning, they had never spoken because Justin put Rachelle in charge of correspondence with the interns. Even if he didn't remember the boss's name he would have to be pretty dumb to forget the name of a place he interned at. Costa Coding…Sam had been right. His unoriginality came back to haunt him someday after all.

Justin was spared from having to say anything when Rick announced "Found you!" and clicked the add button on his phone. He looked up and smiled. "Now you're officially in the club. Welcome to the mad house."

"It's really not that crazy," Dominic said reassuringly. "The most intense thing that's ever happened is an argument in the Friendbook group between Kristi and Kevin about whether the protagonist or the villain in Colonizers III had better motivations."

"There were over five hundred comments and most of them were just from those two!" Rick pitched in. "But stuff like that doesn't usually happen. We're pretty chill for the most part."

Justin couldn't help but laugh. He played the first Colonizers game before so he knew a bit about the protagonist but couldn't form an opinion because he knew nothing about the villains in the newer games. Now he was kind of curious.

"I may have to play that now. I've only played the first one."

"It's probably the best one," Rick said. "The second one was terrible. If don't even know how they managed to sell the third but it took off after a while because of good reviews."

They continued discussing the Colonizers trilogy until the meeting ended. After bidding his new acquaintances adieu Alexa met Justin at the door with a smug look on her face.

"Look at you socializing. I told you these were your kind of people."

Justin smiled. Dominic and Rick reminded him a bit of the guys he knew back in robotics club.

"You were right. Thanks, Alexa."