I’m poolside when Matt texts me: “Roll for it, Kate.” I have no idea what I’m rolling for. I haven’t talked to him in a year. Our breakup was swift and painful, like a warhammer to the chest.

Back when we were together, I downloaded a dice app. I was always dropping dice under the couch. I watch my digital twenty-sided dice tumble across the pixelated crypt stones. It lands on five. I text: “Five.”

“Shit. Lol,” he replies.

Zach, my current boyfriend, hollers, asking when I’ll join him in his parents’ pool? I’m content to read on a chaise and soak up July. I’m beginning to look like some subterranean race, like a kobold goblin.

Another text from Matt asking me to roll.

I roll, then text him: “Twelve.”

One of two scenarios:

Is he finishing the two-person D&D game we started, playing both of our characters? His version of ‘let’s stay friends’?

Or, is this just contact after months of radio silence, a bid to tell me things are different now, that he’s, like, rediscovered the stuff we lost before we broke up — his job, his libido. The ability to have an actual conversation? And not one about how they’re finally remaking ourfavorite video game with updated graphics.

Zach climbs out, towels his muscles, and plops painfully onto my feet, saying, “What’cha doing, babe?”

I dislike his nosiness, but Zach has the sexdrive of an eighteen-year-old. 

“Playing a game.”

Zach calls me “nerd.”

Another text from Matt: “Help!”

I open the dice app, decide:

If even, I leave and go see what’s up with Matt.

If odd, I tell Matt I’m done with texts; I’m done forever.

I roll twenty, which, in the game, means “critical success.”

I tell Zach I need to run to my place and grab something; he grins, asks if it’s “another dude,” as if this were impossible.

###

The best one can say for Matt’s dad’s house is it has a two-car garage, which Matt converted into his game room.

Matt’s dad greets me indifferently, says, “He’s in the garage,” then disappears toward where Wheel of Fortune’s playing. It smells like cabbage. I knock on the game room door. Matt answers, in his pajamas, confused. “Katie. What’s up?”

Matt’s kept all his maps and props arranged on the card table. Some of the figurines, though, have been replaced by wrestling action figures which lie in awkward combinations, sprawled either fighting or fucking.

“You texted me,” I say. 

Matt calls for his dad, who appears in the doorway, annoyed.

Matt wrings his hands. “Dad—did you give me my phone back?” 

“You asked,” he says, wandering away and leaving the door open.

Matt slams a fist into a palm and says, “I got hurt, Katie. Did I tell you?”

He moves closer. I smell him, a cheesy, yeasty stink. “I hit a telephone pole. Like, I really fucked up my car.” As he’s talking, he begins fingering through his greasy hair to reveal a pink scar running his entire scalp. “Insurance paid big,” he makes a dice-rolling gesture, which looks like masturbating, “we’re rich. Dad’s taking me to Vegas.”

“You asked me to ‘roll for it’” I say, positioning the card table between us, looking for my sneaky little rogue figurine and his big, bold paladin who, last I saw, were locked in battle with a zombie-dragon.

“I texted you?” he says. “Why didn’t I text my new girlfriend, Emily? We met in physical therapy. She plays games. Card games, mostly.”

Now he frowns, fishes his phone out, drops it on his first attempt checking the text history. “Oh shit. I did. That’s why—” he gestures toward the door “—Dad keeps my phone. I call people.”

I’m edging toward the door. “You text people, Matt.”

“Did you really roll a dice?” Now he looks confused, angry. “No, I bet you make up the numbers.”

While he reads his nonsensical text history aloud, I let myself out. 

###

Back in my car, I’m fishing through my purse for my keys.

I look up and yelp.

Matt stands at my hood, holding a sword, posing in this ridiculous Conan the Barbarian posture. The sword’s a plastic toy. He grips it in both hands, out to one side, flexing, attempting a fearsome expression.

He’s delighted he startled me.

“Roll for it,” he says, lowering the sword and walking to my window; he’s barefoot, so he winces at the gravel.

I crack my window. “For what?”

“I remembered. I distracted the dragon. You were attempting a backstab. Roll for it.”

My digital dice lands on “1,” which means disaster.

“Twenty,” I lie.

 “Bullshit,” he says. “Let me see.”

I do. He nods, thinks, reaches into his pocket. “I’ll give it to you. Success.” He produces the zombie-dragon figurine, one he painted for weeks. He plants his feet, rolls his shoulder.

“Don’t, Matt,”

“Okay—the zombie-dragon’s confused, he still thinks you’re behind me, so you jump on his back and stab him in—” he tosses the figurine high, then smashes it against the garage door with a sword swing, shouts, “Ohh—shit. That’s way dead.”

“I have to go.”

“Yup. Say hey to whoever for me.”

I switch on the engine. “Say hello to ‘Emily.’ If she exists.”

He holds up a hand like “wait,” then says, “I haven’t actually asked her out. Should I?”

“I don’t know, Matt. Roll for it.”

---

Travis Flatt (he/him) is an epileptic teacher living in Cookeville, Tennessee. His stories appear in Fractured, Variant Lit, Prime Number, Gone Lawn, Flash Frog, and other places. He enjoys theater, dogs, and theatrical dogs, often with his wife and son.