Video Games

By Kelly Ann Gonzales

After David the Writer leaves Cameron de la Cruz for a night out at Dave and Busters in Manhattan, Cameron finds herself in a proverbial quarter-life crisis. Cameron, the nave anti-heroine, must make a choice between doing what is best for her sanity or what is ultimately better for society. In between high-profile careers and men, she finds that the lines between what is normally considered morally just versus what is ethically corrupt are blurring together. Love, lust, and money become entangled in these figurative, and occasionally literal, video games.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Feb 20, 2014
• ISBN: 9781493158683

Kelly Ann Gonzales

Born in the Philippines, raised in New Jersey, and currently living in New York City, Kelly Ann Gonzales works in the hotel industry. She is also the Editor-In-Chief of ALPHA FEMALE SOCIETY. She an insatiable passion for travel, hospitality, and all things written and to be read.

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Copyright © 2014 by Kelly Ann Gonzales.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to any actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Rev. date: 12/30/2013

To order additional copies of this book, contact:

Xlibris LLC

1-888-795-4274

www.Xlibris.com

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CONTENTS

1.     She Chases Him

2.     The Panther

3.     Before David

4.     Lizzie McGuire Adventure

5.     The Scar

6.     The Cheeky Trio

7.     Where did the Party Go?

8.     If We Ever Meet Again

9.     Love is a Losing Game

10.   After David

11.   After Jones

12.   Weekend in Italy

13.   Lizzie McGuire Strikes Again

14.   The Phoenix

15.   Viva La Raza

16.   Holy Ground

17.   Pretty Rich Girl Suffering

18.   Oye, Como Va?

19.   The Journey Home

20.   Happy. Free. Confused. Lonely.

21.   Alone Together

22.   Middle Market Equity Comes to Light

23.   And I Ran

24.   Helen of Troy

25.   Video Games

26.   Via Con Me

27.   The Language

28.   Runaway Heart

29.   Bones

30.   Eyes on Fire

31.   All Along the Watchtower

32.   Palabras y Imágenes

33.   Up on a Hill Across a Blue Lake

34.   Aimée Sol

35.   The Beautiful and the Damned

36.   Killing Me Softly

37.   Drinking. Thinking. Lusting.

38.   Rapture

39.   Headlines

40.   American Men # 1

41.   American Men # 2

42.   American Men # 3

43.   The Writer

44.   Seasons of Love

CHAPTER ONE

She Chases Him

I HAVE TO MEET my brother at Dave and Busters.

Sorry, is that a joke? Cameron de la Cruz ripped apart a bagel with lox and cream cheese. She sat on a plastic chair on the High Line underneath the burning city sun of the concrete jungle. The Colombian writer who she was dating was named David Serna. He was twenty-seven, and he was cancelling plans for post-work drinks with her to go to the adult equivalent of Chuck E. Cheese’s. He was a marketing assistant for a middle market equity firm. He was a writer when they were younger and went to college together, when she was a resident and he was her RA.

Cameron wanted to be a lawyer, but when the prospects for a proper ROI for law school didn’t pan out, Cameron pursued the P.R. industry. She considered herself a professional blogger at night and a hotel executive during the day. Cameron was twenty-five, a general manager for a luxury boutique Manhattan property, and in her spare time she wrote about Manhattan restaurants for a blog—which, in the blogger community, is a pejorative term.

Bloggers preferred to be referred to as writers. This was the one aspect that Cameron and David had in common besides an undergraduate degree. It was her girlfriend’s blog, which her girlfriend called a lifestyle guide more than anything. Cameron was not subsidized for her time blogging, at least not monetarily. Instead, she would reap in the benefits through exclusive product reviews and free drinks in the Meatpacking District.

No, really, insisted David, I want to see my brother and my little nephew.

Okay David, that’s fine, Cameron cooed over the phone. The whole conversation they were having was over their smartphones. Cameron and David grew up in a generation which thought it was perfectly normal to text and call more often than to see each in person. Cameron worked downtown and David was in midtown. They worked in the same city, but were barely seeing each other. They made it up with sweet text messages throughout the day with little picture emoticons, the kissy-faces, hearts, and virtual teddy bear hugs made up for any loss time.

Cool, cool. Cameron could tell David was nodding from twenty blocks away, most likely adjusting his pair of Ray-Ban prescription, thick-framed wayfarer glasses.

So while I put down money on our hotel reservation in D.C., you go have wings and beer with your brother in Times Square.

Cameron, was that meant to sound so hostile?

"Yes, David, because I’m pissed that you’re cancelling plans with me so you can go hang out in the very place you swore you would never set foot in."

Jesus, Cameron, it’s Dave and Busters, not a strip club. We’re going to drink some Stella’s and play foosball.

You made plans with me first. It’s like you don’t even care that you’re cancelling plans with me to go act like you’re a bridge and tunnel college boy.

First of all, you may have lived in the Bronx once, but you grew up in central New Jersey. Studies show that central New Jersey isn’t even real.

Well, David, Cameron’s voice raised. She threw away the remainder of her wheat bagel into a trash can. First of all, go fuck yourself because Bruce Springsteen put central Jersey on the map. Second of all, I understand that your family is a priority. I get that. I’m Filipino. Family is everything, but come on, David, when you make a promise with someone, you uphold those promises. You’re abandoning me for Donkey Kong.

Cameron, you have some abandonment and trust issues you need to work out.

You know what David, now Cameron was shaking her head from fifteen blocks away as she walked further uptown on the High Line, if you’re going to act like this, then I can’t do this anymore.

Well, Cameron, it’s not much of a loss considering you were never my girlfriend anyway. Remember? I wasn’t ready for anything serious. Listen, you’re a nice woman. You’ll find someone before you know it.

David hung up. Cameron stood in the middle of the High Line path. A male jogger swerved past her, sweaty and shirtless. A young couple excused themselves quietly as they swerved past her; she surmised that they must have been tourists. The couple held hands as one of them held a subway map and the other a chai latte from Starbucks. Cameron’s hands shook as she slowly accepted that she had wasted half of the year trying to keep a man who never wanted to be kept. She pulled her Chanel sunglasses out from her Tom Ford black leather bag. What would Carrie Bradshaw do?

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CHAPTER TWO

The Panther

T HANK YOU FOR all coming today. The Director of Sales in his pinstripe suit adjusted his bowtie. He looked too tall and lanky to fit properly into any formal clothing. Now let’s talk business.

Okay everyone. If you were an animal, what would you be? The main Director of Human Resources—since there were four other Directors of HR—filed her nails with a board engraved with the hotel’s logo, an upside down orthodox cross which was intended to garner press from the lodging community. The orthodox was anything but orthodox.

This was the weekly executive meeting for the Orthodox Hotel by Gansevoort Street. Every Friday, the top executives from management would come into the cocktail room to discuss the weekly agenda. The agenda also involved icebreaker discussions, icebreakers for people who saw each other on a nearly daily basis in the office but passed one another by with shiny iPhones illuminating their faces and vibrating Blackberries in their pockets and handbags only to sit down at their desks to type away on their HP computers.

I’m sorry, Cameron had been scrolling through her Outlook account on her iPhone, I really don’t have time to discuss hypotheticals when I have to go meet with corporate in fifteen minutes. What’s actually going on?

Listen Cameron, the Director of HR put down her nail file, we know you’re GM. We respect your title, but it’s important for all the other executives to come to this meeting to know that we’re all a family here. We’re the Orthodox family.

"That is anything but orthodox," the Director of Sales winked.

Okay, I’ll go first! piped up the Front Desk Manager, I’d be a wolf, because it’s kind of like a dog, except more hairy and ferocious. The Front Desk Manager was a four foot-eleven inch Latina who had eyebrows like Frida Kahlo and arm hair like a chinchilla in the heat.

Ferocious. Feral. We like that here, the Director of Sales made a soft purr.

Cameron wanted to say that she’d be a kangaroo so she could kick them all in the face. Her title served more of a figure head purpose than as a legitimate formal authority. There was no use in being a GM if when Cameron actually needed to do her illusion of work, everyone at the Orthodox would rather sit around and make animal noises. Cameron de la Cruz, GM of the Orthodox Hotel was sitting a room with all these grown adults who needed to compensate for the fact their youth was trailing behind them. She cleared her throat.

I, for one, Cameron began slowly, would be a panther.

That’s the spirit, Cameron! HR cheered.

Yes, Cameron agreed, because I love to tear apart my prey. Tiger mom out. Cameron picked up her leather binder and shut the door of the cocktail room behind her. Corporate waited for her down the block from the Oxford Hotel at a bar with all white walls and white floors. The independent bar used to be named Asylum until a bigger business bought out the bar and renamed it La Société: French for corporation.

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CHAPTER THREE

Before David

B EFORE DAVID, CAMERON, and David Cameron, there was Jones. Jones Williams was a tall, hulking figure who resembled Chris Hemsworth if Chris Hemsworth was a college fraternity boy who played lacrosse and double majored in medieval history and French with a minor in economics. Cameron was a petite, young girl at the time she began her freshman year when she and Jones met. Cameron was trying to escape her awkward teenager years when she began college. She wanted to enjoy going to parties and meeting boys without worrying about appearing as a nerd to the other college guys.

Of course she decided to wear bright blue leggings and a white t-shirt with a Star Wars storm trooper on it to a fraternity party. Her long, black hair was thick and wavy and she topped it off with a leopard print hat with pointy ears on it from Juicy Couture. It was her idea of a female panther at the time. This is where she met Jones.

Jones spotted her from across the room at the annual Lambda Lambda Alpha backlight party. He wore a blue striped dress shirt and cargo shorts. Later on, her friends would describe his figure like that of a cartoon character’s. He was a cross between the godlike Thor and Popeye the Sailor Man. She was more like the petite heroine from a Miyazaki film. Jones introduced himself as Jones Williams. He found her name exotic. Exoticized. Fantasized. Eroticized. Cameron de la Cruz was the first foreign girl’s name he had ever whispered on his lips.

It’s nice to meet you, Cameron de la Cruz. Are you Filipino?

Can you tell by my last name?

Yes. He put one hand on the nape of her neck and the other on the side of her hip. What a beautiful name you have.

Within a matter of days, Jones and Cameron began dating exclusively. Cameron had no excuse to enter a relationship so quickly other than the fact that she felt lonely. He filled a hole in a heart that needed to be filled. She began to love him in a manner only those who are desperate to love can love, so that even when he told her that he had a rare form of obsessive compulsive disorder, she stayed out of desperate love. This was not the sadly humorous OCD as portrayed on shows like Monk or casually joked about by studious teenagers who needed to have their books neatly stacked or else all hell would break loose. This was the kind of OCD that haunted an entangled couple because one of them always had to sleep with one eye open, awaiting the slumbering beast about to wake.

The OCD that consumed Jones was the kind that did not care about touching a doorknob fifteen times or having chairs at a 45-degree angle. This OCD was the kind that begged Cameron to not get tattoos because OCD Jones needed her body to remain the same, pristine and clean-cut or else he would lose the Cameron he fell in love with the moment he saw her thick, wavy black hair. He hated the image of a sweaty, burly man with a needle on top of Cameron, owning and marking her body in a way that Jones was not comfortable with doing.

Jones was a young boy stuck in the body of a man. He did not know how to touch Cameron. He was the first woman he had ever loved in the best way he was capable of loving someone else. She was the first person he had ever even kissed. Cameron was the first of many firsts for Jones Williams.

When they made love for the first time, they made love confined in the pale white walls and cold concrete floor of a dorm room in a twin-sized bed. Jones fumbled with a Trojan condom, whispering to himself to remember to pinch the top. Cameron whispered,

Go slow…

The moment he penetrated her virginity, Cameron let out a soft yelp, like a kitten whose tail has been stepped on by a child.

Are you okay? Jones stopped.

Yes, keep going, she nodded and stared at the man on top of her with the build of an athlete and the eyes of a farm boy, I love you.

So the city girl and the country boy fell in love. One lived for the folded slices of Lombardi’s pizza and the happy hour on the Lower East Side. The other enjoyed the silence in the middle of the forest in a town with only one traffic light for ten miles. For six months, everything went smoothly, as the beginning of all young relationships do. While Cameron was slowing accepting the demons that came with loving someone with OCD like Jones had, another demon was growing inside of Cameron.

A bump appeared on the right side of Cameron’s neck one day. While she tried to shrug it off and believe it was a cyst that would go away with enough time and massages, a visit to the oncologist proved her to be quite wrong. At the ripe age of nineteen, Cameron was diagnosed with Hodgkin’s Lymphoma.

Don’t worry, assured her oncologist, cancer is certainly not an ideal situation, but if you’re going to have cancer, Hodgkin’s Lymphoma is the one to get.

Great, I’m glad that I have the cancer that’s all the rage. Cameron snapped back. After being poked and prodded for needle biopsies, bone marrow tests, PET scans, and CAT scans, all Cameron wanted to do was start her chemotherapy as soon as possible.

She did not stop going to college. That semester, when the standard full-time student took between 12 to 18 credits, she chose to take 19 credits. The class that pushed her to 19