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  Cuffing and Turkey Stuffing

  C.M. Kars

  Cuffing and Turkey Stuffing

  Book Two, Cuffing Season Series

  by C.M. Kars

  Copyright © 2021 C.M. Kars

  All rights reserved.

  This book or parts thereof may not be reproduced in any form, stored in any retrieval system, or transmitted in any form by any means—electronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording, or otherwise—without prior written permission of the publisher, except as provided by United States of America copyright law.

  Cover design by Indigo Chick Designs

  Editing by Aquila Editing

  Contents

  OTHER WORKS BY C.M. KARS

  Want to stay in the know?

  Author's Note

  1. ONE

  2. TWO

  3. THREE

  4. FOUR

  5. FIVE

  6. SIX

  7. SEVEN

  8. EIGHT

  9. NINE

  10. TEN

  11. ELEVEN

  12. TWELVE

  13. THIRTEEN

  14. FOURTEEN

  15. FIFTEEN

  16. SIXTEEN

  17. SEVENTEEN

  18. EIGHTEEN

  19. NINETEEN

  20. TWENTY

  21. TWENTY-ONE

  Cuffing and Tree Trimming

  About the Author

  OTHER WORKS BY C.M. KARS

  The Never Been Series

  Never Been Kissed

  Never Been Nerdy

  Never Been Loved

  Never Been Under the Mistletoe

  Never Been Boxed Set

  Sera & Hunter: A Never Been Collection

  The Fangirl Chronicles

  Fangirling Over You

  To All the Footballers I Loved Before

  Bias Wrecked

  Pucked Romance

  Never Say Never

  The Fangirl Chronicles Boxed Set

  The Cuffing Season Series

  Get Cuffed

  Cuffing and Turkey Stuffing

  Cuffing and Tree Trimming

  Cuffing New Year’s Resolutions

  Cuffing and Loving

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  See you there!

  C.M.

  Author's Note

  A note on Esports and professional gaming:

  It is a job like any other, where most of the prize money comes from big tournaments, where prizes can be up to a million dollars (depending on a bunch of other factors).

  There are also leagues which gamers can be a part of and get a minimum yearly salary of $50,000 USD and can supplement their income with sponsorship opportunities. Other ways to make income are through livestreaming while playing on different platforms as well.

  I’ve always been interested in this topic, so I decided to make a character who decided that playing video games could be her full-time job, especially with how good she is at it.

  In this fictional world, there are quarterly tournaments (depending on the sponsor/host) where gamers log in and the tournament is televised/available for streaming-on-demand (as opposed to gamers travelling and competing in-person, depending on the tournament).

  Being a professional requires a 60-plus hour work week to stay competitive with other players and other teams. There’s strategy to learn (depending on the game you’re playing), and different players at challenger levels to scrimmage against and hone your skills and maintain the sharpness of your reflexes. It’s training like any other, but you end up staring at a computer screen for long periods of the day instead of, say, practicing a particular swimmer’s stroke.

  Not many players can maintain this professional training regimen for very long periods of time, and it takes its toll—as any sport training regimen that is taken to the extreme.

  This is the point where Vick is at, so her gaming itself will not be the focus of this book, but rather, how Vick copes with the aftermath of the health issues that have occurred due to her lifestyle, and the burnout that ensues.

  Vick is extremely good at the multiplayer game (Raid on Sky Castle), where the objective is to beat demons and supernatural baddies on different planes (like something out of the Norse nine realms), and ascend to the Sky Castle, where the final treasure is to be had. Players have to compete against one another to get to the Sky Castle and retrieve the treasure, thus winning the game.

  I don’t go too much into the detail of professional esports, or the way the tournaments work, or anything like that.

  This is really a snapshot into Vick’s life (taking a break from her job) from October to January.

  I hope you enjoy reading it either way.

  Thank you, and happy reading!

  Sincerely,

  C.M. Kars

  ONE

  October…

  I end up dying for the third time in a row, struck down by a haze of hellfire from the Demon Lord himself, my own real-life vision going fuzzy around the edges.

  I toss my keyboard (carefully but still with a shit ton of frustration) against the blankets of my nest on my couch. I tear off my headphones and toss them (gently) onto it once I untangle my legs from the blanket over my lap, and drop my feet to the floor.

  I let my body get adjusted to the new position, hissing when the blood flow resumes and starts travelling down to my toes now, and all the aches and pains start to remind me exactly how long I’ve been sitting in one spot.

  I ease myself out of the couch, plop myself onto the carpeted floor. I start bending at the waist and reaching for my toes feeling a glorious ache in my hamstrings and lower back until something pops in my shoulders. I keep reaching for my blue-painted toenails, and I groan and sigh.

  My ears are doing that ringing thing that they do after they’ve been under headphones for too long, where everything feels muffled, like I’m walking through water. Like all the sounds are being filtered through another layer of space before they can reach me, sounding more far off than they actually are.

  After I’m done stretching out my legs, I rub at my gritty and tired eyes, reaching blindly for the bottles of saline solution I keep around in practically every nook and cranny (seriously, I found two tiny bottles in the cushions of my couch).

  It takes me another twenty minutes to fully reconnect with my body, wiggling out my fingers and cracking my knuckles, my fingertips numb and tingling after pressing down on the keys for so long.

  I need to see Amber, or somebody, who can ergonomic the shit out of my one-bedroom condo, so I’m not so sore after doing a twenty-hour stint of gaming, practicing my runs, foregoing all of my body’s needs—I haven’t drunk a single drop of water today, I don’t think. I’m exhausted even if my body hasn’t been doing anything all day, just my brain and fingers, really.

  I head to the bathroom, clutching at the walls when I feel a little light-headed, spots dancing in front of my eyes. I know that if I stand still and just breathe nice and slow, the feeling will pass while my body adjusts itself to moving around again after being immobile for so long.

  I know sitting down as much as I do isn’t good for me, but I’ve got a tournament coming up in the new year, and I have to make sure I’m ready, even if it feels it’s taking more and more hours a week in practice, in scrimmaging, to get there.

  I squint at the bright-bright lights in my bathroom, catching only a glimpse of myself in the mirror. My electric-blue hair isn’tt really electric-blue anymore, fading out to some sort of murky teal travesty that it now is.

  I head into the shower, wash
off the last twenty or so hours, letting the warm water revive me and soothe away the aches and pains that are plaguing my body. I feel like an arthritic old woman, and my body doesn’t really feel like my own.

  Shit.

  Once under the spray, I run a passing glance over the bucket of lotions and bath bombs, and basically all that extra shower/bath shit that Max keeps buying me so I can take care of myself, but it’s still there, collecting dust. I don’t usually have time for a relaxing bath or anything like that, this shower is purely for being functional now that my stomach’s starting to growl.

  I walk out of the bathroom and into my living room with a towel wrapped around my chest, pinning my arms to my sides so I don’t drop it. I squint blearily at the curtained windows and the amount of sunlight streaming through the crack between them, my hair dripping bits of blue onto my white towel around my chest, down my arms as I stand shivering in the cool air.

  I didn’t turn on the heat, like an idiot—I forgot.

  I go through the motions of making my condo hospitable and livable again, turning the lights on, getting dressed in my comfiest, warmest clothes, and using the towel to mop up as much moisture from my hair as possible, all to find out that I’m going to have to leave the house once I open the fridge.

  There’s only a sad-looking jar of pepperoncini hanging out in the back, and a bottle of hot mustard right next to it.

  Great. I’m going to have to go outside and face people so I can buy groceries for the week, like a sane adult.

  I tie my wet hair up in a sloppy bun at the top of my head and pull up my socks to stuff them in my oxblood Doc Martens, tuck my giant ratty T-shirt into my sweatpants, tying a knot that feels a little tighter than the last time I did it around my waist. I then pull on one of my comfortable and giant hoodies. I tuck some cash and my keys into the kangaroo pocket, pulling the hood over my head, and head out the door, only to freeze as I try to futilely put my key in the lock to lock up my door.

  Of course I had to run into him, of course.

  I mean, you collapse one time in front of a guy, and apparently that makes him worried about you non-stop, as a good neighbor and all, which really isn’t a thing anymore when you live in a building like this, all of us one on top of the other. The building has twenty floors – there’s a ton of people in here, at all times.

  So why did I have to go and live right next door to a guy striving for sainthood? Why?

  “Hey,” he calls, and I hunch over my key in the lock of my front door, thinking fast—which isn’t my strong suit when I haven’t been to bed yet—but I’m too hungry to fall asleep, and hence I absolutely need to venture outside and get food because I forgot to do groceries.

  So now I’m here, trying to fuse my human molecules with the door molecules and become one, doing anything to save myself from saying hi to him.

  I thud my forehead against the door, hoping that if I make a small enough target, Michael Nash, my next-door neighbor, will forget about me existing entirely, instead of greeting me with a hello every single time we’re in the same vicinity together.

  It seems to happen more often than not, the way we bypass each other when I have to skulk outside with the rest of the people and get groceries for myself and pretend I’m an actual human being that can take care of herself—even though I fail most of the time.

  I huff out a breath against the door, hiking my shoulders practically up to my ears, holding onto the doorknob for balance as I slowly begin to lift my head.

  “Hey, are you okay?” Michael asks, and I hold my breath, wanting him to go away.

  Jesus Christ, does he have to play the hero all the damn time? Why? Why does he keep doing this to me, making me embarrassed all over again?

  Shit.

  I clear my throat, pulling myself up to my full height, which isn’t that much but it’s just the way it is, and turn to look at him.

  I know that I look close to corpse-like pale, my skin a little ashen from all the non-eating and non-sleeping over the past few weeks, and gaming-induced stress that’s nothing but a cumulative effect on how I’m looking right now. Seriously, though, is it too much to ask a guy not to point it out so blatantly?

  Especially when he looks like that.

  Michael’s big in the way that all guys are bigger than me, and there’s a very feminine part of my brain that thinks Michael Nash can bench press me no problem. It somehow sets off a dopamine-rich cascade of fireworks in my head until I can feel my cheeks begin to heat as I take my time looking at him.

  Yeah, he’s beautiful, okay? I’ve admitted it to myself, even said something to my cousins Amber and Max in passing (but they probably don’t remember anything at all), and it doesn’t really mean anything. I’m not going to climb him like a tree, and I don’t need to know the motion of his ocean.

  I’ve got shit to do.

  I’ve got a reputation to maintain.

  I’m NIKTORIOUS, and I don’t lose my head over a hot guy; that just isn’t who I am. He’s not part of my to-do list today which is comprised of three tasks: buy food, eat the food, go to sleep.

  Nowhere is there room for a guy like Michael Nash in there anywhere.

  My heart, though, is beating fast and my mouth’s dry only because I don’t think I’ve had a full glass of water, or like a vegetable, in the past twenty hours or so (if maybe longer than that). And being faced with a pristine specimen like my next-door neighbor is just making me a little light-headed is all.

  “I’m fine,” I croak, sounding anything but fine, and Michael, precious next-door-neighbor Michael Nash, starts taking a couple of steps towards me, holding his own grocery bags looped over either shoulder, his arms stretched out like I’m going to do the dumb thing and collapse in front of him again.

  Except I’ve lost my grip on my front door doorknob, and I can’t really feel my feet, and it feels like there’s a dark curtain descending over my eyeballs, and there’s something like glass hitting the ground but I can’t really see or hear…

  My eyes flicker open, and I’ve got nothing but Michael’s face taking up my entire field of vision, and wow, what a face it is. I distantly become aware that he’s sitting on the ground, somehow has his arms wrapped around me, and I’m not even sure how I got here.

  Like, I know how I got here, but not how fast he reacted to my damsel-in-distress moment.

  “Ah, shit,” I groan, pulling my hood off my head, the heat suddenly stifling, the elastic that I put around my hair snapped, the tension in my bun forever gone as my hair spills out, all loose and still pretty wet.

  “Hey, Victoria, are you all right now?” Michael asks. Wow, it’s…it’s super nice being held like this (again), even if it isn’t real since I’m so touch starved, I don’t really know any different.

  All I can do is blink at him and his golden skin and those golden-brown eyes with the stupidest longest lashes ever. I notice the way Michael has a scar from what looks to be a cleft palate operation on the left side of his upper lip, the way his stubble already seems to be coming in, and it’s morning, afternoon? I don’t even know.

  Wow.

  Just wow.

  Michael Nash can get it.

  “Victoria?” he asks again, his eyes never leaving my face.

  I grunt, somehow get my hands underneath me and he helps me sit up. I let myself get used to the feeling of sitting upright after crashing and burning in my attempt to leave the house in search of food.

  How am I going to catch the bus to get to the grocery store now?My car’s in the garage, and I don’t feel like walking and expending more energy to get to the depanneur to grab some over-priced snacks.

  Eating a May West isn’t going to give me the kind of nutritional value that I’m looking for.

  “Thanks,” I mutter, now that I’m past my little fainting spell and all the blood can rush to my cheeks. Why?

  “Sorry about that,” I say, not really knowing what I’m apologizing for but it feels like I should when he saved me from
cracking my head against the floor for the second time since I’ve met him.

  This could have been a lot worse. A lot, lot worse.

  You need to get your shit together and soon.

  Yeah. Yeah, I do.

  There’s only so much longer that Amber and Max are going to take me blowing off our group chat, even though they kinda know that I’m working. It simmers inside of me, ready to erupt into a rolling boil, whenever Max and I compare our jobs to Amber’s.

  Yeah, Amber’s a PT and went to school for basically a thousand years to be where she’s at now, and she’s doing a fellowship or whatever it’s called or just thinking about it (more like complaining about it), and Max has fallen down an editing hole for all her vids for her YouTube channel, but shit, I’m tired, and I’m hungry, and I need food. And nobody can help me except for Michael, of all people.

  No…just no. I can take care of myself. I can do it.

  “Are you sure you’re going to be okay?” Michael asks, and it makes anger flare hot in my belly, boiling up my throat. I bite back the mean words I want to fling at him, that I’m not his problem, but he really hasn’t done anything but save my head from a few good bumps, or hell, even a concussion, so I should keep a lid on it.

  “Yeah, don’t worry about it,” I say, lifting up a floppy hand to wave off his concern, giving him a small, fake-as-hell smile. “I’ll be fine.”

  Michael frowns at me, the longer part of his black hair falling into his eyes, over his forehead, his down-slanted eyebrows making him look more severe with me than I think he actually is.

  Then again, what the hell do I know? I thought I could make it outside by myself, and now I know I can’t.

  I’m not pulling any punches when it comes to knowing shit.

  “Let me get you some water,” he offers, and before I can say anything, he’s turning and reaching for his…groceries—groceries that he dropped because of me, shit.