Chapter 11:
Barely able to contain his excitement at breakfast the next morning, Chuck did his best to appear nonchalant as he mentioned off-handedly to Carmen that Morgan was going to meet him. On her part, Carmen only looked confused.
"Morgan."
"Who?" she asked, distractedly filling a travel mug with coffee.
"My friend, Morgan," he repeated. Sarah had known exactly who Morgan was.
"Okay," she said. "As long as you don't leave the house and he's gone by five." She kissed him on the lips just as he was about to protest, making it clear that the decision wasn't open to negotiation. "Be good." She grabbed her bag and left for work at eight sharp, the second hand on the clock passing the number twelve just as the door clicked shut.
.
Chuck waited downstairs for Morgan to show. He was expecting his friend to ride over on a bike or perhaps upgraded to a scooter--certainly not in the nerd herd vehicle that pulled up in front of the building doors.
Morgan looked surprisingly mature in a dress shirt and black work pants. "Hop in, Chuck!" he greeted, unlocking the passenger door.
"Is it safe for you to be behind the wheel?" Chuck asked, but jumped in without a second thought.
Sitting with Morgan, Chuck felt as if he hadn't lost any time at all. Under the guise of neatly trimmed facial hair and wrinkle-free clothes, Morgan was living proof that getting older didn't always equate to growing up. His sense of humor was the same, and Chuck was relieved his friend still found the same jokes from 2007 hilarious now. Had Morgan picked him up from the airport instead of Ellie, Chuck would have lived with the delusion that nothing had changed.
During the car ride, of which the safety during certain lane exchanges was questionable, Morgan compressed the last five years into a fifteen minute run-down. Chuck listened and smiled to himself. While Morgan embellished the details of his promotion to manager at the Buy-More a little over a year ago and how he'd finally moved out of his mom's basement, he seemed to have left out any details that might paint an otherwise humbler picture. Now that Chuck had lost his memories, he would probably never know what really happened.
Once caught up, Morgan wanted to talk about only one thing for the rest of the car ride. Their baby.
"Wait until you see the game, you'll love it!" he declared, speeding through a school zone. "Man, you're so lucky, Chuck. You can test the game out on yourself; it'll all be new to you."
Chuck smiled wryly. "Gee thanks, Morgan. That's exactly why I took the fall."
"Yeah, you're great, man. I knew you'd take one for the team," he jibed and Chuck had to laugh.
_
Chuck was impressed by the outside of Morgan's apartment complex. It looked so…mature and sophisticated. He felt a little inadequate standing next to his little friend. Then they entered his actual room and Chuck realized his worries were for naught. It was filled with what Carmen would have deemed 'messy junk'. There was 'messy junk' everywhere. And garbage too.
"Yeah, don't mind the mess," Morgan said, wading through the piles of pizza boxes strewn on the floor with a most distinguished air of nonchalance. "I just don't get it. It just grows and grows." He threw his hands up in the air, at a loss for what to do.
Chuck held his laughter. "Yeah, I think that's when you need to take out the trash."
He followed Morgan into the living room where it looked like he spent ninety percent of his time. Three giant computer monitors, a cluster of wires that resembled a big bowl of spaghetti and an array of game controllers covered the large work-desk.
Morgan plopped down in the executive chair, plugging away at the keyboard. "Wait until you see this…" he said, already mesmerized by the large amount of code that appeared on the screen. Chuck sat down beside him and scanned the room.
He couldn't help it, his eyes closed in on the collection of game consoles and game cases that were partially hidden by a tower of cardboard boxes.
"Do we play a lot of video games?"
Judging by the look Morgan shot him, it was a rhetorical question.
"Do you we ever play games at my place?"
"No."
Chuck wasn't surprised but he still felt like he should ask. "Why not?"
Morgan shrugged. "I don't know. You don't really spend a lot of time at your place."
"I spend all my time here?"
"Yeah. Or you're busy doing other stuff."
"What kind of stuff?"
Morgan shrugged again. Chuck wished he would stop staring at the computer monitor like a zombie but he knew at some point in their friendship he was guilty of doing the same.
"Okay. Here, here, here." Morgan pointed at the screen like a child at the candy store as the game began to load. "Okay, let me walk you through this." He handed Chuck one of the controllers and leaned back in the chair. "You're the main character, Ned."
Chuck burst out laughing. "Ned? I didn't think people still named their kids Ned."
Morgan nodded and laughed with him. "Hey, don't look at me. You were the one who came up with the name."
Chuck wrinkled his brows. Even if it wasn't true, he would have to take Morgan's word on it.
"So Ned works at a Best Buy."
"A what?"
Morgan rolled his eyes. He leaned towards Chuck and said in a loud conspirative whisper, "The Buy-More."
Chuck couldn't help but smile. "Are we basing this game on ourselves?"
Morgan's eyes were bright with excitement. "You'd think so right?" he cheered. "But Ned's not like any other slob at the Best Buy. He's got government secrets in his head."
Chuck raised his brows. "Well that's certainly different."
"I know!" Morgan slapped him on the back, giddy with excitement. "So now to protect him, the CIA and the NSA send their best to protect him. They're a crime-fighting trio."
The screen changed and the main character, Ned, appeared on the screen. He was tall and lanky, not unlike Chuck himself. He smiled as he maneuvered the figure around the layout of what was obviously their former Buy-More, stopping short as two new characters appeared on the screen.
"So that's Jenny, she's from the CIA. And the man's John, he's from the NSA." Morgan shook his head, laughing again. "Jenny and John. I don't know where you got these names, man."
Chuck dropped the controller and leaned in so close his nose nearly touched the monitor. There was something familiar about the characters but he couldn't tell what specifically. Jenny had brown hair and brown eyes, but shared neither a resemblance to Carmen nor Jill. The character John looked familiar too but he didn't know anyone they might have based him on.
Morgan pointed to the character on the screen. "Yeah, it's funny. That guy looks a lot like this old neighbor of Ellie's. He used to work at the Buy-More with us." Morgan looked like he might have been on to something, but thought against it and shrugged.
Chuck didn't make a sound. He was still staring at the female agent. He felt like he knew her and the frustration of not knowing was as if he were deaf and the name was being screamed at him. He thought it he stared for a few more hours it might come to him.
With the controller freed, Morgan took over, giving Chuck a run-through while he played. Chuck watched their character Ned dodge danger, weaponless and powerless with his protectors yelling behind him. There was a definite sense of danger playing a character as helpless as Ned but all the stages, as Morgan explained, could be solved without muscles or gun power.
Chuck sat and watched in awe. "This is really amazing, Morgan. We made this?"
Morgan nodded, his eyes still focused on the screen. "Yeah. It was all you, Chuck. I still can't believe you thought of something so ingenious."
Chuck frowned. "Me?" he asked, sitting up straight in the chair.
"Yeah, all you!" Morgan cried, whooping as Ned narrowly dodged being captured by a rogue agent. "Yeah, you came up with the story line, all the names—you even designed the characters."
Chuck looked at Jenny again as she ran across the game screen. He couldn't explain it but she felt real to him, more real than any character he'd ever played.
"How did I come up with all this?"
Morgan shrugged. "You just thought it up one day…probably sitting at the nerd herd desk, doodling on a napkin…"
Chuck didn't buy it. Yeah, he daydreamed a lot at work, it wasn't exactly stimulating sitting at the service desk—but creating the concept, designing the characters, making something this real? He sighed, wishing his memories would come already so he wouldn't have to sit in the dark all the time.
Morgan placed a comforting hand on his shoulder. "You okay, buddy?"
"Yeah." Chuck smiled at his friend. "I'm just really glad I have a friend as great as you."
Morgan grinned, obviously pleased. "I know."
Chuck laughed at his friend's wealth of modesty. He grabbed one of the other controllers and held it up. "Now, did we make the game two-player?"
_
Chuck and Morgan ordered pizza and spent the rest of the afternoon playing in front of the TV. It didn't matter that one held a respectable job in an office downtown and the other was a manager at a Buy-More; it was a lazy afternoon all over again and they were best friends with too much time on their hands.
Chuck almost forgot he had somewhere to be until he saw the clock overhead display in big angry numbers: four-thirty. "Shoot, I have to go home." He laughed when he heard himself say the words. He was a grown man and he still had a curfew.
"No problem. I'll give you a ride." Morgan looked ready to stand up, but then his eyes suddenly filled with mischief. "As soon as I'm done my grape soda."
"But you just finished the can of grape—" Before Chuck could finish his sentence, Morgan popped open a fresh can, causing sugar-laden liquid to foam at the opening. He took a giant gulp, slamming the can down with an exaggerated sigh of contentment.
Chuck shook his head, smiling all the way. He was going to be in so much trouble.
_
Morgan angled in and out of rush-hour traffic, surprising and horrifying Chuck in equal measure with his seemingly superhuman reflexes. They pulled out in front of Chuck's apartment with the car clock reading just a quarter after five.
They made good time but Chuck still groaned inwardly, knowing Carmen was already home.
"So, we'll hang out soon then?" Morgan asked, his eyes looking as hopeful as a lonesome puppy.
"You bet."
"No business trips planned in the near future?"
Chuck laughed. He was going to steer clear of danger, minus Morgan's driving, for the foreseeable future. "See you later, Morgan."
He opened the car door and was just about to step out when his friend pulled him back.
"Hey, I forgot something." Morgan fished inside the pocket of his black Buy-More blazer, handing Chuck a small velvet box.
Chuck's eyes widened to saucer-like proportions. With such narrow dimensions, there was only one thing it could be. "Wow," he gasped.
Morgan chuckled. "I know, right?"
He looked at his friend in horror. "Why are you giving this to me?"
"You gave it to me just before you left on your trip for safe-keeping. Said something big was going to happen and you wanted me to have it just in case."
"In case of what?" Chuck looked at Morgan with alarm, resisting the urge to shake an answer out of him. "Did I know something?"
"Whoa, Chuck, calm down!" Morgan patted his arm, trying to reassure his friend. "Look, you said so yourself, it was just a business trip. What happened was an accident."
Chuck opened the box and stared down, wishing he had left a message--something, anything, that could guide him.
"Did I say who the ring was for?"
Morgan was at a loss for words. "Sorry, Chuck." He shook his head. "You didn't say. You just asked me to hold onto it for you."
"Have you met my girlfriend?"
There was a pause, then Morgan said her name. The wrong name. "Carmen? Yeah, I've met her once or twice. She's never made a real effort to know your friends, which is definitely her loss. I could have been a real asset to her you know, given her all the information on my best friend…"
Chuck smiled despite himself.
"I don't want to say this, Chuck, but as your friend…" Morgan hesitated which was completely uncharacteristic for him. Morgan told him everything, and then some. "I always thought you and Sarah—" He hesitated again. "I thought she was the one for you, man. Then you two broke up and you just started fading away."
Chuck frowned. "After I broke up with Sarah?"
"Yeah. You quit your job, moved out…I saw you but you were always so distracted. We haven't played video games like that in awhile. You always had somewhere to run after we finished programming."
Chuck wished he knew where that was. It would explain so much.
"I never asked but I always wondered what you were up to. And then you showed up at my place a few weeks back, the happiest I've seen you. You gave me the box and told me to hold onto it for safekeeping and I didn't hear from you for the longest time."
"Chuck?" Morgan touched his friend's arm, jerking Chuck from his thoughts. "You okay?"
No. Chuck's thoughts were a jumbled mess. "Was I going to marry Carmen?"
Morgan was quiet. "I don't know. I guess so. You never said." After a pause, he touched his friend's arm again. "You okay, Chuck?"
Chuck shook his head. "I don't remember who was supposed to wear this ring."
A/N: If you didn't catch it, Ned is a tribute to TV's other Chuck on 'pushing daisies' and that quote is a nod to the banter between chuck and sarah in the pilot.