Chapter 23
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Just call me wifey.
I know I’m taking this bit too far, and honestly I did think my backbone was solidly out of vertebrae, but I am living for the way Samson is letting me wife at him. It’s the most delusional make-believe game I’ve ever played, but I am quite thoroughly obsessed.
After picking up our room key at the inn, Samson took me to the cafe he’d mentioned before, telling me to order anything I wanted.
I skimmed the menu, got an egg sandwich for myself, and then ordered all the desserts.
Sitting beside him on the wooden booth, I beam as our table fills up with pastries and chocolates and parfaits and cakes.
Oh. And my egg sandwich. After living off Samson’s breakfasts for the past two and a half weeks, it looks mediocre, so it’s a good thing I’m starving.
“I’ll pay you back later, dear,” I whisper, reaching for my sandwich.
Wrapping an arm around my back, Samson pulls me in and presses a kiss to my temple before whispering back, “No, you won’t.” He kisses again. “Your bribery days are over.”
I rest my head against his chest, overcome by how perfectly I fit in his embrace. Like we were made for each other. “Never. ’Tis a wife’s favorite pastime.”
He lifts his spoon to a chocolate parfait, filling it with mousse. “Is that right?”
“I’m almost completely positive.”
The chocolate mousse appears in front of my lips before I can take a bite of my sandwich. When I look up, Samson’s eyes glitter. “Behave yourself, wife.”
As soon as my mouth falls open and heat suffuses throughout my every cell, Samson dresses my tongue with the chocolate. While I’m battling the explosion of sweetness, Samson scoops another bite for himself.
I melt.
Into oblivion.
He rests his cheek against the top of my head, and I worry he’ll feel my heart pounding up through my skull, but he doesn’t seem to care as he digs into a cake, then a pie, then a pudding. His blissful sigh wraps around me a moment before his, “Best wife ever,” decimates my ability to function.
My fingers. They’re trembling around my sandwich, and it’s a miracle I return it to my plate after taking a bite. In this quaint, quiet corner of the cafe, no one else exists. As orders for coffees and teas ring out, the stillness between Samson and me consumes my thoughts.
This is everything.
Belonging amid a crowd.
Safety without any fear.
Wetting my lips, I say, “H-husband…can I try that one?” I point at a yellow cream custard.
A low, affirming sound vibrates against me before he delivers the bite to my lips. With his own spoon. Which he has now used.
Given that my spirit has left my body and ascended to higher planes, it’s really quite graceful how I accept the indirect kiss without asking Samson to marry me for real.
After all, I can’t propose without a circlet.
It would be so rude to not spare Samson every correct means of adoration and respect.
“Good?” he murmurs.
Blessedly, I don’t choke when I swallow too soon to say, “So good. Thank you.”
He nuzzles and continues eating like this is normal.
I’m obsessed with the idea of this becoming normal.
So, even after we eat, I keep up the nonsense.
Stampeding heart lodged in my throat, I hold Samson’s hand while we meander the market. When he stops us in front of a stall, I smile sweetly and say, “What is it, dear?”
He slips a yellow clip into my hair, and his lips soften. “Cute.”
The shopkeeper bubbles. “Adorable! Does your girlfriend like bracelets? That clip has a matching set.”
Samson chuckles. “I think she prefers lethal jewelry, and, also, she’s my wife.” Needlessly, Samson faces the shopkeeper and explains, “We’ve traveled in from the Ridge to get her fitted for some armor.”
“Aww!” The young woman clasps her hands together. “A young adventurer couple. That’s so sweet. I don’t think I have any discreet weapons, but I do have a few blessed trinkets…”
My eyes follow the direction the woman guides, and I gasp as a familiar trinket steals all my attention. “Is that—”
Samson’s big hand closes over my eyes. “No.”
I grab his fingers, shoving them down. “But I’m almost positive—”
“You’re mistaken.”
“Isn’t that a glow ring!”
The shopkeeper chirps, “Yes!”
I twist my wifely charms upon my “husband.” “Samson…” I point. “Can I please—”
“Absolutely not.”
“It’s a staple for most adventurers,” the shopkeeper informs. “Monster dens are dark. It’s dangerous without light.”
Sagely, Samson nods. “I agree. However—” He squishes my cheeks and gives me one hundred percent of his glare. “—my beautiful wife is just sane enough not to wander into monster-filled dark. She is not sane enough to stop herself from going alone into danger that she can see.”
“Ohh,” the shopkeeper tuts, judging me. “I can see where that would be a problem. The only other blessed item I have is for protection. You wouldn’t happen to be more interested in that one, would you?”
My nose scrunches. “I want the glow ring.”
“You can’t have the glow ring.” Samson doesn’t spare the nice lady a look. “What rank blessing is the protection ring?”
“Emerald.”
He hums, finally releasing me. “Sorry. I have Ruby connections. I’d prefer the better skill for a protection blessing.”
Her hands lift. “Oh, no. Totally understandable.”
Samson points. “The clip, though. Do you have one in orange? Possibly even one shaped like an orange?”
Unamused, I fold my arms.
Until the woman presents a clip with a beautiful glass orange actually adorning it. It is the most adorable thing I have ever seen.
“Yeah,” Samson murmurs, returning the one in my hair to its place in the display and retrieving the other, “we’ll take this one.”
Immediately after the purchase is complete, Samson trades the headband he put in my hair early this morning out for the clip, and I try not to let it be too obvious exactly what the simple interaction does to my insides.
My secret feelings are not helped by the time the night market truly begins to come alive, with street performers and more eclectic wares—including an entire display of wedding circlets.
They catch my eye shortly after Samson and I finish sharing a sweet treat not unlike a funnel cake on a stick.
“Wow…” I whisper, skimming the immense array of wedding circlets.
In the game, there’s one pixelated image to represent the jewelry.
The only variety available depends on which gemstones you mount into the five positions around the crown.
And by “variety,” I do mean that you get five little dots of different colored pixels depending on which gemstones you add.
Here, the circlets are silver and gold, white, clear, glimmering, matte. There are some with only one mounting place. Three. Five. Seven. Hundreds, perhaps, in tiny floral adornments that create wreaths of gems.
They are, fundamentally, beautiful.
“Those are marriage circlets,” Samson says. “I’m sorry I can’t get you one. Assuming it’s different where you’re from, that’s how we propose, and we’re already married.”
I stammer, “I-I know. I wasn’t— It’s just—” I force a breath into my lungs to contain myself. The very notion of Samson giving me the marriage circlet…of him proposing…it sweeps me off my feet. “They’re beautiful.”
Samson eyes my beet-red cheeks. “You…know? Is it the same in your old world?”
An awkward laugh tumbles out of my mouth. “Oh, um, no. We exchange rings. It’s lame. A whole crown is so much more romantic.”
He continues watching me, until I feel like I might shrink away from having said something egregiously wrong. “If it’s different, why did your game have information about how we propose?”
I’m going to die. Right here. And it won’t even be because the person on my left who is swallowing a sword made a grievous error. “Uh…well…”
This is the perfect moment to interject that I have a dreadful affliction—beyond my astigmatism.
It’s why my boss at Hardee’s knows my childhood was traumatizing.
After he found me crying in the freezer, I vomited my life story on him with the energy of a deranged marmoset, desperate to relay you just don’t understand vibes.
After all, the affliction is known as oversharing when I’m nervous.
And, boy, am I nervous.
So.
I ramble off an exceedingly horrifying, “So, um, farming sim games in my old world are usually laced with romance opportunities. You get to have your little house and your little farm, and your little husband or wife, to then build a little virtual family with. It’s very cute.
Very cozy. Probably uncomfortable to hear. I-I’m sorry.”
He stares at me.
The night market swirls around us.
His brows knit. “You… Were…we? Is…is that what you meant when you said I was your favorite character? I was…the one you married?”
Oh my granite. I wish.
I don’t, however, say that. What I do is laugh like a crackhead and say, “Oh, no. No, no, no. Don’t worry. You weren’t one of the romanceable options.” To my everlasting chagrin.
This information does not lessen Samson’s soul-searching stare. “So, who would you romance?”
Literally everyone gets stuck in my throat, and I’m not sure I’m emotionally prepared to explain how I one hundred percent the heck out of Vale of Gems with a determination that borders on psychotic, so I say, “Usually, Pyro.”
“Pyro?”
I’d prefer to swallow my tongue than continue this conversation. “He’s…sweet. Less annoying than, like, I don’t know. Lazul.”
“Lazul?” he blurts. “Lazul was a romanceable character, when I wasn’t?”
I know! I want to say. But I do not. I do not say that. I say, “The logic is lacking. I mean, Austin of all people was romanceable, too.”
I’m fairly certain Samson’s expression would be more tame if I’d stabbed him. “Don’t…tell me…you’ve…” His voice trails, and my horrible affliction rears with a vengeance I am never prepared for.
“I have! I don’t know what’s wrong with me.
” Dropping my attention, I plunge my fingers into my hair.
“I guess I wanted to see if there was any excuse for his behavior at any point in the full breadth of his character arc. All I got, though, was boohoo sad boy nonsense about a bad childhood. And, I’m sorry, but a bad childhood doesn’t excuse grown behavior.
It might try to explain it, but at some point you have to take responsibility for your own actions, say, wowza my parents sucked, and become better than them out of pure spite if nothing else.
” Heart thundering in my ears, I whisper, “I’m sorry. ”
“Lemonade…” Samson tips my face up. “It’s nothing to apologize for.” He searches my eyes, which might be a touch weepy. “I’m just…surprised. And also confused at what exactly the genre of your game is if it has both decimating monsters and starting families.”
Welcome to the wonderful world of cozy farm sims… It caters perfectly to the two wolves inside women—that is the one that craves a sweet little romance, and the one that craves violent disemboweling of all adversaries.
It’s the duplicity of femininity.
“I’ve never thought it was strange before. It’s fairly genre standard for farming sims.”
Swiping a hand down his mouth, Samson glances at the display of circlets. “Well…would you like to look at them?”
I would like to do anything that evicts me from this conversation, so—fervently—I nod.