Chapter 7 Hot in a Nerdy Way
seven
hot in a nerdy way
I didn’t get to bed until after four last night—this morning? Late, anyway.
So I’m less than enthused when a loud knock on my bedroom door wakes me at—a bleary-eyed glance at the clock on my bedside table—nine-something.
I don’t even keep my bedroom door closed when I sleep; Victory is just standing in the doorway, knocking on the open door as she stares at my blanket-laden corpse.
(I realize that corpse implies that I’m dead, but it feels accurate.)
Also, she’s not alone.
“Jesus, Vic,” I groan, struggling to keep my eyes open as I try to glare at her. I’m not even sure if what I’m seeing is real. “This is not what your key is for.”
“Pal and I were in the neighbourhood,” Victory says, thus confirming my suspicion that the blue-haired figure next to her is, in fact, Pal and not a hallucination.
“And I figured you probably would be so busy playing the new game today that you’d forget to eat, so I brought this to make sure you at least have some food. ”
She holds up a white paper bag and I can already smell what it is. The breakfast sandwich from Green Bean, with jalapeno havarti and peameal bacon. Victory thinks it’s disgusting but it’s my absolute favourite.
“Why are you such a good person?” I whine, dragging my hands over my face, trying to stretch my eyes open all the way.
“I’ll eat it if you don’t want it,” Pal says. I think they’re joking but I’m too tired to say for sure.
I hold my arm towards Victory, making a grabby motion with my hand, but she stays frozen in the doorway.
“You have to get up first,” she says. “You don’t want bacon grease in your bed.”
“That’s where you’re wrong.” I shove my blankets off, pushing them away with my feet, and haul myself into a vaguely upright position.
I glance down at what I’m wearing—a stained t-shirt with no bra and a worn-thin pair of flannel pants that I know have a large gash in the butt seam—and sigh.
“And now Pal has seen me in my jammies, so that’s fun. ”
“I won’t tell anyone,” Pal says with a smirk.
“I appreciate that.” It takes a great deal of effort to stand, but when I finally do get to my feet and take a few steps towards Victory, she takes a step back.
“I’m going to plate this for you, because you would just eat it out of the wrapper like a raccoon,” she says, and Pal snorts.
“Do raccoons eat out of the wrapper?” they ask her.
She shrugs. “Probably.”
“I have to pee,” I announce, pushing past them and across the hallway to the bathroom. It was perhaps more information than they need right now, but neither of them objects.
I wash my face and brush my teeth while I’m in there, although I don’t bother taking a shower, since I don’t intend to leave my apartment all day. When I come out to the main area of my apartment, I find Victory making all of us tea.
“If I were gay, I would marry you,” I tell her as I walk past, grabbing the plate with the breakfast sandwich and taking a seat on my couch heavily. “I might anyway.”
“Get in line,” Pal says, looking up from inspecting my computer desk. They glance over at Victory and wink before returning their attention to the knick-knacks on my desk. They pick up a small plastic robot with a television for a stomach. “What is this?”
“It’s a clock,” I tell them. “But it doesn’t work anymore. I just think it’s cute.”
“It is very cute,” they agree as they set it back down carefully. “All this stuff is awesome.”
They take a seat in my desk chair, spinning around once, and then stare up at the shelves on the wall above my computer, showcasing all my keyboards.
They let out a long whistle. “I’ve never seen anyone with this many keyboards,” they say before looking back at me. “You are a fascinating person, Audrey.”
“I’m really not.” I laugh nervously, unsure what to think of the compliment. I might be blushing. “I’m just…odd.”
“Odd is good,” they say, spinning in the chair again. “Odd is interesting.” They stop spinning and smack their hands on the desk. “Odd is real.”
I nod awkwardly and take a bite out of my sandwich. I didn’t even realize how hungry I was until the first buttery biscuit crumb hits my tongue, and then I’m suddenly ravenous.
“So, how late did you stay up last night?” Victory asks as she brings over a cup of tea and sets it on the scratched-up IKEA coffee table in front of me.
She sets another cup on the desk, since Pal is still sitting there with their feet up on the chair and arms wrapped around their knees. It’s kind of adorable.
“Um. Not that late,” I say through a mouthful of peameal bacon.
Victory brings her own tea over to the couch and sits next to me, snuggling close since it’s only a two-and-a-half-seater, and my work-in-progress crochet blanket takes up at least three-quarters of a seat.
“Uh-huh,” she says, unconvinced. “And how late is that?”
“Like…four?” I say sheepishly, and she sighs.
“Uh oh,” Pal says with a smirk. “She’s about to mom-friend you.”
Victory laughs. “I am not.”
“That’s okay, I can be the dad-friend,” they add. “I’ll make really bad jokes.”
“How is that different than usual?” Victory says, and I snort a laugh with my mouth around half a sandwich. I nearly choke on one of the crumbs and she pats me on the back. “I’m guessing that means it was fun?”
It takes me a minute to clue in that she’s talking about the game.
“Oh, yeah.” I wipe my mouth with the back of my hand.
“I’m enjoying it so far.” I pause, debating whether or not to elaborate, but it’s Vic and I tell her everything.
“And I, uh, sort of hung out with someone? Like over voice chat. While playing.”
Pal’s eyebrows shoot up while Victory’s furrow together. “Who?” she asks.
“Funny story…” I set my plate on the table, brushing crumbs from my lap onto the floor—I tell myself I’ll vacuum later, but later might be three weeks from now. “So, that guy we ran into at the store last night—”
Now her eyebrows shoot up. “Scones?”
“Yeah, so… He messaged me, and then we sort of built our characters together for a few hours.”
“Is that a euphemism?” Pal asks, looking confused.
“No?” For some reason my voice sounds uncertain when I say it. “Building the character is sort of the first bit of the game,” I explain. “You choose your race, class, appearance, attributes—”
“But…why?” Victory says. I know she’s not asking about character creation.
“I don’t know! He apologized for being a dick and then just kept talking at me while he started the game, and soon we were messaging each other and voice chatting and—Yeah.”
Pal coughs into their fist dramatically, and it distinctly sounds like the word horny.
“Nobody’s horny,” I insist, and they just snicker behind their hand.
“But you stayed up until four a.m. chatting with Scones last night?” Victory asks, aghast.
“Yes—Well, he said I should call him Damien—”
“Oh my god.”
“What? What was that for?”
“Yesterday this guy was your nemesis and now you’re…friends?”
“Nemesis is a bit of an exaggeration,” I say, although I do see her point. “Maybe I misjudged him.”
“Or: he was perfectly fine with being a dick to you,” Pal says, waving their hand through the air, “until he met you and realized that you’re hot, and now he wants to be ‘friends’. Uh-huh.”
My face heats with embarrassment. “I’m…not hot.”
“Well, like, in a nerdy way,” they add, spinning in the chair some more. “Either way, Glasses is into it.” They stop spinning and point at Victory. “I’m right, right?”
Victory looks like she doesn’t know what to think. And neither do I.
“That doesn’t make sense,” I finally say, shaking my head. “He knew what I looked like. He’d even seen me in person before last night, and he was still being a dick online—or, I don’t even know if that’s what he was doing. He’s never seemed like a dick before, so I may have misinterpreted things.”
“Could be,” Pal says with a shrug.
“So, are we friends now?” I ask, and Victory gives me a concerned look.
“I think that’s up to you, Audrey,” she says. “Is that even what you want?” The way she’s looking at me makes me feel like this isn’t just about Damien.
Victory never met Cameron, but I told her all about my childhood best friend.
She knows the whole story—well, most of it, anyway.
She knows how people used to tease us, say that I was his girlfriend, just to piss him off.
And boy, did it sure piss him off. I would always just laugh it off; I didn’t even want to be anyone’s girlfriend. Until I did.
And, yeah, letting him know that was a mistake. It was awkward and painful, and I lost my best friend. My last year of high school, not only was I a loser but I was also a loner.
Looking back, of course, I can see that he was kind of a shitty friend all along.
He didn’t stand up for me when people picked on me, and there was an entire year where he would only hang out with me outside of school.
I thought that was normal, but after meeting Victory in university, I learned what it’s like to have a real friend.
So, yeah, I see it. Now there’s another guy who wouldn’t stand up when people picked on me. A guy who will only talk to me when no one else is around. A guy I still want to talk to anyway, despite all of that.
But if I look at the Scones that I know—the one from his streams, the one I talked to for hours last night—I know it’s not the same at all. Even if the Scones that I imagined for a week was a bit of a dick, he’s never done anything to give that impression before.
“He’s not Cameron,” I say to her quietly. She frowns but I can tell that it’s what she was thinking.
“Who’s Cameron?” Pal asks, somewhat disinterestedly, as they clack away at my keyboard, pretending to type.
I expect Victory to jump in and tell the whole story, but she just gives me a small nod, like it’s up to me to decide how much to share. I squeeze her hand in thanks.
“Just an old friend from school,” I say. “Who only wanted to be my friend when it was convenient to him and then stopped once I became inconvenient.”
“Oof,” Pal says. “Been there.”
I smile at that. Knowing that Pal has experienced that kind of rejection makes me feel a little better, like maybe one day I could be as confident as them or Victory, like rejection won’t define me forever.
There is one thing Pal is wrong about, though. Damien definitely doesn’t think I’m…hot in a nerdy way, or whatever. He’s not interested in me like that—he has a girlfriend—and I’m glad for it. Having been on both sides, I know it’s always awkward when these things are one-sided.
And it’s not like I could be interested in him. Not really.
That’s not why I had fun chatting with him last night, or why I spend Thursday morning just waiting for Victory and Pal to leave so I can get back to my game—and more chatting.
It’s not why, when I finally get a moment to myself some time after eleven, I immediately boot up my computer and log in to my Play’N account.
The message is already waiting for me when I open the chat.
SconesOfAyor:
Let me know when you’re going to play again, I want to finish the tutorial level today
The implication that he’s been waiting for me—that he wants to finish the tutorial level with me—delights me more than it should.
But that doesn’t mean I’m interested.
Probably.