Chapter 15
fifteen
no-clip up the mountain
“You haven’t even texted each other?” Victory asks over coffee on Saturday.
“He sent some word-vomit yesterday,” I admit sheepishly. “But I don’t know how to talk to him right now.”
“Why?” Her face contorts with concern, and I can tell she’s prepared to either hug me or commit murder on my behalf at a moment’s notice, depending on what I need. (She’s the best.) “What happened?”
“Nothing happened!” I laugh sarcastically. “Literally nothing. Pal might not be the best judge of who is or is not horny.”
Victory glances sideways, towards the rest of the cafe, since I may have said that a little too loudly. I fold my arms with my glass cradled between them and slouch down in my seat, taking a long sip of cold brew.
“I don’t follow,” she says after staring at me for a minute.
I huff, exasperated, but the paper straw is still between my teeth and my drink bubbles up. “I invited Scones up to my apartment to hang out after the pub, and he very awkwardly and emphatically declined,” I tell her. “You’d think I’d threatened to kick him in the nutsack.”
Victory snorts a laugh but quickly apologizes for it. “So, he’s Scones again?”
“When he’s being a dick? Yes.”
“And he’s a dick because he didn’t want to keep hanging out?”
“He’s a dick because he looks like that, and then he won’t even—”
“Looks like what?”
“Hot!”
She pinches her mouth shut like she’s trying not to laugh.
I set my glass on the table with a thud and cover my face with both hands. “I feel like an idiot.”
“I’m just trying to get on board here,” Victory says, sweeping her hair back. “You invited…Scones…to your apartment because you think he’s hot, and when he didn’t want to go, you figured that meant Pal was wrong about him being into you. Is that right?”
“Don’t look at me like that,” I say to her, peeking at her through my fingers. “Like you think I’m an idiot.”
“I don’t—”
“You made a face when I said he was hot!”
“No, no, he’s kinda cute, I guess. We just might have different taste—”
I groan and hide my face again.
“Audrey?” she says slowly, and I hazard another glance at her through my fingers. “Did you invite him over…for sex?”
“I—Not exactly.” I lower my hands, defeated. “I mean, I didn’t say it. But I at least hoped maybe he would…kiss me?”
“So, you didn’t tell him that’s what you wanted,” she says, like she’s still trying to get the story straight.
“In case you hadn’t noticed, I don’t know how to do any of this! I don’t know how this works!”
“No one does.”
“You and Pal figured it out pretty quickly,” I point out, and she smiles shyly.
“After a year of failed flirting,” she says. “Putting yourself out there is uncomfortable.”
“Maybe it’s for the best,” I mutter, slumping to one side, cheek propped on my fist. “I had some sort of episode, clearly, and I’ll be back to normal soon.”
“Normal?”
“You know what I mean,” I say with a sarcastic laugh. “Maybe I just need to stick to gaming with him. That feels safe. And then whatever I was feeling the other day will pass.”
“Sure,” Victory says unconvincingly. “Anything’s possible.”
I don’t appreciate her lack of conviction, but a thought occurs to me.
“He asked me to do a speedrun with him,” I tell her suddenly, and she looks confused by my invisible train of thought.
“Well, someone suggested we should both do a speedrun of Stones 4 and see whose time is better, and he said he’s in if I am. Right after he turned me down.”
“Okay…”
“So, is that his way of saying that he only wants to do gaming-related things with me, too?”
“You just spent three hours at the pub with him last night.”
“And we talked about video games!”
“You know, there’s a really easy solution to figuring out what he’s thinking,” Victory says pointedly, and I glare at her.
“I can’t ask him this stuff! It would be way too obvious.”
She sighs, and I feel like a petulant child. “Do you realize how much earlier Pal and I could have started dating if we hadn’t just assumed we knew what the other was thinking?”
“That’s not a fair comparison, because you were both totally obvious and should have known better.”
Victory gives me a look that says it all: So are you.
Which is what I was afraid of. That I’m painfully obvious in my (completely nonsensical) infatuation, while it’s clear to me that he sees me as a gaming friend and nothing more.
At least we still have that much. I hope.
Dinner with my family is tense this week, now that Marie has officially moved back home, at least for the time being.
It’s like none of us know what is a safe topic of conversation anymore.
Mom asks her something about her job and Marie deflects by asking me about the guy she saw walking me home the other evening.
Normally I would think she’s being cruel, but she looks so tired sitting across from me that I realize she’s probably just overwhelmed and needs to take some of the heat off of her. I just wish I wasn’t the most convenient diversion.
I assure everyone that he is just a friend—because that much was made brutally clear to me—but I feel a little guilty as I say it. If he were really just a friend to me, I would be able to respond to his messages.
When I get back to my apartment after dinner, I head straight for my computer. I’m still appearing offline, but I read over the messages he sent yesterday, the ones I never acknowledged.
SconesOfAyor:
Hey, did you see that comment about doing a speedrun of 4?
I dunno if that’s something you’d be into
But it could be fun
Not as a competition, obviously, but as sort of a collab maybe?
Might attract new subs, which is good
Because I am a total sellout
SconesOfAyor:
Anyway, I guess you are probably busy but let me know when you see this
And I’m sorry if I was weird yesterday?
I wasn’t expecting your friends to show up and I felt super awkward
Your friends are cool though
I’m not
Obviously
I can tell they like you a lot
Which makes sense
Since they are your friends
SconesOfAyor:
Okay I’m guessing you’re just pretending to be offline
Since I can see you played three more hours of SOA 4 today
So I’ll just shut up until you feel like talking again
SconesOfAyor:
(Sorry if it’s weird that I checked your playtime; I was worried about you)
SconesOfAyor:
(And sorry if it’s weird that I was worried about you)
And a new message that arrived while I was having dinner:
SconesOfAyor:
Miss you, btw
I settle at my desk with tea and my headphones, ready to play for a few more hours before bed tonight, and I change my online status to appear active. I’m easing my way up to responding to his messages—though I wouldn’t even know where to start.
I don’t even get a chance to make up my mind before a notification pops up that he’s trying to start a voice chat with me. I barely give it a thought, answering immediately. Like a reflex.
“Hey.” My voice sounds thick yet hollow through my headphones. Has it always sounded like that?
“Are you okay?” he asks without a moment of hesitation, or even a perfunctory salutation.
I shrug even though he can’t see the motion. “Yeah, I’m fine. I’ve just been busy.”
If he knows it’s a lie, he doesn’t say anything. “Nothing bad, I hope,” he says, and the concern in his voice is killing me.
I feel more ridiculous for my reaction the other night than ever. As if him not wanting to kiss me meant he didn’t care about me at all. What kind of messed up logic is that?
I am so unfamiliar with…whatever this is—this overwhelming and unwelcome feeling taking over me—that it’s like I don’t even remember how being friends works. But when I think about it, I’ve never really had a friend like this.
Maybe I thought Cameron was like this, but now I don’t think he ever was. I was there to deal with his problems, never the other way around. And while Victory will always be my ride-or-die BFF, it’s never like this with her.
“Family drama,” I say weakly, which is partially true. “I had to help Marie move her stuff in.” That was today, though, and doesn’t account for my absence yesterday, but I hope he won’t ask.
“Right, yeah.” He falls silent for a moment, and I worry that I’ve destroyed everything that made talking to each other feel easy for the past three weeks. “I guess I forgot about that. But I’m glad you’re back.”
“Like you can’t even go a day without talking to me,” I say, trying to sound like I’m teasing him, like this is easy again.
“I mean, I survived it,” he says with a laugh. “But I hated it.”
“Malcolm was extra obnoxious?”
“You have no idea.”
I laugh in earnest now, and the knot of anxiety in my chest loosens a little. “Well, I appreciate that I had a novel’s worth of texts to return to.”
“I would apologize, but that implies that I won’t do it again,” he says. “And we all know that’s not true.”
“Of course.” I relax into my seat a bit more, pulling my feet up and crossing my legs as I hold my tea mug close, feeling the warmth of the steam on my face.
“So…do you wanna do it, then?” His question makes my face heat up more than the steam does as I try to work out what he could mean by that. “The speedrun, I mean.”
“Oh. Right. Yeah.”
“Yeah?”
“No, I just mean—” I pause to gather my thoughts. “Maybe. But how would that work? Do we just each do a run and compare times?”
“I thought we could do it as a joint stream. That way people can watch both of our runs at the same time,” he explains. “And you and I can talk while we play, like this.”
I hadn’t noticed the faint clicking sounds in the background; he’s playing a game now while I’m just sitting here.
I feel a bit foolish, so I set my tea down and open The Stones of Ayor 4.
I’ve already nearly finished the main quest, but I’ve been trying to finish up all the companion quests I haven’t done yet before I go to the final boss.
“I figure that might make it less stressful,” he adds. “For me, anyway. It would be kind of silly and fun.”
“I’m not sure I know the game well enough to speedrun it yet,” I say hesitantly. “This is still my first play-through.”
“Obviously I’ve only played it once, too. It’d be a level playing field,” he says. “And I know other people have done it already, so we can watch some of those runs to get pointers.”
“Okay,” I reply after hesitating for a moment. I know this isn’t the sort of thing I should be doing on my channel, but his idea of a joint stream does sound kind of cool. “But a glitchless run, no cheats or anything. It’s no fun if we just no-clip up to the top of the mountain.”
“That actually sounds incredibly fun, but I see your point.” He goes quiet and I can hear his keyboard clacking away, like he’s typing something now. “Okay, then…” he says with a sharp intake of breath. “Most of these glitchless runs take about six or seven hours. One of them is almost nine.”
“Yikes.” My run of SOA3 took just over four hours, and that was about my maximum. I can’t imagine doing a seven-hour run without a break—probably longer, since I’m not that good. “Maybe we just do a speedrun of the first half? Up until we face Nurendoth for the first time.”
“That sounds more reasonable,” he says with a laugh. “And next weekend is one month after the release. So, it would be a good time to do it.”
“Doesn’t give me a lot of time to study,” I say, laughing as well.
“What are you doing for the next three or four hours?”
I glance at the time in the corner of my screen. Almost nine. “The usual, probably.”
A new message appears in our chat log, a link to someone’s archive.
“This run looks promising,” he says. “It’s the full game, but we could stop after the first Nurendoth fight. Might get some good ideas.”
“You mean we should watch this now?” I ask. “Together?”
“Unless you’re busy,” he says, and I snort involuntarily. “Yeah, didn’t think so.”
“Why are you so interested, anyway?”
“What?”
“I didn’t think you were that big on speedruns. But you seem really into this idea.”
“Because,” he says, with a tone that suggests the answer should be obvious to me, “we’ll be doing it together.”
My stomach flutters like a cliché at his words. I am completely screwed.