Chapter 20 Captain Kirk is Climbing a Mountain
twenty
captain kirk is climbing a mountain
Marie knocks again and I bark back at her with a tetchy, “Just a second! Jesus!”
Way to be totally chill about this, Me.
I shove Damien’s glasses back on his face—crooked, and possibly upside down—and throw his hoodie at him. If nothing else, it might cover up the fact that the front of his jeans is completely distorted. Like, obscenely. What in the motherhecking heck does he have going on down there?
No time to worry about that now, because I’ve got a bra to reattach—also crooked—and hair to flatten out—both of ours—and breathing to do—which I keep forgetting about.
“Say that you were just leaving because you need to get home to stream this afternoon,” I tell him in a harsh whisper, even though I’m pretty sure Marie wouldn’t be able to hear me in the living room at a normal volume.
“Okay…” He seems uncertain, but he stands and slips on his hoodie anyway.
“Everything okay?” Marie calls out, and I rush to the door to swing it open far too enthusiastically.
“Everything is awesome!” I tell her with a fake grin, but I wince when I realize I’m quoting the Lego movie. “Um, we were just… Video game stuff. But, uh—”
“I have to get home for my stream this afternoon,” Damien says when he appears next to me. He sounds far less robotic than I would if I were reciting a script like that.
Marie watches him with razor-like intensity as he tugs on his shoes. “You’re the new gamer friend, I suppose?” she says, and he smiles politely but I can see in his eyes that he hates this as much as I do. Social interactions. Questions from other humans. Person-ing.
“This is Damien,” I say to her, because I think that’s what I’m supposed to do in this situation. I turn towards him. “This is Marie, my sister.”
He gives her a nod in greeting, but she ignores it in favour of narrowing her eyes at me. She is never going to let me live this down.
“It’s nice to finally meet you,” she says when she looks over at him again. “Audrey’s said so many interesting things about you—”
“Okay, well, he really has to go,” I cut in, and I start pushing him out the door before he’s even got his jacket all the way on. “We’ll talk later,” I tell him, and he gives me a nod as well before disappearing down the stairs.
“Well?” Marie stares at me once he’s gone. “Are you going to let me in?”
“Why?” The bitterness in my voice is unintentional but unavoidable.
“Fine, yes. Come in.” I step aside to let her through, and she stops to slip off the ballet flats she must have put on just to come up the stairs.
I resist the knee-jerk impulse to snap at her about what the hell she’s doing here in the first place.
She wanders into the apartment, looking around like she hasn’t just been here a week ago when she needed to escape from Gram blasting ABBA all day.
She turns towards the TV once she reaches the living room, and I realize that the speedrun must still be playing—we barely got fifteen minutes into it before we were, uh, side-tracked.
She frowns at the TV and then over at me. “Do you usually get this sweaty and flustered from watching people play video games?”
“Yes,” I say dryly, because I have no good answer for that.
She snorts a laugh at that—an actual goddamn laugh—and flops onto my couch. I don’t even think she’s laughing at me, I think she just…thinks I’m funny.
I’m going to get a good grade in Sister, something that is both normal to want and possible to achieve—
“I’m sorry for interrupting…whatever was going on here,” she says a moment later. The way she sighs makes me think she’s being sincere. “I just…needed to get out of that house.”
I don’t point out to her that we are technically still in that house.
“It’s fine,” I say with a shrug, dragging my feet over to join her on the couch. “Damien really does have to stream this afternoon. He does it everyday.”
“So, is it, like, his job?” She sounds more curious than condescending.
“Pretty much, yeah. He’s the most popular Stones of Ayor streamer who’s still active,” I tell her. “Though he does some sort of freelancing website stuff on the side? I don’t fully get it, but I think most of his income is from streaming.”
She nods and sinks further into the couch, her attention still on the TV. “And you met because you both like this game?”
My shoulders tense, preparing myself to get defensive. “Yes,” I say through my teeth.
“That’s…” She trails off, but I know what she’s going to say. Pathetic. Ridiculous. Juvenile. “…pretty romantic.”
I almost choke on nothing. “What?”
“It must be nice that you have this thing in common that’s so important to both of you,” she says.
The implication that she and Josh never had something like that in common hangs heavily in the air between us, but neither of us mentions it.
Minutes pass before she speaks again. “Why is this guy climbing the side of a mountain?” she asks, her eyes fixed on the TV.
“Because he’s in love,” I answer casually, and I don’t expect her to get the reference, but she snorts a laugh again and looks over at me like she’s in on the joke.
“That’s from that Captain Kirk song, right?” she says, and my jaw nearly drops. She knows nerd references? What is happening?
“Yeah. But, uh, really, this guy’s trying to save time. It’s a speedrun,” I explain more seriously. “Getting through the main quest line as fast as possible. Though this one is without cheats. The ones using cheats and glitches can do in under an hour. It’s pretty cool.”
“And why do people do this?”
I shrug. “It’s fun.”
I expect her to scoff at that, but she just nods and keeps watching. “Who’s that blond guy?” She points at the screen.
“Cartwright. He’s like the Hadley of this game; everyone loves him.”
“Yeah, okay.”
Before I know it, two more hours have passed by and I have to get up to pause before the final battle, so I don’t spoil it for myself.
And Marie is still right there on my couch.
I don’t know what I was expecting.
That Marie would suddenly think I’m cool and we could just hang out like equals from now until the end of time? That she wouldn’t tattle to our gosh-darn mother that I had a boy in my room? (Apartment. Whatever.)
Because the first thing Mom asks me, when I come down to the shop to start packing orders on Wednesday, is when she’ll get to meet my he-friend.
Since she now knows all about Marie meeting him yesterday.
(I would tell her that she won’t meet him until hell freezes over, but with climate change, I don’t feel safe banking on that.)
“Bring him to dinner on Saturday,” Mom suggests. The wicked glint in her eye is a stark contrast to her syrupy sweet tone. “What does he like to eat?”
“The raw intestines of his vanquished enemies.”
“Do you think Skip the Dishes will deliver that?” She even has her phone out, like she’s googling it. The lengths she will go for a bit, I swear.
“He is not coming to dinner on Saturday,” I tell her. “I don’t think he wants to be eaten alive by rabid hyenas.”
“Can hyenas have rabies?” She’s googling again. “Huh. Apparently yes, but—”
“Unless you can promise that both you and Gram will behave yourselves while he’s there? And promise you won’t use the word he-friend in front of him?”
“Anything is possible,” Mom says with a smile. I am not amused. “All right, fine, yes. We will be civil and appropriate and not at all rabid or hyenic.”
God-freaking-dammit. She cracked me with hyenic, and now I’m laughing, which gives the incorrect impression that I am okay with any of this. And worse, it gives the impression that I agreed to invite him to dinner on Saturday.
Which I absolutely did not.
“I’m going to ask you something and you’re not going to like it.”
A great opening line for tonight’s video call with Damien. I’ve just finished my stream for the night, and we’ve immediately switched to our private chat, where I am about to ruin his week.
“Well, that’s ominous,” he says, though he’s smiling.
I sigh. “My mother wants you to come to dinner on Saturday. With my whole family,” I tell him. “Apparently Marie mentioned that she ran into you at my place yesterday, and now my mom thinks she needs to meet you as well.”
“Oh.”
“To be clear, I never said that you were my…” Crap, I don’t even know what he is. I pinch my mouth shut so I don’t accidentally use the word he-friend.
“Your boyfriend?” he asks, filling in the blanks.
“Um. Yes. I never said that to her.”
“Okay.” He chews the inside of his lip anxiously. “This is my not-so-subtle way of asking if I am. Your boyfriend, I mean.”
“Oh. Um.” I don’t know how this became my decision. I don’t even fully understand what these words mean. “I guess if you want to be?”
“Do you want me to?”
“Do you?”
“If you do—”
I hate this game. The Hedging Game: Now a major motion picture.
“For fuck’s sake, you practically devoured my left boob, so okay, yes, I think you’re my boyfriend!” I say, exasperated, and I can see him fighting back laughter. Because, yeah, maybe that was a ridiculous way to phrase it. “So do you want to come to dinner or not?”
“Do you want me to?” he asks again, though I can tell he’s just baiting me now.
“Honestly, it might be the most harrowing night of both our lives,” I tell him. “But it also might be good to rip the band-aid off quickly.”
“Does that mean you’re going to tell your family?”
“That you’re my boyfriend?”
“No, the left boob thing.”
“Oh my god, shut up,” I say with a laugh.
“Okay,” he says, and for a second, I think he’s agreeing to shut up, and I immediately want to tell him not to, but then he adds, “I’ll come to dinner.”
“Really?”
“But I’m telling the left boob story—”
“Don’t you dare!” I point at him menacingly. “Once my grandma starts talking about boobs, you can’t get her to stop.”