Chapter 5 #2
“Here’s the deal,” he continues. “If StarPlay has to choose between FlyButter and Nephilim, if it comes down to it, who do you think they’ll go for?”
“I have no idea, man.” Another voice, this time a woman’s. Ashley. “I know you want me to say that they’d choose Nephilim, but FlyButter has done some great work recently and—”
“No, no. Guys, follow my reasoning. Who are the studios’ lead designers?”
I glance around the hallway—deserted—and squeeze closer to the wooden wall, listening in.
“Jesse,” another male voice says. It’s that guy—the programmer who once got into a fight with Shannon. “And for FlyButter it’s that girl, Viola Bowen.”
“She’s good,” Ashley says.
“She’s excellent,” John corrects her. “In fact, she may be the best for role-play stuff. But.” I hear the clank of a few balls hitting the corners of the pool table. “She has no combat experience. You know who is the best at combat design and also pretty good at role-play?”
“Jesse?” Ashley asks.
“Ding ding ding! So, say that at the end of this week FlyButter and Nephilim decide that we cannot work together—which is exactly what’s going to happen, I mean, this retreat is already a shitshow—who do you think execs at StarPlay will give the project to?
To the team that can do both well, or to the team that can only do one thing? ”
“That’s a good point,” Programmer Guy says after a brief pause.
“Of course it is. So my advice is, let’s wait it out. Don’t stress over the next few days. No need to make an effort to get along with FlyButter, because if things stay as they are, we get to do Limerence 3, and they get nothing.”
“I don’t know. That seems…” Ashley sounds skeptical. “Like a bit of a gamble. How can you be so sure?”
“Hey, I’ve talked it out with a few others. They all agree with me.”
“You talked it out with Otto?” Ashley asks, a little dubious. “And with Jesse?”
“Trust me,” John reassures her. “It’s what they want, too. Hang on.” Suddenly, the door closes, muffling the voices inside.
I push away from the wall, cheeks glowing with anger. It’s all I can do not to stomp my displeasure all the way to the library.
What. The. Hell.
What the hell?
I came here in good faith. Bitching and moaning, yeah, but I came all the way here with the intention of finding common ground. And all along, Nephilim was planning some shitty Scooby-Doo sabotage.
I throw the library’s door open, wondering whether grabbing a dictionary and dropping it on John’s head will make me feel better, but instantly recoil. I blink once, then once more, unable to process the sight in front of me.
Jesse fucking Andrews is sitting in the reading nook I noticed earlier, the one I came in with the specific intent to use, the one I’ve been thinking of as “mine” for the past hour. He’s relaxed in the plush chair, long legs spread comfortably, knees apart, looking way too damn cozy for my taste.
Aside from my very inappropriate dreams, this might be the first time I get a good look at him without his glasses, and…
I take a step back, because it’s a true Clark Kent situation.
Not that I subscribe to the glasses make a person less attractive crap ’90s comedies tried to peddle, but with no obstacles between my eyes and his face I cannot help tracking the entirety of his bone structure, and I don’t love it.
I really don’t enjoy knowing that Jesse Andrews, game developer extraordinaire, could have a respectable career in modeling.
I prefer him bespectacled.
Actually—I prefer him not existing at all.
“Are you okay?” he asks, nonplussed.
I know why he’s asking. I’m overheated. Jittery. My hands tremble so hard, I have to clutch my book like it’s a rescue rope. And I’m wearing the clothes I usually put on Sunday morning to go grocery shopping while the acceptable section of my wardrobe is busy frolicking in the washing machine.
Still, he can fuck right off.
“Kinda pissed, actually.”
Jesse straightens, reaches for his glasses and slides them back on, as if to study me more closely. “Viola? Have you been drinking?”
“Have I been—” I sputter, and then stop.
Inhale through my nostrils. He doesn’t get to call me by name.
“You know, Jesse, since last year—and even before—I’ve been wondering why you were so cold to me.
I’ve expended a frankly embarrassing amount of energy figuring out what I’d done to you to deserve being ignored at best, and treated like I’m a poisonous mushroom who dared to grow on the outside of your stupid raised bed at worst.”
A beat. He stares blankly at me. “I live in an apartment complex.”
“And?”
“I don’t have a garden.”
“I don’t care if you—” I grit my teeth. “Jesse, if this is how you and your buddies want to play it, I’m going to warn you right now that there’s plenty of eggnog in this world, waiting to be spilled in the laps of plenty of assholes, so—”
“Viola.” He stands, and in the blink of an eye he towers over me, giving me a micro-flashback of the mistletoe, when he looked down at me and for a split second, I thought that we might—
“What are you talking about?”
I take a step back. Swallow. “I heard them. Your friends, spilling your idiot plan.”
His brows furrow.
“Stop looking at me like I’m some insane lady yelling the gospel while masturbating on the subway.”
“I’d love to, but you did come in yelling with no discernible reason.”
I roll my eyes. “I know that you are counting on StarPlay to pick Nephilim over us. I was walking past the game room and heard John saying that you’re not planning to put any effort into establishing a collaboration with us because you know that you have the better chance to get the project and—hey?
” Jesse stalks to the door, and I whirl around. “Stop!”
He doesn’t. His step doesn’t falter—at least, until I reach out to grasp the back of his shirt.
He spins to face me. “What are you doing?”
I let go of the fabric like it’s a pot of boiling water, a little embarrassed. “Are you just…going?”
“Yes. I have something to do.”
“You can’t just leave in the middle of a conversation.”
“Is there a law against it?” He looks down at me with a narrow-eyed expression that broadcasts impatience.
Aside from the mistletoe, it’s the most emotion he’s ever shown toward me, and something within me that somehow managed to survive the stress and weight of his indifference for years finally cracks.
“You know, Jesse, I’m not radioactive. At my last checkup I didn’t test positive for any contagious diseases.
I regularly brush my teeth, I’m not trying to get anyone to invest in cryptocurrency, I use both deodorant and antiperspirant, I never give people unsolicited Netflix recommendations—”
“Are you done?” His arms cross on a chest that’s just too broad, and…
Yes. I could be done. But now that Jesse Andrews is standing in front of me and actually listening, I find that there’s more I’d like to talk about.
“Did I do something to you?” The question slips out of me quietly, a little subdued. It surprises me—and Jesse, too, judging from how his eyes widen.
“No, you haven’t.” His tone is lower, too. “What are you talking about?”
“Right. Because, I mean, maybe you don’t like me, and that’s fair and your prerogative, whatever. But you always act like you wish I wasn’t around, and I know I’m not just being paranoid because I heard you back at the engagement party, and…”
Laughter rolls in through the closed door. A few people are walking in the hallway, and by this point I easily recognize the voices’ owners: Ashley, and John, and—
Jesse spins on his heels to go after them, but I can’t let him leave now that I have some hope of figuring out the reason behind this weirdly tense dynamic we’ve developed.
Without conscious thought, I grab at him again.
This time my hand meets his arm, and my fingers close around his wrist as I pull him back to me. “Jesse, can we please—”
With no apparent effort, he yanks his arm free of my grip and takes one step back, increasing the distance between us. He rubs his wrist, as if scarred by my touch. When he finally looks at my face his cheekbones are dusted with red, his jaw is clenched, and his eyes are blazing with—something.
His breath comes a little quickly. For unknown reasons, so does mine.
“I’m sorry.” My face burns hot. “I didn’t mean to—I wasn’t…”
My jaw drops open as he turns to exit the room, leaving me in the middle of the library to wonder what the hell just happened. I exhale slowly, rub my eyes with my thumb and index finger, let my arm drop to my side.
And that’s when I notice it.
On the chair Jesse vacated, still open facedown, is an old hardcover book. It’s clearly a well-loved copy, the corners scuffed by constant use, full of earmarked pages and tabs.
The Sunken Heart, the cover says. The Limerence Saga, Volume 1.