Chapter 31
Lara
To end your day, interact with the bed. The game will save automatically.
“Here’s to us, and the incredible kickoff we’ve had!” Sophia says, angling her laptop to one side so I’m in the camera frame. The others are already finished for the day, but each and every one of them has joined the call from home.
“Cheers,” Kamal exclaims, toasting us with his can of Dr. Pepper. His daughter Bahar is next to him on the sofa, proudly holding her apple juice up to the camera, which gets a giggle out of me and Sophia.
“The phone wouldn’t stop ringing! And I don’t even want to talk about my inbox.” Nat shakes her head, aghast. “You must’ve properly blown them away. We even got an interview request for television! I really think we can win this thing.”
“It’s not just that we can—we will,” Ramon tells us, toasting us with a cup of coffee, despite the late hour.
We just gave the others a summary of our day, and they, in turn, reported in from the office front, where apparently the phone rang so often that even Aria had to answer it once.
Much to her chagrin. Laughter and babbling echo around the room as several staff members dart around picking up stray coffee cups, emptying the rubbish bins, and hoovering the rugs in the aisles.
Judging by how Mr. Crow’s staff has been flitting around the building all day, their feet must hurt about as much as ours right now.
“What’s next for you two? Bedtime? Party time?” Nat inquires.
“Party time and then bedtime!” Sophia responds, and Aria giggles when she sees me grimacing. The only thing that can convince me to attend a party is the prospect of seeing Luca again.
“I wish I was there too,” Nat says with a sigh.
“Soon,” Sophia promises her. “Once we’ve won, you can go to every single trade-fair party until you get sick and tired of them.”
“Like I’d ever get sick of partying,” Nat says.
“Right then, get some lovely, well-deserved rest, lads. We’ll talk again tomorrow evening. Until then, if there’s anything urgent, you’d best contact Lara; I’ll be booked out with the presentation and everything.”
“Noted,” Ramon promises. “We’ll be watching the live stream, rooting for you.”
“Kamal’s already bought us snacks for the public viewing session,” Aria adds. Then they say their goodbyes, Sophia and I wave at the camera, and a little while later, my boss closes her laptop.
“Please don’t feel like you have to come along if you’re knackered, OK?” She turns off the fairy lights illuminating the walls and bookshelves in our booth while she talks. “It’s just that I haven’t had the chance to chat with Maeve in forever; we rarely see each other these days.”
“I’d like to come and hear how the others did.”
For a split second, Sophia looks startled, but then she gives me an excited smile. “Cool! I’m so happy you were able to mingle a bit.”
She’s just trying to be nice, but her words make it clear that she wasn’t expecting me to be social. Nor was I, but it still hurts a bit that she’s so surprised.
We pack up and make our way over to the lounge, where the party is already in full swing—and there’s no comparing it with any of our earlier meetups.
Maybe it’s because there are more people in the lounge, or maybe the employees of the larger studios are real party animals.
In any case, there’s loud music thumping from the speakers, the waitstaff are picking up the first few empty pint glasses, and people are hugging all over the place.
The mood feels more like a music festival than a convention after-party.
Sophia searches the room with her eyes. Despite the effusive mood in the room, there’s a weirdly strained expression on her face, like she’d suddenly rather be anywhere but here. Then her face lights up as Maeve comes over and hugs her. “How was it? I’m sure you did great.”
Sophia nods. “Not to brag, but yeah.”
Maeve laughs and leans her head on Sophia’s shoulder. “It’s so lovely to see you again. And no worries, you can brag all you like. We were terrific too.”
“Then we should drink to that.”
Maeve nods. “I’d love to. I was meaning to talk to you about something anyway.” Her gaze wanders off to the side past my shoulder, and while Sophia simply nods, I turn around, searching. I can only spot Muhammad, his boss, and Hank, sprawling comfortably on a group of chintz armchairs.
“Do you mind if I sneak off with Maeve for a moment?” Sophia asks me. This seems to be about something serious, because the smile has disappeared from Sophia’s face again, replaced by something bitter, urgent. I wonder if everything’s all right between the two of them.
I shake my head and smile. They obviously have a lot of catching up to do, and besides, I spot Luca in that exact moment, accepting a drink from one of the waitresses.
He’s with Akito and his colleague, and when Luca throws back his head, laughing about something Akito said, a warm feeling spreads through my body, though I can’t hear him over all the noise.
“Catch you later then. Have fun!” I say to Sophia, but she no longer seems to register my presence.
I watch her retreat, whispering, with Maeve by her side.
They make their way right over to Hank. I’m dying to know what’s going on, but they probably want to talk to some old acquaintances in peace.
I mean, Sophia has so much more of a network than I do.
So who knows what they want to talk about.
I get myself a Coke, though my blood must be made up mostly of coffee and energy drinks at this point, and I’m desperately craving some water.
I fight off the nervous, fluttery feeling inside and stroll over to the sofa corner where Luca is sitting.
We can just talk. That worked out fine at lunchtime, after all.
“Lara!” Akito sees me first, moving forward a little, and I stoop down to return his hug. “Wow, you got a crazy crowd. I saw the queue. Oh, should we get you an extra chair?”
Before I can reply, the other man scoots over, creating an empty space between him and Luca. “Oh, no worries, we can move over. I’m Hiroshi, by the way. Akito’s colleague.”
“My boss,” Akito corrects him.
Hiroshi sighs. “I hate that word.”
Akito shrugs, indifferent. I greet Hiroshi, but I’m hardly able to follow their conversation, let alone focus, because I can feel Luca’s eyes burning on my skin.
The sight of him is enough to bring our moment yesterday to the front of my mind.
I’d never kissed anyone else like that, and I’d never been kissed like that either.
Kissing had always been nice, but never that intense.
Above all, after the fire, I was sure I would never let myself fall again the way I have with him.
My heart flips as I sit down on the sofa, which is clearly too small for three people, because our knees end up touching.
Normally, I’d keep my distance from any sort of physical contact.
It took me ages to start hugging Nataly and Aria.
Needing touch, yearning for it with every cell in my body—I hadn’t even had that Before.
My longing for Luca feels like digging my toes into wet sand and waiting for the first wave to break against my ankles.
Our kiss was that wave. And now I want it to happen again and again, and I’m no longer scared of the cold water. I want to run in deeper.
In the end, Luca is the sensible one, shifting his leg away.
I try not to show my disappointment, and listen to Akito and Hiroshi recount stories from their workday.
Everyone wanted to test their VR system, of course.
But according to Hiroshi, there were some issues with the motion tracking—something they’d evidently been aware of and hadn’t managed to fix in time for GameChanger.
I’m ashamed of the glimmer of hope that blooms in my chest when they admit this.
Still, according to the press, Hiroshi and Akito are already favorites to win.
And as much as I like Akito, anything that pushes their studio off the pedestal will help to get PixelPulse on it.
My mobile phone vibrates in my skirt pocket—one of the many reasons why skirts with pockets are the best invention in all of human history, right after the wheel and the printing press.
Since I’ve just spoken to Aria and Nat, I have no clue who else it could be.
I pull out my phone. My screen shows seven missed messages.
All from my mum. An icy fist wraps around my heart.
“Lara?” Luca sounds worried. It’s like he’s able to feel the ice in my veins, judging by how quickly he just realized something was wrong. “Everything all right?”
I nod, though it feels like a lie, and unlock my phone. Maybe my mum just wants to chat. I know I haven’t been in touch for far too long. But seven messages? And this time of night? What if . . . again . . .
Before I can finish that thought, my phone rings. “I need to take this, sorry,” I say, get to my feet, and pick up, blocking my other ear with my free hand. The lounge is teeming with people by now, and I can hardly hear my own thoughts.
“Mum?” I shout over the noise of the crowd.
“Lara, finally! We texted you.”
“Is everything all right? I only just saw your messages. I was busy.”
“We saw. You were on the telly! On the evening news! We’re all of a tizzy.”
“On the telly?”
My heartbeat screeches to a full stop, and the cold feeling disappears.
Everything is all right. I close my eyes for a moment to collect myself.
Fear is a strange companion. It exists inside you, faithful until your dying breath, feeding on your past and sabotaging your present and future in the most unexpected moments.
“Lara? It’s so loud where you are; did you say something?”
My eyes snap open again, and I walk over to the large door I just passed through a few minutes ago. As it falls shut behind me, the noise of the lounge fades into a distant hum.
“I was on television?” I ask. I gave a few short interviews here and there, but Sophia managed to head off most of them.
“Yes, there was a short news segment about a video game convention, and the presenter was in front of a beautiful booth with books and fairy lights—and you were there!” My mum’s voice nearly cracks from the sheer speed of her jabbering. “We thought we were seeing things.”
“Put her on speakerphone,” I hear my dad’s voice in the background.
“Wait, how d’you . . .” My mum swears under her breath, and all of a sudden, there’s an ache in my chest. I miss them both so much.
I clear my throat, because it has suddenly become very tight.
There are good reasons why I talk to them so rarely.
Whenever I see them, my pain becomes the epicenter of their lives, though I usually hide it as best I can.
I know my parents blame themselves for what happened to me.
I see the guilt in their eyes, and I know it from the whispered conversations they had when they thought I was sleeping.
The room we stayed in at my aunt’s house was small, and anyway, I didn’t get a wink of sleep the first few nights.
They blame themselves for everything: the fire, caused by our outdated heating system.
The fact that I was the one who suffered, and the time afterward when I suffered not only physically but psychologically too.
They blame themselves because it took so long to transfer me to another school, and because we were dependent on my aunt’s help for so long.
“Hello? Did I hang up now?”
Despite my painful memories, I grin. “No, everything’s fine. I’m still here.”
“Hello, sweetheart!” My dad sounds just as excited as my mum. “I was just wishing we still had VHS; I could’ve recorded your performance for you.”
“I think there are catch-up services for this sort of thing now, Dad,” I tell him and laugh, because my dad makes it sound like I performed for the camera when, in fact, I made a short appearance in the background of the scene.
I stroll around the empty ballroom with its booths, now lit only by the emergency lighting. It’s almost creepy.
“Well, I’ll have to check those out then.” My dad pauses. “That’s online, isn’t it?”
I bite my lip, but my grin is still clearly audible in my voice. “Yeah, it’s online. I’ll send you a link.”
My dad sighs. “I really don’t know where you got your internet skills from.”
“We used to let her play on my sister’s computer too much,” my mum says.
“Well, she’s made it onto television, hasn’t she? So it can’t have been that bad of an idea.”
“I don’t know. Do you remember when she kept drowning people in that life simulation game?”
“I can hear you, you know,” I mutter. “Besides, everyone does that in The Sims.”
“Mm” is the only thing my mother adds to that, and I can hear the smile in her voice too. I’ve reached our booth, and I turn the fairy lights back on, plonking myself down in the armchair by the fake fireplace. It’s strange, talking to my parents while sitting in a replica of our old living room.
“Anyway, we’re very proud of you,” my mum tells me. “But do tell, what are you doing there? Was that your company’s booth? It was so cute! A bit like our old living room.”
If only you knew, I think. Then I tell them about the past few days, and though they probably only understand about half of what I’m saying about our game and the convention, they keep asking loads of curious questions.
All of this feels so unexpected and wonderful and normal that, for the first time in ages, I can’t feel the weight of the past on my shoulders as I hang up the phone.