7. Salutations
7
Salutations
The next morning at breakfast, I mulled over the friend request sitting in my GameUp inbox: SalUtations933.
A pun username. It was certainly in line with his personality.
According to GameUp, the last time he’d logged in, he was playing Craft Cove at 2:30 in the morning.
When I’d asked about good games, he hadn’t mentioned it. Maybe he figured the rest of the group didn’t care about casual simulations.
If I hadn’t been so determined to fall asleep before the bed-squeaking started, I might’ve stayed up to play.
I sighed and scrolled through my privacy settings. All good. If things got weird, I could always block him and say I was busy. Quit my job. Whatever.
I accepted the friend request and braced myself for the confetti animatic.
A new friend. Yee-haw. I smirked, remembering how he’d lasso’d an imaginary demon last night.
Footfall padded down the stairs. I sat up and switched tabs.
“Are you sure you’re okay with me wearing your sweatpants home?” Kat asked .
“Yes. Leave them there. I could use a spare,” Victor said.
I rolled my eyes. He already kept a duffel bag of Kat-sanctioned sleepover gear in his trunk. She’d given him a drawer, a razor, and a toothbrush. How much stuff did he need at his girlfriend’s place? It was nice of him to make sure she was comfortable on the drive home, but his logic was ridiculous.
“Okay,” she said.
The faint smack of kisses drifted from the doorway. I sighed and reached for my noise-proof headphones only to find empty space. I didn’t think I’d need them this early.
My brother’s voice was muffled, probably by her skin. “Are you sure you can’t stay for breakfast? I’ll make you eggs.”
“Ah, I wish I could, but Jinx needs me,” she said.
“I need you too,” he said, his voice graveled.
“I’m in the kitchen,” I announced.
He grunted in acknowledgment.
“Good morning, Z,” Kat called.
Oh, great. Now she was calling me ‘Z,’ following Victor’s lead.
“Goodbye, Victor. I love you. I’ll see you at work.” She kissed my brother, then hurried outside, setting off the motion camera. I clicked on the notification and caught her waving and blowing kisses at the door. Were those marks on her neck?
I whipped around. “Victor, are you still standing there?”
“I’m making sure she gets to her car safely,” he said.
“You could do that on the cameras,” I said. He was pining like a lovesick teen. “You’ll see her again in five hours or so. Eat something. Please.” I closed the app and sighed. It was almost enough to put me off my appetite.
“Fine.” He locked the door, then trudged to get the other half a bagel I’d left on the counter. His hair looked like it’d been wracked by a tornado. But he did have more color in his cheeks lately. He smeared some cream cheese on the bagel, his shoulders tense and his gaze evasive.
I propped my elbow on the table. “What? You can’t eat without her beside you?”
His jaw flexed, and he shook his head. “There’s something I want to discuss with you.”
“Okay.” I placed both feet on the floor and clasped my hands, my heart hammering in steady thuds. Was she pregnant? Did they revisit the possibility of moving in?
“It came to my attention that Ash may not be an ideal candidate for your friendship."
“What?” I broke out in a laugh. Of all the things he could’ve said, that wasn’t on my mental list.
“First of all, she’s your manager, and secondly, she drank with an underling.” His shoulder twitched as he sat opposite me.
“I wasn’t drinking,” I clarified.
“She also hit on my girlfriend in front of me,” he growled.
Oh. Was that what this was about?
I sighed and waved my phone. “I doubt she’ll do it again. Besides, she backed off pretty quickly, and we were all making somewhat crude jokes last night. If that’s uncomfortable, we can hang out with her in more sober settings. You were eye-fucking your girlfriend all night, and no one judged you for it.”
“Actually, they did.” His forearms flexed as he picked up the bagel.
“Sal may have teased you about being in love, but he’s just…he was…” Echoing my concerns about them? I shook my head. “I thought we had a nice night. I even made plans to start a server for all of us so we could play games.” I spun my phone toward him for the proof on GameUp.
He frowned at the screen. “Sal invited you?”
“Yes. ”
“The toy guy with the girlfriend? He’s messaging you at two in the morning?”
“He’s not…” I snatched my phone back. “It’s not like that.” Not yet, a jagged voice warned in the back of my head.
“You two seemed awfully friendly,” he said.
“Because we are. In a platonic sense.” I pinched my bagel, tearing it into bite-size pieces.
Victor licked a crumb off his finger. “What if he becomes single? Would he want more than friendship?”
My skin tightened around my hands. Sal knew that I didn’t like him like that. But so had other men. Telling him wouldn’t be sufficient. Not that I got the impression he had eyes for anyone besides Janice. I wanted, or at least suspected, we could form a casual friendship.
“I can’t speak for him, but he does have platonic female friends, and I doubt he’d be inclined to send any of them pictures of his anatomy. I can investigate more though. We’ll invite his girlfriend to the game server. Plus, you’ll be there. And Ash. And maybe even your girlfriend. If things get weird, I’ll block him and report it to Ash.”
He sucked cream cheese off the edge of his finger. “You feel confident she’d protect you instead of giving a pass to her friend?”
“She helped me with a creepy customer. But if she’s as spineless as my old advisors, I’ll find a new arrangement.” I pushed back from the table, my chair grating on the tile.
He tilted his head. “What creepy customer?”
I huffed, battery acid sneaking up my throat. “It doesn’t matter. You badgered me to put myself out there, but somehow, the only companion you deem worth having happens to be your girlfriend.”
He scoffed. “It seems like you’re deliberately choosing people who will reinforce your bias against humanity.”
“My bias?” I clipped. That wasn’t on me .
He sighed and gestured vaguely. “My apologies for the phrasing.”
I didn’t need an apology. I needed someone who actually supported me.
I shoved my plate into the dishwasher. “If you don’t want to join the game server, I’ll tell them you’re busy.”
“Z…” His phone lit up with a photo of Kat and blared some stupid Southern song.
I threw my hands up. “Since when do you listen to country music?”
“It’s from a show.” He held up his finger, prepared to swipe. “Just a moment. She’s video-calling so I can remotely walk her inside.”
After the stalker incident last month, she’d gotten security cameras too. Why couldn't he view her from there? I sighed and stormed off to get ready for work. Whatever. He was protective. By the time I came down, he was talking to her cat.
But sure, I was the one with social problems.
“Aw, can you hear the purring? He misses you,” Kat cooed.
“No, he likes being snuggled by you. I would purr too.” He smirked.
I waved my keys so they jingled and got his attention, however briefly. “I’m heading out.”
“See you later,” he said.
Not ‘see you at work.’ So, we weren’t having lunch together.
I sighed and got to work without issue. As I was walking up to True Tech, my phone buzzed. My brother was calling. I frowned and swiped to answer. “Hey, is everything okay?”
Did I forget something at home? Did his car malfunction?
“Everything is excellent, thanks. I just wanted to check in,” he said.
“Oh. That’s it?”
“Partially,” he said. “I was talking to Kat, and we thought maybe you’d like to hang out with us and her younger sister sometime. She’s very sweet. Very low maintenance. And very busy, so you’d barely see her,” he said.
I ground my teeth. What exactly did he think I was looking for in a friend? How did he describe me to Kat’s sister? Closed-off, high-maintenance, and lonely? “You want me to go on a platonic, sibling double-date?”
“Nothing creepy,” he said.
“It is creepy. I don’t need you to set me up with people even younger than you.” I paced in front of the store.
“I just thought you might get along. We could even go to her family’s house for Thanksgiving.”
My pulse thundered in my ears. “What about our family?”
“We could stop by their celebration if you wanted to.”
Stop by. He didn’t want to. Not that any of that came as a surprise, but still. My hands shook. “I…I thought we were keeping it small this year.”
“It’s just an option, Z,” he said gently.
But I knew him. If I turned this down, I had the option of spending four hours getting suffocated and analyzed across the table from our parents or holing up at home with Craft Cove and microwave mashed potatoes. He’d check on me. But he’d leave. He was always meant to leave. To love somebody.
“I…I’ll think about it.” I hung up, anxiety pulsing through my veins.
Somehow, I’d ended up in front of Geppetto’s Workshop. The turkey plush sat on a shelf, its button eyes askew, silently asking, ‘Are you okay?’
Maybe.
I snuck inside and peeked around the shelves.
Old neon gym shoes were propped up on the counter, and a familiar tune rang out from a tinny speaker. Sal was playing Craft Cove. He slurped some kind of energy drink and rocked himself in the roller chair.
Maybe Craft Cove and mashed potatoes wouldn’ t be so bad.
Turkey Tom stared at me.
I hugged him tightly, then shoved him back on the shelf and walked away.
It was fine. I had to work on my happiness, right?
I peeked over my shoulder. Turkey Tom was squished in the back. That wasn’t right.
I came back to fix how he was sitting. There. Now, he’d be comfy. And so would I.
Sal’s chair squeaked as he turned, so I rushed off to work, pulling my cap down.
No one needed to check on me. I’d be busy crafting…and fixing things.