Chapter 10
CHAPTER TEN
Andi
Despite my run-in with Cat lasting all of one minute, it leaves me rattled for the better part of the weekend. I shouldn’t have been so standoffish. If anything, I should’ve apologized for being too harsh on Thursday. I blame Brett. If it weren’t for him and his “numbers-backed proposal,” I wouldn’t have seen Cat’s round face and immediately thought “romance.” Between that and her immolating glare, my brain stopped working. By the time I snapped out of it, my takeout was ready and an expeditious retreat seemed like the best course of action.
I pull myself back on track by spending the rest of Saturday and all of Sunday working and working out. While we’re both workaholics, Gabe and I have our routine for the forty-eight hours between Friday and Monday down pat so that we never accidentally run into each other and make it weird. Nothing’s worse than sitting in a near-abandoned office and worrying about whether your coworker is judging you for not typing enough.
Perhaps as a result of Brett’s drop-in on Friday, he doesn’t have many questions for us come Monday. I walk him through one of our main story quests, after which Dom demos a new battle mechanic: portal fighting. Brett gets such a kick out of creating magical wormholes and punching the living daylights out of unsuspecting enemies that that’s what we spend the rest of the thirty minutes doing.
By the end of the meeting, Brett’s grinning so widely that as we’re walking to the elevator bank, I chance bringing up nixing the romance one more time. He doesn’t buckle, though, only reminds me that women make up forty-five percent of the gaming populace, and shouldn’t I want to create something that appeals to my own kind? The elevator doors close before I can wind up my fist and split his lip. Too bad portal fighting doesn’t exist in the real world.
I bang into Philo’s office. She’s studying what looks like a stack of legalese but lifts her head when I throw a shadow over the Times New Roman. “Andz?” she says. “What’s up?”
“Stop sending Cat our scripts.” I don’t know why that’s the first thing that pops into my head when I should be foaming at the mouth over the billion offensive things Brett said, but I can’t be bothered to engage in any self-reflection right now.
“What? I didn’t send Cat anything.”
“You must’ve,” I insist. “How would she have gotten ahold of them otherwise? She barged in here last Thursday night, you know.”
Narrowing her eyes at me, Philo stands and circles her desk to lean against its edge. “What’s going on with you, Andz? I get that you’ve been under tremendous amounts of stress since Brett started butting in, but how is that the temp’s fault? Cat’s great. Like I said before, you should give her a chance. Or do you not trust my instincts?”
“Of course I trust your instincts. I just …” I fall into her chaise sofa and kick up my feet. “What does Brett know about how to make really great narrative-driven games? He probably only plays Among Us and maybe FIFA Mobile when he’s taking a dump.”
“So we’re back to Brett,” Philo clarifies. “For the record, I don’t like our frat overlord either, but in this case I don’t disagree with his inclinations.”
“You what?” I sit up.
Rubbing her temples, Philo meets and holds my gaze. “It’s not about the revenue. Hollow ’s been missing some indefinable thing since the beginning.”
“Like hell it has.”
“Don’t tell me you’ve been working and reworking the same scenes every weekend for the last year because they’re perfect already. Just last week you spent an hour pacing my office, going on about how Sentinel’s emotional character arc doesn’t feel right yet. And before you start blaming Gabe for tattling on you, check your trash. It’s full of Swedish Fish boxes even though the janitor sweeps through every Friday night.”
I gulp down the protest I’ve been prepping. I really do need to stop eating gas station candy. “Their arc isn’t right yet,” I concede. “That doesn’t mean love’s the answer.”
“That doesn’t mean love isn’t the answer either,” Philo counters.
What is going on? When did the world become stuffed to the gills with love junkies? I force my shoulders down and back into the couch cushions and cross one ankle over the opposite knee in a bid to portray nonchalance. “Right, well, we’ll give it a shot,” I say. Not like I have a choice.
“Excellent. Glad to hear it.” Philo smiles down at me, but I’m not fooled. Her brown eyes are full of Don’t piss on me and tell me it’s raining energy.
I nod. There are only two people in this world who have the power to intimidate me, and one of them is Philo. Thankfully, she doesn’t weaponize her metal-edged smile often.
Straightening, Philo heads back around her desk. “Now if you don’t mind, Andz, I’ve got to call a twenty-one-year-old in Ontario about releasing compasshollow.com to us.”
Back at my desk, I pull up a blank email and skip straight to the body. If I’m going to be forced to add romance to Hollow , then I may as well give the opportunity to the least expensive resource on my team—who, by the way, is also way too excited to work on it. With any luck, she’ll realize how far in over her head she is and give up halfway, thereby allowing me to say to Brett—and Philo—that I legitimately tried and failed. Win-win.
“Dear Cat,” I start. Too familiar. I delete the two words and replace them with just “Cat,” but that feels even more intimate, like we’re old friends who disbanded with pleasantries long ago. Ctrl-Z’ing back to my original salutation, I agonize over how best to tackle the elephant in the room: that the romance I promised to kill is very much alive and well.
Balls. This is why I don’t write emails, at least not to coworkers with super-soft hoodies and an unhealthy amount of enthusiasm for sap and sentiment. I’m about to give it another go when Carter pokes his head in.
“Hey, uh, Ms. Zhang? You asked me to remind you to take a walk to get lunch at noon, and it’s, uh, noon, so—”
I shake my head, less at him than at my laptop. “Not today, Carter.”
“Right, ’cept you said you’d say that and you told me to remind you you’d say that and to insist that you take a walk lest you”—he pauses, gnawing on his lower lip—“develop blood clots and a premature dowager’s hump.”
With a sigh, I tear my eyes away from my unwritten email and meet Carter’s frantic blue ones. “Message received, loud and clear. I’ll take a walk as soon as I get this out.”
He squeaks and darts away from the door like it might chomp down on him if he’s not fast enough. I think he’s scared of me, although I have no idea why. I’m just a cranky writer who had one good idea once.
I do intend to take a walk, though. As soon as I make good on my promise to Philo. Maybe I’ll start by plugging in Cat’s email address. But the second I navigate my cursor to the “To” line and type in “ca,” two names pop up: “Catherine Sulin Li” and “Carter Snook.”
That’s … interesting. Philo was adamant she hadn’t sent anything to Cat. Could I have screwed up last week then? Emailed something to Cat when I meant Carter? Holding my breath, I check my Sent folder. There it is: my email to Cat, complete with the indelicate command “plz print x5.”
Passing a hand over my face, I consider what to do. Apologizing now, half a week after the fact, would only make things more awkward, right? Outside my office, Carter sprints by on his way to who knows where. An idea lights up inside my head. Bringing up the blank email again, I carefully pick “[email protected]” from the drop-down menu and type:
“Plz send Cat Li Sentinel’s full character synopsis and let her know I expect her thoughts within a week.”