Chapter 20
CHAPTER TWENTY
Cat
I’m fuming as I plop down in my chair and wrench open the lid of my laptop. My mood is par for the course, really; I can’t seem to have a run-in with Andi without descending into a reckless rage. I should’ve known she would be in the office. She exhibits all the hallmarks of a workaholic: a put-upon, holier-than-thou attitude; a way of making others feel bad for not being as busy as her; bruiselike smudges under her dark obsidian eyes.
Not that I’ve noticed her eyes or anything.
I can’t leave—that’d be conceding—so I bend my mind to Kelsi x Sentinel instead. I decided a few days ago to develop the relationships one by one; that way, if I run out of time, I don’t end up with a bunch of half-baked scripts. That would give Andi a legitimate excuse to not include any romances, and I’m not about to gift her that opportunity. Slipping on my headphones, I set my wrists on the keyboard and begin typing.
I’m deep in the zone when a shadow falls over my hands. I jerk with a yelp and tear my headphones off. Heart pounding, I glare up at Andi.
“Sorry, I should’ve knocked or something. It’s just me.”
She’s inspecting the low wall of my cubicle like it’s the purpose of her visit. Blood fills my cheeks. I’m not proud of how jumpy I can be when I’m deep in another world, but I wish my body didn’t make everything ten times worse by turning my face the same color as Bowser’s brows. “What’s up?”
“I’m ordering lunch. You want in?” Andi shakes her phone at me, and I catch the name of a Thai delivery place.
On the one hand, I want to say no just to spite her. On the other hand: Thai food. Making up my mind, I nod, albeit not enthusiastically. “Pineapple fried rice?”
Andi’s nose scrunches up a little, but she shrugs and skates her thumbs over the screen. “You got it.”
When the food arrives, I tip the deliverer and bring the bags to the Ogre Mound. I half wonder if Andi expects me to run her drunken noodles up to her office like I’m some sort of secretary, but she joins me without complaint a minute later. She’s about to leave—even angles her body toward the door like she can hear her work beckoning—when, to my surprise, she pulls out a chair and sits down across from me instead.
Great.
The first few minutes are so awkward that I eat half of my fried rice in five big gulps. It’s a defense mechanism of mine, a nonverbal way of saying, Sorry. Can’t discuss the weather. My mouth is too busy chewing to spew hot air with you. I’m sizing up the remainder of my takeout—maybe I’ll really challenge myself and eat this half in three bites—when Andi clears her throat.
“So you, um, must really like pineapples or something.”
I cough and send a few grains of rice flying. And here I was thinking I was bad at small talk. The sarcastic part of me wants to quip, Bet you say that to all the girls , but I quell the impulse. “Why do you think that?” I ask.
Andi jabs her fork at the remnants of my meal. “You ate pineapple yesterday too.”
The back of my neck warms. “Besides Ferret, nobody else was touching the Hawaiian. It’s my favorite pizza flavor, but I also felt bad for it. It looked left out—”
I pinch my lips together, distraught that I’ve confessed out loud to feeling bad for a pizza. If Andi didn’t think I was a massive weirdo before, I’ve certainly sealed the deal for her now. Out of desperation, I latch on to the first thing I can think of: “I like the book in your bathroom.”
I like the book in your bathroom? On second thought, I’m not sure who’s more socially inept: me or Andi. Probably me. At least Andi looks cool, with her tattoo and her cuffed white T-shirt and her stupidly perfect hair.
“Thanks.” Twirling a forkful of noodles, she hesitates, then adds, “I read it when things are bad.”
When things are bad? What does that mean? Like … when she gets the runs?
Thankfully, Andi changes the subject before I can ask and embarrass us both. “So why do you like romance? In video games, I mean. I’m not against it, for the record.”
I stop eating and raise my eyebrows.
“I’m not,” Andi insists. “I just don’t know why it has to be shoehorned into every game these days.”
“Why is that a bad thing?” I challenge. “Besides, I’m not sure why you’re talking about this like it’s some new phenomenon. Super Mario ’s one of the oldest games out there.”
“Please,” Andi says, rolling her eyes. “We both know Mario doesn’t count. With all due respect to the franchise, the first game’s about a plumber with a savior complex committing mass murder. What I’m talking about are the games where you have a few romance options and you have to place the person you like most next to you in battle, or spend time with them, or—I don’t know—mine orichalcum so you can make them a special axe, and if you choose the wrong dialogue option, they ‘disapprove’ or a sweat bubble appears over their head and you have to reload your last save to salvage the situation.”
Andi finishes her rant in a breathless haze. Her hair has fallen into her eyes, which for some reason is extremely distracting. Thankfully, she shoves it back a second later and asks, “Well?”
“I was waiting for you to be done with your soapbox,” I say caustically. Inwardly, I wince. Why can’t I be nice and—as Andi put it— normal around her? It’s like I glitch out whenever we’re together. No dialogue tree. No calm and considered responses. Nothing.
She dips her head, and I think I see a slight wrinkle of sheepishness in her expression. “I’m done. Go ahead.”
Setting down my spoon, I blink at her in what I hope is a serene and maybe slightly patronizing way. “I like romance in games because it feels real.”
“It feels … real,” Andi deadpans.
“Yes,” I continue. “Think about it. How many games have enemies to lovers, or second chances, or any other romance trope out there? Very few.” I’m not one hundred percent telling the truth—technically, dating sims and otome games are rife with tropes—but I’m guessing Andi hasn’t played any and therefore doesn’t know any better. “You know why?”
She shakes her head.
“Because games can’t use ’em. People play games to escape, but more than that, they play games to be inside of a story. Games are the ultimate self-insert fantasy, even ones with pretty defined protagonists. And you know what real people don’t do? They don’t bang their enemy then fall in love, because that shit is toxic. Seriously. They don’t usually get a second shot with their high school sweetheart, they don’t accidentally get stuck in an elevator with an undercover prince, and they sure as hell don’t spend three hundred pages being terrible communicators, then live happily ever after.” They do, apparently, fake date, but I’m not about to touch that one with a three-space Animal Crossing vaulting pole.
I’m breathing hard, but I’m also on a roll. It’s unclear if Andi’s still listening. I’m not sure I care. “You know what real people do? They go on dates. They get each other flowers or a piece of smoked meat or a goddess statuette. They say things to each other. And yeah, sometimes they say the wrong thing and their love interest disapproves or breaks out in sweat bubbles, but that’s just how life is.”
At this, Andi’s eyes tighten. So she is paying attention. Newly confident, I go on.
“You know why you want to reload when you screw up in a game? Because it feels so real.” I make eye contact with Andi. “Being able to make someone feel that intensely about pixels on a screen? That’s powerful. That’s”—I want to say intoxicating, but swerve at the last moment—“neat.”
Andi holds my gaze long enough that I begin to squirm inside my skin. Why hasn’t she said something pithy and rude yet? Maybe I went on for too long, gave her so much content to make fun of that she doesn’t know where to begin. Her eyes are slightly narrowed and the left corner of her mouth is bending upward, like she’s holding back a smile … or a smirk.
I break first and shrug. “You asked,” I mumble. “Don’t hate me for answering.”
“What? No,” Andi says. “That was …” She trails off.
I knew it. I’ve bamboozled her with my explanation. I don’t know why I expected anything else. No one’s ever really understood why I made the career change I did, given I’m paid peanuts, of the Styrofoam variety, for it. Not my parents, who think games are a frivolous waste of time; not GSL, who’d sooner be caught reading Ayn Rand than a rom-com; not even Lou, who’s always down for a round of Mario Kart but won’t commit to anything narrative driven.
A screech pulls me out of my own head as Andi pushes back from the table and caps her leftovers. I watch as she tosses them in the fridge and pads toward the door. Right as she’s about to cross the threshold, she turns around.
“Thanks, Cat,” she says. “That was a really good explanation.”
She disappears before I can respond. Glancing down, I see I’ve barely put a dent in the second half of my pineapple fried rice.