Chapter 33
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
Cat
My brain goes blank. My vision blurs at the edges. I nearly faint, but not from the ninety-degree heat.
What is Andi Zhang doing at my hotel pool? Shouldn’t she be off glad-handing with important people? And just as importantly, why is she wearing navy-blue boy shorts and a crop tank, both of which leave very little to the imagination? Even from this potted plant I’m hiding behind, I can see the jut of her hip bones, the flat plane of her stomach, the ripple of her deltoids as she types. What kind of person uses their delts to type?
She’s kind of hot.
Okay, fine, she’s very hot.
Without my consent, the lowest muscles of my abdomen seize.
If the pasty man snoring to my right hadn’t wheezed at precisely the right time, I would’ve walked straight into Andi’s field of vision. As it is, she’s swiveling her gaze around like an enemy NPC in a stealth game. I scoot an inch to the left and pray my oversized beach wrap doesn’t give me away.
After what feels like an eternity, she returns her attention to her laptop. I exhale slowly. Whatever she’s working on, she sinks into it immediately, her fingers flying across the keyboard while the minute muscles of her forearms roll and twitch. Dane x Sentinel, perhaps? Maybe she’s baking in the changes we talked about last week, maybe she’s excited about Dane’s character growth and Sentinel’s moral choice, maybe—
“Can I help you, ma’am?”
I fall flat on my ass, my Nintendo Switch clattering across the cement. A pool attendant peers down at me, his eyebrows furrowed. “No,” I squeak, darting a panicked glance in Andi’s direction. Thankfully, she’s too absorbed to have noticed anything yet. “Go away. I mean, I’ll go away. You … you’re fine.”
Scooping my Switch up, I squat-walk out of the pool area of the Tempo Hotel & Casino. It’s irritating how I keep ending up in professionally compromising situations with Andi Zhang when, as a gamer, I thought I’d pretty much perfected the art of avoiding real people.
It’s almost like the universe is trying to throw us in each other’s way.
Back in my hotel room, I pace a rut into the carpet and tap my lower lip. I haven’t exchanged a single word with Andi since my fail of a text last Sunday (the one time you need speech-to-text to screw up, it gets every word of what you say exactly right). I haven’t even really thanked her for driving me home from B8. Obviously, I shouldn’t have waited so long—now it’s awkward either way—but between booking a last-minute flight and hotel room for IAX and working on Catha x Sentinel, time got away from me. I didn’t even tell anyone at Heartrender I was coming.
And yes, maybe I’m also a coward who doesn’t know how to apologize for accidentally sexually harassing her boss.
I’m okay, though. I just need to avoid Andi for the rest of this con. And the rest of my life (outside of D&D). Shouldn’t be too hard as long as I stay in cosplay. Forever.
I eye the tunic poking out of my splayed-open suitcase. In college, I painstakingly backstitched the crest on by hand, which is the only reason the getup has lasted this long. Thank god everything still fits. Between my blonde wig and white scarf-cum-gaiter, I won’t have to show my face around Andi (or anyone else I don’t want to) for the next forty-eight hours.
In fact, I’ll go to dinner tonight in cosplay. Thanks to IAX, I’ll be far from the only Sheik from the Legend of Zelda decked out in a wig and holding foam kunais. No reason to let fear of Andi Zhang keep me from indulging in Tempo’s world-famous, nine-kitchen-deep buffet.
My plan goes off without incident. Thoroughly stuffed on Roman-style pizza, duck carnitas quesadillas, and mini opera cake, I waddle across the gambling floor, winding my way through rows and rows of slot machines. The crowds are so thick that I feel safe enough taking my scarf off. Tying it around my hip, I wander over to the shopping plaza to poke my head inside stores meant for people with non-gaming-related graduate degrees and salaried jobs. Yet after the third sales associate in a row glares at me for ogling their displays of silk and gold and three-hundred-dollar perfumes, I retreat back to the casino. Go away, nerd , I read in their beady eyes. Come back when you have a high-limit credit card—and some friends.
At least gamblers are too busy staring at their own hands to give me the evil eye.
I don’t have the guts or the financial flexibility to fritter away quarters, and a few minutes into gaping at the wall-sized roulette wheel from afar, I lose interest. Reviewing the remaining IAX events for the day, I contemplate crashing “Press X to Dance: Shimmy Shimmy Riot,” which is being held at Tempo’s premier nightclub, but after last weekend I decide I have no business being anywhere near strobe lights, glow sticks, and overpriced drinks. Plus I’m not sure I want to see how normal people react when their space is invaded by cosplayers.
Demoralized, I amble outside. A blast of heat hits me like car exhaust, but it’s so cold indoors that I welcome the change in temperature. Taking my time, I make my way down the Strip toward the Bellagio. Lou said something about the water show being worth checking out.
I find a spot along the rim of the fountains. To my left, a child squeals and claps their hands together, stoked to be up so late. A hundred feet off to my right, a man with his back to me nuzzles his girlfriend, who—from this distance—resembles Philo a little.
I pull out my phone to call Sally, but she doesn’t pick up. My stomach drops. She was chilly all week, even though I apologized and sent her flowers (it seemed like the right, if stereotypical, thing to do at the time). At least she hasn’t mentioned terminating our ruse.
Water shoots up before me. I fold my phone into my pocket. In the end, I watch the show alone.