Chapter 38
CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT
Cat
I don’t get a chance to drop Fantasy DILF off in my room, so naturally, it’s the first thing Andi sees when I walk up to the Top Note bar. Her eyes flick down toward the case in my hands before I can hide it behind me, and my ears catch fire like Hades’s hair in Hercules . I start to explain why I’m holding it, then stop myself. I have nothing to be ashamed about. Games are supposed to be fun. And who is Andi Zhang to tell me what I should or should not consider fun? No one, that’s who. I fill up my diaphragm to share a piece of my mind with her when she one-ups me by speaking first.
“I’ve heard good things about that one. You’ll have to let me know what you think of it.” She nods vaguely in my direction but doesn’t fully meet my eyes. The halfheartedness of the gesture turns my earlier embarrassment into something else entirely.
“I don’t have to do anything. Make fun of me all you like. I don’t give a flying fairy what you think.” With a snap, I set the game case down on the polished wood of the bar, right in front of Andi. The noise catches the attention of our bartender, who eyes the title and promptly edges away from us. I almost snatch it up again, but not wanting to seem weak around Andi stays my hand. If normal people can read Fifty Shades Freed on the subway, then I can walk around with Fantasy DILF .
“That’s not—” Andi says.
I cut her off. “Are we here so you can fire me? Because if that’s what’s gonna happen, I’d rather we skip the pleasantries and get it over with.”
“Fire you?” Andi’s face floods with incomprehension. “What are you talking about?”
It’s only then that I notice how pale she is. Her normally tan skin is a washed-out yellow, and she’s gnawing on her bottom lip, which is already swollen and ruby red. She’s sweating too. Beads of perspiration cling to the top of her forehead and temples, all in spite of the industrial-strength AC blowing down on us.
“Are you okay?” I ask, the bluster going out of me with barely a wheeze.
Dashing a wrist along each of her cheekbones, Andi skirts my gaze. She calls over the bartender, orders a bourbon on the rocks. Only once she’s thrown that back and ordered another does she turn toward me.
“I just wanted to say thanks. For what you did back there.”
“Y-you’re welcome,” I say. “Are you okay, though? You look … a little shaken.” She looks more than shaken. She looks rattled, haunted almost, like she’s seen a ghost who’s marked her soul for its dark ritual. “Here, have some”—I pull out what’s left of the bottle Caeneus offered me—“Mountain Dew?”
Andi shakes her head so hard her hair falls out of place and into her forehead. I reach out a hand to push it back, then realize what I’m doing before my fingers can graze her skin. With a sharp inhale, I draw my elbow away. For less than a heartbeat, we make skimming eye contact. Then we both find fascinatingly mundane objects in the middle distance to study.
“That guy was a dick,” I say once a few seconds have elapsed. “Can’t believe you worked with him for years.”
“He wasn’t so bad in the beginning.” Andi shrugs when I raise an eyebrow at her. “Seriously. A lot of guys like him aren’t until they realize helping you might actually cost them something.”
I have nothing to say to that, so I flag the bartender down and order a drink of my own. Andi smiles when a pi n a colada lands in front of us.
“Still all about that pineapple, huh?”
“Don’t hate. I don’t see you drinking something chock-full of vitamin C.”
“Fair enough.”
We listen to the music playing overhead switch from one pop star to another. I bop my knee in time with Florence & the Machine, but when the speakers cut over to My Chemical Romance, I groan and bury myself in my cocktail.
“Not a fan?” Andi laughs.
“It’s fine,” I say around a mouthful of straw. “ ‘Welcome to the Black Parade’ just overstayed its welcome during my high school years as the most played song by sixteen-year-old boys in baggy jeans with skateboards.”
“I hear that.” A smirk wrinkles the corners of Andi’s eyes. Her almost-smile tugs at something deep inside me and leaves behind a sound that I feel rather than hear. Clear and rich and reverberating, it reminds me of a single low note, pulled out by a bow running across a cello’s lowest string. It reminds me of the opening melody of the video game Journey . But how can an almost-smile remind me of music?
Looking away, I focus on the milky swirl of my melting pi n a colada. Man, this drink is strong. I can feel my brain going cottonball-soft already.
Beside me, Andi clears her throat. “I think Jan was the one who leaked my information three years ago.”
She states this so faintly, so evenly, that at first I don’t register it. When I do, my jaw falls open, my straw clattering with a plink against the glass.
“Holy hell, Andi. That’s awful.”
“Obviously, I don’t know for sure, and maybe it doesn’t even matter anymore, but the day before it happened, Jan asked to drive me home from work. He knew I was with Sally, but he also knew we’d been on the rocks for a while and all the Aftermath stuff had driven a wedge between us. He … asked me out.”
“He what now?” I stare at Andi so hard my eye muscles ache. She pretends not to notice and runs her thumbnail along a line of chipped bar top varnish.
“I said no. But when he insisted I let him take me home—so he could prove to me he hadn’t offered in the first place with ulterior motives in mind—I told him where I lived. The next day …” Andi massages the inside of her left elbow, where her tattoo goes from river and mountains to classic Nintendo controller. “Overnight, because of Jan, the entire world became this hostile place. I couldn’t stay home alone, couldn’t go into the office, couldn’t even visit a coffee shop without looking over my shoulder. Everyone thought I was overreacting, since a smashed mailbox and a handful of broken eggs don’t exactly mean my life is in danger. Jan, in particular, told me to get over myself, since nobody would remember or care in two weeks’ time.” Andi squeezes her forearm again. “Guess he was right.
“I haven’t told anyone this in a long time—honestly, I don’t know why I’m telling you—but … yeah. Maybe I just want someone other than me to know and believe it was him.”
Letting go of her arm, Andi resumes picking at the bar. Under her thumb, a piece of varnish flakes off and flutters to the ground.
“Do you?” Andi asks. “Believe me?”
“Of course I do,” I say. “Who wouldn’t?”
Andi snorts. “The internet.”
I roll my eyes. “Fuck the internet.”
“Sal,” Andi adds quietly.
My eyes widen. “Sally didn’t believe you?”
“She didn’t not believe me, but she didn’t believe me either. You know Sally: logical to a fault. She told me without proof, my resentment was only hurting myself.”
Well, that sheds a different light on their breakup and why Andi ghosted Sally. Not that Andi did nothing wrong, but … I guess there are two sides to every story. Which—wasn’t that the point of my final project Philo loved so much?
Rolling back her shoulders, Andi crosses one leg over the other. “You’re right about the internet, though. Fuck ’em.”
“Fuck ’em,” I repeat. My head’s still reeling from everything she’s told me—about Jan, about Sally—but I get the sense she wants to move on, so I follow her lead.
“I was pretty surprised to see you yelling at Jan,” Andi says, pushing a hand through her hair. “Don’t take this the wrong way, but you don’t strike me as someone who usually causes scenes like that.”
She’s not wrong. Normal me—that is, me trying to act normal—would’ve left rather than sit through Jan’s provocative line of questioning. As it was, I’d been on the verge of slipping out the back when I caught Andi’s face, the fear underneath her usual prickly attitude.
I make a face. “People like Jan really set me off. And as you’ve probably noticed, I’m pretty bad at keeping my mouth shut when you’re around.”
“I’ve noticed.” The corners of Andi’s eyes crinkle again, sending me deep into my dwindling pi n a colada. It’s so nice when she smiles. Why is it so nice?
Overhead, “Welcome to the Black Parade” gives way to Joni Mitchell. (Seriously, who the hell is curating this chaotic neutral playlist?) As my straw makes slurping contact with the bottom of the glass, Andi drains the rest of her bourbon and stands to leave.
“I’ll let you get on with your day. Sorry for getting heavy on you.”
“You can get heavy on me anytime,” I say, before hearing myself and wincing. “You off to get dinner with Philo and Gabe?”
Andi shakes her head. “They’re busy.” My mind goes to the couple I saw at the Fountains of Bellagio last night, but I say nothing. “I’ll probably head up to my room and spend the night catching up on work.”
She bends to hoist her bag to her shoulder. When she straightens, I study her face, still pale and damp with sweat. Her appearance is such a departure from the haughty and distant Andi Zhang I’m used to seeing that I jump down from my stool to help her pick up her cosplay where it’s escaped on the floor.
“Thanks,” she says, accepting Link’s Phrygian cap from me. “That reminds me—here. You dropped these.”
She holds out my foam kunai and scarf, the items I left behind during my escape from Auditorium G. Taking both, I wad up the latter into a ball and reclaim Fantasy DILF from the bar. Together we start slow-walking toward the escalators up to the hotel’s rooms.
What did she say? Because of Jan, the entire world became this hostile place. I couldn’t stay home alone …
She couldn’t stay home alone.
My nonexistent spidey-sense tingles. Does Jan still make Andi feel that way? Is that why she’s dragging her feet right now, when usually she walks like there’s a fire under her ass and she’s on her way to a water trough? What if she’s anxious about spending the night alone in a hotel that Jan is likely also staying in?
Our toes reach the base of the escalators. Sucking in her teeth, Andi turns to me. “Well, see—”
“Do you want company?” I blurt out. “We don’t have to talk about heavy stuff. You can just work and so can I, or we can order room service and you can make fun of me while I play Fantasy DILF .”
I watch Andi’s face as it moves from emotion to emotion. Have I overstepped? Is she about to tell me off for being stupid, embarrassing, presumptuous? After all, she’s the confident one, the lead writer and narrative director of a triple-A game who also has cool hair and dresses in white T-shirts and leather jackets. Meanwhile, the last time I was popular was in-game, when I went down the harem route in Persona 5 and romanced every girl.
I’m about to take it back, rescind my laughable offer, when she smiles, the left side of her mouth canting a millimeter higher than the right. “If you don’t mind,” she says, “that’d be great.”