Chapter 43
CHAPTER FORTY-THREE
Cat
“Cat? You okay in there?”
Sally’s voice drifts toward me as if from a great distance. With my hands clasped around my neck, I hug my elbows in so my forearms touch. Sitting on Andi’s toilet with my head between my knees and my eyes closed, I can almost pretend like I’m somewhere else. Somewhere not embarrassing.
“Cat?”
“I’m fine,” I croak. The words don’t come out willingly, but I know they’re the right thing to say, so I force my mouth around the syllables.
“Okay, well, take your time. We’re … well, we’re here.”
I wish she would stay. I wish she knew me well enough to sit with me on the other side of the wall, or better yet, ask to come in. But she’s not my real girlfriend and therefore doesn’t owe me anything, and her socked feet shuck away from me before I can say anything else. It’s not like I can even fault her for dropping me like a level-one weapon in the endgame, now that I’ve both lost my in-game utility and pretty much made whatever out-of-game point she wanted me to help her make. Now that Brush is dead and we’re on the cusp of November.
The pity party I’m throwing myself disgusts me so much that I slide down onto the floor and bury my head in my lap.
Why would Andi kill me? Is she mad about what happened last weekend? Did I humiliate her by opening my big mouth during the panel and then offering to keep her company? But then why did she say yes? Why didn’t she simply kick me out of her hotel room?
And why in the Nine Hells did she kiss me back for as long as she did if our kiss, if I , was so bad?
I hold back a scream, and it feels like an iron vise clamping down around my throat.
“Cat?”
Speak of the BBEG—the Big Bad Evil Guy. I back up against the far wall and scrub at my eyes with my knuckles. Maybe if I wait long enough, the person on the other side of the door will lose their patience and leave.
“It’s me.” No such luck. “Andi. I came to check up on you.”
“I’m fine,” I say, even though my voice breaks in half like a piece of dry wood. “Go away. Just pretend I don’t exist and go away. I know I’m being stupid, so let me be stupid.”
The doorknob rattles in its socket but doesn’t turn. Then: “I don’t think you’re being stupid. Can I come in?”
I prepare to say no, even touch the tip of my tongue to the roof of my mouth. The word won’t come, though, and instead my cheeks slacken and a breathy yes escapes.
The door swings open and closes again. Andi, her hair a mess, slides down the inside of it and extends her long legs to cross at the ankles. She’s massaging her left forearm like it hurts. I watch as the mountains of her tattoo wrinkle and stretch.
We sit.
“I’m sorry about Brush,” she says eventually.
“Why’d you do it?” I whisper. “Was it to get back at me? Because I embarrassed you last week?” And now you’re all over Reddit?
I refrain from adding this last bit. Andi doesn’t need me—or anyone else—reminding her that people are talking about her and Jan online. Two camps have emerged: people who are gleeful that Jan ended up with egg on his face (courtesy of Sheik/me) and people who are enraged at Andi on Jan’s behalf.
“What?” Eyebrows furrowing, Andi stops squeezing her arm to stare at me. “No. You didn’t embarrass me last week. You … helped me.”
“Then why do it? Why kill off Brush?”
“I didn’t kill off Brush so much as Brush claimed the aegis without realizing it was trapped.”
“But you’re the DM!” I say. “Couldn’t you have, I don’t know, just changed it so that it wasn’t trapped?”
“I could’ve, but that wouldn’t have made for a good story, just an easy story,” Andi scoffs, as if she’d rather die than be accused of telling an easy story. “And you know better than anyone that for a story to be good , it has to have real, believable, and high-enough stakes. Did Sally not tell you about our table’s norms?”
I blink. “Norms?”
With a sigh, Andi stands. “We don’t retcon, and I roll in front of the screen when shit’s hitting the fan, which means characters can die. It’s my fault, though. I should’ve clued you in earlier, actually held a session zero with you. I haven’t been the best DM.” Mussing her hair with one hand, she reaches the other out toward me.
Despite everything—my anger at Andi and Sally, no, at myself for being a sore loser—I take it and let her pull me up. Her hand is warm and dry, and as my thumb skims the line of calluses at the base of her fingers, a shock crackles between us. We look away, me toward the sink and Andi up at the ceiling.
“Ouch,” I say.
“It’s the heat,” Andi tells the overhead light fixtures. “Winter is coming.”
At this, we make eye contact in the vanity mirror and smirk.
Andi drops my hand, and immediately, cold rushes in to snake along my palms. I shove my hands in my hoodie’s kangaroo pouch, where they knit themselves into complicated knots.
“I can’t tell you the number of times my D&D characters have died a dark or quiet death,” Andi says, holding on to the side of the bathroom countertop. “In the end, it’s just a game. Right, Cat?”
I sway on my feet, thrown by how close our bodies are to each other right now. At this paltry distance, I can smell Andi’s shampoo and underneath that, the musk of her skin, her clean sweat. If I take a step forward, will I feel the points of her hip bones press against my clothes, my stomach, my lowest ribs? If I tip my chin up, will she once again incline her head to greet my lips with hers? My heart is hurling itself against the inside of my chest, begging to be let out, and if I don’t do something soon, it might just break all the bones keeping it tucked away, keeping it safe—
“Cat?” Andi says.
“I …” I lick my chapped lips. “It’s not just a game. It’s—”
A burst of laughter rends the air. We leap away from each other. The backs of my knees hit the lip of the bathtub with a painful whack, and in the sound that follows, I once again hear a phantom not good . “I’m still with Sally,” I blurt out.
A shadow of annoyance, storm cloud quick, passes across Andi’s face. “I know.”
“And my family is coming to Colorado for Thanksgiving to meet her.” I let out a bark of derision. It echoes around us, bouncing off ceramic and glass and stone.
“Okay,” Andi draws out. “So …?”
“So I’m going to stay with Sally for the time being, even if it means I have to spend the next four weeks pretending to be someone I’m not.”
The storm cloud returns and this time lingers, darkening Andi’s features and creating wells around her eyes.
“Why?” she says.
“Why what?”
“Why pretend?”
Tossing my head, I go on, louder than before. “Like I said, my family is coming to Colorado to meet her.”
“That doesn’t really answer my question, though,” Andi pushes, inching forward a step. Somehow, during our conversation, we’ve shifted so my back is up against the wall opposite the vanity and Andi is facing me, almost pinning me to the wall. “Why play pretend? Why stay with Sally? ’Cuz I’ve always thought being yourself around the person you like should come naturally.”
We’re standing so close together that briefly—in the time it takes for one heartbeat to end and another to begin—I consider telling her the truth. Consider explaining how much of who I’ve pretended to be whenever Sally’s been around has been a lie. But I’m so close to the finish line that I don’t want to burn down this house of cards Sally and I have built together, and besides, a part of me is still convinced that I’m reading everything wrong. That Andi’s intensity, the way her eyes currently look like they want to swallow me whole, has nothing to do with her liking me.
After all, I’ve been wrong before. Every time before, in fact.
I dart my eyes to the right, where Andi has anchored her left arm beside my ear. Her tattoo taunts me, with its mountains and river and classic Nintendo controller. I wrench my gaze back onto her face. “Nothing about people comes naturally to me, Andi,” I say, breathing hard. There’s a buzzing in my ears and in my belly, clamoring for me to sway in toward her, but I ignore the noise as just that—noise. “The fact is, you’re the person I’m the most myself around, and you hate me.”
Andi jerks back. “I don’t hate you. I—”
“You did, though,” I insist. “From the second you met me, you hated me, because I was loud and opinionated and—god knows why—actually excited about working with you. You hated me because I burst into your office asking for things and because you thought I might ruin your precious game. For all I know, you still hate me. You’ve certainly been avoiding me.”
“Hey now.” Andi’s eyes flash. “ You’re the one who ran out on me without leaving so much as a note last week.”
“What was I supposed to do after you said what you said about our …” I can’t even get the word out, I’m so incensed. “ ‘Not good,’ ” I remind her with a snarl. “Those were the words you used.”
Her eyes widen in realization. “I meant the situation! Not you! Not our k—” Cursing, Andi shoves a hand through her hair. “Look, all I’m saying is if you can’t be yourself around Sal, then maybe she’s not the right person for you.”
“So what?” I cross my arms, mirroring her closed-off posture. “What do you know about the right person for me, Andi? Since I’ve been looking for them for as long as I can remember and every single time I think I’m close, it turns out my princess is in another castle. So tell me: in your brilliant mind, who’s ‘right’ for me?”
“I am!” Andi bellows.
My eyes go wide. Andi sucks in a breath so sharp, I hear it hit the back of her throat. Outside, the apartment is quiet, ringing with the last embers of our argument. No one moves or even breathes.
“Andz …,” I say.
But she doesn’t stay to find out what I have to say. In that moment, she’s already gone, the bathroom door slamming behind her.