Chapter Eighteen
The final competition between Liam and me took place across the last weekend of spring. Just two weeks before our shop’s lease contracts were set to either be renewed or terminated.
Liam’s event was set to take place on Saturday evening. Mine would take place the next afternoon.
The plan was simple. He and I would each set out a sign-in sheet for our respective events. Whoever had more people sign in by the end of their event would be declared the winner.
When Saturday evening came, after The Prologue was closed up for the night, I made my way over to The Galaxy Gamer’s Cafe.
At least, I attempted to.
I spent nearly half an hour lingering outside the shop, willing my feet to carry me inside.
Nervous didn’t even come close to describing how I felt.
I was terrified. There was so much that I needed to say to Liam, but after avoiding him for months and literally running away from our last conversation, I was afraid that he wouldn’t want to speak with me.
In the end, it wasn’t me getting over my nerves that finally got me through the door. The push that I needed came in the form of a friend.
“Jessa?” I turned in the direction of the familiar voice to find a short girl carrying a stack of donut boxes taller than herself.
“Clara? What are you doing here?”
“What’s it look like?” she asked, lowering the boxes enough to reveal her eyes. They were light brown and sat behind thick-framed glasses. “Give me a hand?”
I nodded and took half of the stack from her hands. “Where are you taking these?”
“Inside. Your boy ordered twelve dozen,” Clara said as she kicked open the door to The Galaxy Gamer’s Cafe.
“He’s not my boy. Why does everyone keep saying that?” I replied quietly, a blush creeping across my face.
Liam’s voice filled the room as we walked in. “Alright, last question before we start the next round. What year was the detective game Shimmer Spies released?”
I never got to ask Liam what his final event would be, but it was apparent that it was some sort of trivia night. He stood in front of the game tables, a microphone in hand and a large whiteboard behind him, wearing a cape and a crown that read ‘trivia king.’
Every hair on my body stood on end when Liam’s gaze flickered over to us. For a moment, his face lit up, and then he noticed me. That look of excitement was replaced with one of confusion.
My heart sank.
“Jess—?” he began to say into the microphone.
He fumbled with it, reaching to set it back on its stand before making a face and lifting it back up toward his lips.
“Alright, ah, flip your boards!” Each of the groups at the game tables flashed their small whiteboards toward Liam.
“1983 is correct, Dragon Masters. The final point goes to you! This means we now have a three-way tie.”
Liam turned to his own whiteboard and added one point to the Dragon Masters. “But the donuts are here! Take a break, eat a donut, look around. We’ll start our next round in ten. This round will be for all the marbles!”
Clara gestured for me to follow behind her as the groups dispersed. “Liam said to set them on this table by the front window.”
We made quick work of setting up the table. By the time we were done, the first box of donuts had already been emptied, and people were steadily picking through the second.
I could almost feel Liam’s presence behind me. That, or perhaps Clara’s grin as she waved herself off, gave it away.
“See you,” I said as she made a break for the door.
“Bye!” she replied. “Need more donuts, you know who to call,” Clara said, presumably to Liam, who stood just behind me.
I didn’t turn around. Not yet.
My mind was racing a mile a minute. My heart was ready to pound right out of my chest. Another nervous wave sloshed around in my stomach. And for some ridiculous reason, the kiss that we had shared in my grandparents’ garden was playing through my mind.
I turned to the one comfort I could at that moment: sugar. I picked out a Boston cream donut and took a bite. The sickly sweet sugariness of it all gave me the confidence boost I needed to turn around and face him.
“You know, those donuts are for customers only.” There was a teasing lilt to his voice that set my entire body ablaze.
“Who says I’m not a customer?”
“Oh yeah? Want me to set you up with one of the trivia teams? I’ve got a group that’s down a member. I’m sure they’d love to have you.”
It should have felt weird, being able to settle into a conversation with him as if no time had passed. As if I hadn’t been avoiding him for months. But it didn’t. Because he was Liam. Years could pass, and talking to him would likely always feel the same—like coming home.
“I’d love that,” I replied, calling his bluff. I took another bite of my donut.
He called mine. “Kade,” he shouted in the direction of the game tables. “This is Jess. She’s going to join you guys for the next round.”
“Sick!” a man in a beanie and a graphic t-shirt called back. “Send her over, we’re discussing our strat!”
Liam’s smile was a mile wide. “You heard the man. Go meet your team.”
It was too late to argue. So that’s how, twenty minutes later, I found myself elbow-deep in a gaming trivia match.
“Jess,” one of my teammates said, drawing out my name slowly.
“What do you think? Princess Yuna or Princess Greta? Who was the original?” The question was in regard to a video game I hadn’t ever heard of.
“Um, Yuna?” I replied.
Heads around the table all bobbed up and down in agreement. Kade, who was apparently the team captain, quickly jotted down the answer on our whiteboard.
“Alright, let’s flip those boards,” Liam said into the microphone.
I looked up to find his eyes locked on mine, a mischievous smile on his face.
“And the correct answer was Princess Yuna. Princess Greta was introduced in the sequel. Congratulations to Knights of the Trivia Table and—” he snickered into the mic.
“It’s Quizness Time! Congrats on your first point. ”
My team, It’s Quizness Time—which was by far the cheesiest team name I had ever heard—began to cheer. “You rule, Jess!” a girl with long blonde hair and a donut in her hand exclaimed, throwing an arm over my shoulder.
“Um, thanks?” I replied.
As the game played out, it quickly became apparent that not a single member of It’s Quizness Time seemed to know a thing about game trivia. How they made it all the way to the trivia final, I had no idea.
Liam would ask a question, and instinctively, all their expectant eyes would shift toward me. I guessed on every single question, but by some miracle, the majority of the time I wound up guessing correctly.
Come the end of the round, I had pulled my team all the way up to first place by nothing but sheer luck.
Their eyes all shone with wonder. I think if I had let them, they would have thrown me right up over their shoulders in celebration.
“You’re amazing, Jess!”
“Yeah, that was insane!”
“Liam’s the best for scoring us such a big game nerd. Without you, we would’ve lost for sure.”
“I am not—” I began to say as a sorry attempt to defend myself. Not that it was necessarily shameful to be declared a gaming nerd, but it wasn’t even close to the truth. In all my life, the only video games I had ever really played were ones I got roped into with Liam.
Before I could finish defending myself, Liam came around to our table. “Winners! Here is your prize!” he said with a smile. He handed out a gift card to each member at the table.
Liam handed me mine last. “Wow,” I said a little sarcastically as I examined the card. A smile played on my lips. “Ten whole bucks. Thanks.”
“Don’t spend it all in one place. Or do. It is only valid here,” Liam explained with a chuckle.
My fellow teammates seemed to be absolutely thrilled with their gift cards. Most of them were already rushing away from the table to go find something to spend it on.
“So,” Liam said, lifting the crown off his head. “I’m impressed.” A flush of warmth crept across my cheeks as he set the crown on top of my head.
“What can I say? I’m a trivia master.”
Liam’s fingers worked quickly as he untied his cape and then retied it around me. “You did have an unfair advantage, but I’ll let it slide.”
“Unfair advantage?” I scoffed. “I guessed on every question.”
Liam looked at me. Warm eyes examined every feature of my face, as though he was silently seeking the answer to a question. His gaze drifted down to my lips for a moment before jumping back up to meet my eyes.
“You really have no idea, do you?”
“What?” I asked softly.
All the members of It’s Quizness Time had dissipated now. I could recognize the voices of two of the girls coming from the direction of the cafe. From the corner of my eye, I could see Kade and one of the other boys sifting through the large bin of dice.
“You have chocolate on your face,” Liam said.
He raised a hand, slow and tentative, like he was afraid that I would back away. I didn’t. He cupped my cheek and brushed my lower lip with his thumb.
“Do I?”
My cheeks flushed. I wasn’t sure if it was from the humiliation of playing an entire round of trivia without a single member of my team telling me I had frosting on my face, or if it was from the sheer intimacy of the act.
We were right in the middle of his shop, with countless people around.
That fact didn’t seem to bother Liam in the slightest.
“No,” he confessed. His usual teasing grin tugged at his lips.
Memories of our first kiss flooded my mind again. My grandparents’ back garden, glittering with snow. Liam’s gloved hands, resting so gently on my face, just as they were right in this moment. The feel of his lips on mine and the undeniable pounding of my heart. I wanted it. Again and again.
“That trivia,” he started to say. “It was based on all the games we used to play as kids. Even if you thought you were guessing, it seems your subconscious remembers a little more than you think.”
I stared at him, stunned for a moment. Before I could open my mouth to reply, a loud voice cut through the moment like a knife.
“Liam!”
We separated in an instant. A solid two feet of distance was put between us before I could take another breath. “What’s up, Jace?” Liam called back to his employee.
Jace simply threw his arms up. “I’m dying over here, man!” He shouted, gesturing toward the long line in front of his register.
Liam stood still for a moment, as if still registering the words, before he jumped into action. “Right, right,” he said. “Give me one sec!” Liam turned to me, and for the first time in months, I saw the familiar brightness in his eyes. “Stay.”
“Stay?”
“The shop closes in an hour. Stay. Find something to use your gift card on. Go get a drink from the cafe. Just—”
“Okay,” I agreed.
“Okay,” he echoed, still smiling, before he turned away and began to jog over to the register.
I wandered up and down the aisles, examining all the merchandise that filled the shelves. It was the first time I had ever really looked closely at what his shop sold. Most of the time, I was in here for him and him alone.
I had to admit, the massive bin filled with dice was pretty cool. There were dice of every variety, every color, and some with more sides than I would ever bother to sit there and count.
I sifted through the bin for a while before plucking out a pink, translucent, eight-sided dice filled with petals of dried flowers. The numbers were written in gold, and the outside was shimmery and iridescent. It was beautiful.
“Found something?” Liam asked when I finally made my way through the checkout line.
I nodded, handing him the dice.
His smile stretched even wider. “Nice choice,” Liam said, typing something into the register. “What are you going to do with it?”
I shrugged as I swiped the gift card through the card reader. “Just thought it was pretty,” I confessed.
“Fair enough.” His eyes shimmered, like he knew something that I didn’t. “Maybe one of these days, I can teach you a game or two that you can use that for.”
I tucked the gift card back into my pocket and then held out my hand. He carefully set the dice in the center of my palm, the tips of his fingers barely brushing my skin.
“I’d like that.”
I rolled the dice around in my palm as I sat in the cafe. Customers slowly began to filter out of the shop until, finally, seven o’clock rolled around and Liam locked up the store for the day.
The closing procedures for The Galaxy Gamers Cafe seemed to be a lot less extensive than what I was used to from The Prologue. “You guys don’t mop the floors every day?” I asked with a raised brow.
Liam scoffed. “Only on Fridays.”
“That’s disgusting.”
“It’s not like someone’s going to come in and lick the floor,” Liam deadpanned.
I shrugged. “Never know. You do get tons of kids in here.” That elicited a small chuckle from him.
“Did you come here to talk to me, or to shame me for how I run this place?” His tone was lighthearted, and his features seemed relaxed as he settled into the chair across from me.
All the overhead lights were off now. The dim glow of the LED lights that lined the walls made his face look warmer, casting it in a glow of golden light.
“I don’t see why I can’t do both,” I teased.
“Oh, yeah?” Liam asked as he leaned back in his chair. “Go on then.”
I glanced around the shop. “You need to clean your front window on the outside, not just inside.”
Liam tsked and made a face. I knew what he was going to say before he even opened his mouth. That was a nice change of pace. More often now, it felt like I had no idea what was going on in his head. I longed for the time when it felt like we shared one mind.
“The—”
“The rain is not enough.”
Liam rolled his eyes. “Anything else, oh wise one?” His voice was laced with a teasing kind of sarcasm that had my chest swirling with desire.
“I could make you a list if that would help, but I charge by the hour, just so you know.”
“You take payment in mediocre coffee and occasionally decent company?”
A smile tugged at my lips. “I suppose I could make an exception.”