Bonus Chapter
She’s the one.
She’s the one, and I know it from the start.
She may not have much experience—who does, at twenty-nothing?
—and yet from the very first click I can see the raw talent.
Her portfolio is unpolished but creative, engaging like no other candidate’s.
Nothing too flashy, but I lose myself in the walk-through of a narrative-driven puzzle game with a mechanic so unique, I can’t figure out the building blocks of it.
There are some samples of level design that I wish the people I currently work with were able to produce, a couple of original characters and their surprisingly authentic dialogue, infinite pools of ideas.
She’s the one we have to hire, and for the better part of an hour, I’m stuck in the timeless loop of the wonderful, different, fresh mind that created all of this.
It’s the chime of a notification that pulls me out of the flow, and I realize with a tinge of embarrassment that my nose is less than an inch from the monitor.
As always, very cool, Andrews.
I straighten and open the company Slack, finding a text from my boss.
Kevin: Did you get a chance to look at this batch of applicants for the Junior Dev position?
Jesse: Just now.
Kevin: We should bring in #2, #17, and #35. Agree?
I glance down at the list. None of the candidates Kevin mentioned has warranted a second look from me, but that’s unsurprising, since I value inventiveness and originality, and he’s into…I don’t know, and at this point it’s too late to ask.
Still, I’m happy to comply. I’m not going to fight him on this—not when I have my own ask to put forward.
Jesse: Sure. And #12.
Kevin: 12…Remind me, what was his name?
I realize that I have no idea. I have to click out of the demo and navigate to the About Me section of the portfolio, which unfortunately is sparser than I’d like.
Viola Bowen. Seattle native. Great education background, great internships.
An interesting line about book-to-game adaptations that makes me want to pick her brain.
There is a headshot of her that was obviously taken by someone with an iPhone—a brown-haired woman crossing her arms in front of a nondescript background.
She seems young, probably because she is.
Not quite smiling. Pretty in a way that, I have no doubt, hasn’t done her many favors in this industry.
Her, I message Kevin, trying to swallow the irritation that always rises up my throat when he reminds me how much of a dickhead he is.
Kevin: ?
Jesse: Not his name. Hers. And it’s Viola Bowen.
Kevin: Ah.
Kevin: I don’t know about that.
Jesse: ?
Kevin: We don’t really have other female employees on the creative side. Is it a good idea to bring her in? She’d probably feel all alone and ganged up on, or something. Seems like courting trouble.
I rub my face, in the throes of the intensely pleasurable daydream of screenshotting this conversation and using it to wallpaper the HR rep office.
Then I remember that we don’t fucking have an HR department.
In no universe should I even be the one screening applications—I would like to spend my time designing games, not wrangling new hires.
But we are a small studio. More important, we are an extremely poorly managed studio.
Because we are managed by Kevin, who, just like many other men in this industry, is an incompetent asshole who spent the last decade failing upward.
Jesse: Kevin, please reread what you wrote and tell me you see why it’s problematic.
Kevin: I guess.
I can almost hear his sigh. I’m sure it’s not as deep as mine.
Kevin: Sure. We can bring the girl in if you want.
I do want. In fact, I am excited about it.
We set the interview for the following week and I spend large chunks of it on edge, half excited to finally meet her, half afraid that she’ll be scooped up by a less shitty company in the interim.
What if she starts looking outside of Seattle?
Even if she stays, I know for a fact that FlyButter is hiring, or about to.
Have they posted the ad yet? Mike is significantly more reasonable than Kevin. She’d be better off.
Still, when I email with her she seems delighted at the prospect of an in-person interview.
I click through her portfolio more times than is necessary to get a good idea of a junior dev skill set, but I can’t help myself.
There is a tiny quirk in one of her characters’ design that I’d love to ask about.
What games did she grow up playing? What made her want to create her own?
I need to know more about those book adaptations she mentioned.
We’re mostly doing combat stuff here, and I like combat stuff—fine, I love combat stuff—but even I have to admit it: Our last few works have been rote and boring.
A new, brilliant brain could be exactly what the studio needs.
If someone like her—Viola; Viola Bowen—were to come on board, maybe I wouldn’t have to talk myself out of quitting once a week.
Yes. This could work.
Bottom line, my expectations for her are high. And still, when the morning of the interview comes, she blows them out of the water—in every possible way. Some of them, maybe not too good.
She comes in right on time, lingering in the entrance of the conference room. I’m busy cleaning my glasses on the hem of my shirt, which means that at the beginning I cannot make out much more than a shapely, dark-haired blob. Then I slide them up my nose, and my cool collapses.
She’s not pretty. Or maybe she is, but she’s also more.
The most beautiful girl I’ve ever had the privilege to lay my eyes upon.
She is…resplendent. Irresistible. Unique.
The princess for whom the chosen warrior moves through the levels defeating guards, breaking out of dungeons, indefatigably conquering death.
No, better than that: the princess who’ll stick by the warrior’s side and slay winged, sharp-toothed beasts to help him clear the path out of the fortress. Yes. Much more to my taste.
If someone asked me to explain why, I wouldn’t be able to say what is so striking about her.
But it doesn’t make her pull on me any less strong.
I can only stare and experience the feeling that’s right there, in the air surrounding her—a gestalt impression of perfection that should be too dangerous to truly exist.
It’s nine in the morning, and I may be fucked for life.
She walks toward us, and I jerk awake. Reflexively, not really knowing what I’m doing, I stand to shake her small, cool hand.
The entire process takes no longer than a couple of seconds, but it’s enough for me to write a whole movie treatment about what the rest of our lives together could look like, complete with training montage.
I see dates in ramen restaurants next to comic stores, epic tabletop campaigns, heart emojis discreetly dropped in Discord DMs; I see heated arguments over who we should be romancing in Baldur’s Gate 3, sleepy nights spent pressed to each other watching different streamers together, a first anniversary celebrated by buying her a ridiculously expensive headset.
I have no time to imagine further, and thank fuck.
I sit back down next to Kevin, sure that I must be having one of those transient strokes that are not a big deal but mess up your brain anyway.
I’m usually much more grounded than this.
I pace myself. I don’t play house in my head with future colleagues.
Even though she’s not going to be. A few minutes into the interview, and I know it. Once I’m no longer too stupefied by the tiny mole on her cheek and the rasp of her contralto to pay attention, it becomes obvious that Viola Bowen is not going to be working with me anytime soon.
Because Kevin, as usual, is fucking shit up.
I hear him heavily imply that our studio might be too manly for her, and my brain buzzes with alarm. Then I hear him say it outright, and the rest happens very quickly: Viola’s contemptuous look, my sharp reminder to Kevin that being a piece of shit should not be his default mode.
All I want is to save this interview. I’m ready to go on my knees and apologize on behalf of this dickhead.
To offer his testicles on a PS5 platter as a sign of goodwill.
To swear to her that if she accepts the position I will personally make sure that she’ll never have to interact with him—in fact, what if I stick around her the whole time, just to make the transition easier?
I could be her personal bodyguard. Shield her from this bullshit. It sounds like a great job description.
But it’s too late. Viola is already out the door.
“You are worthless, Kevin,” I say. I follow her out before I can hear his reaction, jogging through the lobby to catch up.
Slower, I tell myself. Slow down. Nobody likes being harassed and chased in the span of thirty seconds.
But I’m so panicked that she’ll disappear into Seattle’s foggy air, I simply can’t stop myself, not until I’m standing in front of her.
With the left part of my brain, I’m drafting my resignation letter, mentioning Kevin’s incompetence every other line. With the right…
Which part of the brain falls in love at first sight?
“Hey—hey.” I block her path with my body. When her eyes lift up to meet mine, electricity runs through me. “Are you okay?”
She snorts. “Should I be?”
“No. You absolutely shouldn’t.”
“Good. Because your boss is a shithead.”
“Oh, I know.”
I study her serious mouth. The frown between her eyebrows. There are dark circles under her eyes that tell me she hasn’t slept much. Her clothes are wrinkled, and she’s pressing a palm to her temple as if to shoo away a headache. She seems to be going through it.
Still, I take a step back. Because here’s a fact: Even though Viola Bowen is younger and less experienced and obviously bedraggled, I feel a little intimidated by her.
We’re in dream-girl territory here.
“Kevin is appalling, and you have every right to say it.”
“Yeah, well. Unfortunately, he also holds the key to the job of my dreams, so.”
The defeat in her voice depresses me. To the point that what comes out of my mouth is full-on self-sabotage. “No, he doesn’t.”
“Excuse me?”
“You’re better than this job, Viola.”
Her eyebrow arches. “How so?”
“I’ve seen your portfolio.” I swallow. “There are other studios. And they’d suit you much better.”
For the first time since stepping into the interview, she looks at me with a glimmer of interest. All at once, I am a part of her world, a part whose existence is being acknowledged and assessed. I want to be found worthy so badly, my heart beats faster.
“Are they hiring, though?” Viola cocks her head, and I may be having a religious experience. “Those other studios?”
“They will be. Soon.”
“Who?”
Her attention on me is addling. Drug-like.
Probably the reason I don’t feel any pain as I proceed to shoot myself in the foot by telling Viola about FlyButter, then by giving her a few pointers to beef up her portfolio and appeal to Mike.
I try to keep my distance, not to stare too much.
She seems exhausted. She is exhausted, going by the way her face stretches into a wide yawn. She doesn’t need me crowding her.
“Sorry! I’m so tired today—can’t believe I stayed up so late to prep to impress that asshole.”
“Don’t worry about that,” I say. And the rest tumbles out like a natural catastrophe, at the worst time and place. There is nothing I can do to stop it when I hear myself ask, “Would you like to get coffee?”
I wouldn’t say that I usually have a lot of game, but I’ve successfully asked out enough girls that I know to be mortified by how my words sound.
It’s the way the question comes out, too fast and entirely out of place.
Egregiously inappropriate. Embarrassing.
It’s just—her voice, the way she talks with her hands, the collar of her shirt that falls just a little askew…
She might be the most inviting thing I’ve ever experienced, and I can see it, her, us, talking for hours about her next steps, about the Kevins of the world, about what makes a successful D&D campaign, about absolutely nothing—
“Oh, no. No, don’t worry. Not going to fall asleep at the wheel. ’Cause I can’t afford a car, yet.”
She smiles for the first time and I’m blinded. Almost bowled over. The high that comes from it is some very, very good shit—until the meaning of her words registers.
“Ah.”
The refusal hits me almost physically, but I manage not to slither backward and to keep my expression composed. Of course, no. What the fuck was I thinking, asking her out after the shitshow that just went down?
But I wasn’t. Thinking. I was too busy wanting. “I’m sorry. I have to apologize—”
“Nah, unless you’re a ventriloquist and Kevin is secretly a puppet, it’s not your fault.”
I’m sure that she doesn’t understand what I’m apologizing for.
But then she continues on, telling me the shit that happened this morning is not even the worst she’s been through from men in our industry, and the longer she talks, the more it feels like a warning to get away from her—one that I obviously deserve.
And still, an If you change your mind is on the tip of my tongue.
I’m not even certain what I’m offering. If you change your mind, that coffee is still on the table. If you change your mind, you only have to say. If you change your mind, I’ll probably drop everything. Snap your fingers—just like that.
But none of it is what I should tell her.
So I settle, just a few minutes later, for echoing her “See you around.” I watch Viola walk out of the lobby, hair bouncing with new confidence and hope, hand waving at me through the glass door as she hurries to cross the street while the light is still green.
Swallow my disappointment and take a deep breath.
Okay. So maybe Viola Bowen is not the one.
Even if, for a while, it really felt like she could be.