We all sit down at the kitchen table and Bev grabs a basket of blueberry muffins from the counter. I snatch one up and eat it between sips of coffee, savoring the sweet, juicy blueberries and the soft cake.
“So what’s on the agenda for you two today? I haven’t seen you spend this much time together since before you finished middle school,” Bev says.
Zane and I laugh at that a bit. She isn’t wrong.
“We were going to play some PlayStation for a while, see where the day takes us,” I say.
“It’s so nice today, you two should be out and about, doing things,” Bev says. “Maybe you could play wingman for each other, or wingman and wingwoman, and get each other dates for the party tomorrow night.”
I roll my eyes.
“Actually that’s not a bad idea,” Zane says, and I raise an eyebrow.
“Go on,” I say, and I feel a little flutter in my chest at the thought of trying to get Zane a date to his parents’ big anniversary bash.
“If we get dates for the party tomorrow, then our parents won’t keep trying to hook us up with other people,” Zane points out quietly.
“That’s actually a good point,” I say in a whisper, thinking about it.
“So, since you two are both now over twenty-one, why not hit up one of the bars in town and find each other someone to bring to the party tomorrow night?” Bev grins at us and rises from the table.
“We need to decide where to go,” Zane tells me.
I think about it.
“First one to win three rounds of Tekken chooses?” I meet Zane’s gaze as I make the suggestion.
“You actually think you can beat me at Tekken?” He raises an eyebrow.
“I think I can beat you so hard that you’ll cry for how badly your character goes down,” I tell him.
“Oh you’re on,” Zane says.
“Three rounds,” I remind him.
“We’ll see,” he tells me.
“No, we have to agree ahead of time!” I can feel my heart beating faster and I’m not even entirely sure why.
“Okay, first one to three rounds wins,” he says. We both get up from the table. I finish my coffee and my second muffin, and we go upstairs to his room, almost rushing each other to get there.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
ZANE LEWIS
I hand Harper the controller as I open up my PlayStation and put in Tekken. I can feel that little tingle, that sense of wanting to win, even if the stakes were nonexistent.
“You’re sure you want to go up against me,” I say, closing the console and booting up the game.
“Oh you’re not going to pull that ‘hur hur, I’m a man so I can beat any woman at video games’ thing, are you?” Harper shakes her head.
“No,” I say. “I just know I’m really good at this.”
“Yeah, you think you’re really good at this, but I have played some Tekken,” Harper counters. She grins at me and I make sure both controllers are plugged in properly. I can’t have Harper claiming I cheated.
We both press start and I get into selecting my character, watching Harper in the corner of my eye as she goes through the options herself and picks one. I select Ganryu and Harper picks Kunimitsu.
“Final chance, you can back down,” I say, smiling at Harper.
“Final chance for you, too,” she counters.
I roll my eyes and we both start playing.
I have to admit, Harper is good, and I have to wonder where she learned to play.
“How the hell did you get good at Tekken?” I ask her as the first bout between our two characters draws out longer than I would have thought. Harper blocking me and getting in quick bursts of attacks. Me doing the same to her. We might actually run out the clock on this one and one of us might win it on a technicality, I think to myself.
“College dorm championships,” Harper tells me, not taking her eyes away from the screen at all, not even for an instant.
We play down to the wire, both of us trying to get enough of an advantage that we can quickly get the other one out. In the very last few seconds of the first round of the fight, Harper’s character ducks, and slips back. I go in for the kill attack, but she catches me and gets in a few final hits. I’m the one who gets finished off instead.
“I never saw you play it even once,” I say, as the screen flashes her victory.
“Oh, I played maybe a few times at the arcade. Things like that,” Harper says.
“And then in the dorms, and a lot it looks like,” I counter.
“We had championships once a semester,” Harper explains. “I didn’t do great the first time I went in for it, but I trained, and got in the final ten the spring of my freshman year. I worked my way up a couple of places every semester after that.”