Don't Hate the Player

by Alexis Nedd

  Just when I’m about to give up and slump against a random wall and hope for the best, I spot the stacks of chairs at the end of a hall and charge toward them, hoping no one in one of the empty corners behind me catches a glimpse of my red-and-black jersey and tries to follow me. The spot is exactly as I remember it from before, except this time there’s no Jake. That’s a relief, honestly. I need a few minutes to be alone and work this out for myself. I don’t want anyone talking or getting close to me. I am exactly who I’m supposed to be right now, an island of a person who got herself into this mess and needs to get herself out.

  “Figured I’d find you here, Em.”

  I don’t think islands shiver when they hear familiar voices behind them. They definitely don’t feel a horribly comfortable combination of toasty and desperate when it’s a voice they thought they didn’t want to hear.

  “Hey, Jake.”

  “Do you want me to go?” he asks. I knew he would. The normal, defensive thing to do would be to ask him to leave me alone. He would if I asked him to. I tried to push him away here a week ago and failed, which wouldn’t have solved my problem but might have made ditching the competition a little easier. When I quit GLO, I’ll quit Jake too. As wonderful as he is, he’s still a glitch in all of this. Quitting is about having less to deal with in the months to come, not more. Jake is very, very more.

  “No,” I hear myself saying even though I can’t even bring myself to turn around and look at Jake. “Please stay.” Hey, me, stop.

  “Wait, really? Okay. Cool.” Jake sounds as shocked as I am to hear me say I want him around. I know a little bit of that is rooted in Jake assuming I never bother thinking about him, which should not be my problem anymore but still makes me feel terrible. “Hold on a sec—here you go.” Jake stretches his arms up and grabs a chair at the top of a stack and clumsily wiggles it away from its spot. He places it next to the single chair he sat in a week ago, which apparently has been waiting patiently for our next disaster chat.

  Jake sits in one chair and pats the seat of the other. This boy is corny as hell. I sit down anyway.

  “So, the league,” he begins. It’s all he needs to say. “Could be dope. Lotta money, big commitment.”

  I know, Jake. He knows what I’m thinking, though, doesn’t he?

  “But you won’t do it.” Yes, he does.

  “I can’t,” I say. Won’t isn’t the issue here. “Winning would change everything. What I have now is perfect. I play GLO and I hide, and I’m a totally normal high schooler. And I hide. I can’t afford to change that.”

  Jake clears his throat. “Listen, Em, I’m d—”

  “If you say ‘dumb,’ I will grab this chair and strike you like a Hardy brother.”

  “Fine, I’m a genius. I’m the smartest man in the world.”

  “Eh, dial it back.”

  “Can you stop doing that?” He doesn’t say it harshly, but I still turn to him, visibly annoyed.

  “What?”

  When I look, Jake is holding me in his gaze, staring as intently as he did that day in the cafeteria.

  “That . . . ​prickly, defensive mean girl thing. You can talk your way around anyone, I know, but that’s not you.”

  He’s wrong. It’s absolutely me. I wouldn’t have survived this long keeping my two lives in balance if I didn’t push people exactly where I needed them to be. I push them away, I pull them closer, and they stay there until I need to move them.

  I’ve been getting progressively suckier at it, but that’s still the guiding principle.

  “It’s who I have to be,” I explain quietly.

  “Nah,” he says dismissively. “It’s really not. I know, remember? I’m seeing you from both sides. All sides really; there’s way more than two. You’re, like, one of those conceptual DnD dice that no one can even use because there are too many sides. A tri . . . contra thing.”

  “Triacontahedron.” Technically a disdyakis triacontahedron, but I’ll let it slide.

  “Sure, you nerd. Anyway.” Jake reaches across me and holds both of my shoulders. Not like Connor does it, when he’s trying to steer me around like a tiny girl-tractor, but like Jake is holding something small and soft that might run away before he has a chance to help it. “You still have to try to win.”

  “I—”

  “Shush. What you have right now, it’s not working, right? You think the people in school can’t possibly understand why you play GLO, but what happened when you told Penny and Matt? Or that Fury won’t protect you if the shit hits the fan, but do you hear your name coming out of Byunki’s mouth, ever? We got you. So, so, so many people got you.”

  Well, okay. Penny and Matt were cool when they found out, and Fury is obviously fine, but that’s not the important thing here. There are my parents and school and exposing my real identity to the world. These are all valid concerns.

  “You do,” I submit, “but I still can’t risk winning. I’m going to throw this match and quit before Round Three either way. I’ll stop playing; it’s not the end of the world. That’s better than cracking this whole thing open.”

  “You are so smart,” Jake says kindly. He absentmindedly rubs his thumbs back and forth over my shoulders; it feels incredible, like a Vulcan chill-the-hell-out pinch. “And so not right. You know the first thing I thought when we were onstage and Thibault announced the league? First thing, like I didn’t even think ‘Wow, my team could go pro’ or ‘Muddy’s gonna crap himself.’ ”

  “What did you think?” I ask. Those thumbs are lulling me into something new.

  “I thought, ‘Emilia is about to do some real dumb shit.’ And here you are, trying to quit when you have a shot at getting what you want. You do want it, right? In a vacuum, like you say.”

  “Of course I do! Stop touching me.” I shrug away from his hands, and he holds them up on either side of him like he’s under arrest. Immediately I feel more tense. That “prickly, defensive mean girl” thing is back in play, and I fully hate myself for it. “No, wait. I’m sorry. I just . . .”

  Jake puts his arms down for a moment, then reaches over and hovers his hand over mine. He tilts his head experimentally: Are you sure that’s what you wanted? I’m fine either way, but I need you to choose it, he seems to ask.

  Fuck it. I grab his hand with both of mine. I touch the tough skin at the joint of his thumbs and the tips of his forefingers and feel the weird, specific muscle tone of someone whose hands burn more calories gaming than the rest of him combined. For all the thick, unruly hair on his head, the five or six hairs on each knuckle are fine. Smooth wrists, nice hands. He’s a healer for sure.

  “I want to try,” I finally admit while I’m petting Jake’s hand like a guinea pig. Penny’s going to lose it when I tell her about this. “I’m good enough.”

  “You are.” Jake doesn’t know what to do with his extra hand. He’s tried tucking it under his chin, messing with his hair, and in the last few seconds settled on squeezing it between his legs. Other than that, his eyes are fixed on my hands touching him. That should bother me, but it doesn’t. Not even a little bit. It’s just easy.

  “Fury could win today if I don’t throw away my shot.”

  “They could.”

  “You could win today too.”

  “That’s right,” Jake says gently. “Then you’re gonna have to get through me.”

  “We’ll bring it. We’ll fight all of you.”

  “It’ll suck,” he agrees, but I see the grin spreading across his face. This is exactly where he wanted to lead me, and he’s proud of himself for getting there. I could say something to wipe the smile off his face, but I don’t want to. I like it there, and it’s stirring up something inside me that I am actively choosing to identify as my, ahem, competitive spirit. “But the best man . . . woman . . . or, like, nonbinary collection of individuals, they’ll win. You deserve to be in that fight. Don’t give up because of what might happen.”

  What can I even say to that? Every time I’ve tr
ied to push or pull Jake, he outmaneuvers me and slips in closer. Ordinarily I’d hate feeling out of my depth, but he’s the one person I don’t mind surprising me. Unless it’s going to screw him over in the long run.

  “Does your team know you came back for me?” I ask.

  “Nope,” he answers.

  I felt guilty about taking Jake away from Team Unity this morning, but right now I’m content to have him here, breaking whatever social rules should keep us at odds. We’ve only been talking for a few days and have literally only re-met each other for a week, but just sitting and talking to him feels necessary somehow. I was prepared to do this without him, and then I wasn’t, and now I’m back in the game because he’s with me. That counts for more than whatever weird rivalry Bob and Byunki have.

  “You want to get back to them?” Neither of us knows how much time Jake has before his match. It has to be coming up soon.

  Jake unsticks his other hand from its hiding spot between his thighs and places it over mine. His hand is warm and more than a little sweaty, but it feels nice, like hugging a field hockey teammate after we’ve won a game. I’ve got you, Jake’s wet hand seems to say. That’s pretty cool, to be got.

  “Yup. Gotta go beat Beast so we can, uh . . . beat you.”

  I try to pull my hand away playfully, but the physics of yanking anything out from between two sweaty boy palms make the whole motion too awkward to force. My fingers are Jake’s until he decides to let go.

  “Good luck,” I reply. “I mean that literally about Beast Mode and very, very sarcastically about the finals.”

  “Thanks? Same? I really don’t know what to do with that, but okay,” Jake says and liberates my hands. I miss their warmth immediately. While he stands up and runs his fingers through his hair, I idly wonder if Jake gets his texture from touching his curls with sweaty hands all the time. Like a sea salt spray, but—no, that’s disgusting. Bet his sweat smells amazing, though. What?

  Fuck my life, he’s done the thing. All Jake did was sit in a chair and listen to me, and now I want to find out what his neck tastes like. I am either massively starved for this kind of attention or exclusively nerdsexual, because Connor never made me feel the way I’m beginning to feel about Jake. I mean, yeah, I almost kissed him in the car. I can say that now; that’s what almost happened, and I can name it because it was real. But that was . . . I don’t know. Exhaustion. Hormones. Postgame adrenaline wearing off into ambient horniness that didn’t have anything to do with the part where Jake was kind of wet and steamy behind his glasses and smelled like boy and didn’t ask me to explain anything because nothing odd or secret about me could surprise him. Or make him like me less. I am clearly horny for acceptance, not for Jake.

  Except he’s standing in front of me now and stretching his arms to warm up before he heads to his green room, and the bottom of his Unity jersey is hiked up, like, a quarter of an inch above his beltline and—Jesus, take the wheel.

  “Hey,” I find myself saying as I stand up and hug Jake. “Thank you.”

  Jake hugs back better than he did outside his apartment building, which I appreciate. Last time I was too freaked out to touch him, and now I don’t want to do anything else. I know I have to let go of him soon because we’re, you know, in the middle of a massively high-stakes competition and he needs to fight his way toward trying to kick my team’s ass, but I don’t feel bad holding a little longer. I mean Jake did just tell me to go after what I want.

  “Good luck today, KNOX,” he whispers.

  I don’t know if it’s his breath in my ear or hearing him go back to our competition titles that tips me over the edge of reason. Before he can get his face away from my face—and he really is too much taller than me to attempt this when he’s drawn up to full height—I turn my head to kiss Jake on the cheek. For luck, I tell myself. It’s a lie. I don’t care.

  Jake freezes when my lips hit his warm face, and for one hopeless second I think he’s going to turn and catch my mouth with his. Then, I don’t know, we’d make out in this hallway? Just a little, as a treat? I’ve never wanted to kiss anyone so badly before. When I kissed Connor in the cafeteria, I spent the whole time wondering why everything in there tasted like nickels, but the kissing itself didn’t move me. Here in the hallway, not kissing Jake is moving me, to put an insufficient name to the good heat I’m feeling with my nose pressed against his skin.

  But he doesn’t kiss me. In fact he reacts more like I’ve stabbed him than smooched him. After that first freeze, he lets go of me and steps back, his face so red I worry for a second I’ve transferred my cream blush to his pale skin.

  “Em,” he says quietly, with some of the panic I remember from this time last week creeping into his voice.

  “Good luck to you too,” I reply quickly. Glad I had that one ready to go. “That was just a luck . . . thing.”

  “Right, you too. I gotta . . .” He jerks his thumb over his shoulder. I know, I know, he has to go. I wish I felt less giggly and triumphant having only kissed him on the cheek, but whatever. It felt good. We’ll deal with it later, after the matches. Probably not on the ride home, since Bob won’t let him come back with me, but sometime after that. I’m not worried about it or anything right now.

  I shoo him away with my hands. “Go. I’ll see you later.”

  Jake nods and starts back down the hallway. He doesn’t get far before he turns around and looks back.

  “Just a luck thing?” he asks. Anyone else would sound cocky asking the world’s most obvious question, but Jake isn’t anyone. As smart as he is, he really doesn’t know. Not like I have a ton of high ground to stand on; I just figured it out five minutes ago.

  “Nope,” I say, straight-faced.

  “Cool,” he replies and closes the space between us in two long-legged strides. “This,” Jake continues, “isn’t for luck either.”

  As good as not kissing Jake Hooper felt, I have to say, kissing him is so much better.

  PART IV

  Jake!!!

  BOB HAD GONE through a lot of trouble to make the Team Unity green room feel like home. He’d brought in blue curtains for all the sense that made, since none of the green rooms had windows, and had tacked them up on the walls like a college student trying to create a sexy, tasseled opium den vibe in their concrete dorm room. There was also a gold star chart pinned up with everyone’s names to reward good ideas, which had quickly devolved into a black star chart marking down anyone who cussed and now functioned as an analog LanguageBot.

  Ki had brought a few LOONA light sticks in a glass vase that sparkled like distracting electric flowers, and Penelope had brought a busted-looking black ottoman her sister was going to throw out if P hadn’t found something to do with it. Muddy’s contribution was a bag of cheddar cheese popcorn, which he ate by himself; his decor contribution could generously be described as the orange powdery marks he’d left on the couch.

  Out of all the things Jake helped Bob drag to the green room that morning, half out of punishment for getting caught with Emilia and half out of necessity because the sheer volume of swag he’d packed in his trunk would take one man two trips, he liked the blankets best. They were navy blue, were extremely fuzzy, and felt amazing when he launched himself facedown into one and screamed into its fluff. It was a good scream. Team Unity’s match was over. They were in the finals.

  “Blue cross!” Bob bellowed when he entered the green room after Jake. Jake had skipped ahead of everyone else and gotten to the room first. He could have skipped his way around the arena eight times and still had the energy for another match at the rate he was going. He was having the best day of his entire life.

  “Black shield!” Ki and Penelope chanted after him and flopped down to flank Jake on the sectional. Jake felt one of them scratch at his back in excitement. He felt like a beloved family pet. Whatever Bob felt about Emilia and Fury, this win had to have wiped it out.

  “Can’t lose. Apparently.” Muddy strolled in after everyone. He’d been
a little more leisurely in his pace down the ramps from the stage, dodging and bending to photobomb people taking videos and selfies in the halls. Jake didn’t know why he bothered; someone had been backstage to take their picture the second they won the match. Thibault Adige wanted everyone in the city to know which players had a fifty-fifty shot at repping Philly in the Guardians League. Bob even stopped to say a few words to an esports reporter about his team and what they’d bring to the league.

  For the second time since this tournament had started, people were looking at Jake. On any other day, the attention would make him curl up into himself, dropping his head to make sure no one had a problem with his face and apologizing for taking up any space in their field of vision. Today he was smiling, laughing, posing even. Look upon his works, ye mighty: Jake kissed Emilia.

  And yeah, he’d also healed his ass off against Beast Mode, but that victory felt like a direct result of the one that came before. Kissing was awesome; did everyone know that? Like objectively it seemed great, but mouths, man. They do so much that should make them gross, but they’re not.

  He hadn’t gone to their hiding spot to kiss her, honest. It would have been so much cooler if that had been his goal, though. Just like, swoop in, give the pep talk of the century, dip her like a romance cutscene, and get down to smooch town—that would have been dope, but it wasn’t the story. Jake knew that Emilia would try to cut loose the second he heard Thibault announce the league, and the ridiculous, heart-tugging loyalty he felt for her wouldn’t let him see her do that without hearing him out. GLO was the reason Emilia talked to him, the only reason she even saw him. When she got on voice chat after the Matcha Attack, he’d nearly peed himself on his dad’s creaky old office chair. She was different when she talked about GLO; she knew everything about it. Emilia laughed and opened up when they talked about games. She got sparkly somehow, way brighter than he’d seen her in the month since he got to Hillford West and saw her going through the motions of being the junior class’s student-athlete queen bee. Jake had only hoped to convince her to keep playing so she could stay sparkly, and, bam, she’d kissed him.