by Alexis Nedd
What were the odds of that? Batman would shoot someone at point-blank range before Jake thought he’d get to kiss Emilia Romero. The Elder Scrolls 7 would come out on the PlayStation 79. Nintendo would reveal MissingNo as a starter Pokémon in the first generation of game consoles playable on Mars. Those were the odds, and yet.
Jake wasn’t even embarrassed that he’d gotten his first kiss at fifteen. Quality definitely won over quantity in this case. And Emilia was . . . a chef’s kiss kind of kisser. Probably the best kisser in the world. He had literally nothing to compare it to, but Jake didn’t have to be a completionist to know when he’d scored a platinum trophy.
Whew, he really had to stop thinking about kissing. Now that everyone was in from backstage, it was time for Bob to give a speech. The only worse time to get a boner would be mid-match. Or walking across the stage. Or in the postgame photos. Now that he thought about it, there were a lot of bad times for boners. Really only a handful of good times for one, Jake guessed. This wasn’t one of them.
“All right, everybody, circle up,” Bob called. Jake wiggled around to get his face out of the blanket and settled between Ki and P on the couch.
“Great match,” Bob continued. “If the star chart was still a star chart, you’d all be getting a sticker.”
“And four stickers for you, Bob,” Penelope yelled.
“You go, Bob,” Ki echoed.
Bob shimmied his shoulders like the praise was showering down on him from above. “I’m sorry I couldn’t tell y’all about the league. Wizzard reached out to the captains after Round One and told us they’d get better reactions if everyone was surprised onstage. So if I’ve seemed like a hard”—he stopped himself and glanced back at the black star chart—“butt lately, it’s just because I knew what we were fighting for.”
“And here we are,” Muddy said smoothly. Jake noticed that Muddy had taken the long part of the sectional for himself and was kicked back with his feet up on the couch. Muddy’s eyes narrowed when he caught Jake looking. Whatever that was about didn’t matter. This was Unity’s parade, and Jake felt like he was riding the biggest damn float in the route.
“One more match and we’re in the league,” Bob said. “Now let’s find out who we’re going to have to take down next.”
“Let’s see,” Ki groaned sarcastically while Bob picked up the remote for the green room’s live feed of the competition. “I’m going to go with Fury, or maybe Fury.”
Penelope squinted at the screen. “Turn it up, Bob. We missed the start of the match.”
Bob obliged, and Jake leaned back against the couch’s cushions to watch Emilia play. He cautioned a look at Bob, who caught his eye knowingly before turning to watch the match as well.
“Whatever happens, we have to talk after this. As a team,” Bob said ominously. Jake felt his stomach twist. That parade feeling was fading out into a suspicion that winning today wasn’t enough to get Bob off his back. He was also nervous for Emilia, so either way his abdominal region wasn’t going to feel great.
“Chronic came out with Grendel,” Muddy noted as the hairy, one-armed form of GLO’s resident monster type tank stomped around in the commentator’s third-person screen view. “Smart of Fury to give VANE the swap so he could play Jubilee.”
“Ugh, it’s gonna be a monster fight.” Ki shuddered. She didn’t like any of GLO’s monster characters, preferring to ice people out as the light-footed mad scientist Doctor Jack.
“He did the mash . . . ,” Penelope sing-whispered to Jake. The two of them had healed in lockstep today, and Jake could tell she was feeling cuddly.
“He did the monster mash,” Jake whispered back before Bob shushed them both. The match was getting serious on-screen.
Jake watched Emilia’s Pharaoh perch up among the obelisks in the crumbling architecture of the Memphis III map before the camera snapped to an opposing player’s POV. Chronic had gotten first blood, and Fury was way behind on getting enough damage to fill up their Special Attack meters. Both teams still had all their players alive, so there was still a chance either of them could win on payload.
“They’re too evenly matched; they keep hitting and healing,” Muddy noticed. He was right. Unless someone took a big bite out of Chronic, this match was going to be a long, tense slog. Jake knew how Emilia must be feeling on that stage, fueled by wanting—needing to win to keep fighting for her place here. He wondered if she was also thinking about the kiss in a non-distracting, subconscious sort of way. Kissing her buoyed Jake to some of the best heals of his life. Somehow, he doubted his lips had the same powers hers did.
Or hey, why not? She was the one who wanted to kiss him. Maybe she was on a “get what I want” warpath and making out with him was Step 1 in her quest for world domination. Jake had a sudden, vivid mental image of Emilia decked out in Pharaoh’s gold robes, standing atop a mountain with an army behind her and a swirling ball of necromagic fomenting between her capable hands. He pictured himself as Pythia, dressed as a hospital clown, draped on the ground beside her and clinging to her leg, like the cover of so many of his dad’s awful, vaguely porny sci-fi novels from the ’70s. Jake’s kiss could be good luck too, even if it meant bad luck for him down the line.
“Oh shit!” Penelope exclaimed. “Nobody even saw her coming.”
“Black star,” Bob said automatically, but leaned into the TV to see what Penelope was describing. It was a suicide move from Emilia, averted at the last second from a lightning-fast heal from JOON. She’d leaped from the obelisk and spun to land three paralyzing bolts on Chronic’s healers and tank, and would have dropped from the fall damage if Han-Jun hadn’t laid out a heal/harm wall parallel to the ground. The force field caught Emilia like a bunch of firefighters holding a blanket underneath a five-story window to keep her in the game by a tiny sliver of health. RIKK topped off her bar and sent her on her way, while VANE turned Chronic’s tank armor into swiss cheese.
Jake looked over at Muddy, who was staring openmouthed at the screen.
“Think you can manage that next match, baby Jake?” Muddy asked.
Jake shook his head. That move was barely possible within the laws of math, let alone the mechanics of GLO. Once Chronic’s tank was damaged, it was all over. Fury piled on the payload and defended it like the walls of Minas Tirith. Byunki even had time to do a moonwalk emote on top of the hover-wagon as his teammates beat back Chronic’s DPS, his Klio’s flame sword bobbing smoothly as the character slid backward in a perfect circle. That was it, payload to Fury. No tank kill, but a way more impressive victory all around.
“Shiii-oot,” Bob exhaled. Fury’s colors flashed along the arena’s LED screens, red and black in a shooting loop around the mezzanine.
“That’s that,” Ki said quietly. “Now we know what we’re up against.”
“It was perfect,” muttered Muddy. “They sandbagged the first half of the match to keep it even and then . . . that heal. JOON just . . .”
Penelope was staring straight ahead at a wall that was now half-covered with one of Bob’s curtains. One of the tacks must have fallen off during the match. “Just gonna say it,” she said. “I couldn’t do that heal.”
“Me neither,” Jake agreed. JOON and Emilia were just not human. That combo looked harder than a zero-gravity trapeze routine, followed by the girl he’d just kissed shooting three dudes in the face with a crossbow.
“You sure?” Muddy asked. “I’m pretty sure you could pull it off for KNOX.”
“Yeah. About that,” Bob said. After the match, Bob had sat down on the edge of the couch near Muddy and put his face in his hands, but now he sat up to look directly at Jake. Muddy was looking at him too, which only sent another stabbing feeling through Jake’s stomach.
Ki and Penelope turned to look at him too, but they both wore such confused expressions that Jake was pretty sure they didn’t know what was about to go down. Everything happened too much these days.
“Do you want to tell them or do you want me to, Hoo
ps?” Bob asked. Yikes, Bob never called him Hoops unless it was serious. They’d called him that for the first few months of GLO before he moved on to a first-name basis, back when they still called Muddy “Matty.” Jake felt oddly defensive, because if anything their victory today meant that whatever Bob was worried about wasn’t true and everything was fine. Jake could fight with Fury and kiss Emilia. He was absolutely capable of those two things. Going up against her in the finals was not ideal, but it was not like either of them were going to back down to make the other one feel better. That was not what Emilia was like. It was not what Jake was like either.
“I mean, I don’t—” Jake began. Jesus, there was a lot to explain. They knew one half of the story, but how could he compress everything that had happened since Round 1? Especially since he’d sort of . . . super lied to them about most of it.
“How about I do it?” Muddy interrupted. Bob jerked his head around to look at Muddy behind him. Jake’s eyes widened. What did Muddy know?
“Baby Jake’s been colluding with KNOX all week,” Muddy said, directing his accusation to Bob. “I saw them in Crystal Cathedral on Wednesday. Lakeport on Thursday. They were playing freaking minigames in Euphrates Crater while we were in chat on Friday. I was on an alt and saw Jake hanging out with a legacy robe Pharaoh on a Diamond-tier dev server. Put two and two together. Kept trying to catch them in a screenshot, but Jake kept tossing freeze spells at me and running away with her.”
Okay, it was a little funny that the pesky guy in Crystal Cathedral was Muddy, but only if Jake completely removed it from the context of the complete shitshow he had just earned a starring role in. Bob’s jaw dropped, and Ki and Penelope each grabbed one of Jake’s shoulders in unison. He felt like a prisoner about to be tossed on the floor in front of an unfeeling elf king.
“What?” Bob asked. “That’s not what I was going to say, Mud.”
“What were you going to say? Because I have more.”
“I was going to say that KNOX—Emilia, by the way; her name is Emilia—”
Jake cringed. So much for keeping that cat in the bag, Bob.
“—drove Jake to the competition today. And he told me she drove him from Round One last week. They’ve been, I don’t know, hanging out? Jake, what the hell is going on?”
Up on the TV screen, the arena’s recap showed Emilia smiling and waving with Team Fury after their win. She looked fierce in her red jersey and her curls pulled back in a tight, no-nonsense ponytail. Emilia had her hair down when Jake kissed her. He remembered because it touched his face and smelled like Key lime pie.
Penelope followed Jake’s line of sight to the screen and had the good sense to reach over to the coffee table and hit the power button on the remote. Emilia vanished along with the ambient clamor of competition. The ensuing silence quite frankly sucked.
“We’re not hanging out,” Jake began now that the distraction of seeing Emilia was gone, “not like that. I mean I’ve barely even seen her except from the car rides, so it’s not like we’re . . . we’re . . .”
“Take your time,” Ki said quietly. She knew Jake got caught up in his words when he felt nervous. He’d talked to her and P on voice chat more often than Bob and Muddy.
Jake took a deep breath. “She gave me a ride after Round One. It was raining; she was being nice. Nothing happened. She’s just got a lot of stuff going on with GLO, so no one’s supposed to know she plays. So please, don’t tell anyone her name. Like you really can’t tell anyone who she is or that she goes to my school.”
“Who cares?” Muddy interjected.
“Not now, Mud,” Penelope replied sharply.
“She almost got doxxed, okay? A couple years ago, when she first started playing GLO, there were some bad . . . guys, I don’t know. It freaked her out, and she only agreed to play with Fury if they protected her identity. She didn’t expect anyone she knew to be at the competition, so I’ve been keeping that secret for her. I didn’t tell you because it wasn’t my secret to tell.”
He felt terrible for lying, but he’d done it for Emilia, and she was equally as important to him as Unity right now. He was going to have to figure out how to parse that in the finals, but it was his problem to work out, not something that should be decided by committee.
“Then we kept talking,” Jake continued. “I didn’t think we would, because why would she bother with me? But she did, and it’s been a few days, and she gave me a ride this morning because she’s nice.” Jake felt his voice rising as he defended Emilia. He wasn’t great at making himself heard, but this was too important. “She’s great, and she’s too good to have her motives torn apart by people who don’t understand where she’s coming from. So no, Bob, Byunki didn’t send her to mess with me, and even if he did, she wouldn’t do that. And I’m not an idiot who would fall for it anyway because I’m not a baby.”
“I never said you were, Jake,” Bob said calmly, “but the timing looks . . . not great.”
Jake wasn’t finished talking. “And about this all being a secret? Not even her parents know. She’s an extraordinary player, and she does this in her spare time. If you knew half of what she had to do at school . . . and her parents . . . Personally I’d, like, die if I was her. I’d wake up, take one look at my schedule, and die. And through all of that she . . . she still saw me. She’s so cool? And she has so many friends? She still wants me—to talk to me and ask me questions and stuff. And you guys are great, and I love you, even Muddy, but also screw you right now, but I feel 3D around her, like I’m real and worth looking at, and I love it. Because I—”
Yeah, no. Jake knew that was where the speech stopped. Those were more words than he’d had said out loud to anyone besides Emilia in months, and he didn’t want to go any further. His eyes hurt, and his nose was tingling uncomfortably. That was a good sign to stop.
Jake slid his fingers under his glasses and covered his face. It wasn’t enough to block out the fluorescent light in the green room, but it did save his brain from processing a few of the million stimuli that made him feel like he was about to barf-explode.
“I’m sorry for lying,” he said through his palms. He probably looked dumb as hell. “I’m not sorry for spending time with Emilia. Sorry for not being sorry.”
Jake was surprised to feel arms around him then, two sets encircling him from either side. Ki and Penelope were hugging him, and when he took his hands away from his face, he saw both of them smiling at each other like they’d both just won a bet. Muddy and Bob looked less enthused.
“You’re just going to believe that?” Muddy finally said. “You’re just going to believe that a hot girl waltzes back into your life on the opposite side of a million-dollar deal because you’re special? She doesn’t want you, dumbass.” He rubbed at his brow like he was trying to wipe Jake’s airborne stupid off his face. “Of course you two buy it.” He gestured to Penelope and Ki’s half-octopus grip on Jake. “Bob, please tell me you don’t believe this.”
Bob leaned forward with his elbows on his knees. If he had a bomber jacket, Jake would think he was aiming for a full Karamo Brown cosplay moment. “I believe that what Jake is feeling is real. I also think”—he turned to look at Jake—“that you don’t know Byunki like I do. He knew about the league before everyone else. I know he met with Thibault because Wizzard wants a big-name team like Fury to win. So if Emilia started talking to you on Wednesday, it’s still possible that she’s, you know . . .”
“She didn’t know,” Jake interjected. “She didn’t know until this morning. We talked after the announcement.”
“Where?” Muddy asked. “When?”
“Right before the match, some weird corner behind craft services where they keep all the chairs. Does that matter?”
“Because she tried to psych you out before the match!” Muddy yelled.
“No,” Jake snarled back, “she didn’t. She was actually about to quit when I talked to her, so if she was trying to psych me out, she must be on some next leve
l sideways mind game shit, which she isn’t.”
Bob spoke tenderly, like he were trying to explain death to a toddler. “Maybe she isn’t, but Byunki—”
“Hey, Bob?” Penelope spoke up from beside Jake. She exchanged a look with Ki, who nodded. “Maybe you need to let go of the idea that your ex is a psychopath out to get you and let people have nice things.”
Bob’s what? Everyone, including Muddy, snapped around to stare at Bob.
“We love you, B-man,” Ki picked up where Penelope left off, “but just because Byunki dicked you over on World of Warfare, like, half a decade ago doesn’t mean that every time someone likes someone it’s the preamble to a blood feud. Like, yeah, Byunki is your evil ex, but maybe, and stop me if this is crazy, Emilia is a better person than him.”
“Not like that’s hard,” added Penelope, “but your bad taste in men hasn’t necessarily rubbed off on the rest of us.”
“Not even a little bit,” Ki riffed. “You’re the only one here who likes men at all.”
“Sorry.” Jake’s brain was exploding in slow motion. “But Byunki, like Team Fury Byunki, is Bob’s ex-boyfriend? That’s the thing? And you all knew this?”
Muddy shook his head. “I didn’t. You people don’t tell me shit.”
Bob groaned and stood up from his spot on the couch. Now that the end of the reclining edge was free, Muddy stretched his feet up in the open spot and leaned back with his arms behind his head, clearly waiting for the show to continue.
“Yes, Jake, that’s the thing,” Bob admitted. Sitting, he was another member of Team Unity, but standing was Bob’s signal that he was about to enter Captain Mode. “We were your age, we cocreated a guild on World of Warfare, there was a meetup, and Byunki and I got close.”
“They hooked up in the bathroom at Amalgam,” Penelope added. “Like a lot.” She was never going to let Bob tell the story devoid of details. Jake loved that about P.