Cosplayed: A Sweet Lesbian Romance

by Mia Archer

  Zoey allowed herself to be pulled along to the door. I double checked that I had my apartment keys before stepping out.

  “So are we driving to wherever this is?” she asked.

  “Nope. No need for anything like that,” I said. “It’s within walking distance. Trust me, you’re going to love this place.”

  Zoey smiled and reached out to take my hand. I looked at the offered hand for a moment before grinning and taking it. It felt good holding her hand. It felt right holding her hand. That was a hand I could get used to holding.

  “I trust you,” Zoey said. “So let’s get going! The anticipation is killing me.”

  So we stepped off into the night and towards bar row down on campus. As we walked I desperately hoped that everything would continue to go well tonight, because I really liked Zoey and I didn’t want things to go to shit.

  Then again if things did go to shit I could take small comfort in that brief makeout session we had. Still, I told myself everything was going to be fine. It had to, because this girl was damn fine, geeky on top of that, and I had to have her in the worst way.

  19: Date Night

  Zoey:

  “Bar row? This is where we’re going?” I asked.

  Hailey looked at me and grinned a secretive grin. “Oh ye of little faith with your barely concealed disdain for the bar life.”

  I arched an eyebrow at her. “So are you an English major or something?”

  She grabbed my shoulder and yanked me along with that secretive smile still plastered on her face. Like she knew something I didn’t. I still trusted her, but I was having a hard time. The bar scene had never really been my thing unless it was a bar scene at a convention where I was hanging out with my fellow geeks.

  That was different though. I felt at home no matter what when I was at a con. I felt less at home when I was hanging out in the real world with the muggles. I was surprised at how Hailey moved with such confidence, too. This didn’t seem like her kind of place either.

  “Can you at least give me a hint where we’re going?” I asked. “I’m not really into the bar scene.”

  Though come to think of it I honestly didn’t know if I was the one who wasn’t into the bar scene. Natalie sure wasn’t into the bar scene. She’d made that painfully obvious on several occasions when she got upset when I suggested we go out. It was something I’d always wanted to try, especially when we both turned old enough to drink, but it was also something I’d given up on.

  Did I really hate the idea of going out? Or was that one more zap Natalie put on my head? I gave Hailey’s hand a squeeze.

  “Y’know what, ignore my bellyaching. I said I trust you and I trust you. Lead the way,” I said.

  “Good,” Hailey said. “Because I was planning on dragging you here whether or not you came willingly.”

  We kept walking as drunk people walked up and down the sidewalk around us. It actually wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be out here. Natalie always complained about bars being too loud and drunk people being assholes, but that never stopped her from getting drunk and acting like an idiot whenever we were out. Which always led to the inevitable conversation after where I got mad at her because she always promised she’d never do anything like that again.

  I sighed and forced my teeth to stop grinding. I was doing it again. Thinking of Natalie. I needed to stop that bullshit now.

  I looked up as we turned a corner and saw a sign I didn’t recognize. Then again it had been awhile since I’d had occasion to drive through this part of town. It wasn’t the sort of place anyone went unless they were going to classes or they were driving down for a night of partying and a cab ride home.

  “Arcadez?” I asked. “What kind of place is that?”

  “You’ll see,” Hailey said. “I just discovered this place a few weeks ago and it’s fucking awesome. You’re not going to believe it unless you see it for yourself.”

  “Fine, lead on,” I said.

  Unlike most of the other bars on bar row there wasn’t a line of people waiting to get into this place. I wondered if that meant it wasn’t nearly as cool as Hailey seemed to think it was. Then again Hailey and I probably had a far different idea of what was cool than the rest of the world given our geeky nature.

  Hailey opened the door and we stepped into a bar that was absolutely nothing like what I’d come to expect from a college dive bar. The place wasn’t even a dive bar. The whole place was immaculately maintained and it had a modern trendy look without the underlying smell of stale beer that permeated the few other bars I’d been to.

  There was also no smoke, for which I was thankful. It was a good thing that all got banned from bars well before I got old enough to go into bars.

  None of that was why I was standing in the entrance staring, slack-jawed, at the bar though. No, that had nothing to do with the decor and everything to do with what lined the walls at this bar. There was the usual bar in the middle and there were tables where people sat shooting the shit with one another, but lining the walls on the first level and in a loft I could see up above from where we stood were arcade cabinets. Tons of glorious arcade cabinets that I barely remembered from when I was a kid and the arcade at the mall was still barely hanging on.

  I looked at Hailey and my mouth must have been hanging over or something because she had a huge grin on her face watching my reaction.

  “I told you you’d like this place!” she said.

  “This place is fucking amazing,” I said. “It’s like they have every video game I loved when I was a kid!”

  Hailey elbowed me in the side. “Seriously grandma? You were old enough to be around when these games were new?”

  I turned and elbowed her right back. A playful elbow, to be sure, but I wanted her to know she wasn’t pushing this grandma around thank you very much.

  “Ha ha, very funny. No, I wasn’t old enough to be around when a lot of these games were new or I’d be like twenty years older. My mom used to drag me to the mall when she went shopping and the arcade was her babysitter before it finally gave up the ghost right around when I got to middle school and started appreciating the mall for things other than the arcade,” I said.

  “Well let’s get started! These games aren’t going to play themselves,” Hailey said.

  “Wait a second. I don’t have any quarters or anything. How do we…”

  Hailey was giving me one of those looks again. Like I’d just said something monumentally stupid. I wondered what it was now. I wondered if she was going to call me grandma again. It’s not like I was that much older than her. If she was in grad school then we were probably close to the same age, assuming she’d done the usual four year stint in undergrad.

  “They don’t make you pay to play the games,” Hailey said. “Can you imagine how much business they’d lose if they made people carry around quarters in a world where everyone uses credit cards?”

  I shrugged and looked over the rows of games again. “I don’t know? Maybe they retrofitted them with credit card readers or something?”

  “Credit card readers on ancient video games?”

  “Stranger things have happened,” I said. “So what, are they free or something?”

  “Totally!” Hailey said, a huge smile splitting her face. “All the games here are absolutely free as long as you’re drinking.”

  “Huh. I guess that makes sense,” I said. “I’m guessing the beer here is way overpriced too?”

  “Think of it as sinking quarters into your drink instead of sinking them into the game machines. C’mon, I promise you’re going to have a good time.”

  Hailey took me by the arm and pulled me up to the bar. I smiled as I allowed myself to be drawn along. As I allowed myself to be surrounded by the geeky ambiance that was this bar. It was interesting to see the change in Hailey as soon as we stepped through the door. When we were out making our way through the campus social hot spot she’d been a little drawn in on herself. Like she wasn’t entirely comfortable aro
und a bunch of people going out to get shitfaced and find someone to fuck.

  It was something I could totally identify with. I’d never been big into that scene, though I was wondering now whether that was because I wasn’t into that scene or if it was because I’d internalized Natalie not being into that scene.

  That wasn’t the case in here though. In here Hailey reminded of me when I stepped through the doors of a con. Or when I stepped out of my car at a charity event in my costume. It was like she was in her element. All of that reluctance, that withdrawn look as though she wasn’t enjoying herself, disappeared as she came out of her shell and really enjoyed herself.

  And that smile on her face. It was radiant. It sent a thrill running through me. She was beautiful.

  “How about you get the drinks and I’ll go stake out an arcade cabinet,” I said.

  Hailey turned and looked me up and down indignantly, but her tone was telling a different story. “So you expect me to buy you the drinks while you go off and have fun playing games?”

  I winked at her. “Yeah, well get me a little tipsy and we’ll see where the night goes. How’s that sound?”

  “Sounds just fine to me,” she said. With that she turned and waded into the crowd of people surrounding the bar. I had no doubt she’d be able to get a drink pretty quickly. She looked good enough tonight that any male bartender would be all over her. It’s not like said bartender would have any way of knowing Hailey was into girls.

  It was amazing how much faster service was for a hot girl. I’d miss it when I finally aged out of that, though hopefully I wouldn’t still be coming to bars like this by then.

  I moseyed down the line of arcade cabinets looking at familiar old titles that I’d all but forgotten in the years since I was a little girl staring up at the blinking lights and booping noises in amazement. These had all been the height of video game technology back then. It was a far off time when arcade cabinets could still, barely, deliver a better experience than home video games.

  They all looked quaint and archaic these days, but a fun game was a fun game even if it was almost old enough to start getting mailers from AARP. I went down one row but all the games were taken. That was one bad thing about having a bar where there were no quarters. There was no way to tell the world that you had the next game.

  I finally stopped at a game near the back that caught my eye.

  “Holy shit. I can’t believe it!” I squealed.

  It was an honest to goodness copy of Battle Barbarians. I had a lot of fond memories of this game, in no small part because it was a fighting game populated by shirtless barbarians which did nothing for me and women in fur bikinis which had done quite a lot for young me back before I understood exactly what it meant to feel tingly looking at pixelated scantily clad women.

  I certainly knew what those tingles meant now, though they were more nostalgic than anything else. Apparently my memories had inflated the graphics on this thing, because it wasn’t much to look at these days. Still, the old sights and sounds brought me back to days when the only concern I had in life was being cute enough to bum another quarter off of someone so I could keep playing.

  Besides, this game and its scantily clad women in those bikinis had been the precursor to my obsession with the Battle Gear Angel Squad anime. In a way it was the reason I got into the whole costuming scene and a big part of the reason why I was here tonight with Hailey. Everything came full circle.

  20: Friendly Wager

  Zoey:

  The guy standing at the arcade cabinet turned to look at the source of the squeal. Then he stopped to give me a more considering look when he realized that the source of the squeal was a hot girl, if I do say so myself. His grin said he was about to make a move, so I held up a hand.

  “Gonna stop you right there buddy,” I said. “I’m here with a date.”

  “Well that’s his problem if he left you all alone back here. How about you and I do a little one on one here? Winner gets a kiss?”

  I crossed my arms and fixed him with my best “are you fucking kidding me?” look. He seemed to get the message because he started to look a little pissed off. Great. A belligerent drunk hitting on me. That was just what I needed.

  “First off, I’m not nearly drunk enough to fall for a stupid line like that so keep dreaming buddy,” I said. “And second, my date will be here any moment now and I’m sure she wouldn’t appreciate it if I was with some random guy.”

  He got that hopeful look that I was so familiar with. The look that said he thought he was about to get the threesome that it seemed every heterosexual guy dreamed of. The threesome that they seemed to think every lesbian couple owed them for some reason. Stupid men and their stupid entitled attitudes walking through life.

  “I know what you’re thinking and it’s not gonna happen,” I said.

  Behind him I saw his barbarian fighter get hit one final time and he went flying across the screen in slow motion letting out a poorly sampled scream. The monitor flashed “GAME OVER” and another sampled voice said the same thing in a garbled shout.

  I smiled at the reminder of a time when video games couldn’t render everything so perfectly that you could almost mistake them for reality. That had all been a part of my childhood even though I was young enough that there was no way those things should’ve been part of my childhood if it wasn’t for an ancient mall arcade barely hanging onto life.

  “Forget it,” the guy said. “You can have the stupid machine. I’m going somewhere where I have a better fucking chance.”

  “Have fun,” I said, fixing hi with my best bubbly smile. I gave him a little wave as he shouldered past me and I moved up to the arcade machine and shivered as I put my hands down on the familiar old controls.

  Those controls were the same, but my hands had gotten a hell of a lot bigger since the last time I played. Still, it was like unexpectedly running into an old friend from when I was a little kid. I smiled as I watched the demo screen running.

  “Do you and the arcade cabinet need a moment alone?”

  I turned to see Hailey smiling as she carried two beers over and placed them on trays installed on the side of the arcade cabinet. Huh. I didn’t remember anything like that from the old days playing this game. Then again I hadn’t been old enough to drink.

  “What are you talking about?” I asked.

  “You were looking at this arcade cabinet the way I’m hoping you’ll be looking at me by the end of the night,” Hailey said.

  I winked. “Who’s to say I’m not looking at you like that right now?”

  “Trust me, I’ll know when I get a look like that. That was pretty fucking intense,” she said.

  “I have a lot of good memories playing this game,” I said. “I used to be pretty good when I was a kid. I could beat anyone who challenged me.”

  Hailey arched an eyebrow. “Really now? That sounds like a challenge to me.”

  “Maybe it is,” I said.

  “Want to make it interesting?” Hailey asked.

  “What did you have in mind?”

  The question was hardly necessary. I knew exactly what she had in mind. It was the same thing I had in mind.

  “How about loser has to kiss the winner?”

  I grinned at the almost-echo of what that guy had said. The big difference was that I wasn’t interested in that guy and boy was I interested in what Hailey was offering. I grinned and stuck my hand out. Hailey took it and we shook on the bet.

  “It’s a deal,” I said.

  There’s an ancient and wise piece of advice that floats around in geek culture: let the Wookiee win. I was also aware that there was a lesser known corollary to that rule when it came to dating. It was a good idea to let the hot girl you were interested in win every once in awhile if you were really good at a game.

  I briefly dated a girl at the beginning of college who thought she was really good at Smash Bros. She only learned otherwise when things started going south between us and I stopped pulli
ng my punches.

  Something told me Hailey wouldn’t be interested in being treated with kid gloves in a game though, and the rules were that the loser had to kiss the winner so I figured it was sort of a heads I win tails you lose situation. Which is to say I didn’t pull any punches. After a couple of rounds Hailey finally threw her hands up and took a long drink.

  “Okay, I get it,” she said. “You’re like some weird Jedi master when it comes to this game. Uncle.”

  “So where do I go to collect my winnings?” I asked.

  “They have some booths in the back of the bar for people who want a little quiet time. At least more quiet than it is out here with all the arcade machines,” Hailey said. She held out her arm. “Care to join me?”

  “Do I!”

  We settled into a booth in a back room where there was low music playing. It sounded like a jazz rendition of the Super Mario Bros. theme. I guess even back here they weren’t going to completely abandon the geeky gaming theme. The one thing that was blessedly absent? The beeps and boops of all those old games.

  I settled in next to Hailey and moved in close. She reached out and put an arm around me. We were close. So very close. I could lean in just a little and my lips would be pressing against hers.

  I searched my feelings in the pause before our lips pressed together. I was drawn to her. I needed her in the worst way. Yet at the same time I couldn’t help but feel that I should’ve felt weird about this. After all, I’d been dealing with the nagging feeling that I was cheating on Natalie at every step of the way.

  Only to my surprise that feeling wasn’t there anymore. No, the only thing I felt was a deep attraction to Hailey. There was nothing left for Natalie.

  What the hell. I needed to go with what my body was telling me. I leaned in and we were right back where we were earlier in the night at Hailey’s apartment sucking face like our lives depended on it.

  I lost track of time. It was one of those makeout sessions to end all makeout sessions. The sort where I completely lost track of time. I barely came up for air or to take a drink of my beer. The place wasn’t making much money off of us tonight because we were too distracted and drunk on each other to get drunk on the good stuff.