by Lulu Pratt
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.”
“That is insane,” I tell her.
“I had good reasons, there was a really cute guy who was super into Tekken and I wanted to impress him,” Harper says.
I laugh. “Of course,” I say.
Round two of the bout starts, and as I’m determined to at least make it three rounds for this bout instead of two, I have to tie her. I don’t play around this time. Instead I go in aggressive, hitting hard right away, smashing the buttons as fast as I can.
But Harper doesn’t want to tie me, she wants to take the lead, and I have a hard time keeping up with her. We both get into it, neither of us willing to give an inch to the other. Harper wants to beat me so that she only has to beat me one more time and of course I don’t want to go down so easily.
At the very last moment, I manage to knock out her character, and I almost throw the controller in my hands down onto the floor as I holler my victory. I look at Harper and I have the sneaking suspicion that at the last instant she might have actually let me win. I have to wonder if I might have secretly, in the back of my mind, let her win the first time around, or if I had just not paid attention enough because I hadn’t actually expected her to be that good.
Since she won a round and I won one, there’s one round more between our two characters for the final bout to decide the overall winner. I take a deep breath, crack my knuckles, and pick up my controller again as the third round screen comes up.
I don’t even think about Harper sitting next to me. I want to pull ahead. I pretend it’s the computer I’m up against and just go as hard as I can. I realize halfway through the match that I’m shouting, and that Harper’s shouting too. Both of us almost screaming at the TV as we both try to win the round, throwing everything we’ve got at the opponent, both of us treating this game way more seriously than we should be.
At the last moment, Harper wins again, barely getting in a punch to knock my character out before the clock stops. I groan in frustration. This time I actually do throw my controller down onto the floor and turn to face her.
“You cheated,” I say with a smile.
“I did not,” Harper counters, looking at me like I’m crazy.
“There is no way you could be this good even after, what, two years after graduating from college? Even if you became one of the best Tekken players in your dorm, two years later you shouldn’t be this good.”
“Why not? How much Tekken have you been playing in the army?” Harper puts down her controller and drinks the last of the coffee she brought up to my room with her.
“A lot, actually,” I tell her.
“That explains it,” Harper says.
“Explains what?” I look at her, confused, as the game transitions from the bout screen to the character selection screen.
“Why you’re so offended that I beat you,” Harper said, grinning.
“I’m not offended,” I smirk.
“No, you’re definitely offended the book-reading girl with the nerdy job beat you at your own game,” Harper said. “And I’m about to do it again.”
“Okay, but we have to change characters this time,” I say.
“Fine by me,” Harper says with a shrug.
We pick different characters and sett
le in for the next bout. I focus down, for some reason I just can’t bring myself to let Harper win, even though I know it doesn’t really matter where we go later. I don’t even have anywhere in mind. But I throw myself into the game nonetheless, determined to prove that I can beat her soundly at it.
The first round goes to me, and we’re even. The second round we’re both going at it full tilt, absolutely pounding on the controllers, and I can see Harper in the corner of my eye, leaning to the screen just like I am, shouting at her character just like I’m shouting at mine. We run out the clock, and it ends in a tie.
The final round is on us and I look at Harper. Her cheeks are lit up bright pink, her eyes are shining and she’s breathing heavy. All of a sudden all I can think about, even if it’s only for a second, is that she would look like that during sex. I push the thought out of my head as ruthlessly as I can and dive into the game.
We both go at it, and for a while it seems like we’re going to tie again, the clock counting down and neither one of us getting ahead. But I get a quick ‘in’ and knock a few health points off Harper’s character, and manage to dodge her next attack on me. I’m about to launch my final attack, to really knock her character out before the clock runs out, but I catch myself just a fraction of a second too late. I’m wide open.
Harper’s character catches me, and it’s one hit after another, with no space or time for me to block. I yell out as my hit points go down steadily until my character’s health bar matches hers, and then she’s got me trapped under another volley of hits. I’m out. I drop my controller and look at her with a sigh.
“Okay, so you pick where we’re going,” I say.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
HARPER POLSEN
I step out of my bathroom with a final check in the mirror. If Zane and I are going to try to get each other dates for the big party his parents are throwing, I want to look my best. Not that I’m all that concerned with getting a date. I’ll be going back to the city in a few days, and it’s not like anything would come from any date I did end up scoring.
But I want to look nice anyway. A little voice in my head suggests that it might actually be for Zane’s benefit, but I ignore it. I don’t want to think that I might be dressing up, doing my make-up, to attract a guy who until recently I never even remotely thought of as hot.
He’s practically your brother, he can’t be hot.
I grab one of the more casual dresses that I packed and hold it up to my body, looking in the mirror to make sure it goes with the way I did my hair and make-up. It looks great, and I know I can’t wear it to the party the next night anyway. It’s got a plunging neckline, but not too daring. I think that I can probably pull it off without too much scandal.
I pull the dress on, slip my feet into a pair of flats that go with it. There is no way that I’m going to wear heels, not if I don’t have to, and grab my purse. Mom and Dad are busy in the kitchen, making dinner. I told them when Zane and I finished our big Tekken tournament hours later, with me narrowly in the lead with one win more than him, that I was going to dinner with Zane to find ourselves dates.
I grin to myself as I step out through the front door and see Zane himself walking to the house. We’d kept playing the game even though I’d won the wager, betting other things along the way, whose car we’d take, who would be the designated driver, whatever it was we could bet to keep things interesting, down to a few desperate wagers for the party the next day.
After a while, we were too hungry and too bored of the game to keep going, so I’d left to get ready to go out.
“I have no idea why you want to go to Bill’s Tavern so bad,” Zane tells me as he walks up to the driveway.
“Why wouldn’t I? That place is awesome,” I tell him.
“It’s so stupid!” Zane shakes his head. “I would think a cultured city girl like you would want to hit up a real bar.”
“I have hit up many kinds of bars, and I happen to like Bill’s Tavern a lot,” I say tartly, making sure I have the keys to my car.
“Once a nerd, always a nerd,” Zane says, shaking his head again.
I see him hesitate a bit as he goes to climb into the passenger’s side. “Do not make that face,” I tell him. “I am an excellent driver.”
Zane gives me a dubious look, but gets into the car.
I drive us to the Tavern and we chat about the party the next day, about what a huge deal it’s going to be. The entire neighborhood is going to be there, as well as Zane’s parents’ friends from work, some of their college friends and members of the family. His parents’ ten-year anniversary had been almost as big a deal. They’d had the one party, the big blowout, without the preamble a couple of days before. I could only just remember it since we’d only been kids at the time.
“Admit it,” I say, as we chow down on our dinners with sides of beer.
“Admit what?”
I gesture around Bill’s Tavern in response to Zane’s question. “Admit that I chose a good place,” I say.
“It’s not awful, but I don’t think we’re going to find dates here,” Zane says.
“That’s a good point,” I admit, looking around.
We’re possibly two of the youngest people in the bar-restaurant, along with two other couples, and clearly we’re not going to get any dates from the couples.
“Maybe if we hang out for a bit, a younger crowd will start showing up,” Zane suggests.
“We’ll stay for another beer, maybe a shot, if we really want to be daring. Then we can go to a bar of your choice,” I suggest.
Zane grins. “Another beer, no shot. If there aren’t any other single people our own age to talk to, we’ll move on and get that shot somewhere else,” he counters.
I consider that and nod. There are two or three bars within walking distance of Bill’s Tavern, which is really more of a dinner spot anyway. In the worst-case scenario, we can get a cab if we get too tipsy to drive home.
“Did we ever agree on who was going to be the designated driver?” Zane asks.
I shake my head. “You kept insisting that I cheated, and demanding rematches,” I say.
“And then we moved onto something else,” Zane adds.
“Yep, so we’ll have to figure out which one of us is going to stay sober.”
“Maybe we could both take it easy?” Zane says, raises an eyebrow. “After all, there’s going to be drinking tomorrow night, too.”
“That’s a good point.” I sigh.
We look around the room and make up a story about the fellow patrons.
“You know, I just remembered something,” Zane says, cutting through my musings about an old man seated alone at the bar.
“What’s that?” I turn my attention back onto Zane.
I have to admit, even in a T-shirt and jeans — for once he’s not in an army T-shirt — he looks pretty damn good. Better than that, he looks damn hot.
“I know where I want to go instead.”
“You said you remembered something,” I point out.
“I remembered how, that year I took off before the army, there was that skinny dipping trip when you were home for spring break,” Zane explains.
“Oh God, that,” I say, shaking my head as I start to remember it too.
“You chickened out,” Zane smirks.
“I didn’t chicken out. I had other things to do that night,” I insist.
“You chickened out,” Zane counters.
“Whatever,” I say, rolling my eyes at him.
“Which makes me think we should go to the lake after this,” Zane says.
“Why? No one’s going to be there,” I say.
“We could buy a couple of beers on the way, hang out, sit around and drink,” Zane says.
“We’re not going to find dates there,” I point out.
“At this point I think we’ve both come to the conclusion we’re not looking for a date,” Zane counters with a smirk.
“I guess,” I say hesitantly.
But there’s a little jolt of heat working its way through me, and something about the alcohol makes the blood rush into my face.
“So shall we? I’ll pay our tab, and we can head out.”
I look at Zane for a long moment. “We split the tab, and then we’ll head out,” I say.
Zane looks like he’s going to argue the point, but he extends his hand and we shake, sealing the deal.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
ZANE LEWIS
Harper pulls her car up to the little cleared-out area next to the lake we’ve been coming to since we were old enough to swim, and I look at Harper.
“I still can’t believe you chickened out,” I say.
“I keep telling you I didn’t. I just had something to do that night,” Harper insists.
“Well, have you ever gone skinny dipping then? Maybe at that fancy university you went to?”
“I went the very next night, actually,” she tells me, smiling.
“What?” My eyes widen and I stare at her.
“The night after you and Julia and all the others went to the lake, I decided it was stupid of me never to go skinny dipping, so I went to the lake by myself,” Harper says.
“Thus ruining the entire point of going skinny dipping,” I say, shaking my head.
Harper rolls her eyes. “The point of skinny dipping is to go swimming naked,” she says.
“It’s to do that with other people,” I tell her. “The whole point is being with people you’re not entirely sure you want to see you naked. Like a cute guy, or that girl you like, or your friends. It’s about the rush of being a little bit scared you might get caught, or laughed at.”
“It’s to be naked in the water,” Harper insists.
“Did you ever go skinny dipping with someone?”
