Conventionally Yours (True Colors)
Page 14
The interior of the building was bigger than it looked from the outside, sort of a big, cavernous warehouse filled with flashing lights and bright machines. All the classics I remembered from kid birthday parties—Pop-A-Shot, Whac-A-Mole, a big wheel to spin for prizes, a photo booth, and more. And rows of arcade video-game machines, including several iterations of Pac-Man, Donkey Kong, Street Fighter, and Joust along with a line of pinball machines. In the rear of the building, a Tilt-A-Whirl-type ride jockeyed for space with a mini carousel for little kids, two flight simulators, and a driving game. Out back, there were go-karts and a small oval track.
It being early afternoon on a weekday, there weren’t many other patrons—a couple of kids out driving the go-karts, bored moms sitting in the shade, some teens on the video-game machines, and a few little kids being chased by a young caretaker. One almost ran into us, but Alden gently redirected her back to the high-school-aged babysitter.
“Careful. No escaping!” He laughed, his voice surprisingly gentle. It really was remarkable how much more patience he had for kids than for adults. Two fingers in her mouth, the little girl smiled, clearly taken with Alden. He gave her a little wave before we continued to the counter where a guy as ancient as Mary’s dog greeted us.
“How many tokens can I do you for?” The man sized us up with bleary eyes. The long counter had a register at one end and a wall of prizes behind the clerk, mainly assorted stuffed animals and plush figures, with more in the cases under the counter. He pointed to a special on the board in front of the register—two sodas, popcorn, and a hundred tokens. “This is our best deal.”
“Do we need a hundred tokens?” Alden frowned at me. “She said it would only be a few hours. How many tokens can we go through anyway?”
“You’d be surprised. And car stuff has a way of always getting delayed. If we have leftover coins, we can just give them to a kid as we leave.” The way I saw it was that this was my last splurge before I had to pay my half of the tire repair. I’d load up on free breakfast in the morning and cheap snack food to save money later. I passed the clerk some cash before Alden could talk me out of it.
“You got lunch,” I said when he pulled out his wallet. “Let me get this.”
“Okay.” He didn’t seem too thrilled, but he followed me to the end of the long counter where I accepted our bucket of tokens and vouchers for the food.
“You’re strangely happy,” he observed as we passed through the old-style metal gate to enter the main part of the arcade. “You play a lot of games as a kid or something?”
“Oh yeah. The convenience store that I told you about, the one I was allowed to bike to, had some old-school games in the back. And there was a pizza place in town with a ton of games that everyone used for their birthday parties. So many parties. Didn’t you have that too?”
“Some. I…uh…didn’t get a ton of invitations.”
“Damn.” My heart squeezed. I got that Alden could be a little prickly, but every little kid deserved a crowd of friends. “Well, we can make up for lost time. You pick first.”
“Okay.” Alden studied the offerings as though there might be a quiz on the layout later, finally pointing to the driving game. “I know we’ve been driving for days—”
“Not video-game style.” Happy, I led the way over to the machines. “And not head-to-head.”
“Yeah, it’s a two-player game.” The way he said it slowly made it clear he hadn’t had a lot of takers to play those with him before.
“Put the tokens in,” I ordered him with a grin. “And if you’re lucky, I’ll even do a rematch once I kick your ass the first time.”
My competitive side wouldn’t let me go easy on him, even if I did feel bad for all his childhood hurts, and I didn’t think he’d want that anyway. He was every bit as competitive as me, and I liked that about him. Liked that I could talk trash and not offend him.
“Who says you’re winning?” he said as he took a seat next to me.
“I’ve seen you drive. You need me to show you the accelerator?”
“Big talk. I’ll have you know I have excellent reflexes. And maybe I took notes yesterday at the Speedway.”
“Bring it on.” The game started up, and he chose a bright-red racer after we agreed on a urban setting backdrop. The tinny music and sound effects brought back a flood of memories, and it wasn’t hard to remember how to drive like a maniac and dodge obstacles, laughing as Alden did the same, giving me a much better race than I’d expected. I still won, but it was damn close.
“About that rematch?” Alden’s brown eyes sparkled, like sun shining through honey.
“Totally.” I loaded us up with more tokens, switching it up by picking a slick yellow roadster. Knowing that he was better at this than I’d assumed made my muscles tighter, made me concentrate that much harder, trying to outrun him. And it looked like I’d succeeded when at the last second a line of barrels came rolling toward me and I couldn’t swerve fast enough. I wiped out, leaving Alden to zoom to the finish line.
“I win!” The look of pure elation on Alden’s face was one that I wanted to memorize. Not photograph and share with the others, but map for myself to take out and examine later—the joy and openness there utterly intoxicating. I couldn’t help grinning back. His nose wrinkled. “What? You’re looking at me weird.”
“Nothing. You’re cute when you win, that’s all. Good game, man.” A saner person would probably not admit the cute part—or at least try to take it back once the words escaped—but I didn’t. The way I figured it, Alden was cute, true facts, and he probably hadn’t heard that very often in his life, which was a damn shame.
“I’m not cute.” His cheeks stained pink. “And it’s all about anticipating disaster. Trust me. I know how to see bad things coming and duck.”
“Yeah, well it was still impressive.” I clapped him on the shoulder. “Let’s try a different game now.”
“Your turn to pick.”
“Pop-A-Shot. Love that one.”
“I suck at sports involving balls.”
“There’s a joke there, but I’ll be nice.” I laughed as I led the way to the row of mechanical basketball hoops with flashing lights over each hoop. “And it’s not a sport. Just put the ball in the hole. Easy. I’m gonna win us a friend for the goat. Watch me.”
“Like you need a bigger fan club.” But Alden didn’t sound particularly put out as he watched me feed tokens to the machine that delivered a row of small basketballs to the well in front of me.
“You’re not going to try?”
“Like I said, me and balls… Oh, never mind.” He seemed to realize at the last second how he’d sounded, going from mildly pink to beet red as he looked away. “You have at it.”
I easily made my first couple of baskets, earning bonus balls as the clock ticked down, increasing my score. I played a couple of fast rounds, earning an impressive stripe of tickets and a round of mock applause from Alden.
“Now, you need some tickets toward our quest to make the goat less lonely. I worry about him, as an only kid.” I laughed, expecting Alden to join in, but only got a quizzical look in response. “Get it? Only kid?”
“I get it now.” Alden shook his head, but a smile tugged at the corners of his mouth. “You enjoy being ridiculous, don’t you?”
“Sometimes.” I shrugged. “Life’s too short and unpredictable to take seriously. Might as well have fun.”
“Well, you’re good at it.” He walked over to the Whac-a-Mole. “I never saw the point of this one.”
“Stress relief.” I handed him one of the mallets. “Come on, Mr. Reflexes, show me what you’ve got.”
I took the spot next to him, and we both got way too invested in smacking the mechanical creatures, whooping and hollering until we both got more tickets for our efforts.
“My score is higher,” Alden pointed out.
“Haven’t we been squashed together enough?”
Not nearly enough. I tried to push that thought away. “Come on. Have you ever tried it?”
He shook his head so seriously I wasn’t sure we were still talking about photo booths, but I didn’t need any further encouragement to drag him over and shove enough tokens into the machine to get us a strip of four pictures. We squeezed in, him in front of me again. With the curtain drawn, the temptation to touch him, to pull him close became almost unbearable. My hands didn’t seem to know where to go, hovering over his torso and thighs, refusing to listen to my command to mind their own business. Finally, the urge won as I gave into the impulse to rest my hand on his flat stomach, pulling him more against me. His scent filled all my senses, making my body hum like a space heater, warmth zooming everywhere.
The bare skin of his neck seemed to beckon me, made it too easy to lean in and—
“Do we make goofy faces or what?”
I pushed the start button hard enough to make the booth shake. “Yeah. Get silly.”
Silly was good. Silly would allow me to regain a grip on my sanity, remember all my very good reasons for not doing something truly ridiculous like kissing Alden’s neck. But man, how I wanted to.
Chapter Eighteen
Alden
We could have been squished into a file drawer and possibly had more available space than in the microscopic photo booth. Conrad’s hand on my abdomen seemed to burn a path straight to my brain, wiping out essential neurons. He said to be silly, but all I could focus on was his big hand, right there, pressing me tighter against him. I made myself smile as the camera flashed, hoping like heck that my inner turmoil wouldn’t be apparent in the pictures. This was probably how Conrad acted with all his friends. No way could I let him know how this was affecting me.
His breath was hot on my neck, warm prickles, more sparks of heat. I shifted and he inhaled sharply right before the final picture. He was so solid behind me, and the temptation to relax into him was almost overwhelming.
Almost.
I could still hear voices outside, kids laughing, parents calling after them. Despite how it felt, this wasn’t actually a private cocoon. And even with the curtain drawn, my muscles were tense with worries about misstepping—what would happen if I did sink into him? Let my head tip back the way it seemed to want to? What would happen next? That was where my brain kept short-circuiting. I prided myself on my ability to use probabilities and statistics to make predictions, and right then it seemed about fifty-fifty whether he would laugh and push me away or hold me tighter, inhale like that again, maybe…
No. I couldn’t let myself even daydream about it. This was Conrad being nice. Friendly. I couldn’t risk messing that up, risk a terminal case of awkward derailing our trip and distracting me from my reasons for being here.
“Let’s see the pictures.” My voice came out low and husky, something wrong with my vocal cords.
“Yeah. Let’s do that.” Conrad seemed to have the same issue, voice rough as he inhaled and exhaled like we were at a yoga class.
I exited first, grabbing the strip as the machine spit it out.
“Oh, wow.” Conrad peered over my shoulder, still way too close. “Not silly at all.”
No, they weren’t funny pictures in the slightest. Instead, we looked…happy. Like my-oldest-sister’s-wedding-pictures happy—like a couple radiating the kind of affection that seemed to transcend paper and ink. It was…unsettling. Like seeing my deeply hidden private wishes exposed for public consumption, leaving me raw and vulnerable.
“Want me to snap a copy of it?” Conrad asked, still looking himself. I wondered what he saw, if I was hallucinating about the happiness in our eyes.
“We don’t need to bother the others with a picture right now.” I tried to sound decisive, but when I went to tuck the strip of pictures in my pocket, Conrad plucked it from me.
“I want to keep it anyway.”
Well, so did I, a private souvenir to obsess over later, and not inevitably lost to the laundry as it would be with Conrad, but I let him keep it, not wanting to give away too much by taking it back.
“What next?” I asked, my voice somewhat back to normal.
“Pinball.” Humming some tune under his breath, Conrad made his way to the row of shiny games along one of the side walls. “I wish our pizza place had had some of these instead of just kid games.”
Something he’d said earlier poked at my brain. “You’re going back to that job, right? Like they gave you vacation time?”
Conrad was silent while he fed tokens to the pinball machine, which made it light up and the music start. “Hang on.”
I almost forgot the question as I watched him play, the way his whole body seemed to vibrate with focus and energy, shoulders flexing, eyes narrowing, same hand that had been on me working the knobs and buttons. It was the weirdest thing in the world to get turned on from—right up there with my thing for the latest Captain Kirk and about as unrealistic.
Finally, the turn came to an end and I asked again, both as distraction from getting worked up watching him and because I couldn’t let it drop. “So about that job? They’re holding it for you?”
Conrad sighed. “Not exactly.”
“Not exactly how?” Tilting my head, I studied him carefully, noting the rare blush on his cheeks and his skittish gaze.
“Listen, if I tell you something, can you promise to not tell the others?”
“Yes.” Agreeing was easy. I hardly gossiped with the rest of our play group as it was, and being singled out for a secret—something that almost never happened—was too good to pass up.
“The grocery store let me go right before we left. And I…uh…” He rubbed the back of his neck. “I might have quit the pizza place when they wouldn’t give me time off. They might rehire me once they have a chance to miss me. Or I’ll find something else. But it won’t matter. Because I’m going to win.”
No, I was going to win, but even I knew better than to point that out right then. “Well, at least you’ve got your place with Professor Jackson right? She won’t kick you out while you find something else.”
“Yeah. About that…”
“Not that either?” My mouth falling open, I gaped at him.
“She’s selling her house. Like I said, it won’t matter when I win. And I’ve got places to stay. Jasper’s mom said I’m welcome to their couch anytime.”
“Couch surfing is not the same thing as having a home.” It was on the tip of my tongue to volunteer my own couch, which didn’t see very many visitors but was acceptably long enough for overly tall persons like Conrad, but then his face shifted from sheepish to something closer to one of his old sneers.
“Says the guy who lives with his mothers.”
Fine. Let him be homeless. See if I cared. Except I did. Way more than I wanted to, and as he gave the machine more tokens, my gut churned. I didn’t like him operating without a safety net, didn’t like knowing he had literally everything riding on this tournament.
“Conrad—”
“In a second.” He waved me off as the game started, giving his all to managing the little bouncing balls, racking up points, and making me ridiculously frustrated that he could be more attentive to pinball than to his future. I wished that I knew him better—knew what to say to make him focus, to make him see the seriousness of the situation without pissing him off. But I didn’t, and the tension between us continued to simmer, a toxic stew.
But maybe there was something to staying quiet as slowly, his shoulders relaxed, his face softening, his eyes less angry. As the machine flashed with a new high score, he turned back to me, his voice calmer. “You said you wo
uldn’t tell. That means no trying to solve my problems either. I just need to win. It’s no biggie.”
“The probability of that is less than optimal.”
“But it’s not zero.” He gave me a lopsided smile that didn’t reach his eyes. “You want a turn?”
“No, thank you.” No way was I following his high-scoring performance, and no way was I risking this very tentative peace we had going.
“Okay. I’m going to use the vouchers for our drinks and popcorn then. That worked up a sweat.”
He wasn’t lying—little beads of moisture clung to his temple, and I had to shove my hands into my pocket before I could do something stupid like brush them away. We made our way to the small snack bar where the same clerk fetched us popcorn of indeterminate age, a soda for Conrad, and water for me. There were tables outside, under an awning, and we carried the food there.
The go-kart track was quiet, leaving us alone on the patio area. I was painfully aware of the purse of Conrad’s lips as he chugged his soda through a straw, the flex of his throat, the satisfaction in his eyes. The more he drank, the more I was desperate for one of the kids to run outside, aliens to land, planets to collide, anything to distract me from my sudden obsession with his mouth.
A thousand scenarios raced through my mind, each more improbable than the last, and I had to force my mind away from things that weren’t ever happening. Better to focus on things I could control. Like making sure Conrad wasn’t left in the lurch after the contest.
“I bet Professor Tuttle could help—”
“No solving my problems.” Conrad glared at me. “The various professors have already done enough. I made the mess out of my life. I’ll fix it.”
“You did? I thought you said your parents—”
“It’s complicated. Really complicated and I don’t want to go into it, not now when we’re having fun.”
“We are?” I wasn’t sure anyone had ever called me fun before.
“Well, yeah. I mean, I wish the tire hadn’t blown, but this place is kind of awesome. And once you’re not trying to kick my ass in Odyssey, you’re not bad company. Plus, it’s nice to not think about the tournament and all the other pressures for a while.”