She was staring at the screen, hands on the wheel. “In this situation, yes.”
“Got it, ma’am.”
The game started. Becca was horrible. She spent half of the first lap driving backward. When she managed to turn the car around, she was driving on the grass and running into buildings. She may have hit a person or two. Definitely a few mailboxes. It was physically painful for me to win each lap and not at least try to help her out but, like she said, chivalry is dead when it comes to gaming. So I finished that third lap with a smile on my face. I threw my fist in the air too. Just to show her how respectful and aware I was of her lack of talent.
“Jeez. You can tone it down a little,” she grumbled, staring at the screen showing the match replay. It was footage of her hitting a tree.
We moved on to the next game. It was a huge wheel divided into different sections, each with a prize amount. The jackpot was one thousand tickets and the smallest was five. I spun it first—I was shocked the wheel didn’t break because of how old it looked—and landed on one hundred. Becca went next. The arrow landed on five hundred. She pulled the tickets out happily, eyeing me the entire time with this smirk on her face, like she was making up for sucking at the racing game. I stuffed our tickets into my pocket and we moved on to the next game. This time, it was Skee-Ball. It was a large table with a ramp and holes in the upper half. Each had a different ticket amount. The point was to grab a ball, roll it across the table, and have it bounce into one of the different holes. The smaller the hole, the greater the prize.
“Let’s make this interesting,” I said, handing Becca the first ball. “If you get a ball in, you get to ask the other person a question. You said you wanted to get to know me better, right? Here’s your chance.”
“So this is like the Skee-Ball version of twenty questions?”
“Something like that, yeah.”
Becca nodded, squaring her shoulders and cracking her neck. “Let’s do this.” She rolled the first ball and into the hole it went. The smallest one too, right in the middle.
I whistled, watching her grin spread. “Impressive. Ask away.”
She sat on the edge of the ramp, glancing up at me. “What’s your connection with this place? You seem really close with Samson,” she said, nodding toward the counter.
“I worked here when I was fifteen, just for the summer,” I explained.
“But I thought your family . . .” Was rich, was what she meant but didn’t say. She looked uncomfortable, chewing on her lip.
I shrugged, gesturing for her to stand so I could take my turn. “My family is well off, sure. But this was my favorite place as a kid. It was the only real time my dad and I spent together that didn’t involve a football. So when I saw that Sam needed the help, I volunteered. He couldn’t pay me for most weeks so I just played the games for free and ate loads of popcorn. It was pretty sweet.” I rolled the ball, missed, and handed the next one to Becca. She was giving me that confused, who-are-you face again. “Your turn.”
She blinked, said, “Right,” and took the ball. When she rolled it, she missed.
My ball landed in the five-hundred-point hole next. “Favorite color?” I asked.
She thought about it for a second. “All of them. Undecided.” She rolled and scored. “Favorite food?”
“Burgers,” I said. “And fries.”
I rolled. Missed. Becca rolled. Scored.
“How old were you when you had your first kiss?” she asked.
“Thirteen. It was during recess and we both had braces.” I rolled again and scored this time. “Are you and your mom close?”
She smiled, bending to grab another ball. “Yeah. She’s my best friend.” Becca rolled and missed, passing me the next ball. I scored.
“What were you thinking before when I said I used to work here?” I asked. “You had this funny look on your face.”
Becca grabbed a ball and tossed it between two hands, her eyes following it. “Nothing. Just that, I don’t know, you’re different than I thought you’d be.”
“How so?”
“Like, you’re easy to talk to,” she began, “and attractive people are never easy to talk to. That’s a scientific fact.”
“You think I’m—”
“And you’re really nice,” she continued, ignoring me. “Working here and checking in on the place when Samson was sick. I mean, I kind of knew that already. Everyone at Eastwood always goes on about how nice you are and stuff. But it’s different, to see it firsthand. Am I rambling? I feel like I’m rambling.”
I was smiling by the time she finished talking.
“Not rambling,” I lied.
“Good.” She said it like she knew I was lying and picked up the next ball. She scored again. One hundred points. “Do you regret this?” she asked. “Our fake relationship.”
I didn’t even have to think about it. “No,” I said. “Not at all.”
It was starting to feel normal, being around Becca. Was it rude for me to be surprised by how much I was enjoying her company? Because I was enjoying it. I felt comfortable around her in this way I never had before. It was like we had skipped the beginning awkward phase when you first meet someone and aren’t entirely sure if you can act like yourself around them. I guess jumping straight into dating could do that to two people. With Becca, I felt like I could be myself. There was this kindness about her and this intelligence too, like she understood more than she let on. It was nice.
“Me either.” She said it shyly. It reminded me of how she looked that day in the hall after I kissed her.
I picked up the last ball and missed. It sucked too, because I had the perfect question. I’d save it for later.
It took us an hour to go through all our tokens. When we had, I bought more. We stayed in the arcade until we couldn’t hold any more tickets in our pockets or hands. I started looping mine through my belt and they trailed behind when I walked. Becca found this hilarious, picking off a few when she thought I wasn’t looking and adding them to her own stash. When we were done, we combined our tickets for a total of two thousand and traded them in for three prizes: a red plastic ring with a rose on it, a pack of sour gummy worms, and a stuffed blue whale.
Becca took the ring, we shared the worms, and the whale was undecided.
We were sitting outside on the parking lot’s curb, knee to knee, under the sun. It was cooler now, and the leaves on the trees were blowing in the breeze. Becca’s hair was whipping around her face, constantly going into my eyes. After I ate the last gummy worm, she hauled out the brown paper bag—where had she kept it this entire time?—and placed it on my knee.
“What’s the verdict?” I asked, eyeing the bag. “Did you have fun today? Am I allowed to finally eat whatever that is?”
She laughed, pulled her knees to her chest, and said, “You can eat them.”
I grabbed the bag, stood up, did a little victory dance, then sat back down and ripped the bag open. There were four little balls inside, all covered in white sugar. They were the same ones I had bought for my mom and, holy shit, they smelled incredible. I reached in and grabbed one. By some miracle, it was still warm. How was that possible?