“We could play video games again.”
I thought about the last time we raced, then recalled Alfie laughing as he passed me at the last second. I swallowed the lump in my throat.
“Not today. I’m still trying to catch up on my sleep.”
“Tomorrow?”
I pulled the elastic out of my ponytail and shook my hair free. I hadn’t put on a lick of makeup earlier that morning. Maybe all I’d needed was to be an absolute asshole to Tristan and I would have had him wrapped around my finger.
“We’ll see.”
Aida sat on the front porch, rocking a wee bundle. I took that as my excuse to tell Tristan I’d talk to him later in the week and sent him on his way. I refrained from adding, “Scat.”
Before he put on his helmet, he bumped my shoulder with his fist, like he might a little sister. “See ya soon.”
As soon as he’d disappeared around the corner, I climbed the steps, and a sigh transformed into a sob. Then I began to ugly cry.
Aida said, “That’s how I feel whenever I see Tristan, too.”
I laughed through my blubbering. I took the other rocker and dropped my face into my hands, still suffering the aftershocks. My shoulders shook, and Aida reached over to rub my back. “It’s okay, Sierra. It will be okay.”
I wanted to believe her. I wanted to let go of this rage even yoga hadn’t diffused. “I miss him.”
“So go to him.”
“It’s not that easy.”
“He’s right down the street. What could be so hard?”
I twisted my head around to look at her. “The guy I fell in love with doesn’t exist.”
Her eyes rolled. It was subtle but I caught it. “Such drama. The guy you fell in love with is alive and well and probably waiting for you to go talk to him.”
If she wasn’t holding a baby, I might have been tempted to punch her. How dare she trivialize a serious character flaw? She’d hated on Tristan for the exact same crimes.
“The guy down the street is a liar. At least when I thought Tristan had pulled that prank, I’d believed he’d done it to beat me in a contest. It hadn’t been so personal. But what Alfie did? How’d he even manage to pull it off?”
“Marco figures he set it up on a timer and couldn’t stop it while you were onstage without you seeing him.”
I stared at her, blinking. At least she’d made me stop crying. “You two are analyzing this like it’s a common crime drama?”
“It’s fascinating. Marco has this one theory—”
I held up a hand. “Enough.” I couldn’t believe she was casually discussing the literal trigger of my current trauma.
* * *
On Monday, Tristan showed up at my office, uncharacteristically sporting a business suit. He looked like the prettiest version of Link if The Legend of Zelda were set in a modern-day corporate America.
“To what do I owe the pleasure?” I asked.
He leaned against my desk. “I ran into that guy who works here at the bar the other night. He said I should come in.”
Marco had invited him? “Do you need me to show you the way?”
“That would be great.”
I led him down the hall. When I knocked on the doorframe, Marco startled awake.
“You wanted to see Tristan?”
“What?” He rubbed his eyes, then stood and held out his hand to shake. “Oh, hey.”
I left them to talk, a little pissed off that neither had warned me in advance.
But I turned my focus to setting up the demo for my final chance to audition. In the conference room, as I loaded up the video, Reynold entered, trailed by Tristan.
“Um.” I blinked, trying to understand what was happening. “Why is he here?”
Reynold tilted his head toward Tristan. “We were talking in my office when I got the reminder.”
Tristan grimaced. “Sorry, you misunderstood. My meeting was with Reynold.”
How? I recalled Reynold at the bar, praising Tristan’s performance. Had he approached Tristan on Friday? What was happening?
As I returned to the podium, my thigh clipped the conference table, and I dropped the notecards in a fanned-out pile at Reynold’s feet. Tristan knelt to pick them up and handed them to me in no order at all.
“Give me a minute,” I said, sorting them. At least they were numbered.
Reynold moved to the other side of the conference table and leaned against the window.
The video started, and I said, “Capture Castle . . . I mean Castle Capture is a multimedia online . . . I mean a multiplayer online role-playing game.”
Fuck.
I sighed. “Can I start that over? I’m a little frazzled.”
Reynold lifted an eyebrow, and I realized he thought I was having a crisis of nerves again. It wasn’t that at all.
I squeezed my fists together. “Castle Capture is a multiplayer online role-playing game in the style of Final Fantasy.”
There. This would be easy if I didn’t overthink it. I just needed to get rolling.
Reynold stopped me. “Could you add a little more personality to it?”
“Personality?”
“Pizzazz.” He lifted his shoulder from the wall and looked from me to Tristan. “I have an idea.”
I didn’t think I was going to like this.
“Let’s see how Tristan does.”
No. I hadn’t spent weeks preparing to hand it over to fucking Tristan. “What? Reynold. You’re supposed to be letting me do this.”
“I’m just curious. Tristan tells me he has sales experience. I want to see him try it.”
Sales experience? “I thought you worked in graphic design.”
I glared at him but held the cards out, fighting back a childish urge to fling them in his face.
“Just read them?” Tristan shrugged. He didn’t care. He hadn’t been working toward this goal for the past six weeks. So of course he began right off with his charming charismatic smile even though he read exactly what I’d written, which was, “Castle Capture is a MMORPG.”
I snorted when he tried to say the acronym as a word. But as he continued, I had to admit he sounded like a natural-born salesman. I’d worked so hard, and Tristan might waltz in here and take my dream away from me. How dare he even consider presenting my demo?
I got up. “Would you both excuse me?”
Reynold had the nerve to ask, “Don’t you want to learn how to present yourself better?”
“Actually, I wanted you to have a bit more confidence in me.”
“Suit yourself.”
I headed to my office, feeling blindsided. Would Reynold hire him just to demo the game? It made me laugh to imagine Tristan’s disappointment to get hired as a salesman rather than an artist after all that maneuvering.
As I passed by Reynold’s office, I took a gander in, hoping to find the bag Tristan always had on him. It sat open on a chair, and I stared at it. It would be so wrong to snoop in his things, but then again, hadn’t he done the same to me? Was turnabout fair play? And wasn’t he betraying me right this minute in the conference room with Reynold? Even after I’d invited him to my yoga class? I was such an idiot.
Besides, I was only interested in one thing. Sure enough, his notebook was tucked inside.