Chapter 3 - Video Games
Jack hated company happy hours on principle.
They were loud, overpriced, and full of people performing friendship like it was part of their job description. Everyone clustered in tight little circles, shouting over music that wasn’t good enough to justify the volume. Someone had already taken their badge off and clipped it to their waistband like it was a personality.
He’d said yes this time only because Penelope asked with a voice that dared him not to.
“You coming tonight?” she’d asked, leaning on the side of his desk, breath smelling faintly like those tiny oranges she hoarded. “Or are you gonna fake a calendar invite again?”
He scoffed. “That was one time.”
She raised an eyebrow. “You color-coded it.”
“It was a deeply important fake meeting.”
She’d just smiled, slow and smug. “So… I’ll see you there?”
Which was how he ended up here, posted at the bar with a sweating beer bottle, trying not to look like he wanted to set the fire alarm off just to get out early. His chair fit fine in the space–he’d already done the quiet geometry in his head, found the spot where he wouldn’t get bumped by a backpack or trapped by a barstool–but he could still feel the room’s slight, constant pressure. People shifting around him without realizing they were shifting around him.
He watched the door once. Twice. Told himself he wasn’t.
Penelope showed up twenty minutes in, cheeks flushed from the cold, hair still a little damp at the ends like she’d half-run there straight out of the shower. She saw him across the bar and lit up like a bulb. Not subtle. Not performative. Just–bright.
“Please tell me you’re not about to Irish goodbye,” she said, sliding in beside him like this was her assigned spot.
Jack handed her the better of the two drinks he’d ordered. “I have class.”
She took a sip, winced. “Barely. This tastes like if beer had anxiety.”
“Yeah,” he said. “I panicked and ordered ‘something light.’ It’s basically carbonated disappointment.”
She leaned her shoulder against the bar, close enough that their arms brushed. “You look miserable. I’m glad I caught you before you faked your own death.”
“I wouldn’t fake it,” he said. “I would make it believable. There would be a note.”
“A color-coded note,” she teased, leaning over to bump his shoulder.
“Obviously.”
They didn’t even pretend to mingle after that. Penelope would tilt her head toward someone, let them talk for thirty seconds, then drift right back into Jack’s orbit like he was gravity. He didn’t move away when she did it. He didn’t even pretend to.
At one point, someone from HR wandered over and tried to insert themselves into the conversation with a bright, desperate smile.
“Oh my god, you guys,” the woman said, laughing too early. “What are you talking about?”
Penelope blinked, deadpan. “Tax fraud.”
Jack nodded. “Light tax fraud. Social. Nothing major.”
The HR woman laughed again–higher this time, uncertain–and tried for a pivot. “So anyway, we’re thinking about doing a team–”
“Escape room?” Penelope guessed.
“Yeah!” HR said, relieved.
Jack leaned in slightly. “No.”
Penelope added, sweetly, “I would rather eat my own shoe.”
HR smiled like she’d been slapped with a wet towel and retreated after another few minutes of references and inside jokes she couldn’t keep up with.
“You’re gonna get me written up for hostile banter,” Penelope muttered once she was gone.
Jack bumped her arm with his elbow. “Worth it.”
They left after an hour–Penelope tossing a too-loud goodbye over her shoulder like she was running for office, Jack coasting behind her in the slipstream. The crowd thinned as they hit the sidewalk, the noise falling away into city hum.
She slowed without looking back. Not enough to be obvious–just enough that he stayed right there at her shoulder instead of behind her.
It felt… aligned. Like walking next to him was the point. Like she’d done it without thinking and her body had already decided it was right.
The air outside was colder than it had any right to be. Jack adjusted his jacket, fingers hooking under the front of his wheels to pull his sleeves down, and she watched him for half a second too long–how automatic it all was, how he moved like the chair was just… him. Then she forced her eyes forward like she hadn’t just stared at his hands like a freak.
“My place is like five minutes from here,” she said, like she was offering a neutral fact about traffic patterns. “Wanna come over?”
He looked over, caught off guard.
“I’ve got snacks,” she added quickly. “Better beer. And I just got a real Nintendo 64 from my cousin that I have no idea how to set up.”
He narrowed his eyes. “Is this a cry for help disguised as an invitation, or an invitation disguised as a cry for help?”
She considered. “Yes.”
“Okay,” he said, like he wasn’t smiling. “Lead, chaos goblin.”
Her apartment was exactly what he’d expected and somehow better–cozy and chaotic, a too-soft velvet sofa, low warm lighting, a rug that looked like it had survived multiple breakups. Art climbed the walls in mismatched frames, and a serious bar cart glinted in the corner like it was always almost cocktail hour. Nothing matched, everything was intentional, and it all smelled faintly like good candles and coffee.
Penelope kicked a pile of magazines off one end of the couch to make space and didn’t apologize for the mess.
He liked that. The no-performance of it. The fact that she didn’t do the thing people did where they scrambled and made jokes like their home needed to be forgiven.
Jack rolled in, checked the doorway clearance out of habit, and angled toward the couch. He didn’t say anything about the transfer–didn’t narrate it, didn’t make it A Thing. He just popped his brakes, braced his hands, and moved with practiced efficiency. Fist to cushion, shift, lift, land. Then he reached down and lined his legs up, angled toward her with the same calm, matter-of-fact motion, like tidying the last detail.
Penelope clocked all of it and pretended she didn’t. Or tried to. She kept moving like if she stayed in motion she wouldn’t have to think about how intimate it felt to watch him settle himself into her space.
They ate chips straight from the bag and drank her weird fruit beer while the console loaded, a low hum under their chatter. Jack was ninety percent sure it would burst into flames or open a portal.
“This feels illegal,” he said, eyeing the cartridge like it might bite him.
“It’s nostalgia,” Penelope said. “It’s a controlled substance.”
“Okay, Mario Kart,” she announced, untangling two controllers like she was defusing a bomb. “Winner gets bragging rights. Loser buys lunch tomorrow.”
He narrowed his eyes. “You think I won’t absolutely smoke you just to make you spend money?”
She shot him a look. “You are constitutionally incapable of letting me win at anything.”
Jack leaned in a little. “Pen, I am extremely petty. Don’t test me.”
They played for two hours.
She kicked his ass, mostly. He accused her of cheating. She told him to stop being fragile.
At one point she got so into it she was holding the controller like a real steering wheel, half-kneeling on the sofa to lean into his space and “block” him. He laughed and shoved at her hip with his forearm to push her away; she shoved right back, palm to his shoulder, knocking him sideways into the cushions.
He looked personally thrilled. “Unbelievable. Does it make you feel big? Assaulting the disabled?”
“Enormous,” she said without missing a beat. “Thanks for asking.”
She threw a blue shell at him with absolute malice.
By the time they collapsed back into the cushions–her sprawled in the corner with one leg thrown across the sofa, his knees angled toward her–something in the room had tipped sideways. The game hummed on the menu screen, music looping soft and tinny, but neither of them even looked at the controllers again.
Jack rested his arm along the back of the couch, fingers brushing the edge of the blanket she’d tossed there earlier. Not touching her. Just… there. Close. Like he’d placed his hand in the possibility of it.
“You ever think about what people at work think?” he asked.
She turned her head on the cushion. “About what?”
He hesitated. “About us.”
Penelope thought a second. “Probably think we’re plotting something.”
“We are plotting something.”
“Exactly.”
He kept his gaze on the TV for a second longer than necessary, then looked back at her.
“You don’t think it’s weird?” he said. “That we hang out. Like this.”
She shifted, rolling onto her side so she was facing him fully. Her hair slid across the cushion, and his eyes tracked it for a beat before he caught himself.
“No,” she said. “Do you?”
He exhaled through his nose, then gave a tiny shrug.
“No,” he admitted. “Not with you. Just… in general. People get weird about it sometimes.”
“What, because of your chair?”
“Mm,” he went on, “If a woman’s hanging out with me, everyone suddenly becomes a body language expert. It’s either ‘aww that’s nice, she’s being so kind,’ or they act like she’s…confused. Like she wandered into the wrong movie.”
Penelope stared at him, then made a face. “God. That’s so–”
“I know,” he said, a half-laugh in his voice. Like it was easier to joke than to admit it still stung sometimes.
“Well,” she said, shifting closer just enough to pluck the controller out of his lap, “I am nice to you.”
He waited.
“And I am confused,” she added, balancing on one foot, close enough that her knee brushed his thigh. “But mostly because you put sour cream on nachos under the cheese like a sociopath.”
He laughed, something softening in his face. “It keeps it from getting warm.”
She landed back beside him and leaned her head on the couch cushion next to his elbow, close enough that her hair tickled his arm. Close enough that he could’ve moved his hand an inch and touched her.
He didn’t.
But he did let his arm relax, like he’d been holding himself slightly rigid and didn’t realize it until now.
“Hey,” she added, softer but still her, “you don’t have to think about other people when you’re with me.”
He didn’t say anything.
But she felt it–the way his body eased, the way his breath changed, how he let his arm slide a little lower on the couch. Not quite touching her. Just closer. Like he was letting himself be where he was.
He looked at her then, like he was trying to figure something out. Not about the room. About her.
“You okay?” she asked, voice light but edged with real curiosity.
Jack tilted his head, eyes tracking her face. “Are we doing a bit,” he asked, “or are we having a moment?”
Penelope’s smile twitched, softer at the edges.
“Both,” she said.
And she didn’t pull away.
And he didn’t, either.
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