Hurk.
Just impale me, I guess.
Managing a shaky smile, I push up my glasses and keep fiddling with the petal. “Y-you think?”
“Yeah.” His voice lowers. “Don’t marry Pyro, though.”
Because my heart’s already broken into a zillion splinters over the idea Samson thinks I’ll marry someone else, I ask, “Why?”
“He’s…” Samson leans his head back, looking at the ceiling. “…loud.”
He also goes on periodic month-long adventurer campaigns once you marry him and he determines that you are capable ofprotecting the Ridge in his absence, thus leaving you to tend the farm by yourself and have secret not-quite-adulterous—because the game isn’t coded to allow it—interactions with your true love next door.
I ease myself fully onto the bed, sitting against a heart-shaped pillow beside Samson. “What about…Slate?”
Disgust wrinkles his nose. “Also loud.” His attention cuts toward me. “Probably louder. The people in the Ridge aren’t the only ones you can consider. There are matchmaking services right here in the city, and you can say how you want someone interested in farm life, assuming you want to stick around in the Ridge itself, not move out here.”
I am going to cry. “Is that…so?”
He nods. “I briefly considered it, but I never could quite feel comfortable around even the people I knew the most, so I figured introducing a stranger to my oddities would be cruel, especially if that stranger were someone I was supposed to grow to love.”
I am crying. Just not literally. Swallowing hard, I whisper, “That’s…really sad. You must have been so lonely to consider a matchmaking service.”
“I got used to it.”
“I’m sorry. That’s a horrible thing to get used to.”
He shakes his head, faintly smiles as he takes another sip to finish off his wine. “It’s okay. Even your game understood I wasn’t particularly lovable.”
Horror stricken, I lose every word I could possibly say.
Rubbing his neck, Samson sets his glass aside and rises. “I’m gonna get ready for bed.”
“R-right. Me too.”
Together, we brush our teeth in the bathroom, then separately we wash up. He lets me go first, which means I’malready snuggled up in bed and talking myself down off a ledge when he emerges—shirtless—from the bathroom.
“Ready for the lights?” he asks, standing at the switch that turns off the gemstones currently gleaming in glass cages overhead.
Dumbly, I nod, and the world darkens, leaving nothing but streetlight to stream in and caress Samson’s form as he approaches the bed.
Why hasn’t he said anything about theonebed? Is this normal here? Does the absence of sexism make the concept of a man and woman sharing a bed something other than the illicit activity I consider it to be? Does he just sincerely and completely not think of me in any of the ways I think of him?
I wish I could sneak by the window with my journal and whisper all this panic to it. It would metaphorically roll its eyes at me and explain something about the culture dynamics here that would help settle my bleeding heart.
Samson and I have been playing husband and wife all day.
Casually.
I guess I just didn’t realize exactly how deeply casual it was for Samson.
He is so good at it.
Sogood.
My breaths shorten as he pulls back the covers and changes the gravity in the bed. There is no feasible way in the world I do not roll into his gravity tonight, so I guess I’ll be spending the next few hours gripping the side of the bed for dear life and trying not to cry.
Trying not to cryis an exercise I am particularly bad at, if I’m being honest.
