“Get dressed,” I said, standing. “Real clothes. We’re going out.”
Tanner looked up from his laptop, which he’d been pretending to use for the last twenty minutes. “Where?”
“It’s a surprise. Trust me?”
He studied my face for a long moment. Then he closed his laptop and stood. “Fine. But if this is some kind of sports thing?—”
“It’s not. I promise.”
Outside, late October had finally arrived in Alabama. The air had that crisp edge that passed for autumn this far south, and the sweetgum trees lining the sidewalk had gone orange and red, their star-shaped leaves crunching underfoot. Tanner grabbed a hoodie on the way out, but I didn’t bother. After two-a-days in August, anything under eighty degrees felt like a gift.
Fifteen minutes later, we were standing outside Pixel Palace, the retro arcade two blocks off the main drag. The place had been around since the eighties, wedged between a laundromat and a pawn shop, its neon sign flickering in a way that suggested electrical problems rather than aesthetic choice. I’d walked past it a hundred times but had never gone in.
Tanner stared at the entrance. “You’re taking me to an arcade?”
“You spend half your free time gaming. Figured you might like the original versions.” I shrugged, trying for casual even though my heart was hammering. “Plus, it’s loud and dark, and no one gives a shit what you’re doing in there. Seemed like a good place for a first date.”
His head swung toward me. “A date?”
“If you want it to be.” I held the door open. “Or we’re just two roommates playing Pac-Man. Your call.”
The wariness in his face gave way to something warmer. He walked through the door without answering, but the tips of his ears had gone pink.
Inside, the place was exactly what I’d hoped for: dim lighting, rows of arcade cabinets glowing in the darkness, the electronic chaos of a dozen different games bleeding into white noise. The carpet was the kind of aggressive pattern designed to hide stains, and the whole place smelled like dust and old pizza and the particular mustiness of electronics that had been running since the Reagan administration. A few other people were scattered around—a group of high schoolers clustered around a racing game, a couple feeding quarters into a claw machine—but no one looked up when we walked in.
“Holy shit,” Tanner breathed, his eyes tracking across the room. “They have Galaga. And Donkey Kong. And—is that the original Space Invaders cabinet?”
“I have no idea. You’re the expert.”
He was already moving toward a cabinet in the corner, drawn like a magnet. I followed, fishing quarters from my pocket. Tanner’s whole posture had changed—shoulders looser, face open in a way I rarely saw outside the lab when he was deep in his research.
“This is—” He stopped. Ran his fingers along the side of the Galaga cabinet, and his expression flickered. “My dad used to take me to a place like this.”
He said it casually, but his hand had stilled on the wood.
“Yeah?” I fed quarters into the machine, keeping my voice neutral.
“There was one near our house. Smaller than this. He’d take me on Saturday mornings sometimes, before Mom woke up.” Tanner gripped the joystick, his knuckles going white for a second before he relaxed. “He was terrible at all of them. Would lose all his lives in like two minutes and then stand behind me giving bad advice while I tried to beat his high score.”
“That sounds like a good memory.”
“It is.” The game started up, and he focused on the screen, but I could see him working through something. “I don’t have a lot of those anymore. Most of what I remember is from the end. The bad years. Sometimes I forget there were good years first.”
I wanted to touch him—his shoulder, his back, anything—but we were in public, and I didn’t know if he wanted comfort or space. So I just stood close, near enough that my arm brushed his, and watched the pixelated ships descend.
“Maybe that’s part of what this is,” I said. “Finding new good stuff to remember.”
He didn’t answer, but he leaned into the contact, his shoulder pressing against my chest. I let myself stay there.
Tanner was good at Galaga. Better than good—his reflexes were sharp, his movements precise, and he cleared the first three levels without losing a single life. I watched his hands more than the screen, the way his fingers moved with practiced ease, the furrow of concentration between his brows.
“You’re staring,” he said without looking away from the game.
“You’re fun to watch when you’re focused.”
He fumbled the joystick and lost a life. “You can’t just say things like that.”
“Why not?”
