It’s too late. I’m already pushing up my sleeves and grabbing the drill.
CHAPTER 11
LACEY
It’s around four when we decide to be done for the day. When I throw on a jacket and follow him out the door, he raises an eyebrow at me.
“I was promised dinner,” I say, pausing outside the Jeep, watching him.
Earlier, I thought for sure that he was going to say something about…this. The way it feels to meet his eyes, like touching an electric fence. Or, what I imagine that feels like, anyway. A kind of rush of adrenaline I haven’t felt since the day I had my interview for the Citadale team.
“You were,” Max agrees, and I climb into his passenger seat, hoping he doesn’t think it’s an imposition. Or that I think the dinner is anything more than that, even with the strange energy between us.
As we make the short drive from Jasper’s cabin and down to Max’s, I think about the way my life has changed so much in the short time that I’ve been here. How I haven’t even checked myemail from Gaia, taking to heart HR’s insistence that it be afullvacation.
Up here in the mountains, or even in town, that life seems so far away. Max helped me set up satellite internet out at the cabin, but I’ve strangely lost most of the urge to get on it. Other than using it to chat with Vanessa and my mom, I haven’t spent much time online at all.
In fact, last night I got my tablet out and revisited some of the characters I’d worked on before. For a long time, Vanessa and our other designer and development friends have talked about getting together and making some sort of cozy fantasy game — one with a fun little town and a cast of kooky and lovable characters.
Now, spending time in Low Pines, I can’t stop sketching out the avatars in the game. The perky barista as a pixie, or the succubus flirting with you while selling stone and wood for your projects. The suave demon at the general store, willing to sell you anything as long as you barter with him for your soul.
Okay. It’s not like Warren is that intense, but being here, it’s like my mind finally has the time and space to spiral out creatively. Take a concept and run with it, to the point that my digital sketchbook is full of character ideas. Quest objectives based on a little fantasy mountain town.
“Lacey?” Max’s voice is deep, curious and slightly amused.
I blink, realizing we’re outside Max’s cabin and I was so lost in my thoughts about the game that I didn’t even notice. I look over at him, find him studying me.
My heart flutters. I imagine him leaning across the center console, taking my chin in his hand. Kissing me like this, with the fireflies starting to dance just outside the truck.
God, what is wrong with me?
“What are you thinking about?” Max asks, his voice low, and because there’s no way I can tell him the truth — that I’m thinking about him kissing me — I blurt out the next closest thing.
“I was thinking about the game I want to make.”
Over the past week, I’ve told Max all about what I do, and while he doesn’t really understand the computer stuff, he appreciated how impressive it is that I’m in a role like this so young. He also had never heard of Citadale, which was impossible for me to understand.
“It’s like not knowing aboutThe Simpsons,” I’d argued, throwing my hands up. “Citadale is, like, universal. Don’t you know about the dances? And, I mean, there are so many people you can wear as skins?—”
“You can wear aswhat?” he’d asked, his eyes going wide with horror, and that took me down a completely different path, explaining what a skin is in a video game, and putting to the side just how out of touch he is, up here in the mountains.
Even though Max was impressed with my role, I didn’t get the usual pride I feel when someone acknowledges how fast I’ve climbed. Since coming here, some of the sense of achievement has worn off. Especially with the space from the constant stress of the role.
Now more than ever, I’ve had time to think about what I do and whether or not it’s what I’ve alwayswantedto do.
“The comfy one?” Max asks. I blink at him, having been so lost in my thoughts that it takes me a moment to remember what we were talking about. I told him I was thinking about my game, rather than admitting I was thinking about what it would feel like to climb over the center console and settle myself in his lap.
Max grabs his keys and jumps out of the truck, moving quick enough that he’s at my door before I can open it myself. I flush again at the weird chivalry of it and jump out, saying a quick thank you as we walk into the cabin.
“It’s acozygame,” I correct as we walk to the door, but smiling to myself at his cluelessness. It’s kind of refreshing to be around someone who isn’t so entrenched in the gaming world. Someone who doesn’t have pre-conceived notions about what gaming is or isn’t.
There are a lot of people who might argue that cozy gaming isn’t really gaming. And lots of people at Gaia — executives, really — who have stifled a lot of cozy game projects with the explanation that they don’t bring in that much revenue.
“Okay,” Max says, stepping inside his cabin and shrugging off his jacket. “So, what’s in your cozy game?”
I want to answer him, but I’m momentarily distracted by his cabin. Rustic and small, and, frankly, nothing like my uncle’s. Jasper’s cabin has the touch of a builder who clearly knew what he was doing, while Max’s feels like it was a learning-in-progress endeavor.
Rough log walls and a simple wooden floor. A kitchen bar with stools looks slightly newer, more polished. There’s a door in themiddle of the space that must lead to a small bathroom, and it divides the cabin, creating a space for the bed on one side and the living space on the other.
