“Well?”
“At the very least, I want the chance to think about it,” I said, much stronger than I felt. “Can I have some time to make a decision?”
He snorted, rolling his eyes like he already knew how this was going to end. “Sure, take all the time you want. But we're doing this with or without you, Joon. So it really doesn't matter what you choose.”
My hands balled into fists at my sides from the dismissal. “Whatever.”
Marcus' phone pinged, and he patted the top of my head, moving to place his coffee cup into the dishwasher. “See you later, Mr. Consideration.”
“Bye, dickhead!” I said as he grabbed his bag from the breakfast nook bench and disappeared through the back door with a chuckle. The shake of his broad shoulders mocking me through the window as he descended the steps off the back deck towards the garage.
I wished I'd said something more badass, but Marcus always pushed me to this level of frustration where I couldn't think straight. The kind that made my throat tight like I was going to cry at any second.
And I'd be absolutely fucked to let that dickhead think he had any kind of effect on me, much less let him see me cry.
The tears I’d been holding back tracked down my cheeks now that he was gone. I wiped my nose with my sleeve before turning to his pristine to the point of neurotic kitchen, making my way over to the magnetized knife rack hung beside the stove. It didn’t take me long to entirely destroy the perfect order by size, leaving the knives in complete, heavily fingerprinted disarray, but by the time I finished, I already felt a little better. The little act of defiance helping me reclaim a hair of my control.
There, that’ll fucking show him.
“Comeon! You stupid fucking—”I turned the key again, willing my car to turn on. Or the engine to roll over, or whatever the hell was supposed to happen when you put your key into the stupid hole and turned, turned,turned. This useless pile of scrap had been on its last legs for a while, but it couldn’t die today—today was too important.
Surely whatever god was assigned to cute girls with beater cars they'd been driving since high school wouldn't do me dirty like this.
Dorothy had to have a couple more good months in her. Or, at the very least, a few hundred more miles.
I was already running late since hair and makeup had taken longer than I intended, and there was zero shot I’d make it on time if I had to take the train. There were a lot of things in this life I was willing to be late for—doctor’s appointments, trips to the salon, funerals—but not my first opportunity to actually have a say in my favorite game of all time.
Not a fucking chance.
“Come on!” I snapped, slamming my hands on the plush pink steering wheel cover so hard I worried I’d trigger the airbag as my frustration got the better of me.
Okay, Eva, think, what worked last time?
I jiggled my keys, humming the tune ofPop Goes the Weasel, which, in theory, had absolutely nothing to do with getting the car to start, but I swear it did the trick a few weeks ago when she wouldn't start in an Omegamart parking lot. Just as I was about to resign myself to being fleeced by a ride share, the car rattled and then let out a littleclunkbefore the engine gargled to life.
“Fuck yeah, Dorothy!” I praised, patting the dash. "I knew you could do it, just needed a little motivation."
I didn't know what kind of person, or car, would considerPop Goes the Weaselmotivational, but as long as it continued to work, I didn't care. Especially since Dorothy had enough check lights on that I'd affixed a piece of black electrical tape over them so that I didn't have to think about it anymore.
Watching the dash light up like a Christmas tree after a struggle like that had been demoralizing as fuck. And now? Problem solved.
She might have been an old, beat-up, smelly hunk of junk. But she was my hunk of junk, and for the most part, she got me where I needed to be… So long as she turned on. And with a couple of tricks or sometimes giving her a little space to relax before I tried again, that was most of the time. I wouldn’t replace her until I absolutely needed to—not out of some high-horsed environmental principles or anything, I just didn't want to use my limited savings to replace something that still worked, like, eighty percent of the time.
Okay, fine, like… sixty-five. Sixty, if I were being realistic.
I’d been saving for the better part of a year, and at the rate it was going, the only staff I'd be able to afford to hire to help me get my studio up and running would be unpaid interns. AndI was pretty sure that interns only wanted to work for already-successful companies. Something that'd look good on their resume, not start-ups in pre-production on their first indie title.
Somewhere likeFreespire.
Though I’d been going live on Streamverse for years, I never really felt like I'd had my big break. Even when long hours on Kill Floor catapulted me onto the front page, turning my usual viewer count from fifty to several hundred, I still felt like an industry outsider. But as much as it was a setback, it was my strength, and I knew the experience I offered my viewership was unique to anything else out there.
At the end of the day, I was an entertainer, and I planned to leverage that as long as I could… but I couldn't be a glorified internet proxy girlfriend forever. Sooner rather than later, I wanted to stop playing games and start making them. Ideally, at my own studio. Somewhere I could take my ideas from hundreds of notes on my phone into the real world. Or as much of the real world as a girl could manage, given that video games were still on a screen.
There just weren’t many companies that specifically catered to people like me, and I wanted to change that. Girls wanted to play lore-rich, story-driven horror games as much as guys—we just wanted the option to have cute characters, too.
And pets! Yeah, that was a good idea. I’d remember that.
I was already imagining my character running around with a little bunny hopping after her as I pulled out of my parking space and onto the road, letting my GPS guide me.
