[Nintendo Femicom: good shit with that last flank]
[Witchofthew3st: thats what happens when you queue with the best shotgunner in the game Femi]
[Nintendo Femicom: ego, witch. you gotta check your ego, it might slow down your slide cancels if it gets too big]
[Witchofthew3st: nah no way. I’m too sexy to be slowed down]
[Nintendo Femicom: pics or i don’t believe you :P]
Owen slouched back in his chair as the two of them chatted between matches. It was getting very late in the night, or early in the morning if you were pedantic, which meant the queue times were starting to get longer and longer. While the message before Owen seemed innocent enough, he couldn’t shake the paranoia that there was a secondary meaning behind her words. Was she asking for pics because she didn’t believe that he was a girl? Did she not trust him despite all of the time they spent together? Owen didn’t want to believe she was so distrustful, but that thought was rich, coming from him. If Aoife was being suspicious about Owen’s intentions, it was for good reason. He was lying to her. He had no intentions of hurting her by doing so, but it was getting harder and harder to excuse himself of blame the longer he kept up his charade.
[Witchofthew3st: sorry if I send a pic you’d go blind, im just that hot :3]
[Nintendo Femicom: can i ask u something witch?]
Suddenly, Femicom had canceled their queue, leaving them standing around in Owen’s lobby. Owen immediately sat up in his chair while his heart sank deeper into his chest. Femicom was rarely serious about something. Even when something was serious she would talk about it in a way that made it seem lighthearted in order to not bring down the mood. Owen had long since picked up on the tactic as a way to approach otherwise uncomfortable tactics for her. With shaking hands, Owen typed out a response, wondering if he had already been caught. Standing up simultaneously with Aoife wasn’t a very good look, but surely she hadn’t assumed it correlated to him being Witch. What were the chances that the person she had been playing with was the same as the one she was now living with? The chance was very low, and despite it being exactly how it turned out, Owen thought there was no way that Aoife had come to that conclusion yet.
[Witchofthew3st: yea whats up?]
[Nintendo Femicom: are you a lesbian?]
“Fuck.” Owen muttered under his breath as he hung his head over his desk, his elbows pressed against the wood with his hands wrapped around the back of his head. The thing that was racing through his mind, louder than any other surrounding thoughts, was the desperate thought of “does she know?”. A difficult question to answer, given the question that she had sent over UMDK. “Are you a lesbian” was phrased in such a way that it drove Owen crazy. A lesbian was a woman that likes another woman. He couldn’t answer yes without digging himself a deeper hole. If he clarified that he was actually a guy, then she’d surely decide that he was Owen, and he’d be screwed. If he was to divert attention by asking a question about himself, it would also reveal that he knows too much, and Aoife would know the guy she was rooming with was a liar. It was such an innocent question that Aoife could easily backstep it without revealing if she did or didn’t suspect that Witch and Owen were the same person. He had to say yes. But if he did, and she already thought he was Witchofthew3st, then he would be exposing himself as even more of a creepy liar.
[Witchofthew3st: you got me]
Owen and Aoife both wriggled in their chairs, attempting to parse over every part of their conversations. Any indication of tone, anything that would confirm what they both suspected.
[Witchofthew3st: is this a weird way of asking me out or something?]
[Nintendo Femicom: you got me]
Owen’s brow furrowed as he re-read the short message. The implication was obvious, but that didn’t make it any easier to settle on. Owen was well and truly baffled at the message.
[Nintendo Femicom: So….]
[Witchofthew3st: im so confused, am i missing the punchline or something?]
[Nintendo Femicom: not a joke, weirdo, im saying i like you]
Owen couldn’t even begin to think of a response. It was all wrong. It felt great, but it was all so wrong. He couldn’t believe that Aoife might like Owen, or at least Witchofthew3st, but she shouldn’t like him. She’d fallen in love with a stupid facade, and transitory mask that he wore at night to spend time with his favorite person. It would have been flattering, if Owen hadn’t felt so guilty. Unless she knew…
That thought made Owen feel even more sick to his stomach. If she knew that he was the same person as Witchofthew3st because of his stupid celebration earlier, then that only confirmed what this was. This was a joke. She was a lesbian, she was absolutely not attracted to a man like him. She must have figured him out and decided to string him along in some sick humiliation ritual. Owen felt like he deserved it, for all of the time that she believed he was someone else. Was Aoife cruel enough to lead him to the carrot on a stick, with the false promise of getting to date her? That didn’t seem like the Aoife he had come to know. Then again, Witchofthew3st was completely different from who Aoife thought. It might have been a kind of poetic justice.
[Nintendo Femicom: you can say no, witch. It seems like ur pretty conflicted there]
[Witchofthew3st: i gtg theres a fire alrm in the dorm]
Owen had clicked the power button of his PC, performing a hard shut off before wrapping his arms tightly around himself in his chair. It was too much. Every answer felt like the wrong one. He was tied up between what he wanted and what was. He wanted to date Aoife, but it could never happen. He was a guy. It wasn’t like Owen even wanted that either! But some things are just out of his control, and that choice had been made for him a long time ago but an unlucky flip of a coin. Life was easier when he could remain in the online world, where whatever he wanted could happen. He could be a woman in UMDK, he might even be able to date Nintendo Femicom in UMDK. But it would only last until his real life caught up to him. Until he slipped up too many times around Aoife, and everything came crashing down.
It wasn’t fair, Owen thought. Aoife seemed to like Owen plenty when he pretended to be a girl in the game. He wanted that to work in real life as well. He couldn’t help but feel that being a girl would solve a lot of his current problems. He wouldn’t be considered strange for always playing girly characters, he wouldn’t have to pretend constantly, and lose friends when they found out he was lying, he’d even be able to date Aoife!
It took Owen five minutes hunched over his desk to restrain his thoughts enough that he could keep himself from crying. He knew it was probably a supremely stupid idea to shut off his PC and leave Femicom without an answer, but it was all he could do in the moment to take a step back. He just needed to act normal. If he could play the part of Owen well enough, he could try to throw Aoife off his trail.
“I’m gonna get a snack from the vending machine, Aoife, you want something?” Owen had calmed his nerves enough to act like nothing at all had happened. That he wasn’t mere moments from crying a few minutes ago. When he got up from his desk and moved towards the door, he saw a very glum looking Aoife slouched in her chair.
“No…”
“You good? Did you derank or something?” Owen asked.
“Worse.”
“Dog die?”
“What? I don’t even have a dog.” Aoife responded, finally turning to face Owen.
Bingo, Owen mentally cheered. He remembered through a conversation that Aoife had already said she didn’t own any pets. Perhaps he was overthinking the whole “throw her off the trail” thing, but if it would work, he was willing to do it. The plan was working, so long as Owen was willing to put up with the uncomfortable twisting in his gut that grew more intense the more he lied to Aoife.
“You’re gonna have to help me then, what happened that a Duchess honey bun won’t solve?”
“I tried asking her out.”
“Her…?”
“The crush I told you about. I think I might have fucked things up. It’s fine if she says no… I just don’t want to lose that friendship.”
It was disorienting as always to be hearing about himself from a perspective that he should not have. The only upside to it all, was that she kept calling him “her” and “she” while she talked. Owen found it a slight comfort, something he decided must have been because it suggested the possibility he truly could just pretend to be a girl forever online.
“How did she turn you down?”
“A stupid excuse. She said that a fire alarm went off in her dorm and went offline.”
“Maybe it was real?” Owen offered, hoping that it wasn’t suspicion for him to be taking his own side in a conversation that he had already been a part of. Keeping up with his own perspective and making sure to omit details he shouldn’t know was difficult.
“What are the odds though? I ask her out, she goes quiet, and then it just happens? The chances of that are too slim, no?”
“Life is full of slim chances coming true. I happened to pick the exact wrong time to walk into our room two days in a row. The chances that we even met in the first place are slim. We just don’t think about it that way. What were the chances my roommates stayed in college and we never met in the first place?”
“I guess. You’re gonna need to stop there before I start getting all existential though.” Aoife was still choked up in her chair looking at the error message on her screen.
[Host Disconnected: Returning to Menu]
To her, it felt like failure. She hadn’t had much success asking out girls recently, but most of that was because she had been assured, “I’m not a lesbian”, as the reason for the rejection. This time it stung more. Witch had just told her that she was a lesbian, and it still resulted in an awkward pause, followed by silence.
“Sure. Just don’t count it as a loss before it’s over, yeah? Things can always come around and surprise you.”
“You sound like a coach, dude.”
“Thank you? Sorry? I’m not sure how to react to that.”
“Whatever makes you feel worse so we can sulk together. Misery loves company.” Aoife pushed her rolling chair towards Owen to close some of the distance. She playfully reached towards Owen, like it would stop him from leaving to get his past-midnight snack.
“Well I love honey buns, and you’re not gonna stop me from getting one. Want some sour gummy worms?” Owen asked, hand already wrapped around the knob of their dorm room.
“How’d you know I like the sour stuff?” Aoife asked.
Owen froze against the door, his right hand clutching the knob tightly. He thought back through their previous conversations to see if there was any excuse for him to know that that wasn’t “Nintendo Femicom talks about sour candy all the time”. He remembered the text conversation that she had showed him earlier where she texted Richie about bringing sour candy.
“You told Richie to bring some. I thought it might be your thing.”
“Oh. Yeah. Gummy worms would be nice. Thanks.”
Owen breathed a sigh of relief and opened the door to walk down the hallway. The vending machine was in the lobby of the dormitory, on the first floor. It was mercifully restocked on a regular basis due to the amount of students that would grab a snack or two before classes.
Aoife remained in the dorm room, her eyes drifting back towards her screen to stare at the error message. She had been so absorbed by confessing her feelings and being met with rejection that she had completely stopped considering the possibility that was going through her mind in the past few hours. Owen. The way that he played UMDK felt familiar, in a kind of distant way. He played well sometimes, and almost painfully bad at others. So poorly that it felt like he was either playing at 10 FPS or he was just trying to be terrible. At first, she thought he might be doing so in order to dip out of playing with her. But it didn’t seem like Owen disliked her in any other area. They had some fun, silly conversations back and forth while playing, enough to make her question why he would want to be distant from her. That, on top of his odd outburst earlier.
Could Owen be Witch? Surely not, right? For some reason, they felt very similar. The way that the two of them joked was eerily similar. On paper, it was easy to draw comparisons between the two, but it always fell apart upon closer examination. If Owen was Witch, then why didn’t he just say so? It didn’t make any sense for him to have constructed such a convoluted web of lies for seemingly no reason. It might sound bad for her to think so, but she also didn’t believe he had it in him to lie so well. He didn’t seem like the type.
What wasn’t up for debate for Aoife, was his feelings about gender. Watching him create a character felt like she was watching someone lift a tungsten cube instead of the mouse. He dragged every slider back and forth like he was hoping for more changes than could ever happen. It put her in an uncomfortable position, however. She didn’t know how to go about facilitating that conversation with him, or even if that was the case at all. She worried she might have read too much into things and would embarrass herself by bringing it up. Those thoughts swarmed her mind like a hive until Owen had entered the room holding a honey bun and a bag of sour gummy worms.
He was sweet, but far too reserved, Aoife thought. Witchofthew3st was a blunt hammer that swung without care, like she was utterly free. Owen felt like he was a butter knife that would gently tap away at obstacles in hopes they would up and leave. Could those polar opposites be the same person? It seemed unlikely to Aoife, but she planned to push further tomorrow at the meeting.
“Here ya go.” Owen said, passing the bag of sour gummy worms over to Aoife. She took them and muttered a “thanks” in response as she peeled the top off of the bag. After eating one of the worms, she noticed that Owen was continuing to stand around next to her. She looked up at him with another gummy worm already pressed against her lips in wait for her to finish chewing the first.
“Mmm?”
“I just wanted to know if you were gonna mope around all night.”
Aoife swallowed the first gummy worm and pulled the next in with her tongue. Owen and Aoife were locked in an awkward kind of staring match as they looked at each other. The two stood there until Aoife had finished chewing. “I’ll get over it.” Aoife mused out an answer as she reached into the bag for another gummy worm.
“Would you get over it faster with a drink?” Owen asked, a coy smile rising in the folds of his face.
“You of all people snuck alcohol into their dorm?” Aoife seemed surprised, and Owen really couldn’t blame her. Alcohol was banned in the dorms because a good amount of the student population was underage. There are supposed to be random dorm checks in order to sniff out the stuff, but one of the few good parts of being in Freidrich Hall was that they didn’t care enough to check often. Owen had only ever gotten checked once, and it was a few semesters ago. It’s not like he went out and bought the stuff frequently either, the cans that he had were technically from his old roommate, and since he didn’t drink, they sat in the back of his mini-fridge behind other sodas and energy drinks.
“You don’t think I’m fun enough to break any rules?”
“I didn’t say that! I was thinking it… but I didn’t say it.”
“Do you want a drink or not? It’s a variety of seltzers. Weird names, I don’t remember the flavors.”
Aoife flashed a tender smile and stood up from her chair. Owen seemed to take that as an affirmative and moved towards the mini fridge next to his desk. He pulled open the door and pushed aside the energy drinks that sat in the front of the shelf to reach towards the back. Looking over the names, he chuckled and began to pull some of the cans out to show them to Aoife.
“I’ve got Deep Breeze, Tropical Enthusiasm, Arctic Thrill, and… Swamp Thunder?” Owen finished reading the labels of the flavors, if they could be called that, and looked up to Aoife. She was holding a hand over her mouth to quiet her snickering.
“What the fuck kind of seltzers do you have?! They sound like deodorants more than drinks. What is a ‘Thrill’ supposed to even taste like?”
“You’re asking the wrong person. I’m trying to wrap my head around if Swamp Thunder is supposed to sound like a threat or not.”
“You don’t know? They’re in your fridge, Owen! Did you buy them when you were blackout drunk on Tropical Enthusiasm or something?”
“My roommate was a bit strange, and when he dropped out he just gave me a bunch of his shit.” Owen shrugged, thinking over the other items he gave him before leaving. Most of the items Owen had just thrown away, since they reeked of smoke and had no discernible use. But he had held onto some of his desk supplies. It was worth saving money where he could.
“I’m suddenly a lot more nervous about drinking now.” Aoife squirmed at the intimidating white cans with colorful imagery splattered across the surface.
“Oh come on, there’s nothing like some Deep Breeze to get your mind off of things right?”
“Yeah, if I even remember tonight. This shit is like the off brand of an off brand.”
“…so it sounds like it will get your mind off of things.”
Owen smirked, and Aoife rolled her eyes. After a long drawn out sigh, she snatched up the can that Owen held up to her. Flipping it to face her revealed she had been passed a can of Arctic Thrill. Half-expecting the can to explode and kill her on the spot, she cracked the lip open with the tab. “If I’m drinking Arctic Thrill you’re drinking Swamp Thunder.” Aoife deadpanned, waiting for Owen to open a can of his own. This was not an affair she was willing to involve herself in alone. If she was to drink some oddly flavored poison, Owen would be joining.
“Fine. Swamp Thunder, here I come.” Owen cracked the can open and took a whiff of the sparkling effervescence that came out of the opening. It was hard to even imagine a taste going along with this. The closest analogous scent he could think of was a kind of wood scented candle. With a smile, he raised his can up towards Aoife to cheers her. It might taste completely horrendous, but the point wasn’t that the beverages would be pleasant. The point was that Aoife had a fun night to distract her from the rejection she faced from Witchofthew3st. Owen was trying not to think about the fact that he was comforting the woman for a rejection that had technically come from him, and technically wasn’t even a rejection in the first place. Owen wanted to say yes. His heart told him to draft up a heartfelt “YES!” to Nintendo Femicom, but his mind was hesitant to cause any further trouble for Aoife. Owen cared deeply for her after all, hurting her was the last thing he wanted to do.
“To love.” Aoife clinked her can against the edge of Owen’s can.
“To love.” Owen responded by tapping his can against hers before taking a hefty sip from the seltzer at the same time that Aoife took a sip from hers. The flavor of Swamp Thunder, what could even be said? Owen was at a loss for words. Judging by the expression that flashed across Aoife’s face as she swallowed her sip of Arctic Thrill, the other drink was much the same mess of flavors that assaulted the tongue and throat.
“If I wake up with six fingers on a hand tomorrow I’ll know exactly what did it.” Owen was squinting and contorting his face into a rapid pace of different expressions as the taste faded.
“At least you’d be popular with women if you had six fingers.” Aoife shrugged, letting the realization of her joke fall upon Owen like a bag of hammers. Much to his confusion.
“What? How would- there’s no way that makes any sense.” Owen sat up from the floor and moved to sit on the side of his bed that ran half of the length of the wall it was against.
“I could make it work. An extra finger could make a big difference.”
“Is that really worth all the trouble?”
“What trouble? An extra finger might even help with gaming.”
“I’m sure it’s all fun and games until Inigo Montoya comes along looking for someone with six fingers.” Owen joked, hoping desperately that Aoife would get the reference to The Princess Bride, his favorite movie as a child.
“Oh please, I’d have his ass thrown in The Machine like Westley.” Aoife giggled out a response, demonstrating her knowledge of the movie.
“Hello. My name is Inigo Montoya. You killed my father. Prepare to die.” Owen moved his can into his left hand to gesture at Aoife with his right hand. He held out his hand and swung it left to right as if it was a sword. Aoife grinned and held out her left arm to block the “swipe” that Owen had done with his hand. After a few swipes back and forth, Aoife pushed him away in order to reenact yet another famous scene from the movie. “Ah but you see! I am not left-handed either!” She moved the can into her left hand to continue their playful fight with her right hand, eventually poking Owen in the stomach with her fingers, causing him to dramatically fall onto the bed and pretend to play dead while still holding his seltzer upright to keep it from spilling on the bed.
“That movie is the shit.” Aoife said, taking another sip from her drink.
Owen pulled himself back up into a sitting position and followed Aoife in taking a subsequent sip of the unpleasant but manageable seltzer. “It was my favorite. Whenever I would get sick my parents would bring me out into the living room and I would lay on my couch with a blanket and some soup and watch the whole movie. It almost became a kind of ritual, I think. Placebo or not, The Princess Bride felt like a kind of cure all whenever I was feeling down.” After listening to Owen’s story, Aoife moved towards him, closing the distance between the two so that they were sitting next to each other rather than across the entire bed.
“That sounds nice.” Aoife flashed a smile, one that had thinly veiled remorse behind it. Owen realized in that moment why she must have been sad. Femicom had mentioned her relationship with her dad a fair bit. From how she talked about it vaguely, Owen didn’t have any specifics to go by, instead relying on the overall vibe that things were not the best. It was hard to relate to her on that front. Owen had always had a loving relationship with his parents. Something he even took for granted until later in his life when he started to make friends with people that didn’t have such pleasant relationships with their own family. Owen needed to find a subtler way to address it, however. If he asked about her dad now, it would certainly be suspicious.
“Did your parents ever do anything like that?”
“No.” Aoife responded shortly. It felt like a reactionary impulse to give that response to Owen. After a moment of silence, Aoife seemed to back away from the knee jerk reaction and give a little explanation. “My Mom isn’t in the picture. Supposedly she was there when I was younger but I don’t remember any of it. It’s just me and my Dad. Or it was, I guess.”
“What happened?”
“Let’s just say he wasn’t a fan of me telling him I’m a lesbian.” Aoife smiled weakly, attempting to put on a brave face despite feeling the nagging daggers of wounds that had yet to close reopening. Aoife found it odd that she was even sharing this much with someone in the first place, but something about Owen made him easy to talk to. He had that effortless charisma that made it seem like the two of them had been longtime friends.
“That’s awful. I’m so sorry to hear that.” Owen felt like his words were'nt enough. They were words she had almost certainly heard before, and they felt vacuous despite how much he meant them. He reached out his hand towards Aoife as an offer, hoping that the comfort would be appreciated by her. She slowly took his right hand with her left hand and gave it a soft squeeze.
“It’s chill. I’m moving past it y’know? Can’t let something like that keep me down.”
“You’re talking about it like it’s nothing. Having a fight with your only parent seems like a pretty big deal.”
“Yeah well what is crying about it gonna do? If tears would dissolve my problems I’d have been problem free a long time ago.” Aoife shrugged while Owen looked on with concern. He gave a soft squeeze in return and moved his head towards where Aoife was looking to attempt to make eye contact.
“It doesn’t have to fix the problems, Aoife. You can just cry because it makes you feel better. That’s what I do. I put on some sad music, shed some tears, and it makes me feel a little bit lighter when I’m done.” Owen smiled at Aoife, before chugging some more of the Swamp Thunder. If it was going to taste awful the whole way down, he figured he would try to get through it faster.
“Maybe you’re right. Either way, I’m chill right now. You don’t gotta worry about me.”
“You’re chill, huh? Must be that Arctic Thrill…” Owen smirked, watching as Aoife’s eyes rolled at his joke.
“Kind of strange you’d admit to crying so much though. Isn’t that something that guys usually avoid? Or at the very least hide?” Aoife asked.
“Should I?” Owen cocked his head to the side.
“No, that’s not what I’m saying! I just think it’s cool. It’s usually a girl thing.”
“You think I’m girly?” The words came out far more defensive than Owen had intended. Regardless, he was concerned about the implication. Without noticing how much he was blushing, Owen began to think of how to rid himself of the accusations. If Aoife started thinking he was acting like a girl, it might lead her to connecting the dots between him and Witchofthew3st.
“Damn, you don’t have to sound so attacked. Being a girl isn’t that bad, Owen. At least, I don’t think so. But I feel like that would be pretty obvious.”
Why would it be obvious? Owen was having trouble making the connection. “I didn’t mean it like that. Girls are cool! It’s just… you were saying I was like them, and I’m not. I’m a guy.” Owen stated matter of factly. Aoife was staring intensely into Owen’s eyes, the slightest hint of a smile showing up in the corner of her mouth before she responded.
“Whatever you say, final girl.” Aoife replied, tongue fully breaching the gap between her lips as she mocked Owen.
“Shove off, Prince Humperdink!” Owen replied, feeling strange about the nickname that he was given by Aoife. Aoife felt just as weird being referred to as the male antagonist of The Princess Bride, but made no effort to express those feelings at the moment. This one she could let slide.
A restless kind of quiet stretched on as the two of them continued to drink the closest approximation of a scientist attempting to abstract vague concepts into flavors. The silence grew until Owen made a motion for the mini fridge to grab a second can. A daring choice that ripped an abrupt laugh out of Aoife’s mouth. “Back for more? The cheaper the stuff, the worse the hangover. You know that, right Owen?” She slid off of the side of the bed to crouch down next to the mini fridge and pull a seltzer out after Owen. Owen seemed entirely confused as to why Aoife was grabbing a second can of her own.
“You know you don’t have to drink another. I just felt like I might as well go through some of these now before they evolve into higher beings of life within the back of my mini fridge.”
“You don’t have to suffer alone, Owen. I’ll vanquish the mysterious ooze in your fridge with you.” Aoife flashed a smile to Owen. The two of them were having a much better time than either of them thought they would this evening. Aoife had sort of consigned herself to sulking in her bed after her plan had backfired. The desire to ask out Witchofthew3st had been there for some time. She hadn’t told anyone about her feelings, but after around 3 weeks of being friends with Witch, she was crushing hard. It took a lot of guts to reach the point where she felt brave enough to confess her feelings, and the response she got only made her want to pull back into a shell and chill at the bottom of the ocean. Owen, having slipped up a number of times throughout the day was petrified that tonight would be the night his secret erupted in his face. Instead, he was relaxing with Aoife, in a way that he hadn’t done with anyone in years upon years. At least, not in person.
“Thanks Owen.”
“For what? Being the coolest, most awesomest badass survivor of Swamp Thunder in all of Everett University?”
“I’ll rescind my thanks actually.” Aoife rolled her eyes and pushed Owen away with her elbow. Light enough to move him, while not having enough force to hurt or cause him to fall over.
“Noooooo! I take it back. I need all the praise I can get, Aoife!” Owen did his very best version of “puppy eyes” that he could manage. Not something he had ever tried before, leading to an awkward wide eye stare at Aoife that- while not persuading- was very entertaining to witness.
“Okay fine, you look pathetic enough, you can keep my thanks.”
“What was it for, though?”
“This. All of this, I guess. Every roommate I’ve ever had was a shithead. It’s nice to have some pleasant cohabitation for once. You really didn’t have to do any of this to cheer me up. I’d have been fine on my own, dork.” Aoife finished her statement by chugging a good portion of the can. It wasn’t often that she would talk to someone like this, and although the alcohol was helping, it still made her tense to be opening up to someone else like this. Owen fought the urge to squirm as Aoife congratulated him for not being an asshole. Something which he very much felt like at that moment. The alcohol in his stomach felt like it was circling a mass of guilt that sunk deeper into his gut the longer he listened to her words.
“You don’t have to say all of that. You barely know me. I could be a shithead tomorrow and you’d probably feel really stupid for thanking me now.”
“A shithead wouldn’t contest the compliment, Owen. If you were a shithead you’d have taken the compliment and let it stroke your ego all night long. You don’t seem like that type of person, Owen.”
You don’t know that, Owen thought. The anxieties that bubbled inside of him needed to be culled in some manner. The alcohol could probably take care of that. Owen continued to drink, and hoped that the social lubricant would help him make it through the night without collapsing into a sweaty mess of paranoia. Over the next hour or two, it did just that. Eventually he got himself tipsy enough to no longer fret over the double identities that he was juggling like a lousy court jester. The rest of the evening passed in a mirthful reverie. Jokes were passed back and forth between the two, who became thoroughly sloshed as they made it through a couple more cans. Before they knew it, the two had fallen asleep whilst poking fun at each other on the bed.
* * * * *
Owen’s morning alarm buzzed away on top of his chest, his phone having fallen from his hand onto his splayed out form across his bed. With a beleaguered arm and half lidded eyes, he managed to turn off the alarm. He meant to use his right arm to turn it off instead of his left, but when he attempted to move it, nothing happened. He had assumed his arm had fallen asleep due to his odd positioning, it was a common occurrence for him to wake up with one of his arms having fallen asleep during the course of the night. When he turned his head to the side, he realized it was instead because the weight of an entire other person was pinning his arm down.
“Mhmfuckin alarmnm.” Aoife murmured as she opened her eyes and quickly closed them again as light pierced the veil of her eyelids. Over the course of the next few seconds she opened and closed her eyes again to shake off the sleep from her mind and gain a hold of her bearings.
Owen and Aoife looked to one another as their vision cleared and the realization of where they were dawned on them. They were still in Owen’s bed, but none of the covers had been moved, causing them to sleep in an intertwined mess of arms and legs. Owen couldn’t remember exactly when they had fallen asleep, but judging by the empty cans that sat on his desk across from the bed, they had quite the night before passing out. The saving grace for Owen, was that the both of them were still fully clothed in their loungewear, albeit with disheveled hair and marked skin that wore the impression of the textured clothes that pressed against skin for hours in the night.
“Good morning?”
“Uh. Yeah.” Owen replied.
Owen wasn’t sure what to say next. His face was alight with a bright red blush. The two of them had quickly scrambled away from one another once they had realized how close they were while they slept. Owen couldn’t tear his eyes away from Aoife as she sat awkwardly across the bed from him, her hair crimped up in a silly way from the way it rested in the night. She was beautiful, in all of the ways that Owen could put to words. Like a poet’s imagining of his intimate desires pulled from page to person before his very eyes. Owen felt a tremendous guilt seep into his veins. He knew that Aoife had a crush on a different girl online. Even though that girl was still technically him, it wasn’t okay for him to be having these feelings for a girl that would never reciprocate. Once Aoife left for classes, he would need to log back on to Witchofthew3st and send some excuse to break things off between them. It’d be better for her to lose one friend rather than two. Owen could still play UMDK with her, he’d just have to use PertinentHorse. The thought of playing that muscular man was slightly nauseating, but it would be worth putting up with to continue playing with Aoife.
“10 fingers. Damn.” Aoife joked, holding out her two hands to demonstrate that she had indeed not mutated in her sleep from the terrible seltzer. “Maybe it means I didn’t have enough. We’ll try again next time, yeah?” Aoife smirked and sat up from the bed to walk towards her side of the room. Next time, Owen thought. She wanted a next time, even after passing out on another guy’s bed?
“Right. Next time.”
“You’re coming to the meeting right? If you don’t show up I’m dragging you there by your ears.”
“Yeah, yeah. I’ll go.” Owen acknowledged, still sitting on the edge of his bed, fearing what he knew he needed to do next. He sat still, like a fleshy gargoyle watching over his side of the room as Aoife showered and left for her classes. She was gone for the morning.
Owen pushed the power button on his PC and waited for it to start up. His leg refused to stop bouncing up and down as he waited for all of the programs to launch. He’d been thinking of what to write for fifteen minutes now, but no words seemed right. It was all wrong. When he pulled up the direct messages between Nintendo Femicom and Witchofthew3st, he noticed a message that must have been sent after he had already powered off his PC.
[Nintendo Femicom: sry if I came off too strong, I just think you’re really cool. No ones been quite so kind to me before. Even if that kindness is held behind some stupid jokes (mine are better btw). If you dont wanna date that 1000% okay, just forget i said anything and we can game like normal, k? We can just go back to how things were and get out giddy gooey groove on :)]
Owen’s fingers rested over his keyboard, shaking just above the key caps. A tear rolled down his cheeks, collecting the sorrows that rested in his expression as it dripped off of his chin and onto the stale wooden desk. Owen really did want things to go back to how they were. But they couldn’t, so long as Owen was lying to her on a daily basis. The tears continued to well up into solemn pools under his eyes as he began to draft a response to Aoife.
[Witchofthew3st: I’m sorry, Femi-