What If It's Us(35)

I want to ask him more about Georgia, but I’m in third place right now and have to get ahead.

The game ends.

“You got second place!” Arthur says. “Congrats.”

“Second place sucks.”

“Oh, you’re one of those. Second place is the first loser, right?”

“Sort of. A couple years ago my mother almost won the lottery. She was off by two numbers.” I get off the motorcycle. Not going to tell him how big that jackpot would’ve been for my family. “We were first losers.”

“What would you have done if you won the money?”

Moved into a bigger apartment. Bought a car because yeah, the trains and buses are fine, but if we had our own car, we could take trips outside the city where the trains and buses don’t go. Get one of those memory foam beds. “Buy every gaming console.” Admitting practical needs isn’t first-date talk. “And maybe brave my first flight ever so I can go to that Harry Potter park in Florida.”

“I’ve never been either! Maybe we can go one day,” Arthur says. He’s beaming, like a first date automatically equals a couple’s trip to Universal Studios. Definitely jumping ahead a bit. “You need a new wand anyway.”

“What?”

“The wand in that box you were returning to your boyfriend.”

The box still sitting in my bedroom. “Yeah. Exactly.” I lead the way to a Pop-A-Shot. “Have you made any friends here yet?”

“These girls at my internship, Namrata and Juliet,” Arthur says. “They were rooting for me to try and find you. They had suggested Craigslist, but my mom wasn’t having it.”

I stop. “You talking about missed connections?”

“Yeah! You know it?” Arthur reaches out and touches my shoulder. “Wait. Did you put up a listing for me?”

“Oh. Um. No,” I say. I wish I had lied to spare us from all this blushing. “But my dad had mentioned it, and I checked to see if you were looking for me too.”

Arthur is smiling. “I didn’t know you were looking for me. At all.”

“Well yeah.” I run my hands through my hair as I move toward the hoops again. “So . . . motorcycles weren’t your speed, but maybe basketball? You just got to get the basketball in the hoop as many times as possible in one minute.”

He nods, but I’m not sure he’s actually heard me. I probably only need one guess to know what he’s thinking: we were looking for each other. He went to greater lengths, but hearing I wanted to find him too? Well, we all love having our feelings reciprocated.

We play against each other plus some random kid being shadowed by his dad. Making two notes to myself right now: 1) Don’t talk shit when I beat Arthur and the kid. 2) Don’t call “bullshit” if Arthur or the kid wins.

The timer starts and I’m doing okay, six shots in ten seconds. The kid is keeping up though. Twenty seconds in and Arthur scores his first shot.

“YES!” He turns to me. “King of the world!”

“You’re wasting time,” I say. He has no chance of catching up, but he can try harder. Or at least stop distracting me. I. Play. To. Win.

Arthur keeps at it until his basketball bounces out of the booth, and he chases it like a bull wrangler.

Time’s up.

23 to 1 to 25.

“That’s bull—” I don’t give props to the kid because he’s laughing at me. Maybe an arcade wasn’t such a great idea for a first date. My sore-loser side is more third-date material, maybe fourth.

Arthur returns with his basketball. Shoots it. Misses.

Hudson was a better opponent. He would’ve also schooled that kid.

I pop some Skittles.

“Want to play air hockey?” Arthur asks. “I promise you’ll come in first.”

Or I’ll end up in the hospital when Arthur sends a rogue striker my way.

“Let’s do the claw machine,” I say. “But we’ll make it interesting.”

He follows me into the corner. We’re not playing for any stuffed Pokémon, screw that.

“Interesting? Like strip poker interesting? I hope I’m wearing the right underwear for this,” Arthur says.

“Do you have wrong underwear, in general?”

“We all have our laundry-day underwear,” Arthur says.

“Truth. Well, your pants are staying on for this challenge.” There’s a claw machine for jewelry. Pretty necklaces, ugly bracelets, fake diamond rings, and so on. “Whatever we win, the other one has to wear. Game?”

“Game!”

“I’ll go first,” I say. Might help him to see someone else play. “That jeweled necklace in the corner will go nicely with your eyes.” I get moving with the claw, holding my hand on the lever while peeking around the case—this is good. I press the button and the claw reaches down, expands, hits the case, and is thrown off completely. It returns with nothing. “This is not my day.”

“I wouldn’t say that. Good chance you’ll have a wonderful accessory in the next minute or so.”

“Good chance?”

Arthur points at a necklace with a bejeweled peace sign the size of my iPhone. He gets the claw going and surveys the case from all angles—crouches, tiptoes, shifts left, shifts right, adjusts the claw, rinse and repeat—and hits the button. The claw scoops up the necklace and deposits it.