[b]On the Park![/b]

3V laughs. Not meanly, mind you! The kind of laugh that invites you to join in. She manages to keep the nervous edge almost off it, given how [i]dating[/i] is a bit of a touchy subject right now. She turns on the dazzle, though not to a degree that would blind someone who hasn’t seen the sun recently, glittering in its offer of everything all the time forever.

“Oh, god, comedy of errors, am I right? Nah, I’m a platonic houseguest, Gavin. Here to talk about her collection, stayed the night because I missed the last bus off the mountain, you know how it is. Can I get you a drink? Her casa mi casa, after all.”

She raps her knuckles on the counter, and how they flicker and flash! Got all kinds of settings packed in those things. And yet she still hasn’t mastered the art of cracking the egg perfectly the first time, like anyone with cyberhands should be able to do.

In retrospect, how she’s probably coming across is someone who was just [i]turned down.[/i] Which is fine! That’s totally fine if he believes that for the rest of his life! It’s just that her persona’s a little manic even when she’s not walking a tightrope and the flames of hell underneath it are labeled [i]dating!![/i]

“How’d you end up here? Not at [i]Casa du Ginsburg[/i], but on the Park. I like getting different perspectives on the whole question of [i]why not Aevum?[/i] C’mon, it’d be a waste if you came up all this way just to pop into the kitchen and restock it like a magical brownie.” She takes a seat and shoves the wicked phone with its invitations to hang out, to lunch, to game, to do all sorts of things, into her pocket, and focuses on him so she doesn’t start itching for it.

***

[b]On Aevum![/b]

Her smile’s frozen. There are wheels spinning, careening out of control, behind that smile. Her fingers tap the rhythm of the cheerful pop song playing over the cafe speakers, [i]do it do it like me do it,[/i] and she gives Blue a very [i]considered[/i] look above that frozen smile.

“I keep odd hours,” she counters after a minute, and the smile’s mocking herself, the cafe, the music, the world. “I flit between hobbies, which currently include business ownership as a way to cultivate an interesting social vibe, journalism as a way to hang out with interesting people, motorcycling as a way to find new vistas and places to eat new foods, and [i]Hyperborea Online: Lostlight[/i], critically acclaimed mor-pee-gee that you can no longer play for free up to level 60 including the award-winning first expansion, Clockwatcher with [i]all[/i] the restrictions on playtime because our servers are in Devilhome, someone save us.”

You know this. Of course you know this. It is impossible to escape the meme right now. The fans howl for server slots. Blood feuds have been declared over unmarked spoilers. The fans are also screaming about the death of low-poly lemons, for some reason.

“I am a heartbreaker. And you [i]will[/i] have to delete all your feelings when we break up over, I don’t know, my refusal to let Black ride my motorcycle or my refusal to treat our fake betrothal with the gravitas it deserves, or— something like that. If I made this profile myself, it would be entirely just Redflag, over and over. I am telling you right now that this is a bad idea. Terrible. The worst. [i]You accept everything that will happen from now on.[/i] So how bad do you want it?”

She’s glittering again, almost goading you. She holds one flashy gamer hand out across the table, elbow on her napkin, with intense nonchalance. Take it; don’t take it. She’s holding it out to Yellow, but Blue was the decision point. Take it; don’t take it. She wants you to reach out; she wants you to flinch. She wants them both, so bad.

Take it. Don’t take it.