Chapter 5
FTER SETTLING IN MY ROOM, I spend the afternoon walking around theA property with some of the FlyButter crew. Dinner is a magnificent affair —lentil minestrone and sautéed vegetables and chicken potpie, accompanied by wine that, unlike the one I usually buy at the supermarket, doesn’t smell like applesauce even one bit. The rice pudding is nothing to write home about, but the chocolate cheesecake is so movingly good, it takes me several seconds to gather my words once I’m done chewing the first bite.
“Fuck me,” I say, shoving more in my mouth. “This is ridiculous.”
Mila nods and forks another piece of the slice we’re sharing. “Better than sex.”
“Maybe better than sex with some people,” John mutters from somewhere on my right. He’s Nephilim’s 3D artist, and Mila’s former fiancé.
They were together for half a decade and broke up following a whirlwind of mutual cheating and kitchen appliances thrown out the window. Needless to say: No, they did not “stay friends.” Neither I nor she would have chosen to sit anywhere near him, but someone (probably Mike) had the stunning idea to assign place cards and force the two teams to mix, so here we fucking are.
Mila pretends not to hear what John said, but the suddenly square line of her shoulders tells me the words cut deep. I turn around to incinerate him with eye lasers that I so wish I’d developed instead of my mild nearsightedness, and when I find him sniggering like a fourteen-year-old, I decide to “accidentally” elbow my glass of eggnog and spill its contents in John’s lap.
“Sooo sorry.” I press my hand to my lips as he frantically wipes his pants with a napkin. “I’m so clumsy, you know?”
It is, by my count, the fourth Nephilim-FlyButter incident of the day.
The others were a screaming match, a LOSER note slid under a door, and a stolen suitcase that mysteriously reappeared in the thicket outside. John leaves for a change of clothes, and I go back to savoring my cake. A few moments later, my phone buzzes with a text from Mike.
That wasn’t very nice of you.
I look up to find his disapproving scowl pinning me from across the table, so I beam at him and message back.
This retreat was such a GOOD idea. I can feel FlyButter’s relationship with Nephilim improve by the second.
Mike sighs, so I send him the emoji of a dancing woman—and then immediately feel bad for him.
He’s in a difficult position. As the CEO, all he wants is for StarPlay to invest in us so he can keep us on—and we, his team, are not exactly making it easy at the moment. I glance around the table and find no amount of effort being made by anyone: Despite the assigned seats, conversations seem to have clustered by company. Even Otto, instead of pushing for more harmony, is ignoring everyone in favor of his phone.
If we continue like this, there is no way we’ll be able to collaborate on Limerence 3.
I roll my eyes and decide to be my best self: a reasonable adult with mostly regulated emotions. I wolf down the rest of my cheesecake, then turn to my right and smile at the dark-skinned girl on the other side of John’s
empty seat.
“Clara, right?”
She blinks at me. “Yes,” she says, suspicious. Honestly, I can’t blame her.
“I’m Viola. I don’t know if you remember, but we met several years ago at that animation workshop that East Coast guy hosted…”
“The one in Tacoma?” She grimaces. “God, that was a waste of time.”
“I know. I doubt that guy can make a finger trap, let alone a video game.”
She laughs, and we start chatting, lingering at the table after most others have left. The retreat doesn’t involve much structured time or mandatory activities, so we’re free to spend the night doing what we like, and Clara, despite her dubious allegiance, is great company.
It’ll be fine, I tell myself while returning to my room. Nephilim and FlyButter can and will learn to get along. There will be some tiptoeing and individual friction, but we’ll make it work. For Limerence.
“Hey, Viola.” I turn to see Mila catching up to me. “Wanna go explore the lodge?”
We make our way through a handful of entertainment rooms, counting two more fireplaces, coming across a pool table and a stack of board games that’s higher than us. We find a winter garden, and a gym that is better equipped than the one down my block—for which I buy yearly passes every January, and yet barely frequent. The library smells like old books, and I genuinely did not know this many DVDs and Blu-rays still existed in the world.
As someone who has about $10K in student loans left to pay off, the extreme luxury of this place seems a little wasteful, but I’ll take it.
“Why do you suppose we’re doing the retreat here, instead of, say, a Motel 6?” I ask Mila, who shrugs.
“StarPlay sent us here. They’re a giant company. Made of money.”
“Yeah. But why spend money on us instead of…I don’t know, buying Fabergé eggs for shareholders?”
She tilts her head to the side. “Maybe they would rather give a gift to real human beings whose skill sets they value than increasing the already abundant wealth of the one percent?”
It sounds so ridiculous, we burst out laughing at the same time.
MOST OF THE FLYBUTTER CREW decides to watch a movie, but I’ve socialized plenty for the day. It’s still early enough in the evening that I know I won’t be able to fall asleep, so I put on sweatpants and a sweater and slip out of my room. I tiptoe past Jesse’s room, keeping an ear out for any noises, but no light filters from under the door.
Maybe he’s asleep. Maybe he’s hanging out with Ashley. Maybe he put on a Grinch hat and a green thong and is climbing an Engelmann spruce. Not my business. I head down to the library, taking with me The Sunken Heart, the first volume of the Limerence series.
Oftentimes, video games derived from books are adaptations of huge literary phenomena, the household-name kind that spend years on bestseller lists. The Limerence Saga, though, was never a big hit. Even as the first and second games were produced and rose in fame, the books’ popularity never followed. In fact, most people don’t know that the source material is a collection of five novels, each more complex and beautifully written than the last.
The story starts out simply enough: Noham, a young warlock, teams up with a human girl, Aqualuna. In the first volume, their goal is to rescue her missing older brother. They succeed, albeit not without a few setbacks and a lot of bickering, and by the end of the book they both recognize that they’re formidable together. The rest of the series follows the same basic formula, except that as Noham and Aqualuna grow up on the page, the worlds they visit and the adventures on which they embark become progressively darker and more elaborate.
Like me, Aqualuna was a youngest child: at once teased and unnoticed, underestimated, even forgotten for long stretches of time, to the point that it took four volumes for her family to realize she was in the habit of taking off and visiting other dimensions. Only Noham seemed to see her for who she was, and offer his unwavering support. Aqualuna never became magic herself, nor did she gain special powers, but reading the saga meant watching
her blossom into a strong, independent heroine and earn the respect of those who surrounded her.
Needless to say, it all resonated very much with me, a girl addressed as “Swampy” daily by her siblings because of an unfortunate childhood accident.
My dad had loved the series since he was a boy, and decided to introduce me to it after I told him that books were boring, and that I couldn’t imagine why someone would willingly choose to read. It quickly became our thing, just him and me and none of my loud, attention-hogging siblings.
Every night he’d come to my room and read a chapter or two, until page after page after page I realized that books were not that boring—they were, in fact, the best thing ever. We raced through the volumes in just a few months, until we got to the last one.
“Once you’re older,” he said, “we’ll read it together.”
I pouted. “Why not now?”
“Because you’re still a bit young for it. And that book, Vee, is a bit harder to understand.” He cupped my cheek with those calloused hands I can still feel sometimes, so warm and familiar. “Don’t worry, you’ll be ready soon.”
But by the time I became ready, Limerence was the last thing on my mind. By then, new books had entered my life, and video games, and school and friends and boyfriends. I forgot all about Aqualuna and Noham—until a
few years ago.
When Dad got sick.
“Read to me, Vee,” he’d say when I visited him after work, and picking up Limerence felt as natural as breathing. We began with volume one, and it was like traveling back to the past. My love for the characters, the way their adventures transported me to faraway places, how close I felt to Aqualuna and how invested I was in her success and well-being—I was reminded of it all. Except that this time around, I was terrified we wouldn’t make it to the end before Dad left me—so scared that it kept me up at night.
I shouldn’t have worried, though. I still remember how it felt, reading “The End” out loud and closing the fifth book, a little shell-shocked. Running
my fingers over the embossed texture of the back cover. Saying, “Dad?”
“Yeah, Vee?”
“What do you think ‘limerence’ means?”
“What do you mean, what do I think?”
“I…it’s not a real word, is it?” I’d always assumed it to be a made-up term, like irregardless or bootylicious or ornithopter. Nothing too unusual for the fantasy genre. But now that I’d reached the end, I was puzzled by the fact that the word limerence did not make a single appearance in the texts.
“Oh, Vee. You should definitely look it up.” His gentle laughter slowly turned into coughing, and I dropped the topic. But that night, I did pick up the dictionary. And afterward, I could never see the series in the same way,
because— “…just wait it out.”
I hear the words drift out of the pool room and stop in my tracks. The door is ajar, but not open enough to see who’s talking. The voice, though, is
familiar.
John. Mila’s ex.
Eggnog boy.
“Here’s the deal,” he continues. “If StarPlay has to choose between FlyButter and Nephilim, if it comes down to it, who do you think they’ll go for?”
“I have no idea, man.” Another voice, this time a woman’s. Ashley. “I know you want me to say that they’d choose Nephilim, but FlyButter has done some great work recently and—”
“No, no. Guys, follow my reasoning. Who are the studios’ lead designers?”
I glance around the hallway—deserted—and squeeze closer to the wooden wall, listening in.
“Jesse,” another male voice says. It’s that guy—the programmer who once got into a fight with Shannon. “And for FlyButter it’s that girl, Viola
Bowen.”
“She’s good,” Ashley says.
“She’s excellent,” John corrects her. “In fact, she may be the best for role-play stuff. But.” I hear the clank of a few balls hitting the corners of the pool table. “She has no combat experience. You know who is the best at combat design and also pretty good at role-play?”
“Jesse?” Ashley asks.
“Ding ding ding! So, say that at the end of this week FlyButter and Nephilim decide that we cannot work together—which is exactly what’s going to happen, I mean, this retreat is already a shitshow—who do you think execs at StarPlay will give the project to? To the team that can do both well, or to the team that can only do one thing?”
“That’s a good point,” Programmer Guy says after a brief pause.
“Of course it is. So my advice is, let’s wait it out. Don’t stress over the next few days. No need to make an effort to get along with FlyButter, because if things stay as they are, we get to do Limerence 3, and they get nothing.”
“I don’t know. That seems…” Ashley sounds skeptical. “Like a bit of a gamble. How can you be so sure?”
“Hey, I’ve talked it out with a few others. They all agree with me.”
“You talked it out with Otto?” Ashley asks, a little dubious. “And with Jesse?”
“Trust me,” John reassures her. “It’s what they want, too. Hang on.”
Suddenly, the door closes, muffling the voices inside.
I push away from the wall, cheeks glowing with anger. It’s all I can do not to stomp my displeasure all the way to the library.
What. The. Hell.
What the hell?
I came here in good faith. Bitching and moaning, yeah, but I came all the way here with the intention of finding common ground. And all along, Nephilim was planning some shitty Scooby-Doo sabotage.
I throw the library’s door open, wondering whether grabbing a dictionary and dropping it on John’s head will make me feel better, but instantly recoil. I blink once, then once more, unable to process the sight in front of me.
Jesse fucking Andrews is sitting in the reading nook I noticed earlier, the one I came in with the specific intent to use, the one I’ve been thinking of as “mine” for the past hour. He’s relaxed in the plush chair, long legs spread comfortably, knees apart, looking way too damn cozy for my taste.
Aside from my very inappropriate dreams, this might be the first time I get a good look at him without his glasses, and… I take a step back, because it’s a true Clark Kent situation. Not that I subscribe to the glasses make a person less attractive crap ’90s comedies tried to peddle, but with no obstacles between my eyes and his face I cannot help tracking the entirety of his bone structure, and I don’t love it. I really don’t enjoy knowing that Jesse Andrews, game developer extraordinaire, could have a respectable career in modeling.
I prefer him bespectacled.
Actually—I prefer him not existing at all.
“Are you okay?” he asks, nonplussed.
I know why he’s asking. I’m overheated. Jittery. My hands tremble so hard, I have to clutch my book like it’s a rescue rope. And I’m wearing the clothes I usually put on Sunday morning to go grocery shopping while the acceptable section of my wardrobe is busy frolicking in the washing machine.
Still, he can fuck right off.
“Kinda pissed, actually.”
Jesse straightens, reaches for his glasses and slides them back on, as if to study me more closely. “Viola? Have you been drinking?”
“Have I been—” I sputter, and then stop. Inhale through my nostrils. He doesn’t get to call me by name. “You know, Jesse, since last year—and even before—I’ve been wondering why you were so cold to me. I’ve expended a frankly embarrassing amount of energy figuring out what I’d done to you to deserve being ignored at best, and treated like I’m a poisonous mushroom who dared to grow on the outside of your stupid raised bed at worst.”
A beat. He stares blankly at me. “I live in an apartment complex.”
“And?”
“I don’t have a garden.”
“I don’t care if you—” I grit my teeth. “Jesse, if this is how you and your buddies want to play it, I’m going to warn you right now that there’s plenty of eggnog in this world, waiting to be spilled in the laps of plenty of assholes, so—”
“Viola.” He stands, and in the blink of an eye he towers over me, giving me a micro-flashback of the mistletoe, when he looked down at me and for a
split second, I thought that we might— “What are you talking about?”
I take a step back. Swallow. “I heard them. Your friends, spilling your
idiot plan.”
His brows furrow.
“Stop looking at me like I’m some insane lady yelling the gospel while masturbating on the subway.”
“I’d love to, but you did come in yelling with no discernible reason.”
I roll my eyes. “I know that you are counting on StarPlay to pick Nephilim over us. I was walking past the game room and heard John saying that you’re not planning to put any effort into establishing a collaboration with us because you know that you have the better chance to get the project and—hey?” Jesse stalks to the door, and I whirl around. “Stop!”
He doesn’t. His step doesn’t falter—at least, until I reach out to grasp the back of his shirt.
He spins to face me. “What are you doing?”
I let go of the fabric like it’s a pot of boiling water, a little embarrassed.
“Are you just…going?”
“Yes. I have something to do.”
“You can’t just leave in the middle of a conversation.”
“Is there a law against it?” He looks down at me with a narrow-eyed expression that broadcasts impatience. Aside from the mistletoe, it’s the most emotion he’s ever shown toward me, and something within me that somehow managed to survive the stress and weight of his indifference for years finally cracks. “You know, Jesse, I’m not radioactive. At my last checkup I didn’t test positive for any contagious diseases. I regularly brush my teeth, I’m not
trying to get anyone to invest in cryptocurrency, I use both deodorant and antiperspirant, I never give people unsolicited Netflix recommendations—”
“Are you done?” His arms cross on a chest that’s just too broad, and… Yes. I could be done. But now that Jesse Andrews is standing in front of me and actually listening, I find that there’s more I’d like to talk about.
“Did I do something to you?” The question slips out of me quietly, a little subdued. It surprises me—and Jesse, too, judging from how his eyes widen.
“No, you haven’t.” His tone is lower, too. “What are you talking about?”
“Right. Because, I mean, maybe you don’t like me, and that’s fair and your prerogative, whatever. But you always act like you wish I wasn’t around, and I know I’m not just being paranoid because I heard you back at the engagement party, and…”
Laughter rolls in through the closed door. A few people are walking in the hallway, and by this point I easily recognize the voices’ owners: Ashley, and John, and— Jesse spins on his heels to go after them, but I can’t let him leave now that I have some hope of figuring out the reason behind this weirdly tense dynamic we’ve developed. Without conscious thought, I grab at him again.
This time my hand meets his arm, and my fingers close around his wrist as I pull him back to me. “Jesse, can we please—”
With no apparent effort, he yanks his arm free of my grip and takes one step back, increasing the distance between us. He rubs his wrist, as if scarred by my touch. When he finally looks at my face his cheekbones are dusted with red, his jaw is clenched, and his eyes are blazing with—something.
His breath comes a little quickly. For unknown reasons, so does mine.
“I’m sorry.” My face burns hot. “I didn’t mean to—I wasn’t…”
My jaw drops open as he turns to exit the room, leaving me in the middle of the library to wonder what the hell just happened. I exhale slowly, rub my eyes with my thumb and index finger, let my arm drop to my side.
And that’s when I notice it.
On the chair Jesse vacated, still open facedown, is an old hardcover book. It’s clearly a well-loved copy, the corners scuffed by constant use, full
of earmarked pages and tabs.
The Sunken Heart, the cover says. The Limerence Saga, Volume 1.
