Ok.
But the mouse on her computer was broken so she fires the portal gun at my desktop, and suddenly the Team Fortress 2 spills out everywhere, all of the weapons and people and all the dirt you can fit in Dustbowl and everything (Mom's not gonna be happy about this, I remember saying), and Scout's in my face like "What the hell is going on?" My bro's girlfriend is like, "hey, sorry about that," and she picks up her computer and walks away to go play Portal 2 somewhere else and I'm stuck with the cast of Team Fortress 2.
Ok. But that's not really what this story is about.
Engineer's hopped up on the table shouting "yee haw" and Heavy and Medic are clapping and dancing, sure, but mostly Spy comes up to me and says "I think you are the most beautiful girl I have ever seen." I couldn't recognize him at first, because he was disguised like my bro's girlfriend, but I knew she'd just left and so he revealed himself and said that to me, and I'm like, ok.
Well no, I'm not, because what happens then is he swoops me up bridal style and says "you're coming home with me," like I'm a toy he just one out of the crane machine. Which is fair, I suppose, since crane machines are hard to play.
He's got this apartment that's pretty well-furnished, so it looks more like a penthouse. He's even got the little swimming pool, and the koi pond, and whatever. I stand at the edge and talk to the koi fish; I give them stupid names, like Bob Hope (that's the one with the particularly white spots, by the way) and Nyan-cat. Those aren't really stupid names, but hey are for fish, because you're supposed to name koi fish things like Sparky and Plucky and Spotty and Barfbag, not Bob Hope and whatever the other one was.
He said he had a room with the bed made just for me, with little shells on the bedspread as though we were somewhere in Florida. This was probably on a woman's whim, a maid's or something, because men don't really think about these sorts of things.
It's nice, I tell him, though that's not really what this story is about either.
It's not even about the whole leaving-your-life-behind thing and the fact I still had at least two years of high school left ahead of me, or even the idea that my family might be looking for me or that a whole Lotus Clan server just leaked out onto our office carpeting.
It's not even the fact the man's about twenty years older than me. The girls will all judge, I know, and that I can't bear to stand, but that's not really what this story's about.
I mean, the sex is fine. It bled at first when he penetrated, all bye-bye shell bedspread, but if that's your point in having aesthetic it's fine by me, I won't even protest the surprise-I-was-invisible-now-let's-have-butt-sex thing, it's just not really what the story's about.
So what is this story about, that's what you're asking. And if I told you, it'd mean I'd have to confide in you, which I will, but only because you've read this far. This story is about the fact that he smokes. And everything smells of it. It doesn't smell like Spy, no, and believe me I know what he smells like, and no it's not Axe or even Euphoria by Calvin Klein, it's something French and exotic that nobody's ever heard of, except for me because I've smelled it and he told me what it was because I asked him what is that cologne you're always wearing, though for the likes of me I can't remember it.
But everything else, aside from smelling like Spy, smells like smoke. My hair smells like it because he likes to do that neck thing, my clothes smell like it because he does that clothes thing too, that couples like to do. Not taking them off, not yet, but almost trying to, like ooh, this is the teaser, we'll finish this later. The ruined shell bedspread, and the replacement quilting we've begun using ever since that one time, both smell much like smoke. Spy's mask smells like smoke when he kisses me.
The only things that don't smell like smoke are Bob Hope and Nyan-cat, because they both live in the koi pond, and I read once in one of those adventure stories how water helps eliminate smell, like the bad guys or the good guys or whoever was being targeted would head for the river so the old dogs couldn't smell them and rat them out. That was always my favorite part of the story, and now I can sort of see why.
I know it's not fair of me to judge him like this, because I know that once you start, and I know he started at the ripe age of twelve, the nicotine really gets to you, and you can't stop unless you start using those patches or you're really an iron-willed sort of person. Spy tells me he's not an iron-willed sort of person, at least not about those things.
And I've bought the nicotine patches. I went to the convenience store once, and bought them, which I remember because there was this particularly old and crotchety clerk at the front counter, and I remember he said "you kids just start smoking younger and younger," or something along those crude and failed lines, and I snapped back with something like "it's for my boyfriend, thanks," and they looked away giving me change because frankly there's nothing that could really amend that sort of thing, which I remember thinking as I took the brown paper bag of stupid patches and exited the store.
Spy was on duty, I remember, so I went to the old Chinese place across the street and ate rubbery beans and rice alone and soup that tastes distinctly of cardboard.
He wouldn't even wear the damn patches anyway, so that was a $17.95 that would be left forever in the medicine cabinet.
Which is why I'm writing to you, Valve, because he's never actually told me who's in charge that place so I figured it'd be good to start with the corporation in general. I'm writing that when he asked me to be his mistress and I said yes, something told me I'd be able to handle it all, all the smoke. Maybe if I hadn't wanted to be a singer, or an actor, I might be, you know, okay with it, okay, but that's not what this story's about.
It's just that I can't stand that he smokes, that's all.