Bella Disztl felt most at ease behind the wheel of a car.
When that car was being pursued by police squad cars, well . . . that just added to the fun.
"Come on, I thought you said you could drive!" she called out over the radio to her partner, Maks Chapov, whose car was trailing further and further behind her. "If you get nabbed you'll blow the whole job!"
"I've got it, I've got it!" came the irritated reply. "I've got some tricks up my sleeve still."
Bella winced, glancing in the rear-view mirror to see his brightly-colored sports car ricochet off of another car, then travel all the way across the lane as he overcorrected and bounced off a light-post. "I sincerely hope that wasn't one of your tricks," she goaded.
"Oh, you'll recognize my trick when you see it," he answered confidently.
The sirens grew louder. He was slowing her down. "Well you better be ready to show me, then," she challenged, "because I'm not going to jail for the likes of you!"
Maks's overexaggerated sigh grated in her ears. "I'm just looking for the right conditions," he said impetuously. His tone of voice changed to smug when he said, "And it looks like I've found them."
In her mirror she watched his car erratically change lanes, then suddenly accelerate dramatically toward the empty car carrier trailer ahead of him in the lane. "Slow down," she shouted into her radio. "you're going to crash into that truck!"
Then the immense stupidity of what her partner was about to try to pull off hit her. "Don't you dare," she warned with as much venom as she could muster.
"It's like I always say," he said, a smug grin clear in his voice. "Drive it like you stole it!"
Then, with a burst of blue fire behind him, his car suddenly lurched forward. The front tires lifted off the road under the added acceleration afforded by the nitrous oxide canister attached to the vehicle. When the front axle came back toward the ground, it landed instead on the lowest part of the ramp on the empty trailer in front of it.
The continued burst of NOS carried Maks's car up the ramp and, like a fighter jet leaving a seaborne aircraft carrier, the vehicle rocketed over the top of the trailer and soared through the air.
Bella could do nothing but stare, transfixed, as Maks's gaudy racer sailed over the top of her like an electric blue albatross. It landed, miraculously, in front of her with all four wheels on the blacktop.
That was where things turned messy.
Something in the chassis of Maks's car clearly did not sustain the weight of his collision with the earth, and the vehicle seemed to buckle in on itself like an aluminum can in the hand of an overzealous sport fan. She had only a split second to register that there was no possibility that her partner-in-crime had survived the wreck before she found herself swerving erratically to try to avoid joining him in the afterlife.
It was no good. She was penned in on either side by traffic, and she was traveling too quickly to avoid his wreckage. All she could do was close her eyes as her inevitable end zoomed toward her at break-neck speeds.
When Bella opened her eyes, the words "GAME OVER" pulsed in front of her in a blood-red font. She pulled the VR goggles off of her head and leaned out of the arcade's racing simulator to glare at her date.
Maks shrugged apologetically. "I really thought that was going to work," he said with a bashful grin.
"That was a record-breaking run for me!" she claimed indignantly. "If it weren't for you, I'd be writing my name on the scoreboard right now!"
Maks grinned again, wiping at the raccoon marks the VR goggles had left imprinted on his face. "You've already got the top three spots, Bella, I checked."
It was true. In fact, Tantalus 10,000 was her favorite game of all time, and it was the entire reason that Maks had asked her here for their first date.
She huffed and crossed her arms. "Could have had four," she grumbled.
With a laugh, Maks extricated himself from his own simulator. "I'm sorry, really," he said sincerely. "I'd hate to ruin your streak. I think our time is up, but I'll go up to the desk and pay for another round if you want."
Bella sighed and pulled the goggles the rest of the way off her head. "Another round with you as my partner after that stunt? I don't think so," she remarked with some good-natured snark.
Maks made a show of looking offended. "I will have you know," he defended himself as he removed his haptic vest, "that stunt put me ahead of you for a minute there. I could have won."
"Yeah, you were doing great," Bella answered, hanging her own vest on its hook on the wall. "Until you got back down to the ground, that is. I guess you make a better pilot than driver."
To his credit, Maks just smiled back. "Let's make a deal, then. When we inevitably start a Bonnie and Clyde-esque crime spree . . ."
"Which is clearly the next step after our first date," Bella cut in with a smile of her own.
Maks continued as though he hadn't heard her light-hearted sarcasm. " . . . you can be the getaway driver, and I'll fly our fancy private jet."
Bella mulled the offer over for a while, but finally nodded. "Deal."
Later that night, as he dropped her off at her apartment, neither of them seemed to be in a particular rush to part company. Maks leaned against the wall beside her door, making silly jokes and smiling brightly whenever she rewarded him with a laugh. Bella fiddled with her keys, drawing out the process of unlocking her door to spend a few more minutes talking with him.
Finally, Maks's phone began to buzz incessantly and he claimed that he had to get back to his apartment before his roommates called a search party for him. Before leaving he turned to her with a shy grin and said, "I had a lot of fun tonight. Can I see you again?"
Mimicking his action from earlier at the arcade, Bella tapped her chin with one finger and pretended to ponder his question for a moment. "Yes," she finally said, and couldn't help but find the way Maks let out a relieved sigh to be absolutely adorable.
She rocked up onto her toes and planted a soft kiss on his cheek before whispering, "Next time, I'm driving."