𝐑𝐞𝐝 𝐑𝐢𝐝𝐠𝐞

A L E X A N D E R

"I don't mind losing." She grins and it's a beautiful thing to witness, especially from so close. We break apart and the game we end up playing is in no way, shape or form, fair. Charlotte's team get their ass kicked, and unsurprisingly get a little less joy out of the game than the ones who were randomly stuck with me. 

When we've had enough, and Charlotte's cheeks surely hurt from laughing so much, we wave to our teammates and join each other once again. "How do you feel about a walk?" I ask her and she perks up.

"That sounds lovely. Do you think it's okay to leave our things?" She asks, looking down at our blanket and I shrug.

"Yeah, just grab your phone. Best not to sweat the little things." I smile and stand, grabbing a ball cap from off the blanket to shield my face from the sun. It's partly cloudy, but the sun is uncovered at the moment and I somehow forgot to bring sunglasses.

We aren't walking for long in comfortable silence before I decide to speak up—running the back of my hand along Charlotte's forearm and dragging it down to intertwine our fingers. "Next time, let's play on the same team."

She glances up at me and quirks her lips to the side. "I'm going to hold you to that."

I nod, barely holding back a smile of my own. "I can be a sore loser. Hopefully you'll never have to witness that side of me."

"I've heard."

"R—eed?"

She pauses, looking ahead with her hand covering her plush lips. "You almost just called her Rat, didn't you." She calls me out, noticing my stutter. I can't help but laugh, nodding.

"It stuck, I don't know what to tell you."

"What an awful nickname," She says and I shrug, not disagreeing, but silently loving the way the word awful doesn't sound awful at all when she says it.

"So why our program? Why computer programming and not...I don't know, med school or something? You're way too pretty and way too smart to sit behind a screen at a desk all day.

"I'll most likely be in different classes next year, as the studies become more specific. Hopefully, by then, my first game will be well underway, I'm still working on securing an artist. I also have a lot to learn—"

"Wait what? Like video games? That's so cool, Charlotte." I turn to her, my voice becoming louder with excitement.

She blushes and I marvel at the way it looks on her porcelain skin. "Yeah, console games specifically. Reed cannot wait to test it out and she tells me so every other day," She laughs and I can't take my eyes off of her perfect teeth, smiling at the sight.

"Sign me up for that, Reed and I can battle or face off. What kind of game? Why games?" I rattle off questions, wanting to know everything that there is to know about this girl.

"Well, alright, I can put you on my beta tester list. But it's a single-player RPG, so I'm not sure if it's something you'd be interested in..." She trails off and I bump her arm with my own, our hands still held together and despite the heat and sweat, I still love having her close.

"I'm interested in you," Her head snaps towards me, bright green eyes wide, "Therefore, I'm interested in your game. Genuinely though, I think that's the coolest thing I've ever heard. Let me know if you ever have any code that needs debugging. Happy to lend a hand, or another pair of eyes."

"Thank you, Alexander, I really appreciate that. It's a struggle, especially for something so large. It's not a basic game by any standard. Anyway, I could talk about this all day so let's move on."