Perry snorts. “Are you?” Grabbing the pitcher of beer and cups, he saunters across the room toward a vintage Twilight Zone machine. Fitting.
I slide off my stool to follow, but Devin snares me around the waist. His hand is like a brand through my shirt where he grips my side. “You are one of the most surprising women I’ve ever met,” he says softly, his warm breath caressing my ear. The light catches his jawline and damn he’s beautiful—like a Romantic-era painting. His full, glistening lips, immaculate jawline, and dark, perfectly formed eyebrows cap soulful, deep brown eyes. Like Orest Kiprensky’s piercing self-portrait mixed with the bright, breathtaking energy of a Gauguin.
Heart fluttering against my ribs, I feign a bravado I’m not sure I feel. “Stick around. You ain’t seen nothin’ yet.”
“Promise?” The flicker of heat in his eyes is so potent I nearly self-combust.
Part of me wants to haul him out of here and say to hell with Perry and our bet. And by the way Devin’s looking at me, I’m pretty sure he’d be into the idea. But a deal’s a deal. I promised Perry a pinball game, and I never back down from a challenge—especially where pinball is concerned. “You’ll have to wait and see.” With a little shrug, I slip out of his embrace and head toward the Twilight Zone machine where Perry is watching us intently, waiting.
I let my hips sway more than I usually do, knowing Devin’s watching me too.
Chuckling, he quickly catches up and falls into step beside me. “Count me in, Mystery Girl.”
“Looks like you’ve finally met your match, Perry.” Devin’s tone of surprise is nearly drowned out by the electronic dings and flashing red and orange lights of the vintage nineties pinball machine.
I admit, I was initially worried when I watched Perry play. His game lasted nearly forty-five minutes and ended with an impressive score of 1.9 billion points. My score’s now at 1.4 billion; I still have some catching up to do. Devin shifts beside me to stand closer, but I can’t let his nearness distract me. It’s my second-to-last ball, so if I want to win, I need to focus. And that shot of Fireball isn’t doing me any favors. My head feels like cotton and I have to squint at the ball to keep it in focus. I aim for a corner where I know I can score extra points if I land the ball just so, and it ricochets into place. I blow out a relieved breath. Lights flash and another ten million points are added to my score.
“How are you so good?” Perry asks me, voice full of awe.
“I lived above an arcade in Euclid until I was twelve—before I moved to Chagrin Falls,” I add to Devin. “The owner used to give me free tokens if I helped him sweep up after school.”
“That’s kind of shady. Child labor and all that,” says Devin.
I don’t take my eyes off the whizzing ball. “He was the best, actually. A gem. My mom worked long hours, so I was a latchkey kid—alone a lot, you know? I think letting me sweep for tokens was his way of looking out for me without making me feel like a charity case.”
Mr. Fitzpatrick, the owner of Euclid’s Gametime Arcade, will forever hold a soft spot in my heart. A grizzled vet in his late sixties, he was always kind to the quiet, mousy girl who lived upstairs. He even let me draw on his chalkboard behind the counter whenever I stopped by. He’d scrounge up a few half-broken pieces of colored chalk, toss them onto the counter, and say, “Make it pretty,” in his gruff, croaky voice.
At first, I didn’t know what to draw, so I tried drawing what I saw in the arcade. The prizes from the prize case—stuffed animals, small toys, temporary tattoos with dragon and butterfly designs. Then video game characters and, eventually, people. But no matter how cartoonish or terrible my drawings were, he’d nod and say, “Nice work.” And the next day I’d come back and the chalkboard would be blank again—a canvas waiting to be brought to life by my imagination.
I spent countless after-school hours rotating between playing pinball, sweeping up trash, and drawing on Mr. Fitzpatrick’s chalkboard. That is, until my mom found out. She put a stop to my “time-wasting” real quick.
With a shake of my head, I refocus on the game. “Anyway, I haven’t played in a long time.”
“Could have fooled me,” Perry mutters.
I let myself sink into the game—timing when I deploy the flippers so the ball rolls up a ramp and hits a target. I’m dimly aware that a crowd has gathered behind us—I can tell from the shuffle of shoes and the invisible press of bodies. Whispers and the occasional cheer rise up when I hit a target. I lose a ball down the drain and another loads—my last ball. Ten minutes later, I’m within range of Perry’s score… if only I can…