"Fucking toast-ass son of a bitch!"
Kat shakes her controller with a white-knuckled grip like she's throttling it for its failures. The protagonist of her game, Super Doughboy, puffs up into a familiar shade of golden brown as he dies in a pit of fire for the twenty-fourth time in a row.
"Hey, don't blame the little bread dude." I tell her. "He's got the entire world against him. How's he supposed to make it if you give up on him?"
"I can't help him if he won't help himself!" Her controller veers through the air as she guides the doughboy to another death.
If I had watched Kat playing this game four months ago, I would have thought she was tormenting herself. I barely knew her back then, despite having been in classes together since the beginning of high school, and I've never seen another person actually start yelling at a game character in real life. But that was four months ago, and I've learned a few things since then.
First, Kat lets her frustration wind up like a rubber band, and as soon as she actually makes that jump it's going to unravel and she'll whip all the way back into exhilarated triumph.
Second, She's incredibly expressive about everything, not just video games. What I used to think was her acting normal was actually just how she acts when she's shy and closed off around people she doesn't know well. The real Kat projects her feelings so hard, she couldn't sell a lie through a closed door.
Third, Kat is the sweetest, most adorable, and my favorite person in the world.
Somehow, after vaguely knowing each other for years, all it took was spending a few weeks working together on a class assignment as the only members of a group project to actually get anything done, and we basically fell for each other like something out of a teen romance movie, complete with the part where we dramatically got together right before prom. Now, a few weeks later, we've moved on to the stage of our relationship that they don't show in the movies, where I come over to her house pretty much every day of the summer and watch her play video games.
"Oh! Oh my god, finally!"
Kat leaps up in excitement as her doughboy finally makes it across the fire pit intact. She dances in front of the couch in celebration.
"I beat the le-vel! And I'm done getting toasted!"
She does a little shimmy, sending her chestnut hair flying around her shoulders. Her worn pink t-shirt and loose sweatpants do nothing to show off her figure, but seeing her dance around in house clothes like nobody's watching makes me feel so indescribably lucky, I can actually feel my heart throb.
"You don't know if you actually beat the level though," I point out. "There's still another screen after this."
"No! Fuck no, there's
no more!
I'm
done!
" she declares as she crosses over to the next screen.
True to her word, the level goal is right there waiting for her.
"See?" she says. "It would have been too much of a dick move putting anything after that."
"Isn't this game all about dick moves?"
"That would be too much." she says. "I'd cry."
Before we got to know each other, I mostly thought of Kat as a kind of tomboyish girl in some of my classes. A bit cute, but she didn't really stand out in my head as "pretty," maybe because it never seems like she's trying to be. But the truth is, she's really not tomboyish at all.
Marie, my previous girlfriend, could make herself up like a cover model, but she was actually way more of a tomboy. She was a track team member, really competitive, with a never-back-down attitude and a sort of commanding presence which made her seem bigger than she really is. In comparison, Kat wore a cartoon print t-shirt to our first date, and occasionally tells her friends to suck her dick, but she's basically a marshmallow. She doesn't have a commanding bone in her body, she couldn't be much less of an athlete, and she basically never makes the first move at anything. She's also freer with her emotions than anyone else I know, and incredibly sweet. And she always makes me laugh.
"Well, if it did, I'd kick its ass for you, Kittyhead." I say.
She purses her lips like she's trying to fight down a grin, and a blush spreads across her cheeks. I'm the first person ever to give her a pet name, and she still reacts to it every time.
"Uh huh. Well, it's kicking
my
ass right now. I'm literally sweating, look." She flaps her shirt to cool herself down.
"You want to play something else then?" I ask.
We have the house to ourselves right now, but just for the moment. Kat's father probably won't be back for a few hours, but her mother or sister could turn up any minute now. The fact that we can never really be sure how much time we'll have alone together kind of limits our activities, but it's not so bad. As it turns out, I'm actually Kat's first boyfriend. And when we kissed for the first time a couple of months ago, it was very obviously her first kiss. She's adorable, and there's a huge part of me that wants to have my hands on her pretty much constantly, but more than that, I want to still be together with her years down the road. Right now, all the time we spend together, and all the new things I'm learning about her, just make me so happy. So I don't mind taking things slow if it means her parents are okay welcoming me over as her boyfriend. Also, watching Kat play video games is genuinely entertaining.
"Um, actually, I have something we could play together, if you want?"
The slightly bashful look she gives me makes me think for a second that she might have something other in mind than video games, but instead, she turns around and shuffles through her game library and pulls out another game. The grim cover is enough for me to recognize a horror game, even before I read the title, "Slaughtered by Sunrise."
"Are you okay with scary games?" she asks.
"Sure, but it's also the middle of the daytime." I point out. "That's not really the best ambiance for a horror game."
"Look, I need you
and
daylight on my side to handle this one, okay?" she says.
I had no idea Kat was bad with horror until just now. It's the kind of adorable thing about her which would have seemed totally out of place a few months ago. I feel almost guilty about how much I want to see how she reacts to it, but she's the one inviting me.
"Sure, but I'll need you to teach me how to play." I tell her.
"Oh god, I'm gonna be so bad at that. Okay..."
She starts the game up and gives me the rundown of the rules. It's a cooperative game where we work together to activate devices scattered around the map while being menaced by an unstoppable killer, and we manage to get ourselves slaughtered a couple of times while I'm still working my way up the learning curve.
"Kat, save me, I'm getting spike-murdered over here!"
"Sorry, no time, I'm too busy
winning the game!
" she shouts back.
