Page 76 of What If It's You?

“For the game?”

“Sure, but I actually meant for you. Are you going to keepworking with Ryan? Are you gonna try to find a job with a gaming company? Like one of the big ones I mean?”

“Not that. I think a corporate job would actually kill me,” Ollie said, laughing once. “And I’d love to work with Ryan on another game, but that’ll probably take a while. We’re only just starting to sort out how to distribute this one.Ifwe get enough funding to get to that stage in the first place.” He shrugged, going for nonchalant and hitting it…if you didn’t look harder.

“So you find someone else making an indie game, then. Ryan must know some people. Or some smaller studios? Could he point you in the right direction?”

“He has…but none of the ones that I’ve vibed with are Boston-based,” Ollie said, carefully focusing on the screen.

“So?”

He turned to me, half-frowning.

“So I didn’t figure it was worth going after some job in Baltimore when I don’t even know if I’m any good at this.”

“But now youdoknow. You’re good at this. Like…reallygood, Ollie.” I stared straight into his eyes. He swallowed hard.

“So what, we’d just up and move to Baltimore for some pipe dream with an indie gaming company?”

“Maybe. Or maybe you’d move there and I’d come on weekends for a while, until I found a job. We’d make it work.”

“Lo…be serious.”

The look he gave me, mostly eye-rolling dismissal with the tiniest thread of pain, nearly broke my heart.

“Ollie…this isn’t just something you’re messing around with, right?”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean…the way your eyes lit up when you were telling me about the rock-troll sequence?” I laughed. “I haven’t seen you that excited about something since…I don’t even know how long. Maybeever.”

“Okay…yes. I love this. But we also have a life here. Your whole life is here.”

“For now. But it doesn’t have to be that way forever. Especially not if you find the job of your dreams in Baltimore, or Denver, or wherever else they make indie games.”

“Lo…I don’t want you to give everything up for me.”

“I wouldn’t be.” It felt so simple now, it was almost impossible to believe I hadn’t seen it before. “You’remy everything, Ollie. My job, living here—all that stuff doesn’t mean much if you’re not happy too.”

“But you just got that huge promotion.” I could see the hope flickering in the corners of his eyes, but he was still warding against it, shoulders tight, jaw tense.

“Yeah, well, Pixel has a lot of offices. Or I could look for something else entirely—you were right, that job is taking over way too much of my life. And my options have vested at this point. I could always take some time off and…” Even voicing the idea that I could write, especially after the abject failure I’d made of it when I was given the chance in World D, seemed silly, dangerous somehow. I bit my lip, shrugging lightly. “I could try something different, at least for a while. Take a risk for once.”

“So…what are you saying?”

“I’m saying that I want you to go after this. And when a dozen different designers are begging you to join their team, we’ll figure out what our next step is. Together.”

Ollie’s Adam’s apple started bobbing again, and his dark eyes sparkled liquidly as he took my hand.

“That would be…incredible. If it really is together.”

“It will be. Forever.”

I’d never meant anything more, every part of me aching with love for him, and pride in this amazing thing he’d done, and hope that he could find a way to turn this incredible talent into something more, something that gave him that same sparkly look of pure joy every day of his life.

And more, it gave me courage. Ollie had always believed I could do something different, pursue something scary and hard and without the promise of regular gold stars to serve as mile markers. Ialways claimed we couldn’t do itbecause money,but really…we barely even touched the majority of my salary, my savings were frankly ludicrous for someone my age. And seeing him be awesome at something very near what he’d always been awesome at didn’t just…suddenly make me believe I was also a creative genius. That felt like the kind of arrogance that had probably left me so hopelessly muddled in World D. But it made me wonder whether trying—and even failing—wasn’t as scary as I’d always made it out to be in my own mind.

I might never get to see it happen for him—even less so for me, I didn’t even have a book idea let alone a manuscript to peddle. But I had to hope that even if the very idea of me evaporated whenever this ended, a strange dream that grew ever dimmer as reality slowly took its place—even then, he would know that this was the thing he was meant to do. And that the people who loved him wanted it for him more than anything in any world.

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