Page 44 of Chasing After You
The place was a chaotic collage of flashing screens, pixelated music, and bursts of laughter from other patrons. The crowd was happy with half-finished drinks and the vague buzz of nostalgia clinging to them. We stood shoulder to shoulder, surveying the floor. Josh’s face was lit with childlike excitement. I hadn’t seen him like this in… well, ever. Not even back then.
“So,” I said, bumping his hip lightly with mine, “what’s your poison? Shooting games? Racing? Air hockey?”
“I want to try everything,” he declared proudly, already moving towards the basketball hoop game.
I laughed as I followed him. “Your wish is my command. Can’t say I have great aim, though.”
Josh was already picking up one of the small basketballs at the front of the machine, grinning, his face lax and carefree. “Try to keep up.”
My heart skipped in my chest at the happiness he exuded.
After we both had a turn at the machine, it was clear that Josh held an advantage over me in any of the sport-related games.
“Hey, if there was a game for that horse thing, you’d totally beat me,” he teased, elbowing me playfully.
A laugh punched out of me. “Whathorse thingare you talking about?”
“You know, where you ride the horses and use a stick to hit balls!”
I tilted my head at him, smirking. “Do you mean polo?”
“If that’s the horse sport you used to do, then yes,” he snorted.
I shook my head in amusement. “Alright, well, since they don’t have a polo simulator, what would you like to try next?”
He smiled and wandered off toward a retro-style skeeball alley. “Come redeem yourself over here.”
We spent the next hour like that—racing neon-colored motorcycles, failing at air hockey, and getting aggressively competitive over who could shoot more animated zombies. At one point, Josh insisted we try a cooperative cooking simulator, and we devolved into chaos within five minutes. He kept bumping into my character, yelling, “Dorian, we need more onions!” while laughing so hard he had to lean on the machine.
I didn’t even care about the score. I just watched him laugh.
Fuck, his laugh. His smile.
Halfway through our second hour, we took a break near the back bar. He leaned against the counter, cheeks still red from our last game. I slid a soda across to him.
“No alcohol?” he asked, raising a brow.
“Nah, I don’t want to get you drunk. For such a big guy, you really can’t handle your liquor.”
He shrugged and just sipped the drink, lazily looking at me under the pink-tinted lights.
“This was… actually really fun,” he admitted quietly.
“I wanted it to be.” I mirrored his posture, arms on the counter, close but not too close. “You deserve to have fun.”
His smile faltered, just slightly. “You didn’t really get to, did you? Back then.”
“No. But I am now.” I let the words hang between us. “Because I’m with you.”
Josh stared at me, and for a second—just a breath—he didn’t look away.
Then he laughed, nervously, draining the rest of his soda. “Alright. Enough of that. You wanna lose again at skeeball, or what?”
I followed him back onto the floor, my eyes lingering on the curve of his shoulders, the warmth in his voice, the way he trusted me just enough to keep smiling.
At the end of our two hours, Josh asked me if I’d like to stay longer or end the night there.
“It’s already late, and you need your rest,” I told him, feeling a spike of pleasure rush up my spine as he happily nodded at me like I held the answers to all of his questions.
