Page 254 of Call the Shots
Jillian peeked around the door. “Okay, she’s here, actnatural!”
I grinned. “Feels like something’s going on…”
Bear held up his controller. “We want to game with you.”
The three of them had moved on to a new video game—some kind of old-timey Civil War storyline with three guys searching for two hundred thousand dollars in gold—but whenever they included me, we still playedZoo Cultivation IVon the same zoo with an exhibit overflowing with our okapi bloodline.
“That’s it?” I asked.
“Uh-huh.”
“Because your cousins are freaking out, AJ’s turning purple…”
Bear glanced at Jillian, doing handstands against the wall, and AJ holding his breath, pointing at me while he banged his fists against the couch.
“Guys, calm down,” he warned, handing me my controller.
“Is it happening?” his aunt shouted. She hurried in, drying her hands on her pants. “Are we getting this show on the road?”
“Okay, what is this?” I laughed.
Bear just pulled me to their couch and started the game. The kids were vibrating and Jillian kept yelling at Bear to hurry up, like he could’ve cut the title sequence.
“This is so casual,” I whispered to Bear. “I feel at ease. I couldn’t be more relaxed at a spa.”
A flash went off from his aunt taking a picture and I burst into harder laughter. Bear threw me a sheepish smile. Clearly something was going on, I was the only one with a controller while he clicked on the okapi exhibit from the map.
“You’re going to feed the okapis,” he explained.
Feeding the okapis meant an unskippable cut scene the kids hated because it paused the game. I loved the cut scenes, they were twenty seconds of adorably animated fun, but the kids had forbidden me from clicking them.
Bear let me watch them to my heart’s content when we played together but that was before we even left Marrs. I’d already gone through all of them, especially the okapis.
I sighed. “Is this like when you dropped me into the toy shop and my avatar had to rollerblade everywhere?”
“No. Just do it.”
Biting back a smile, I snuggled into Bear and started the cut scene. It began the same, the zookeeper leaning forwardwith the leaves to feed one of our great-great-great grandokapis, the camera panning to the waterfall. But there was something different.
The waterfall had…letters on it?
“What did you do?” I giggled. “Are those from the zoo signs? How did you break those apart—how long did this take you?”
More letters appeared from the new angle.
JUNE WILL YOU MARR ME
Staring at the screen, I lowered the controller. The breath left my body. I was stunned speechless. Bear slipped away, taking a knee in front of me.
“There were no extra Ys!” Jillian burst out. “We made so many zoos to find one—we couldn’t cut any of the Ys!”
“June Basil.” Bear cleared his throat. “Damn, I’m not supposed to be nervous.”
“You don’t have to be nervous—I’m going to say yes,” I blurted out.
The smile on his face—that hopeful, boyish smile that melted me like no other—made my heart pound. “June Basil,” he repeated, cracking open a black box from his pocket. He rested it on my thigh, talking exclusively to me like his family wasn’t freaking out beside us. “If you…would’ve said no, the kids were ready to convince you to say yes, it took us a lot of gaming sessions to figure it out.”
“Alot,” AJ agreed. “I was so bored?—”
