Chapter 4
“Omg! Are you frigging kidding me?!”
Charlie’s fingers flew across the keyboard in a blaze of fury as she typed to verbally lay waste to a ninja looter in-game.
“You totally saw me going for that chest!” said Charlie. “What’s your deal, man?”
“No u weren’t,” said the dwarf bandit.
“Yes I was, you thief! Didn’t you see me killing those three ghosts guarding it? I wasn’t clearing this cave for the fun of it.”
“lolololol noob,” laughed the fiend, who then disappeared before Charlie’s eyes using the vanish skill respectively given to the bandit class.
“Oh, nice. You’re a real class act, you piece of $&%#!”
Charlie hoped his mature language filter in his chat settings was switched off so he could see exactly which very not nice word she had called him. She fought the temptation of losing herself into a nerd rage and tried reminding herself that in the end it was just a game.
But curses! She hadn’t spent the last twenty minutes single-handedly clearing a dangerous cave just to have some little kid, chances were, sneak up from behind and snatch her loot! So, removing her headphones and logging out of the game, she pushed in her keyboard and walked away from her computer to stand in front of the window of her apartment to look outside.
What to do… thought Charlie.
Three days ago, since she had planned on seeking excitement for her life, Charlie had asked for a few days off from work, to which her boss, who liked to be referred to as Mr. Director, a self-proclaimed title that made him feel more important than he actually was, hummed and hawed in consideration of her request, listing off several inconsistencies in their surveys. When things looked like they weren’t going to go her way, she brought up how she had never missed a day since she had been hired. Mr. Director finally gave in, being sure that she noted just how big of a favor he was doing her and that hopefully the pickle surveys wouldn’t take too much of a blow with her absence. She knew that he was just ranting for the sake of ranting, but nonetheless she praised him for it anyway. Anything was better than standing around smelling the sick odor of liquor off his breath. She wondered if drinking was the only way he could tolerate his job. But now that she had a few days off, she had no idea what else to do.
Looking down from her apartment window, Charlie watched as people milled about on their lunch break and treated themselves to whatever cravings they experienced. She found that living in an apartment which was perched above so many take-out restaurants to be convenient during times she was too lazy to cook, but on days like today they were more like sinister temptations since she wouldn’t be able to afford it due to taking a few days off work. Money was always tight, living from paycheck to paycheck. She knew she was going to have to sacrifice some things that week if she were going to search for excitement. But looking at a kid holding a jumbo size slice of pizza made her stomach regret it. If only the bandit class vanish ability was translatable into real life, she thought, and she weighed the ethical significance of just this once ninja-looting that little boy’s pizza.
Charlie tore her eyes away from the streets below before she risked compromising her moral compass.
After the events of the day before, specifically the incident relating to chopping a man’s beard off with a sword, Charlie didn’t have the motivation to seek other excitement that day. So what was there to do? She was really beginning to doubt her decision of taking time off work to pursue such a crazy idea. Now that she thought about it, she couldn’t believe she let some guy’s crazy tirade about his sandwich get to her that bad. Because, who was she kidding? She wasn’t prepared to go skydiving just to seek a thrill. And honestly, there wasn’t a whole lot that she could think of doing that was easy and accessible enough for her to pick up on a whim.
Skateboarding? She’d read a lot about how it’s considered an extreme sport and that the tricks were often difficult and dangerous. Pulling off gnarly tricks would definitely be awesome. But, considering that she had a hard enough time trying to jump over small puddles without slipping face first into them, it didn’t build her resume in a positive light. Check that idea off the list.
Deep sea fishing? Who wouldn’t think the thought of wrestling with a swordfish to be epic? But on the other hand, she knew the moment something caught the line, she’d be torn out of her seat and thrown out of the boat like a minister tearing the devil off of his immaculate daughter before he defiled her innocence. Check that idea off the list because drowning at sea didn’t exactly sound like a fun time.
Exotic dancing?
Yep. That was enough. She shut down all other attempts at brainstorming before she thought of anything crazier than taking off her clothes in front of complete strangers.
Charlie walked along the walls of her small living room. She was really regretting taking nearly a week off from work now that she realized there was nothing she was brave enough to do other than play video games or read books. But really, even if that was all she ended up doing, it should have been more than enough to motivate her to do backflips. Why was it that when she was working all she could think about is getting home to be able to read or play more games, but then when she has almost a whole week off to do just that she quickly gets bored of it after the first day and then paces around her apartment floor like a mindless zombie? Was it crazy of her to actually be missing asking people their opinions about pickles?
God help me, she thought, horrified.
On her fifth circuit around the living room, Charlie stopped in front of her bookshelf. She often did this when she was bored and admired her collection of books she had picked up throughout the years. Currently, none of the books were in any particular order, but depending on what mood she was during one of her periods of boredom, she liked to pull them out and rearrange them all over again. Sometimes they went in alphabetical order by title or author name, from biggest to smallest, from favorite to least favorite, and other times she liked to match colors. Today though, she reached to the top shelf where she then let her index finger slide from one side to the other, dragging over titles like C.S. Lewis’ The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe, Neil Gaiman’s American Gods, J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Hobbit, and lastly, all seven books from J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter series.
As Charlie let her finger slide off the tip of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, the thought of Harry’s magic and wizardry made her think of Rowan’s nifty magically appearing card trick. It had been two days since the events of that day, and every time she looked at it where it lay on her computer desk, a sick nervous feeling invaded her stomach. She thought about him constantly since their meeting on the sidewalk. It was even beginning to become exhausting that she couldn’t get him out her mind. Things like that never happened to a girl like her. All throughout her high school years, she often dreamt of the dreamy guys approaching her to sweep her off her feet. But in reality, they usually just tripped her instead.
So just who was this Rowan?
Extremely gorgeous? Check.
Great personality? Check.
Way out of her league? Double check.
Charlie lost count how many times she wondered if his interest in her was just maybe some cruel joke. She picked up the card with his email address numerous times, deciding that she was going throw it into the trash. But that exasperating sense of curiosity of whether or not he was sincere always won in the end and she placed the card back down on her desk.
That damn sandwich, she thought. Why does he have to be such a delicious looking sandwich?
Charlie had no idea if she should really go through with it and actually email him. Now that her emotions and bodily functions were under control, she was able to look back and wonder why she hadn’t given him her email address instead. Not that she had any experience with this, but wasn’t it the guy who was supposed to make the first move? I guess he did go ahead and ask her out, but still, it seemed only right that he co
ntacted her rather than the other way around. But it was too late to go back and change things now. So, she cursed her social awkwardness and accepted the way things worked out.
Was two days long enough? she wondered. She didn’t want to appear desperate and move in too quickly. And what if he had other plans? This was turning out to be much more stressful than she cared for it to be. But in the end, biting the bullet and deciding there was no better time than the present, she returned to her desk and placed her fingers on her keyboard, emailing him to see if he’d like to come over that night, if available. Her heartbeat increased with every word she typed, until finally when she reached the time to click send, she felt like her heart was literally trying to tear its way out of her chest in an attempt to save itself from the fear of rejection.
Click.
Charlie stared at her computer monitor, the “your message has been sent” notification instantly sending a wave of nausea and regret to wash over her. So she spent the next hour and a half stuffing her face with ice cream, screaming into a pillow, crying in the shower, watching sappy romance clips on YouTube, and not necessarily all in that order. She fought the temptation of checking her email every five minutes but was doing a poor job of it. This was ten times worse than the compulsion of wanting to refresh the tracking page on a FedEx shipment every ten seconds to see if her package had yet to leave its last destination or not.
And to think, this was all for the sake of a LOLcat date.
Then finally, after nearly two excruciating hours of suspense, she refreshed her email page one more time to discover that Rowan finally replied to her message.
Hi Charlie,
Is it Wednesday already? That is the night you spend looking through LOLcat photos, isn’t it? But to answer your question – yes, let’s see each other. I’ve been waiting for your email since last we met. However, in your email you forgot to give me your address to find your place, so how about we meet at an internet café instead? I know of a great one downtown that sells great café mochas that’s called Anna’s Place. Have you heard of it? If so, let me know in a reply and I’ll meet you there around 6.
Talk to you soon,
Rowan
Charlie read Rowan’s email three times before she believed its contents were true. Then, from deep within her, a girlish excitement began to bubble up until it finally exploded into a squeal of joy. She was twenty-one years old and had never officially gone out on a date with a guy before. Nervousness and delight battled each other in her mind as she struggled to figure out all the small details for the upcoming evening, such as what to wear and whether she should put her hair up or down. She wondered, even though they put up a confident and hard-to-get front when in person, if all women secretly acted this way behind closed doors before a date.
Charlie found it kind of embarrassing that she didn’t know enough about that kind of thing. But she quickly forgot about it.
Tonight, she had a LOLcat date.