We scoot past the bar and into the back room, which is filled with huge, blocky games like Pac-Man and skee ball and pinball, plus one of those giant tanks filled with stuffed animals and a useless metal claw. The place is quiet and dusty and entirely empty, which isn’t particularly surprising for a Wednesday afternoon in the middle of the summer. Nobody would choose to spend a beautiful day inside a dimly lit arcade. Except, apparently, for us.
“Quarters,” I say, marching over to the machine, and Griffin trails after me. I feed a few dollar bills into the slot, and the coins clink loudly as they fall into the metal drawer. Behind me, I can feel him waiting as I scoop them out, and my heart picks up speed. Something about the quietness of this place—which is meant to be full of people and lights and noise—makes it feel like we’ve stepped out of the real world.
“Hey,” he says softly, and I spin around, my hands filled with coins.
“Yeah?”
In the dusty light from the window, his eyes look very, very blue, and the small scar below his right one is more pronounced.
“I just—” he begins, then stops.
I wait for him to continue. There’s a Cubs game on in the next room, and the tinny sound of distant cheering rises and falls in the stillness. Griffin lifts an arm, and for a second I think he’s reaching for my hand. But then we both look down, and I realize I’m still holding a pile of quarters. Instead, he takes a single coin, flipping it once with his thumb so that it lands perfectly in his palm.
“Tails,” he says absently.
“What are the odds?” I joke, my voice a little wobbly, and Griffin gives me a funny look.
“Fifty-fifty,” he says, as he walks over to the Pop-A-Shot machine, the moment slipping away all at once. This is how it always is with Griffin, like any progress you think you’re making has a tendency to evaporate immediately afterward. Like no matter how much you think you’re connecting, no matter how hard you try, it doesn’t ever add up to anything. You’re always stuck starting over again the next time.
I follow him over to the game, where two small hoops are arranged side by side, with a net that runs down toward the two players, so that each time you shoot, the balls come rolling back in your direction, an endless supply that only runs out when the timer ticks down and the buzzer sounds.
Griffin is already rolling up his sleeves. When he’s ready, he grabs one of the balls, which is about two-thirds the size of a regular basketball, easy enough for him to palm. “These are pretty wimpy,” he says as he studies it.
“You know who these would be great for?” I ask, grabbing another one. “Noah. Did you see how much trouble he was having yesterday? We played again this afternoon, and the regular ones are too heavy for him. But with these, I bet he could almost get it to the basket.”
“And when he dribbles,” Griffin says, bouncing the ball on the wooden floor a couple times, “he’d have a way better grip.”
“Maybe we can win him one.” I point at the glass case in the corner, which is filled with prizes. I usually don’t even bother, since the amount of quarters it takes to win enough tickets to buy anything is about ten times what the thing actually costs. But, even from here, I can see a small green and white basketball half hidden by a stuffed elephant on the lowest shelf. “It’s camp colors and everything.”
Griffin turns back to the baskets. “Well, if you’re as good a player as you are a talker, I’d say it’s a definite possibility.”
“The trick,” I say, turning to face the hoop, “is to line yourself up just right.”
“No,” he says, as he feeds the quarters into the slot. “The trick is to get the ball in the basket.”
The machine comes to life, all blinking lights and blaring jingles, and the timer on the scoreboard starts counting down from ten. I reach for the first ball, then stand poised and ready to shoot. Beside me, Griffin is doing the same, his face focused and ready.
And then the buzzer sounds, and I let the ball fly. It bounces off the rim, but before it’s even landed back in the chute, I’ve launched the second one, which falls into the net with a satisfying swish, though I’m too busy to notice. I’m already shooting again, and then again, falling into a neat rhythm, the quick tempo pattern a kind of muscle memory, a callback to the hours spent playing in our basement, before my dad lost his job and we had to sell the games, before we moved to a smaller house, and then to a tiny apartment, before the fighting started, the late nights and the shouting and the name-calling, and my sister curled up in my bed with me, a pillow over her ears. Before all that—before we learned how to put on happy faces, before we understood that smiles were something you could hide behind, and words could be used as shields, when it was just the four of us in the basement, the concrete walls ringing out with the bright sounds of laughter and cheering.
Now, once again, I’m in constant motion, moving like a machine, steady and unseeing, and when it’s over, even after the clocks have displayed their broken zeroes and the buzzer has long since sounded, I continue to shoot what’s in front of me until all the balls are gone, and then I stand there, empty-handed and blinking.
“Whoa,” Griffin says, staring at the scoreboard.
I haven’t just beat him; I’ve demolished him. The score is 88 to 42.
“Whoa,” he says again. “You were in some kind of crazy zone there.”
“Yeah,” I say, still not entirely sure I’ve come out of it, still not entirely sure I want to. “I guess I was.”
* * *
We play all afternoon.
“Rematch,” Griffin keeps calling, each time I beat him, and though my margin of victory gets slimmer each time, it also gets funnier and funnier.
“This is ridiculous,” he says, laughing, after our eleventh round, where I beat him 76 to 62. He leans back on the pool table, shaking his head.
“And you thought I was just talking a big game,” I say with a grin.
“You were,” he points out. “But it turns out you have the skills to back it up.”
I hoist myself onto the pool table beside him, letting my legs dangle. “Well, thanks for being such a good sport.”
He looks surprised. “Yeah … it’s kind of weird. I usually hate to lose.”
“Tell me about it,” I say, but he shakes his head.
“No, I mean it. I really, really hate to lose. I hate doing things I’m not good at, so if I love something, I get really into it, but if not, I can’t be bothered. I’m usually either all in or all out.”
“That doesn’t sound like such a bad thing.”
“It is,” he says, scratching at the back of his neck. “Nobody likes a sore loser.”
“You don’t seem like a very sore loser to me.”
“Yeah, well, that’s the thing,” he says, turning to look at me, really look at me, for the very first time, and there’s something about catching his eye that feels like winning a prize. “With you, I don’t seem to mind it as much.”
* * *
The display case holds a ragtag assortment of dubious prizes: On the top shelf are baskets full of bouncy balls and candy, key chains and plastic rings, and below that are the bigger-ticket items, stuffed animals and inflatable bats, miniature footballs and gumball machines—everything wildly overpriced and a little bit dusty.
Griffin and I lean over the glass together, his shoulder brushing against mine in a way that makes my heart beat faster. I want him to notice, to lean into it, to turn and look at me again or to take my hand, to pull me close or kiss me—anything.
But he doesn’t.
Instead, he rubs at the smudged glass with the sleeve of his shirt. In the column of light from the window, he looks impossibly handsome and incredibly far away.
We’re both quiet for a long time, for too long, and I start to get edgy, searching for something to fill the silence, because that’s what I always do. But I stop myself, deciding that it’s his turn, which only makes me more anxious. Because suddenly it seems important, whatever he might say next. Suddenly, it feels like it has the power to tip this maybe-possibly-date in one direction or the other.