“Do we need a hundred tokens?” Alden frowned at me. “She said it would only be a few hours. How many tokens can we go through anyway?”
“You’d be surprised. And car stuff has a way of always getting delayed. If we have leftover coins, we can just give them to a kid as we leave.” The way I saw it was that this was my last splurge before I had to pay my half of the tire repair. I’d load up on free breakfast in the morning and cheap snack food to save money later. I passed the clerk some cash before Alden could talk me out of it.
“You got lunch,” I said when he pulled out his wallet. “Let me get this.”
“Okay.” He didn’t seem too thrilled, but he followed me to the end of the long counter where I accepted our bucket of tokens and vouchers for the food.
“You’re strangely happy,” he observed as we passed through the old-style metal gate to enter the main part of the arcade. “You play a lot of games as a kid or something?”
“Oh yeah. The convenience store that I told you about, the one I was allowed to bike to, had some old-school games in the back. And there was a pizza place in town with a ton of games that everyone used for their birthday parties. So many parties. Didn’t you have that too?”
“Some. I…uh…didn’t get a ton of invitations.”
“Damn.” My heart squeezed. I got that Alden could be a little prickly, but every little kid deserved a crowd of friends. “Well, we can make up for lost time. You pick first.”
“Okay.” Alden studied the offerings as though there might be a quiz on the layout later, finally pointing to the driving game. “I know we’ve been driving for days—”
“Not video-game style.” Happy, I led the way over to the machines. “And not head-to-head.”
“Yeah, it’s a two-player game.” The way he said it slowly made it clear he hadn’t had a lot of takers to play those with him before.
“Put the tokens in,” I ordered him with a grin. “And if you’re lucky, I’ll even do a rematch once I kick your ass the first time.”
My competitive side wouldn’t let me go easy on him, even if I did feel bad for all his childhood hurts, and I didn’t think he’d want that anyway. He was every bit as competitive as me, and I liked that about him. Liked that I could talk trash and not offend him.
“Who says you’re winning?” he said as he took a seat next to me.
“I’ve seen you drive. You need me to show you the accelerator?”
“Big talk. I’ll have you know I have excellent reflexes. And maybe I took notes yesterday at the Speedway.”
“Bring it on.” The game started up, and he chose a bright-red racer after we agreed on a urban setting backdrop. The tinny music and sound effects brought back a flood of memories, and it wasn’t hard to remember how to drive like a maniac and dodge obstacles, laughing as Alden did the same, giving me a much better race than I’d expected. I still won, but it was damn close.
“About that rematch?” Alden’s brown eyes sparkled, like sun shining through honey.
“Totally.” I loaded us up with more tokens, switching it up by picking a slick yellow roadster. Knowing that he was better at this than I’d assumed made my muscles tighter, made me concentrate that much harder, trying to outrun him. And it looked like I’d succeeded when at the last second a line of barrels came rolling toward me and I couldn’t swerve fast enough. I wiped out, leaving Alden to zoom to the finish line.
“I win!” The look of pure elation on Alden’s face was one that I wanted to memorize. Not photograph and share with the others, but map for myself to take out and examine later—the joy and openness there utterly intoxicating. I couldn’t help grinning back. His nose wrinkled. “What? You’re looking at me weird.”
“Nothing. You’re cute when you win, that’s all. Good game, man.” A saner person would probably not admit the cute part—or at least try to take it back once the words escaped—but I didn’t. The way I figured it, Alden was cute, true facts, and he probably hadn’t heard that very often in his life, which was a damn shame.
“I’m not cute.” His cheeks stained pink. “And it’s all about anticipating disaster. Trust me. I know how to see bad things coming and duck.”
“Yeah, well it was still impressive.” I clapped him on the shoulder. “Let’s try a different game now.”
“Your turn to pick.”
“Pop-A-Shot. Love that one.”
“I suck at sports involving balls.”
“There’s a joke there, but I’ll be nice.” I laughed as I led the way to the row of mechanical basketball hoops with flashing lights over each hoop. “And it’s not a sport. Just put the ball in the hole. Easy. I’m gonna win us a friend for the goat. Watch me.”