“You don’t know that.”
“Maya.” He set the water glasses down and moved closer, settling back onto the couch. “I’ve talked to you almost every day for three years. I know you’re kind to strangers, patient with Everest, uh, Tank, even when he’s being an absolute disaster, and you once spent four hours helping a new guild member learn mechanics instead of doing the raid you actually wanted to do. You’re not terrible.”
“That’s friend stuff. Relationship stuff is different.”
“How?”
I thought about Chase, about the ways I’d tried to be what he wanted. Quieter. Less opinionated. More accommodating. “Relationships have expectations. Ways you’re supposed to be. And I’m apparently not great at meeting those.”
“Or,” Geoff said, choosing his words with care, “you were with someone who had the wrong expectations.”
“Maybe.” I pulled his hoodie tighter around myself. It smelled like him and brought me comfort. “Sorry, this is heavy for a gaming session.”
“Maya, we’ve had entire conversations about your career anxieties, my family drama, and Tank’s disastrous love life. Heavy is kind of our thing.”
He was right. Some of my favorite memories from our friendship were the early morning conversations when the game was just background noise and we talked about real things. Dreams and fears and the complicated mess of being human.
Or being a Yeti, in his case. Because he’d never mentioned it, and it didn’t matter in the slightest.
“What about you?” I asked, deflecting. “Any exes who won’t leave you alone?”
His expression shuttered slightly. “A few. Nothing recent.”
“Bad breakups?”
“Complicated ones.” He picked up his water glass, studying it as if it held answers. “Dating as a Yeti is challenging. Especially when you’re into humans.”
My heart did a little skip. “You’re into humans?”
“I mean, not exclusively. But yeah.” He glanced at me, then away. “Most Yetis prefer their own kind. Simpler that way. You know, no size difference issues, no cultural misunderstandings, no having to explain why you need the thermostat set to sixty degrees.”
“But you prefer humans?” I couldn’t stop myself from asking.
“I prefer people who see me as a person, not a novelty or a fetish or a monster.” His voice was quiet. “I know the human world thinks of us as monsters, but we’re people too. It’s harder to find what I want than you’d think.”
I thought about what he said. Especially the part about what it must be like to never be sure if someone liked you for you, oronly wanted to check off some supernatural bucket list item. “It sounds emotionally exhausting.”
“It is. It’s part of why I stopped trying. Easier to be alone.” He gestured at his house. “That’s why I prefer an online connection.”
“But you’re not alone. You have friends, like Tank, and your search and rescue group, and,” I paused. “You have me.”
His eyes met mine, and I tried to read his expression. “Yeah,” he said softly. “I have you.”
The moment stretched, heavy with words we weren’t saying. My heart was hammering so hard I was sure he could hear it. Hell, he probably could hear it with those enhanced senses.
The thought should have been unsettling. Instead, it was strangely comforting. He could hear my heartbeat, sense my emotions, probably smell my shampoo and the chocolate we’d been eating. There was no hiding from him, no carefully curated version of myself I had to maintain.
He already knew me. The real me. And he was still here, looking at me like I was something precious.
“We should,” I started.
“Do you want,” he said at the same time.
We both stopped. Laughed. The tension broke, but it didn’t dissipate entirely. Instead it lingered in the air between us, waiting.
“You first,” I said.
“I was going to ask if you wanted lunch. It’s past two, and we never ate lunch.”
