“It’s a good name.” I meant it. It fit him somehow. “Better than YetiBeGood, anyway.”
“Hey, that username is a classic.”
“It’s a terrible pun.”
“It’s a great pun.” Some of the tension bled out of his shoulders. “Do you know how many compliments I’ve gotten on it over the years?”
“From people who thought it was ironic.”
"Still counts."
We fell into silence, but it was a more comfortable one. I sipped my hot chocolate and tried to organize my thoughts.Questions danced in my head. Some were practical, such as how long he thought I’d be stuck here, about my car and my apartment and the convention. But underneath those were bigger questions, scarier ones.
Did this change things between us? Was I disappointed? Was he?
“You’re staring,” Geoff said quietly.
“Sorry.” I didn’t look away. “I’m processing. I’ve got questions and, well, you’re really real.”
“As opposed to?” he grinned.
“I don’t know. Sometimes I thought maybe I’d made you up. Like, there couldn’t actually be someone who got all my references and made me laugh that hard and always knew what to say when I was having a bad day.” I set my mug down, wrapping my arms around myself. “And now you’re here. Well, no, I’m here. In your house.”
Geoff leaned forward, elbows on his knees, his expression serious. “Maya, I need you to know I wanted to tell you. So many times. But it’s complicated. Being what I am.”
“Complicated how?”
“People treat you differently when they know. I don’t feel it at all in Calamity Creek, but in the rest of the world there’s still…” He gestured with the hand not holding the cup. “Assumptions. Stereotypes. I’m either a dangerous predator or a gentle giant or some kind of mystical wise mountain man. Never me. Never just Geoff.”
I thought about his words. “And online, you could be you.”
“Exactly.” His eyes met mine, and there was such relief in them it made my chest ache. “You saw me. The real me. Not the packaging.”
“The eight-foot-tall furry wrapper.”
“It’s a distracting wrapper.”
“Impressive. Not distracting,” I said, and watched his ears twitch again. Was he blushing under all that fur? “For the record, I’m not disappointed. Surprised, yes. Completely thrown, absolutely. But not disappointed.”
Something in his expression shifted. “Really?” His voice sounded skeptical mixed with a tinge of hope.
“Really.” I pulled the sleeves of his shirt over my hands. “I mean, I might need some time to fully wrap my head around it. And we should probably talk about everything. But the person I've been playing games with for three years, the one who sends me memes at two in the morning and helps me theory-craft builds and remembers my coffee order? That’s still you, right?”
“Yep. That’s still me.”
“Then we’re good.” I smiled, feeling it reach my eyes for the first time since the crash. “Although I have to say, your camera excuse was way more legitimate than mine.”
Geoff laughed, a deep rumbling sound that filled the cabin. “What was yours again?”
“Broken webcam. Which was technically true. I dropped my laptop once, and the camera got weird. But mostly I,” I shrugged. “Didn’t want to deal with the inevitable questions about why I looked tired or the comments about my appearance or any of it. Online, I could just be a username and a voice. It’s tough being a woman who plays games.”
“Same reason, different details.”
“Exactly.”
We looked at each other across the space of the living room, and I felt oddly content. This was weird, but it was also somehow exactly right. The voice matched. The mannerisms matched. The person I’d grown to care about was sitting right there, just in a very different package than I’d imagined.
I could work with different.
