Chapter 22: Racing

"Come in," he calls, and I swallow, taking a breath and tightening the sash on the robe before opening the door, peeking my head in.

He's lying on a giant bed, propping himself up on his elbows and playing a video game. He's very intently focused on the giant TV across from him, grimacing as he presses a button on his controller rapidly. A moment later, he huffs a little, then presses what I assume must be the pause button and looks at me, already smirking.

"Sorry to interrupt," I murmur, not sure if I want him to hear me or not.

He waves a hand, then gestures to a pile of clothes on the edge of the bed. "Here, I put out a few choices. Do you like video games?"

I (very awkwardly, tensely, and gingerly) enter the room and go to the pile of clothing, carefully picking a few items up before hugging the bundle to my chest (it makes me feel marginally less anxious). "Um... I don't... really... know..."

"Too busy with homework? Well, how about once you're dressed, you study some hand-eye coordination, and maybe test out how good your reflexes are?"

"I do have actual homework."

"You've got all weekend, don't worry. At least play some games with dinner, yeah?"

I press my lips together. "And after that, you'll let me get some work done?"

"How about we just consider dinner exempt from the idea of work, and then after that we can discuss a work schedule."

I sigh. "Fine. I'll go get dressed."

He smirks suggestively, and I blush deeply before quickly exiting. That must count as flirting. He must be flirting with me. Maybe. Depending on what he's trying to achieve, by making all those comments and making me the first person to ever come over to his house more than once. What in the name of all things good and precious does he want from me?

I go back to the bathroom to get dressed. The heated floors are so nice.

His clothing is really nice, too. The sweatpants (which are much like the ones he's wearing) are soft on the inside, and the shirt is similarly made out of nice fabric, not rough at all.

When I go back into his room (feeling a lot less awkward this time, though I am wearing his clothes now, which has a few interesting implications) his gaze snaps to me immediately, and he looks at me kind of like he looked at me after Raymond finished with both of us: scanning me up and down, not giving much indication (if any) of his thoughts on his face. Still surveying my appearance, he pats the spot next to him. I take it, swallowing as I try not to pay too much attention to how he's looking at me.

Finally, his gaze circles back up to my eyes as he hands me a controller (showing zero sign of acknowledging how he was just staring at me a second ago). "Here. Ready?'

"I thought we were going to play video games during dinner."

"We are. But in order to actually be playing by that point, you have to warm up first. And if you've never played, you need a tutorial of the controls and such."

I decide not to argue, figuring it's pointless. "Okay, so what are the controls?"

He grins and goes back to his own remote, clicking a button or two before the TV makes a sound like a car engine. I look at it. "Mario Kart?" That's funny. I thought he'd be like, a super invested gamer, with all his money and free time, and be into something more...

"I play Mario Kart religiously," he informs me. "I'm very competitive. I've had programmers come in and alter the game to make it more difficult."

Not even remotely surprising. "Why Mario Kart? Why not just get another racing game?"

"I like sticking with one thing, because then I can master it. And Mario Kart lets me drive the way I do in real life, without destroying the car or having to worry about anything."

Not that he seems to in real life. "Okay. Teach me the controls."

He grins. "Press this to go forwards, this for backwards, and this one on the back to drift-"

"What's 'drift'?"

"Drifting is controlled skidding, basically. You do it for turning corners really fast."

"Sounds dangerous."

"Not at all, this is Mario Kart. Now, this is how you use your power-ups, and you can flick up the controller to do tricks and stuff when you jump off a ramp, and you'll accelerate a little when you hit the ground. Oh, and literally turn the remote to steer- or you can use the joystick." He presses a few buttons on his remote until we get to another screen. "Alright, now in terms of picking your character, you might want to start with baby Mario, since he's good for handling which is what you're going to want until you get more experienced."

I use the arrow buttons to navigate the menu, before finding baby Mario. He reaches over and presses a button on my remote that selects it, and the game moves to the next screen. He reaches over and presses another button on my remote. "There, that'll show your stats for different cars. Go for handling, again, and decent speed. Don't go for a lot of acceleration, yet, because that'll make it difficult to control."

I flick through a few options before finding one that looks good. He glances at my choice, seems to approve, and again the screen changes. He chooses what I assume to be a racetrack, and the TV displays a loading screen.

"Alright, don't try and do a whole bunch of fancy stuff just yet. Just focus on getting around the track. Stay on the road, don't run into things- kind of just use common sense, yeah?"

"Okay?"

"You can ask me questions during the race if you want. I turned down the difficulty, so I won't have any trouble."

"Okay."

The game finishes loading and shows a racetrack from several angles. I try to remember as much as I can about the course, before it changes to a bunch of cars. I find mine and watch as the screen flashes a countdown from three, beeping with each number. When it finally says to go, I press the button that he said causes the car to go forwards, watching my car accelerate.

After a few moments of driving down the straight track, I see a bunch of floating, jelly-like boxes in my path. They have question marks on them, too, and disappear when other cars run into them. I try to aim for an open space, but the box that was burst a few moments before reappears suddenly, and I drive into it. There's a sudden repeating melody, concluded by a happy chirp. I don't know exactly what it did, so I just keep driving.

"Press that button," he says, reaching over and pointing to a button on my remote. I do, and a large red turtle shell suddenly appears out of nowhere and flies towards one of the cars in front of me. The car flies up, does a full rotation, then lands back on the ground with the driver kicking and waving their arms. I blink.

"What just happened?"

"You used a red shell. It targets other drivers so you can pass them."

"Are they hurt? Is there a health level I should be worried about?"

"Nah, it just stalls them for a few seconds and puts them behind."

"Oh." I turn a corner, pressing the buttons that he said were for drifting, and find another line of floating-jelly-question-mark-boxes. "Am I supposed to run into those?"

"Yeah, that's where you get power ups from."

I do, and the repeating melody plays again. This time, I notice a little box in the corner of my fraction of the screen that has a small red mushroom with two black lines on the stem. "What's that one?"

"Mushroom. Makes you go faster for a second or two. Wait until you're not going around a corner to use it."

I turn the upcoming corner and find myself on a relatively straight road, so I press the button to use the power up. The front of my car kicks up, and zooms forwards before settling back down again. I'm sure I look shocked, because he laughs.

"You're doing fine. Usually first timers would have ran into a wall by now."

As if he conjured my fate, I promptly run into a wall. I carefully reverse and turn to get back on the road. Unfortunately, I missed the jelly boxes. Luckily, the finish line is in view. Finally. I centre myself on the racetrack and cross the finish line.

"Hey, there you go! Only three more laps!"

"What?!"

He laughs. I sigh.

What did you think of the way the millionaire looked at Todd wearing his clothes? And the millionaire's choice of video game? How about teaching Todd how to play? Let me know your thoughts in the comments!

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