Chapter 23: Embarrass

After a few rounds of Mario Kart, I start to get the hang of it. He says I'm a natural and ups the difficulty. I think that's a horrible idea, but as usual he insists it's fine.

"But what if it's too hard? What if I can't even finish the race?"

"Then we'll keep practicing until you can."

I'm a little miffed, because I was just starting to climb the rankings when he decided to switch it. My current highest standing is fourth place.

However, luck seems to be on my side. I get third place in my first race at the higher difficulty. He turns to me with a huge grin. "Hey, look at you! And you said you'd never played this before! What a liar."

"Hey! I wasn't lying!"

He laughs, then gives me a smirk. "Since you clearly know what you're doing, want to bump it up again?"

"I am fine with this. I think that was pure luck."

"Once more, then, to see how much luck it really was. Ready?"

He starts the race, and I fall into last place (unsurprisingly). I break open a box, but get distracted when a large, cylindrical avatar with arms and angry eyes zooms past me. "What's that?"

"Keep your eyes on the road!"

I look back at where I'm driving just in time to make a sharp turn. "Right."

He snorts. "I never thought I'd be saying that to you. Anyways, that was a Bullet Bill. A power up for people hopelessly in last place."

I nod, intently keeping my eyes on the road now. By the last lap, I find myself doing really well again. Soon enough, I find myself in second: right behind him. Honestly, that's good enough for me- I don't think I could beat him anyways.

That's when I remember my power up. I glance at the little box in the corner of my screen. "What's that?" It looks like a shell, but it's blue and appears to have spikes and wings. I press the button to activate it.

"DON'T-"

The larger-than-average, blue, winged shell flies straight towards his car, circling above him. I veer out of the way just in time to avoid an enormous blue explosion and zoom across the finish line.

"NO!"

I start laughing. First! I got first! I beat him!

He tackles me onto the bed. "YOU'RE THE WORST!"

I'm still laughing. "I beat you! I beat you!"

"You are so mean! How could you do that to me?!"

He's glaring down at me. I can't stop grinning, though, and I don't particularly want to. "I beat you," I whisper tauntingly, and he makes a face at me.

"You are going to pay for that. I don't like losing, Todd."

"Oh yeah? What're you going to do?"

"Well, I'll start by knocking your remote during races to make you drive off the road, and then I'll push you over and sit in front of you so you can't see the screen."

My eyes widen. "How is that fair?! I didn't do anything but play the game the way it's supposed to be played!"

He smirks. "Well, that's just too bad for you. You decided to play a cutthroat game, you blue-shelling pirate-"

I'm miraculously saved a few moments later when there's a knock at the door and it opens. We both look over to see Darla.

"Boys, time for dinner. And honey, be nice to Todd."

I smirk victoriously at him, and he squints at me before finally getting off the bed. I follow him out of the room, where he waits for me before closing the door.

"Don't you have to turn off the console?"

"I don't want it to save," he grumbles, and I smirk. "And besides, we'll be back soon. I'll beat you very consistently for the next several hours, now that I've been alerted to your skill."

I grin again and force myself not to make any comments, just in case. He gives me the squinty-eyed look again, and I try to clear the smirk off my face and look innocent. He scoffs.

"Don't bother trying to look all sweet and harmless and naive. You're a threat to everything I know and trust, you-"

"Be nice to Todd!" comes Darla's voice from further down the hallway. He smirks a little and focuses his gaze ahead again, not saying anything else and leaving me with many questions as usual.

Sweet and harmless and naive? And what was he going to call me? He was using a teasing tone, so it's so difficult to know if he was actually going to go for an insult or compliment me instead, to catch me off guard (did I say compliment? I meant flirt with). And it's hard to tell if he was still talking about Mario Kart or not, because I have apparently become the first person to catch his interest for more than one day, at least enough for him to bring me home with him twice- does that make me a threat to everything he 'knows and trusts'? Well- it certainly makes me a threat to his usual routine, I would assume, but I don't actually have any idea how much he cares about that.

We reach the kitchen, and my nose is bombarded with the smell of yeast and melting cheese- pizza.

The counter hosts an array of homemade pizzas, cut into large slices. My mouth is already watering. It looks amazing. I force myself to be grateful and polite instead of ravenous and turn to his parents. "Wow, everything looks amazing. Thank you so much for having me."

"Why, thank you, Todd," his dad says. "And of course, you're welcome anytime."

I accidentally glance at him, wondering if that's his perspective as well as his parents', since he seems to drop friends so fast (the thought puts a slight damper on my mood). He gives me a small smile. "Yeah. Anytime."

I return the smile, still not fully convinced but somewhat reassured for now. I join his family as they select slices from each of the pizzas they want, essentially following him down the line. Once he gets to the end, he starts to go back out of the kitchen, but his mom stops us.

"Honey, why don't you sit at the table with us? After all, Todd is the first person you've brought home more than once, so it's a momentous occasion."

He snorts and rolls his eyes, but does so anyways. I follow him and he gestures for me to sit next to him. Their dinner table is shockingly small- I was expecting a long banquet table, but it's just a large (by normal standards) oval. His parents sit on one long side, and he and I sit on the other.

"You two had better not tell embarrassing stories about me to Todd," he warns them as he sits down. His mom grins wickedly.

"Just wait until after dinner, we'll get out the photo album and show him all the embarrassing pictures, too!"

He sighs, shaking his head, and digs into his pizza. "I'm sorry for your loss, Todd."

Wait, what? "My loss?"

"Of the several hours of your life that will be stolen by baby pictures. And that'll lead into home videos, which will lead into-"

"Oh, you're exaggerating," his dad says, waving a hand dismissively. "Though, there is that video of you when you refused to try bacon because it looked gross, and then once you tried it, you asked for it every morning. And when you told us you were going to go to the bicycle store with your uncle to get a new bell for your bike, and instead you went out for ice cream."

"That one's a picture, I might have it on my phone..." Darla says, pulling her phone out and scrolling through it for a moment.

His dad turns to me. "And he wasn't supposed to have gotten ice cream that day because he was being punished for lying about breaking something the day before. So they come back, and I look at him and ask 'Did you go for ice cream?'"

Darla places her phone on the table in front of me. "And he gives us this wide-eyed look and shakes his head and says 'Nooooo, nooooo'."

I grin. In the picture, he's probably about four of five years old, maybe six. He's looking very innocent and righteous, but there's chocolate ice cream smeared all around his mouth, completely contradicting his lie.

"Guys, Todd doesn't care about baby pictures of me. Why did you actually want us to stay down here for dinner?"

"To embarrass you. And, since he's the first person to be brought by you into this house more than once, we wanted him to feel welcome," Darla says factually. "So, Todd, please know that you are welcome here whenever you like."

"Thank you," I say, smiling and intentionally not looking beside me at him. He nudges my arm with his elbow a moment later though, so I do, albeit a little anxiously.

"You are. Really." He holds my gaze, and my heart warms. After a moment, though, he grabs his plate and stands up. "Well, if that's all, then I have to go beat Todd at Mario Kart to re-establish my mastery and nurse my wounded pride."

Thoughts on the chapter? What did you think of Todd getting first in a race? And the millionaire's retaliation? The possible flirting? And the millionaire's parents embarrassing him? Let me know!

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