Page 15 of Love at First Sighting

Carter

I don’t know how many more times I can scrub the toilet before I get carpal tunnel.

I only had an hour between El agreeing to meet at my place and El actually arriving at my apartment.

My meager two-bedroom, which I share with a man named Leonard, who I found on Facebook.

Leonard, despite his name, is in his twenties like me and is apparently exceptional at Spirestorm , a popular multiplayer RPG.

We have the tenuous kind of relationship two federal employees might have—where we occasionally acknowledge each other’s presence and respect the fact that we have jobs we can’t talk about.

It’s obvious where I work, with the uniform and all.

He’s never really specified where he works, but I have my suspicions he’s some kind of data analyst for the FBI.

What I do know is that Leonard has astonishingly high security clearance, and until now, I wasn’t desperate enough to ask for his help.

I am also terrified that in ten minutes, El is going to be at my apartment, where I sleep and live and shower and my fridge is mostly full of inexplicable amounts of salad dressings and condiments.

El, who must be used to McMansions and thirty-dollar smoothies, and smart fridges that know when you’re running low on kombucha. Fuck, I don’t even have kombucha.

El and I are nothing, just horny daydreams and flirty text messages and thoughts of what could be if I weren’t nothing, when she’s everything.

So, I scrub the toilet again.

I return to my room and shove the few remaining dirty T-shirts into my hamper, spray way too much Febreze even though the room doesn’t smell bad, and try to figure out how I can make my bedroom aesthetic in the next four minutes. What if she has to shoot content here?

I picture El’s bedroom as a cream-colored wonderland with all the right accent colors and throw pillows. It probably smells like fresh cucumber, like she does, and she definitely has a mattress that conforms around and caresses her body the way I want to.

What’s a girl like her going to think about my room?

From the simplest bed frame I could find on Amazon to a few shoddy dressers and a nightstand.

There’s practically no decor, just a closet full of black suits and white shirts and a picture of me and my dad at Disneyland when I was a kid.

No place has felt like home enough to settle in since he died.

From moment one, I’ve known El is out of my league. More beautiful, more charismatic, more magnificent than I could ever be. She lives a grand, picture-perfect life of excess and glamour. But something about her seeing physical proof of how little I have—how little I am—cuts deep.

I give El the gate code and directions to get to the apartment and then scrub the toilet one more time in a panic.

When there’s a knock at the door, I begin to sweat, but I swallow the fear and inadequacy and answer.

“I wore sneakers this time,” she says proudly as the door swings open.

And she did. I’m taken aback by her look as a whole.

It feels so…unlike her, but I’m not complaining.

She’s wearing a pair of dark pants, a black T-shirt, and what looks like a letterman jacket with the G-Babez logo emblazoned on the chest. When she asked what I needed from her, I told her Leonard was a gamer who didn’t leave the apartment much, and clearly she knew what to do.

“Do I…look okay?” she asks. “I wasn’t sure about the outfit. It’s a little different from my usual—”

“Are you comfortable?”

“Yes?”

“Do you feel good in this?”

El thinks it over, like she’s supposed to come up with some filtered answer, but finally nods. “Yeah. I do.”

“Great. Then I think you look perfect.”

El shifts in place and gazes up at me with the smallest hint of a smile on her lips. “Cool. That’s…great. Okay, I have a plan.”

I invite her inside.

She eyes the living room and kitchen, which look like they do in every apartment in Los Angeles: white, open concept, with gray vinyl floors made to resemble wood.

Leonard isn’t much of a decorator, either, but our two pieces of decor are a small frog butler statue we keep our keys on and a full wall of collectible Funko Pops no one is allowed to touch.

“Um,” I begin, hiking a thumb at my door. “That is my room. We can go in there and wait for Leonard to finish up his match. He shouldn’t be too long. Bathroom is right there, in case you need it. It’s clean, I promise.”

I awkwardly lead her toward my bedroom and nudge open the door.

I’m half expecting some low whistle of disapproval or outward cringe.

Instead, she swoops around me and homes in on the photo on my nightstand.

It was for my eighth birthday, in the dead heat of summer.

The only thing I wanted was to go to Disneyland, after the roller-skating venue where we’d planned to throw a party was compromised in a brutal water main break.

El smiles and runs her finger around the edge of the frame. “You were cute.”

“Am I not anymore?” I tease.

El turns back around and rests her hands on my tie, loosening the knot at my throat. Her touch is so gentle yet demanding, and I want to encourage her to keep going. Start with the tie, make it to the buttons, my pants. Leonard would be happy to go for another match in his game.

“? Cute is not the word I’d use,” she says. My eyes drop to her lips. Perfectly curved and full, probably tasting like cupcakes or cherries or some saccharine shit I’d eat up. I don’t need to think about this when she’s so close to my bed and is holding me under her control. “So, what’s the plan?”

“We need to convince Leonard to get us into the archives. I’m fairly certain my dad’s file is there and I know Leonard’s clearance is high. And he’s good at hacking things.”

“Can you hack an archive?”

“He says he can hack anything digital. He one time hacked into the servers at the Esports World Cup to protest being knocked out in one of the semifinal rounds.”

El nods, impressed, as Leonard shouts, “Victory is ours, brothers!” through my paper-thin walls.

El’s lips turn into a smile. “Watch me. I can get whatever you need out of him.”

He opens his door a second later. El fluffs her hair one more time and sashays into the living room.

When I first started talking to Leonard, I was expecting an odd old man who I had nothing in common with.

I was not expecting a below-average-height, above-average-freckled twentysomething who lives in typically obscure nerdcore T-shirts and ill-fitting jeans.

He cleans up after himself, doesn’t leave beard shavings in the sink, and I’m pretty sure he has a large fridge in his room, because he never fills our fridge with food.

So, like, maybe he has his own fridge or he’s a vampire. But the vampire thing hasn’t been an issue for me so far.

“Hello, Carter and…maiden friend.”

I know nothing about Leonard’s love life, but I have to imagine it’s not terribly active.

It’s not like he’s un attractive, per se, but he really does commit to the gamer lifestyle on top of a full-time job.

I imagine the only women he has time for in his life are made of pixels.

But even so, no one can tear their eyes away from El.

She’s just like that . Naturally, Leonard’s a little flushed when he sees her for the first time.

“Hey, buddy. This is El, uh…my friend.”

Who I am desperately turned on by.

Leonard…salutes.

Instead of being taken aback, El simply salutes back. “Were you playing Spirestorm ?”

El slides into this role like an Oscar-winning actress. I’ve seen a few sides of her—glammed up, terrified, sated on the best grilled cheese of her life—but I’m learning there may be no shapes El can’t mold herself into.

Leonard huffs. “Yeah, you know Spire ?”

El shrugs. “I mean, I’m no expert. Not like I’m sure you are, but I did a partnership with G-Babez a while ago, so I got to watch a bunch of matches and I was interested. It feels like so much to learn.”

El is so goddamn earnest it hurts my heart.

This is why she has the kind of followers she has.

There’s something about her that’s so authentically real, and I instantly think of the photos we took at the diner.

If she were to post those, start building a brand that screams El instead of anyone else, I have no doubts she’d thrive in her own niche.

“It’s not that hard.” Leonard clears his throat. “I mean, it takes a lot of work building up those levels, but I think you can do it.”

Her smile is beaming . I know she’s trying to woo Leonard, but she is wooing the shit out of me. “Really?”

“Absolutely. Do you want me to teach you?”

El’s lips part in a seductive and inquisitive gasp. “I…well, actually, there was something else I wanted to ask you first.”

“Anything,” Leonard replies instantly.

“Carter tells me…” she starts, gripping me by the tie and yanking me into her grasp.

I collide with her side—a hard, toned body against mine.

I drown in the little sigh she lets out when we come together.

Her voice pitches up in a way that makes her seem clueless, but she’s in control of the whole charade.

“…you can get us in somewhere we need to go.”

Leonard quirks an eyebrow. “Do you need a better DMV appointment?”

El laughs, throwing her head back. Her eyes glimmer with heart as she does. “No, I want something a little more. There’s an archive out in the mountains. Carter says PIS routes their files to it. We want to get in there.”

He stiffens and we lock eyes. It’s not a small ask, and that’s why I’ve brought El here.

If I were to ask Leonard, it’d probably be a sorry, dude, but no , but I have a lot of faith in her ability to sway anyone who’s interested in women.

I don’t want to get Leonard in trouble, of course, but I bet no one at PIS would even know they got hacked.

“What makes you think I’d do that?”

El strides over to Leonard and traces the shape of the Starfleet logo on his chest.

“Because it’s really important.”

Either the word important or El’s placement of her fingertips on Leonard’s right nipple resonates deeply, because he pushes open his door and welcomes us into his room.

I’ve never actually been in here. All I know is there are neon lights glowing from beneath the door frame at all hours of the day.

Leonard’s room is dimly lit, with a massive gaming PC setup with three monitors.

The center one is curved and the largest by far, with green LEDs flashing behind it.

There are three tower fans, all aimed at cooling his rig.

His bed is small and set in the back corner, with a comforter that is so niche, I can’t even recognize where it’s from.

There’s no fridge, so I really have no idea what he eats.

“Welcome to the lair.” It smells like plastic and electronic heat in here, making me loosen my tie even more. “Have a seat wherever.”

El quickly takes a seat in the old, clearly leftover gaming chair in the corner of the room and lets out a pleased sigh as she leans back. “I think I see why people invest in these.”

She lets out a little whoo! as it spins, and I want to get sucked into Leonard’s gaming PC fans and be chopped into a million pieces.

I lean on El’s chair, halting the spinning.

“So,” Leonard begins. “Let’s talk.”

El glances to me. She’s done her job. I need to fill in the rest.

“Leonard, do you know anything about the archive PIS uses? It’s in the Santa Monica Mountains.”

“Oh yeah, Site 47.”

“I need to get in there, and I don’t have high enough security clearance. I need to take a look at one file. My dad’s. I don’t want to take anything or cause any problems.”

Leonard and I don’t go into deep trauma spills over late-night Taco Bell, that’s for sure. But if I’ve learned anything from my time with El, it’s that it not only benefits me to be honest and real, it feels good, too.

“It’ll help me figure out what happened to my family. They’re going to be purging old personnel files soon, and if I don’t get my hands on it now, I’ll never know. I want to get in and out and go home. Could you get me in?”

Leonard breathes heavily for too many breaths.

“Leonard,” El butts in. “I hope you know we wouldn’t dream of asking you to do this for nothing.

I’ve got some connections at G-Babez and I bet I could get you into their annual party at the GamesWorld Expo next summer.

I might even be able to connect you with their head of brand management.

I know they’re looking for actual professional gamers to join their little troupe. ”

I have no idea what G-Babez is, but El clearly does. I wouldn’t put it past her to have established a sponsorship connection in the past hour in order to gain some leverage over Leonard.

“So, do you think you can get us into this archive?” she presses.

Leonard bites down on his bottom lip, then turns back to his computer, instantly pulling up a…it’s a very scary hacker terminal with a lot of numbers and glowing lights I don’t understand.

“Oh,” he says, “I can get you in. I can get you in anywhere .”

“Well, will you?” El continues.

Leonard’s typing away at his console, and within minutes, he’s pulled up a map of the archive.

“PIS is one of the easier agencies to hack into.”

“Yeah,” I say, “we’re not known for being too tech savvy.”

“So, we just waltz in there and find the file?” El asks.

“It’ll be more complicated than that,” Leonard explains. “I’ll have to walk you through and get the doors open. I can wire into their systems and take over the cameras and locks. It’s up to you guys to be as quick as possible.”

I think we can do that. Get in, take pictures, get out. I know I can’t steal the file, but I can have some proof for myself and closure. No one else needs it but me.

“Is anyone else going to be there?” I ask.

“I don’t know. You’ll have to be really careful inside, but I can get you in.”

He’s right. It’s all we’re asking of him. Leonard can’t solve all our problems. I’m amazed he’s even willing to do this much.

“All right,” I agree.

Leonard reaches into his desk, pulls out a simple black box, and pops it open. He passes me two small…beans?

“To communicate,” he says.

“Damn, where did you get earpieces?” I ask. This is the kind of thing I would have killed to have during my secret agent games with my dad.

“Amazon. They’re not that fancy,” Leonard says.

“Well, thanks, then. I’ll keep them safe. And thank you for all the help. We’ll play it smart and make sure you don’t get caught.”

“I won’t,” he says. I exchange a glance with El. “Trust me, I’m a good enough hacker that I won’t get caught. If something goes belly-up, it’ll be you guys who get in trouble.”

El laughs under her breath. “Comforting. Thank you.”