Mismatched

Epilogue II: Happily Hera After

That was about four years ago.

......

Flash forward to today; contrary to popular belief, the damn nerd and I are in a happy, healthy relationship, I've sold more copies of "A Night Without the Moon" than I can count now, thanks to Hera's expertise in marketing, one of the subjects she's currently studying in college, and the situation between our families has greatly improved.

And, by the way, we do share a house close to campus, so we ain't got to fret about how far from campus we are.

Hera and I were finally finished with classes for the day, so we decided to have a gamers' night together after studying. Y'know, MMO's, fighters; all that good stuff. We were playing some co-op Fortnite; I was playing as Rebound Raider from the NBA series of characters, decked out in the colors of Denver, and Hera was Charlotte, your average demon-slaying teen.

On my screen, I saw a bunch of guys ganging up on Hera's character.

"Yo! Get off my girlfriend!" I yelled.

I must've snapped or something, because I fired an entire round of shots at the perp shooting at Hera, knocking them down at first, then eliminating them. And, soon after, Hera took out the guy trying to revive them.

"Good eye, babe!" I praised her.

"Whatever, JJ. You know you're nothing without me on my team."

I rolled my eyes. "Even without you, nerd, I still would've taken out the entire--Ow!"

Hera elbowed me in the ribs before I could finish my sentence. "Will you stop calling me that name, JJ?" she said. "It's annoying."

"Whatever," I countered. "Let's just kill off the rest of these noobs."

We headed off together, after collecting the dropped goods from the eliminations of the perps trying to kill Hera, to find the other squads and kill them all.

A few minutes later, it all came down to the last two squads: me, Hera, and two other dudes against another three players; they had lost a player to battle. We started spraying our ammo, and I knocked down one of the players, a Guggimon player, and as another player in the squad, a Trailblazer Lynx player, went over to try to revive them, Hera shotgunned him in their head. And we killed the last squad member a second before they were able to revive any of their squad members, securing the Victory Royale for us!

"Come the hell on, man!" I yelled. "This is literally our childhood; you can't beat us here!"

And me and Hera high-fived each other.

"Aww, man, that was a good match," Hera said. "They really thought we'd be caught off-guard! But our motherfucking teamwork is unmatched!"

"Hell yeah, it is!" I yelled.

Then, after simmering down a bit, I told her: "But that's it for the Fortnite Battle Royale for now, babe; it's dinner time. How are we gonna continue getting dubs in B.R. if we don't sustain ourselves?"

"Come to think of it," Hera said, hearing her own stomach growl, "all that shooting and defensive building has made me pretty hungry, JJ. So, tell me, what's on the menu tonight, Chef JJ?"

"You're in luck, baby girl," I told her. "I already ordered us some Chinese food via Doordash before we even began our session, so we don't have too much of the mental load of figuring out what we'll eat later. And I ordered you your favorite dish."

"Aww, JJ, you shouldn't have!" Hera said. "I'd have cooked up something for us. But like you said, we no longer have that mental load."

"I think I'm gonna go to my room and take a nap, my sweet," I said, my eyes heavy as hell. "Wake me up when our food gets here."

"I will, JJ!" she replied in a lovey-dovey voice. "Love you!"

"Love you, too, Hera-boo."

And I went up to my room and, as soon as I laid down on my bed, I had drifted into a deep, peaceful nap. Something I had wanted for ages since what happened during our Senior year in high school...

A few more minutes later, the doorbell woke Hera up. She ran up to my room and knocked on the door like a madwoman, effectively waking me up.

"Ayo, JJ, my beloved baka!" she yelled. "Our dinner is here!"

I opened my bedroom door to reveal that Hera had already gotten the food from our Dasher.

"Mm! That fuckin' smells good!" I exclaimed, excited to finally dig into some food after working on my studies and grinding in Fortnite.

After getting myself together and combing my hair, which doesn't take long, I headed downstairs to the kitchen table to meet Hera.

Was I going to risk my future children getting damaged just for trying to be a gentleman?

Hell yes.

I pulled out a chair for her and braced myself for the worst. Here comes the family jewel abuse...

"Thank you, JJ," I heard Hera say. "You really have become quite the gentleman, haven't you?"

"Yeah, well, I guess I can owe that change to you."

And as soon as Hera blushed, I decided to throw a compliment her way and really mess her up. "That blush looks really cute, by the way."

As her blush intensified, Hera punched me in the arm again, but playfully this time. "Will you stop praising me?" she whined. "It makes me blush every damn time!"

"First of all, ow!" I said, rubbing my arm. "And second, you know damn well I like to tease."

Classic Hera. My arm is gonna fall off if she keeps this up.

As soon as she sat down at her spot at the table, I sat down at the spot across from her.

"So, tell me, babe," I said while giving Hera her entree (they were marked), "how'd studying go for you?"

"Oh, it went just fine, JJ," Hera answered. "How about you?"

"Same," I replied.

We thanked God for our food and all that jazz, and we began eating soon after. I was glad to be eating dinner after all that studying and grinding.

"This is really good," Hera said between bites. "Just like I remember back home."

"Agreed," I chimed in. "I heard they really do a good job with the General Tso's Chicken here. And those critics weren't lying!"

I have no doubt about one thing: Our future as a couple is bright and long-lasting.