Entanglement

16. the arcade

"really? you brought me here? i rather be at work," i complained looking uninterested

"you'll have fun here, take advantage of this. who rather to be at work then here?" evan tells me as he grabs my arm dragging me to the front desk with claudia wrapping her arm around my other side.

"we're just trying to distract you with a little bit of fun" claudia says to my ear, as we all walk together to the front desk of the arcade.

we reached the front desk and the man greets us,
"welcome, what would you like to get started with, as you can see we have plenty of options."

i look at the guys name tag, it read 'reed'

"give me all of them" evan says straight to the point

the guy nods and walks to the back of the desk with his back turned to us.

"christina is gonna be pissed," i spoke out

evan shrugs and claudia smacks her teeth

i looked side to side at both of them beside me.

"don't act like you guys don't care, wait until we get back to work on monday, she's gonna call us to her office and yall gonna be shaking in yall boots," i say with my hands up to surrender

"that's monday's problem" claudia says

"you're going down with us, and besides if it does happen it's a free pass for you to talk to her." evan says after claudia

"your anal about us talking huh?" i ask evan beside me

"i want you happy and i want to draw attention to you to christina. you still being clocked in and not in your office for 5 hours is gonna burst her little sexual affair with little miss whore up there" evan chuckles at the thought of christina being pissed.

"talking to christina isn't gonna "make me happy" i say ignoring his last statement.

"you sure about that? you seemed pretty worked up about seeing another woman in her office" claudia chimes in.

i looked to my right shoulder and met eyes with claudia, but before I could respond the arcade guy comes back with a hand full of things.

he hands evan a card for the arcade and sets down 3 roller skates each in front of us and a paper slip with a bar code on it for the bowling alley.

"the bar code is to active your bowling balls and the pins whenever you're ready to go to that station." reed continues "after your time here everything will add up to your price. enjoy." he says then walks away from us.

"ok what do you want to start with first promise, it's all you." evan asks grabbing his skates off the desk while claudia and i do the same.

"let's get the bowling alley over with, seems like that will take up most of the time"

"okay captian" even says and leads the way to the bowling station at the end of the arcade.

claudia and i follow behind.

-

we've been in the arcade for awhile now, it's 3:45p and today is esmeralda's day to pick up apollo, so i didn't have to rush to go anywhere.

claudia had the most points in bowling, we played almost all of the arcade games, evan cheated on the kiddie games so the card he has is probably filled up with points.

we all sat at a bench in front of the skating rink putting our skates on, once i tied my last skate i got up and pushed myself in the rink and glided around the wooden floor getting lost within the crowd of people.

i haven't skated since i was 10 when i lived in alaska, we only had an ice rink at the time, so i learned most of skating from being there.

i was lost in my own world, my head was filled with memories as i glided around the rink maybe 20 times if i cared to count.

claudia caught up with me and snaked her arm around my neck.

"there you are, you running from us?" she asks skating beside me

"no, i couldn't wait up, just wanted to reminisce. i missed skating," i respond to her, pulling away from my thoughts

"that's why evan brought you here, bet you haven't thought about christina since" she says nudging me

"that reminds me, you know we have to go back to the firm to clock out on our computers right?" i reminded her.

"that also reminds me, evan is a tech genius, he can get into the company account and clock us out, no biggie" claudia responds

"big biggie, he can get caught. he'll have to hack into the system, the only people or person with access to that is either HR, mr Davis or the ceo herself," i say crossing my arms "i'm not risking that"

"how would anyone find out?" claudia asks, letting me go and skating backwards in front of me.

"because there's cameras that clearly shows us leaving and still being clocked in and not coming back to clock out then suddenly see us clocked out in the system" i respond to her keeping eye contact

"you overthink alot girl, what's the big deal? they're not gonna know evan did it. be for real, they can think mr Davis did it or something"

"and risk him losing his job? he's already on thin ice with christina from a misunderstanding with me"

"she's something else i gotta tell ya" claudia says chuckling.

i roll my eyes and skate pass her picking up my speed to get away from this conversation.

i slow myself down to get off the rink and stop at the bench to sit. i take out my phone from my pocket to check the time, its passed 4, we need to leave.

i scan the rink in front of me to catch evan and claudia, i spotted them skating together, i got up to motion them to come. i waved my hands to get their attention until evan saw me.

they picked up their pace to skate to me.

"i'm ready" i say out loud as they reached me close enough to hear me speak

"alrighty, let's go see how much money i lost today" evan says chuckling

we sit at the bench and take off our skates

once our skates are off we walk to the desk to return them and wait for reed to greet us.