Facing The Reaper

XV

We met after school on a Wednesday. Lucy thought it would be less awkward if we were all in our uniforms and we didn't have an empty day before to stress about the date. We went to an arcade, there was light music playing in the background and as we got there, Lucy made the announcement that we were splitting into our 'couples'.

"So much for a double date." I said to Connor as he shook his head and rolled his eyes. Following his girlfriend over to one of the race cars games in the corner of the arcade.

I looked at Terra as she stood awkwardly playing with a bracelet on her wrist. I looked around for an abandoned arcade game. A lone table stood empty in an opposite corner to the others. "Fancy a game of air hockey? I have never actually played before."

She looked over at the table and nodded her head. Being careful not to meet my gaze as we walked over to it. I put a pound in the slot on the side and places the disk in the centre of the table.

"You can hit first." She nodded her head, still not sating anything but giving me a small smile as she reached over to place the disk on her side of the table.

She swung at the disk with her baton and sent the disk into my goal before I could even move my own baton to block her. I looked up and raised my eyebrow in question at her.

"Beginners luck?" She said shrugging her shoulder, her smile still present but now a little bigger than before. I nodded in response as I reached down to collect the disk from the side of the table again. When I couldn't find it, she laughed and motioned to a slot in the side of the table where the disk reappeared from. I grinned and gestures for her to hit again, this time blocking the disk and sending it back towards her. She blocked the disk easily and sent it straight back into the goal. After three more strikes, I looked towards her and saw her smile had spread to a grin.

"You've played this, before haven't you?"

"Maybe once or twice." She said, shrugging her shoulders but never loosing that smile. She was beautiful when she smiled, her brown eyes were shining, and her cheeks were slightly flushed. I decided I needed to up my game, I managed to get the next few shots in, but she quickly outnumbered me again. By the end of the game I had almost caught up when the table suddenly started filling with dozens of disks at the same time. I stood there a bit startled whilst Terra waisted no time hitting all the disks into my goal.

"Oi!" I laughed as I regained my composure and rushed to match her and try and reclaim some points. I looked around the room and saw Connor and Lucy playing a basketball game, Lucy getting frustrated as she struggled to land any of the balls into the net on the far wall, and Connor laughing as he berated her, hitting the hoops easily.

Terra tapped my shoulder and pointed to one of the booth games along the wall of the room. "How good are you at shooting games?" She asked.

"I guess were about to find out." I smiled down to her and took her hand to lead her over to the booth, she jumped a bit in mild surprise when our hands met but wrapped her fingers through mine as she followed me to the Zombie shooting game.

I help the curtain open as she slid into the booth first, then putting some coins into the slot we started the game.

I did considerable better at this game, but her skills definitely rivalled my own as she took down zombie after zombie.

"I didn't peg you for an arcade fanatic." I said as I tried to block as many zombie attacks as possible.

"I used to go to the arcade back home in Bristol a lot with my younger brothers." She hit a zombie I hadn't even seen flying towards us at the corner of the screen as I looked over at her. She was cute when she concentrated, her brow was furrowed, and she was chewing the corner of her mouth as she took aim.