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I sighed, knowing this conversation had been inevitable. “Let’s get it over with.”
Alex answered the call and Lauren’s voice came through loud enough for me to hear, despite the phone being pressed against his ear. “Alex, is Emma still with you?” She asked.
He confirmed I was next to him.
“Put me on speakerphone, please,” Lauren said before Alex obliged. “Am I on speaker? Good. Now what genius told you to announce your relationship publicly without consulting me first? Do you have any idea how this affects everything?”
I swallowed hard, but Alex stayed calm. “We understandthat this makes your job a lot harder, Lauren. It was a spur-of-the-moment decision on our part. We felt it was the right time and frankly we had waited too long to announce it to begin with.”
There was a pause on the other end before Lauren continued, her voice softer this time around. “Well, what’s done is done. The backlash is manageable, at least. Congratulations by the way. I hope you both know what you’re getting yourselves into.”
“Thank you, Lauren,” I said. “I think we know.”
She took a deep breath. “I want both of you at the Team Solid compound tomorrow. We have a lot to discuss. We have to make an official statement about Alex retiring and you both need to sign a form for being in a relationship.”
“Will do,” Alex said, and after saying our goodbyes, he ended the call.
We finally hailed a taxi and headed home. Despite Lauren’s initial scolding, I had a feeling that this was the right thing to do.
When we arrived at the apartment, Alex turned to me with a mischievous grin. “I have one more surprise for you.”
I raised an eyebrow, curiosity piqued. “Another surprise? You’ve outdone yourself this weekend. And you’ve got more?”
He led me to my stream room, immediately after leaving our luggage in the living room. When I walked in behind him, I immediately saw the surprise. On my desk, there was a custom-built PC, its case painted with an illustration of the two characters we had cosplayed as at the convention.
“Oh my god, Alex,” I breathed, walking over to the PC and running my fingers over the artwork. “This is amazing. How did you?—”
“I had it commissioned weeks ago,” he said, coming up behind me and wrapping his arms around my waist. “I wanted you to havesomething special and I knew you were putting it off, so I decided to get it for you.”
I turned in his arms, looking up at him. “You’re incredible, you know that?”
He smiled, leaning down to kiss me gently. “I just want to make you happy, Em. You should know that by now.”
“You do make me happy,” I whispered, kissing him back. “I love you.”
“I love you too, baby.”
We spent the rest of the evening setting up the new PC and organizing all the plushies I bought at the convention on the shelves behind my stream setup.
As we finally settled on the couch with a pizza and a bottle of wine, which had become our go-to for late night dinners, I couldn’t help but feel grateful for everything we had. I was buzzing with excitement to get back into the swing of things after this wonderful, albeit hectic, weekend. There was so much I wanted to do, share, and experience with Alex. I had made so many wonderful friends in L.A. and I wanted to do cool stuff with them. Or just play NLA with them, if I was being honest.
As I lay in bed that night, staring at the ceiling, I dared to think about the future and for the first time in a long while, my mind didn't go to the worst case scenario. No, instead it went to the best case scenario—or at least the best case scenario I could imagine at that point.
Epilogue
Emma
I looked around at what had been my streaming room for the past two months. The shelves that once held my collection of NLA plushies were empty and my desk was down to just my phone and a water bottle. It felt weird to see it like this. I always knew I would be here for a little while, but even so this place had started to feel like home.
Moving to a new place should’ve felt exciting, and for the most part I was looking forward to it. I had finally found the perfect place; a one-bedroom on the twelfth floor of this same building. I’d finally have a proper streaming setup and a place that was just mine. Still, it hurt, because in some ways I was leaving Alex behind.
Speaking of my boyfriend, he was busy packing up the last of my PC equipment; carefully wrapping the cables so we could move them to my new apartment.
“You’re being really careful with that,” I noted.
He shrugged. “Don’t want anything getting damaged. This is your baby, after all.”
I smiled. “Thanks anyway.”
