Blaze - Part Eleven
This episode is part of a larger story, Soft Touch. If you haven’t yet, you can go back and read it from the beginning right here.
“Ralph?” I knock on his door, then draw back when it opens only a second or so later. “Oh - hey, man!”
“Hey.” He’s pulling one of his threadbare shirts on, letting the thin fabric fall over the angel wings on his ribs. His blonde hair is a little wet and spiky like he just got out of the shower, some of it tumbling forward towards his eyebrow. “Come in, come on. I don’t like leaving the door open when I don’t have anyone on it.”
He turns away and heads back into his house before I can catch a glimpse of his expression, which strikes me as - intentional.
“Stand down, Sharpshooter,” he says over his shoulder. “I can feel your eyes on my back.”
“Oh, I’m so sorry for looking at you, dude,” I laugh indignantly, then pause as Ralph starts leading the way upstairs. I’m not sure if I’m supposed to follow him, so I just do. “You want me to just keep my eyes shut around you?”
“I don’t know. Maybe? What are you doing here?”
“Ah… well, I just-”
I hesitate as I follow Ralph up the stairs, trying to think of how to explain.
I forgot just how tight Aiden and Ralph used to be, back in high school. They went everywhere together, did everything together.
They’ve been slowly easing back into their brotherhood since they made up, but lately it’s like something has clicked again.
Aiden and Ralph are texting each other all the time. Ralph has started swinging by City Hall sometimes to chill with Aiden during his lunch breaks, giving him rides home from work when I’m busy with my car. The two of them slip away to hang with Noah when I’m busy at the shop, which suits me just fine, especially because Aiden usually brings me back something from the deli.
I can tell how happy Aiden is about all of this. Ralph is much harder to read, but sometimes his actions do the talking for him. And I’m happy that they’re both happy, but -
“I - kind of thought you and I could hang? Since I’ve got two hours before I need to pick Aiden up from work, anyways?” I cast a hopeful, friendly smile at Ralph’s back. “C’mon, man, I’m glad you’re getting so much time with Aiden, but - you and me haven’t hung out just the two of us in a minute.”
Ralph stops in the upstairs hallway and turns to look at me. A baffled, faintly startled expression rises in his grey-green eyes.
“Oh. I - didn’t know you wanted-” His eyes drop to the two coffees in my hands. “So, that’s-?”
“Yeah, I remembered your order from last time.” I hold out one of the Mugshot cups to him. “Vanilla hazelnut latte, decaf, extra sugar and extra whip, right?”
Ralph arches an eyebrow at me, unblinking.
“I’m just kidding,” I say hastily, holding it out to him again. “It’s black. Dark roast.”
Ralph stares at me for another second, then breathes out a soft laugh and shakes his head. He takes the cup from my hand, sets off down the hallway again.
“Okay. Cool. I was concerned that something might actually be wrong with your brain if you’d misremembered that badly.” Ralph pauses for a moment, then adds - “Hazelnut would’ve been fine, though.”
“Really? Oh, wow, I’m making discoveries tod-”
I cut myself off and lapse into startled silence as Ralph slips into Grant’s old bedroom.
I don’t think I’ve ever seen Ralph go in or out of Grant or Noah’s old rooms, not one time since the two of them moved out. He normally won’t even look at them when he walks by.
I follow him in, then stop abruptly, staring around with wide eyes.
Grant’s bedroom furniture is gone. In its place is Ralph’s desk, his whole work setup that used to be in the living room. His desktop computer, his pile of different burner phones, stacks of printed papers weighted down by an ashtray… it’s all up here, in Grant’s bedroom.
The windows are pushed slightly open, letting in cool spring air, leaving behind only the last traces of dust and disuse. A soft green tang is flowing in from outside, natural perfume coming from the trees. There’s a lot more air and space in here, without the clutter.
Ralph goes around behind the desk and tilts the computer screen up. He clicks on his mouse, lifts his coffee to his mouth. “Just lemme finish up what I was doing real fast.”
“You, um…” I look slowly around at the room again. “You converted Grant’s old bedroom into your office?”
There’s a slight pause from Ralph, but he doesn’t break his eyes away from the screen.
“Yeah,” he says, after a moment. “Just finished cleaning it. Shit was a nightmare. I just took the most badly-needed shower of all time.”
“Oh.” I stare at Ralph, beyond startled, but he doesn’t lift his eyes to me. “What made you do it?”
Another long pause.
“Never liked having my setup in the living room,” Ralph murmurs, his eyes still on his computer. “Doesn’t make any sense. Anyone who opens the front door has me clear in their sightlines. I’ve got a view of the driveway from up here, which means now I’ll have them clear in mine, instead. And…”
I wait for a second, but he doesn’t keep going. “And?”
Ralph lets out a heavy exhale. His eyes flit to me, then quickly back to the screen. “Gotta learn to let go, at some point or another.”
I bite back a surprised smile, suddenly and fiercely proud of him. Trying not to let it show on my face, because he’s most definitely not going to like that.
“Besides, it’s good to have a lot of windows.” Ralph straightens up, folds one arm over his chest, and takes a sip of his coffee. “And I’ve already got the glass bulletproofed in case the cops ever show up. So.”
“You’ve got - what?” I let out a sputter of startled laughter, then stare at him with wide eyes when he doesn’t laugh, too. “Holy shit, Ralph! Are you serious?”
“You do realize whose fuckin’ house you’re in, don’t you?”
“I - forget sometimes, Warlord.” I shake my head at him, a little dazed. “God. You’re - scary. But like, not always? Not around me. I don’t know what to tell you. I forget, sometimes.”
“Alright, Keane, enough.” Ralph makes an irritated face at me, then leans his hip against his desk, takes another sip of his coffee. “You eventually gonna stammer towards telling me about how your science class went yesterday?”
“Oh.” I crinkle my nose up, turning my coffee cup in my hands. “Um. It was a disaster, in some ways? But really good in others.”
“A disaster, what?” Ralph narrows his eyes at me, baffled. “But - you were all excited.”
“Yeah, it’s hard to explain. I feel good about how it went, but I’m probably gonna be… wait, I’m blanking.” I close my eyes and try to remember. “What’s the word for when you’re more than famous? Like, really well known, and - oh! Renowned.”
“Notorious,” Ralph answers, at the same time.
We stare at each other, and I let out a laugh. “Okay, we took it in different directions, but I see why that’s where your brain went.”
Ralph tries and fails to look annoyed, then lets out a soft laugh of his own. “Finish what you were saying, dude.”
“I feel super good about how the class went, and I wouldn’t change anything, but at the same time, I’m probably gonna be - well, yeah, notorious among the school administration as the worst substitute teacher they’ve ever had. And I’m definitely no longer welcome back there.”
Ralph stares at me with very wide eyes. “The fuck, Jamie?”
“Yeah, I’m not gonna lie, I came home crying.”
“You - what?” Ralph makes an agonized face, then drops his head and pinches the bridge of his nose. “God, Keane, you fucking cupcake - don’t - don’t tell me you were crying, I need you to not cry that easily, because that shit makes me get all, like - just - for fuck’s sake! Ask me to shed a tear because some school admins got pissed off! Go right ahead, see where that gets you!”
“I know, I know.” I wince at Ralph, even though he hasn’t lifted his head. “But it was a lot more than that, okay? It was a whole thing, trust me. And I tried not to take what that guy said to heart, but-”
“What guy?” Ralph’s dark green eyes come back to mine in an instant. “What did he say to you, man?”
“Um…” I hesitate, remembering what Aiden said. “Will you promise not to go destroy this dude, if I tell you the mean things he said to me?”
“Fuck no, absolutely not! He dies where he stands!”
“Okay, then we don’t need to get into it.” I pause, staring at Ralph, then let out a startled laugh. “Ralph, seriously, it’s fine-”
“Goddamn you, Jamie.” Ralph lets out a long, exasperated exhale, reaching a hand out like he wants to grab me and shake me. “Always punching out of your weight class, aren’t you? Sit back and let the heavyweights handle it.”
“I’m all good, thanks.” I smile at Ralph, warm surprise spreading through my chest. “Appreciate the offer, though. Nice to know I have the heavyweights in my corner.”
The blazing frustration on Ralph’s face falters. His eyes dart away from me, and he lets out a deep, aggrieved sigh that doesn’t hide the smile turning up his lips.
“C’mon,” he says, weaving around the desk, leaving his coffee.
“Where are we going?”
“I’ve been in this room all day, so. Out for a smoke, and some fresh air.”
I follow Ralph down the stairs, then come to a sharp stop when we step into his kitchen.
“Since when does it have four open flowers?” I ask Ralph, pointing to the plant I gave him, a beaming smile on my face. “Most of those were buds, the last time I looked!”
“Dunno.” He shrugs his shoulders, all casual, but a flame of pride rises in his eyes when they glance off of the plant. “Haven’t been paying that much attention.”
Liar, I think happily, following him outside. That was a little one, though. That one was okay.
Ralph goes barefoot out onto the grass, straight to the tree nearest to the house. We stop together beneath the leafy boughs. Ralph tilts his head back slightly to look up at them as he thumbs the lighter to life.
The flicker of some sweet memory suddenly moves through his eyes, like glowing sparks from a flint. I don’t know what it is, but I get the immediate sense that it’s something held deep in his heart.
He gets control of his expression quickly, gives himself a little shake, and drops his gaze to me.
“You’re okay, though,” he says gruffly, with a slight question in his words. “After - whatever that fuckface said to you.”
“Yeah, I am.” I reach up to trail my fingertips over the mass of green spring leaves thronging the lower branches of the tree. “Aiden, he… he turned the whole thing around for me. It’s hard to explain, but as soon as I came home and saw him, talked to him… something about him just…”
“Turns what felt like a brutal full-body injury into something more like a papercut?” Ralph asks, letting out a slow stream of smoke.
I turn my head to stare at him with surprised eyes. “That - yeah. Exactly.”
Ralph nods, not looking at me, rolling the cigarette between his fingertips.
“Calla does that for me,” he says quietly, glancing up at the tree branches again. “So I know what you mean.”
I feel myself break into a slow, huge smile as I look at Ralph. He’s been keeping it well hidden, but as soon as the word Calla left his mouth, I caught something. Something in the texture of his voice as it curled around her name, brimming with warmth.
And in his eyes - something has stirred and woken up. I recognize it instantly. It looks like golden sunlight through soft blue waters when I see it on Aiden, but with Ralph it’s different.
For him, it’s a steady, unwavering kind of white fire. A glow like moonlight suffusing the color of his eyes, so that they look like illuminated, misty green sea glass.
Maybe that’s why he hasn’t really let me get a good look at his eyes. He’s so good at keeping his thoughts deep underground, but even he can’t hide this.
“Oh my god, Ralph,” I laugh, pressing my fingertips over my mouth. “Is that your version of Jamie-face, I’m seeing? Oh, goddamnit - now I’m saying it, too.”
“What-?” Ralph swiftly lowers his cigarette, his startled eyes blinking over to me. “I don’t have-”
“Yes, you do.” I break into a wide grin, then nudge his ribs with my elbow. “You so do.”
“We’re not talking about this, Jamie.” Ralph turns away from me, firmly shaking his head. “Drop it.”
“Oh, come on.” I make a pouty face at Ralph. “I know you like to keep your business to yourself, but you can at least give me an idea. Was any of the advice helpful? Calla came over on Friday, right?”
Ralph bites the inside of his cheek, pointedly avoiding my eyes. There’s a long silence, and then -
“Yeah, Friday,” Ralph says, still not looking at me. “She ended up staying the weekend, though.”
My eyebrows fly up. “The whole weekend?”
Ralph nods slowly, picking at his leather wristbands, struggling hard to fight down a smile. “Mhm.”
I stare at him silently until he steals a sidelong glance at me, then does a double-take when he sees the giant grin on my face.
“Shut up, man!” He lets out a startled laugh, shoving my shoulder. “You never stop saying stuff, even when you’re not fucking talking.”
“I’m allowed to be happy for you!” I snag the cigarette for a drag, still beaming at Ralph. “I mean - seems like things are going pretty great with you and Calla.”
Ralph hesitates, his expression suddenly growing anxious.
Before he can say anything, the soft sound of his phone vibrating interrupts. I blink in surprise as he instantly rushes to get it out of the pocket of his jeans.
He stares down at it in blank silence when he realizes it’s his burner phone, not his personal one.
“Fuck,” he murmurs, in a soft, disappointed voice. And then, at a normal volume - “Sorry, must be a work thing. One sec.”
I wait for a minute while Ralph reads the text. “Everything okay?”
“Mhm. Just making some changes to my chain of command. Noah isn’t coming back to the business, and - that’s for the best. So.” Ralph shrugs his shoulders, typing as he talks. “Shawn is moving up.”
“Shawn? Is he the guy who was on the door when I came by with the blueberries? The guy who said that I’m cute?”
“That’s the one.”
“Well, good,” I say approvingly. “He deserves to move up.”
Ralph breathes out a soft laugh, his eyes still on his phone. “Based purely on that, huh?”
“Yes, absolutely.”
“Jesus Christ.” Ralph laughs again as he sends the text. “We’re lucky that I’m the one who makes the business decisions around here.”
But there’s some dark cloud moving in his eyes, shadowing the glow I’d seen there before.
“Um…” I narrow my eyes at him, looking more closely. “Everything okay, like - outside of work?”
“Yeah. Everything’s fine.” Ralph slips his phone back into his pocket, then snags his cigarette back from me. “Calla just hasn’t texted me back in a while, that’s all.”
“Oh?” Concern starts to climb in my chest. “How long has it been?”
Ralph slips his personal phone out of his pocket and checks it quickly, but there are no notifications. “Since this morning.”
“What-?” I draw my head back, staring at Ralph with bewildered eyes. “Just since this morning? I really don’t think that’s any reason to be nervous. She probably just had a busy day.”
“Yeah.” Ralph slips his phone back into his pocket, then takes a drag, staring anxiously into space. “Bet that’s it.”
I nibble my lip, watching as he pushes a hand through his messy blonde hair.
I don’t want to push too hard. Sometimes it helps, but sometimes the result is that Ralph draws back and bristles, and the fangs come out. Then he looks sorry about it, guilty - but closed up all the same.
He’s been kind of open with me today, though.
I hesitate for another second, then give Ralph a tentative knock on the shoulder.
“Hey,” I murmur, in a much more serious voice. “What’s going on, man?”
Ralph doesn’t acknowledge that I said anything, gives no sign that he heard me at all.
I give him some time. His silences are different from Aiden’s, but I’m slowly starting to know them better. He stays so quiet and so still, until suddenly he crashes over his own walls and pours over them. Like a wave running silent across the ocean, gathering power until it has enough to reach the shore and finally burst over the last barrier.
The crash doesn’t always come, though. And you have to wait.
So I wait, and when I sense Ralph tensing up beneath my watchful eyes, I turn them away to look out at the last light of the day.
The cigarette burns quietly down between Ralph’s fingertips, a chip of glowing orange brightness in the reddening sunset that’s slowly falling around us. The wildflowers, glimmering drops of tender white nestled in the thick green grass, nod their little heads in the soft breeze.
Spring warmth is all around us, everything bursting into bloom even as shadowy twilight begins to slowly unfold over the whispering woods behind us. Flickers of scarlet light move over us, swaying with the movements of the tree branches.
Funny how the shadows always seem to cluster and gather to Ralph, like he’s some safe place for them.
“Just-” Ralph says abruptly, in a rough, quiet voice - “How am I not supposed to be constantly freaking the fuck out, like - all the time?”
I turn to stare at Ralph, at a loss for what he means. There’s a hesitant silence as I search for an answer. Ralph keeps going before I can find one.
“You remember when you and Aiden found me at that bar?” He sounds like he’s forcing out every word, carefully not looking at me. “That night when Cameron texted me pretending to be a girl I’d supposedly met when I was too fucked up to remember, who supposedly wanted to meet up with me? And I took that stupid, obvious bait, even though I knew there was like, at best a one percent chance it was real?”
I pin my lip between my teeth, wince at him, and nod slowly. Ralph doesn’t turn his head, but he gives me the barest little nod back.
“Yeah, well - that’s a good summary of where I was, before.” He turns his fingertips beneath his leather wristbands. “That - that desperate for like, anything, any kind of… And now - now, man, I have Calla.”
He lets out a dazed laugh, that glow coming back into his eyes.
“And what she and I have, I… I know it’s still pretty new, but…”
“That doesn’t seem to matter at all?” I ask, then smile when Ralph pauses, nods slowly at me. “I know exactly what you mean.”
Ralph turns his gaze back out to the falling dusk, but I can see into them from here.
In their resting state, Ralph’s sage-colored eyes have dark and heavy places, tired places. It always shows in the depths of them, how much he’s been through. But even those places are touched by the soft, warm light that comes into his eyes when he talks about Calla.
“I can still barely even get my head around the idea that she wants this,” he goes on roughly, in that suffocated voice he gets when he’s forcing himself to keep talking. “Me? Shit, man, what is she thinking? I’m - she belongs to a whole other world. The one in those movies she likes. She’s something right out of one of those.”
“What mov-?”
“Seriously, that’s the thing, I couldn’t wrap my fucking head around this,” Ralph forges on, like he has to keep going, or he’ll stop altogether. “Before this weekend, I think I - hadn’t totally convinced myself that Calla really feels what I’ve been, um… Like, the way I feel about her, that’s one thing, but the way she really feels about me - how should I know, right? So before now, I’ve been trying not to - to let myself get in over my head. Just in case I’m the only one feeling the - the-”
He falters into silence, his eyebrows knitting.
“Tell you the truth, man, I’m having trouble putting a name to the way I feel about her,” he murmurs after a moment, his grey-green eyes filling up with confusion. “I - can’t think of anything to compare it to.”
I’ve been listening silently, hearing everything with deepening warmth in my heart, but now my mind goes to something Aiden said to me.
It’s the strangest thing about Ralph. He’s got this ingenious mind, but he has a total blindspot when it comes to love. It’s not that he doesn’t want it. I think he’s dying for it. But you’ve gotta put it right in front of his eyes, and even then, sometimes he misses it completely, or he thinks it must be something else. It’s like that part of his brain got starved out, to the point that it barely works anymore.
I wonder if that’s so true that Ralph doesn’t even recognize it when it’s coming from himself.
Ralph casts a sidelong glance at me, then turns away again. “Got something you want to explain to me about myself, Sharpshooter?”
“Mmm…” I bite back a smile, then quickly shake my head. “No.”
“Really?” He narrows his eyes at me in the last rays of scarlet sunlight. “Sure looks like it.”
“I-” Think that’s one you’re gonna have to figure out on your own. “I’m listening, that’s all.”
Ralph falls silent for a moment, takes a deep breath. His cig has gone out, but he hasn’t noticed. He slowly runs a hand over his jaw, the shadows sliding over his arm with the movement.
“Well, even if I can’t name it, whatever it is, I - feel it.” A thread of rare, deep happiness rises in Ralph’s voice. “This past weekend I spent with Calla, it was…”
He looks at me again, and I can’t fight down the startled laugh that bursts from me when I see the dreamy expression on his face. But Ralph laughs, too, softly and dazedly. He turns away again, shakes his head a little.
“Feel like I’m still tripping so hard on it,” he murmurs, something like disbelief in his voice. “It was heaven, man.”
I start to smile even bigger, then freeze when a pained look flashes through Ralph’s eyes. He swallows hard, avoiding my gaze again.
“But now - now I’m in over my head,” he says, in a very soft, rough voice. “Can’t pretend anymore, not even to myself. Think it’s finally sinking in exactly how hard it’s gonna hit me, if I let this girl slip through my hands.”
I tilt my head slowly to the side as I look at Ralph, absorbing that. “And - that’s why you’re constantly feeling like you’re gonna freak out?”
Out of nowhere, Ralph suddenly looks about ready to have a nervous breakdown.
“Yes, Keane, because I can’t use any of my old methods of keeping people with me! I promised Calla that I’d be good to her, and I’m trying to hold good to that.” Ralph takes a shaky breath, rubbing his temple. “I gotta cut my strings, not let my old instincts control how I handle things with her. Never gonna forgive myself if I crush her trying to hold onto her, the way I did with Noah, and - everybody else.”
Ralph stops for a second, staring with unseeing eyes out at the slow-falling dusk, anxiously nibbling his lip.
“Really don’t want you to think that I’m backsliding, okay? I mean, right now my every instinct is fucking screaming for me to take every available way I can see to make sure she doesn’t leave me on the pavement. But I’m - trying to weather that. It’s so much fucking harder after this past weekend, but I’m trying.”
It dawns on me why Ralph chose today to take on such a big, work-intensive task as cleaning up Grant’s old bedroom and turning it into his office.
Calla hasn’t texted him back since this morning. Ralph must have been trying to distract himself, fight off the urge to call her or text her a bunch of times, or try to find out where she is, what she’s doing.
And if he’s still anxiously checking his phone, waiting to see if she’s said something - it must mean he hasn’t done that.
“I don’t think you’re backsliding,” I tell him, hoping he can hear the sincerity in my voice. “It sounds like you’re doing great, actually, why are you so stressed ou-?”
“It’s so much riskier this way.” Ralph’s eyes are suddenly roaming all over the spring twilight in a quiet panic, not stopping on anything. “I don’t have any control over… all I can do is give her what I have to give, and - hope that I’m enough, and that she keeps coming back. But why - why would she-? I know how I feel, and honestly, this weekend, I thought I - felt it back from her - but how am I supposed to believe that she…?”
I see it move through Ralph’s eyes. A flash of that deep, aching, desert-island loneliness that was there before Calla. Coming back as if his fate is already sealed, as if she’s already decided to abandon him.
“Ralph.” I gently pop him one on the shoulder, leaning forward earnestly. “You have to trust Calla. That’s what this is about. You realize that, right?”
Ralph doesn’t look at me, but his fast-blinking eyes stop their wild roaming. He takes a heavy breath, doesn’t answer.
“Sounds like she trusted you, this weekend. Had faith in you. You’re doing the same thing for her, right now. Trusting her to keep coming back.” I catch his eyes, make him meet mine. “And yes, there’s always the risk, but the rewards - don’t they match the scope of the risk?”
Ralph runs an anxious hand over his face. “Might sound dumb, but for me, the risk feels like life or death stuff, man.”
“And how did this weekend feel?”
Ralph opens his mouth to answer, then stops. He’s silent for a minute, chewing the inside of his cheek. Then he looks at me, and I laugh again when I see the expression on his face.
“Yeah, so.” I smile up at him, nudge his arm with my elbow. “Hang in there. You’re doing great.”
“Am I? She’s got me going crazy, I fucking swear.” Ralph leans back against the tree, looks up at the branches again. “She said she’s so busy tomorrow that she’s only got twenty free minutes all day, and I - I honestly want to drive there and take that opening. I don’t care if she’s only got twenty minutes. I’ve been trying to talk myself out of it for hours.”
“Well…” I turn that over in my mind. “I’m not sure that’s too much, actually. What did she say, exactly?”
“I’m dying to see you,” Ralph repeats, like he’s read the text enough times to know it by heart, “Wish I had more than literally twenty free minutes all day tomorrow.”
I smile at Ralph, then tug on the sleeve of his shirt. “Go surprise her, man. Just don’t overstay the twenty minutes.”
Ralph blinks at me, his eyebrows furrowing. “You think?”
“You know Calla better than me. Would she think that’s too much, or would she think it’s romantic that you drove all the way there to see her for twenty minutes?”
“I - guess maybe she’d like it.” Ralph hesitates, then blows out a heavy breath. “But now she hasn’t said anything all day, I don’t know what’s…”
He trails off into anxious silence, fidgeting with his wristbands.
“Just trust her, Ralph,” I say again, more quietly and seriously. “I’m sure it’ll pay off.”
Ralph nods slowly, nervously rubbing his elbow. Then he nearly drops his cigarette as his pocket starts buzzing.
It’s his personal phone this time. He wrenches it out of his pocket and silently stares at the notification that came in.
“Is it her?” I ask hopefully.
Ralph shakes his head, his face falling. “No, it’s - just some weird email, probably spam…”
He fades off, his eyes narrowing. I lean in to read the notification.
From: Game Dev
Subject: Can Your Wisdom Pass the Test, Wolf?
“What…?” Ralph stares at the notification for another silent second, then sets off towards the house. “C’mon, I’m not opening this on my phone. Calla installed a mad good virus scanner on my computer.”
I blink at him, bewildered, then rush to follow him into the kitchen. “Why open it at all?”
Ralph is striding along so fast that I’m a little out of breath by the time he drops into the chair behind his desk. He goes right to his email and opens the weird one.
Inside is a stylized invitation to play a computer game that I’ve never heard of, called The Wolf. Strangely enough, the email looks - old. Vintage, almost. Like something from an earlier era of the internet, with pixelated graphics and very bright colors.
There’s no description or explanation of what the game is. Only a grey, pixelated wolf running in place over a button that simply says: Play.
“That’s - weird.” Ralph slowly shakes his head, staring at the email. “I was literally just telling Calla, this past weekend… I used to love these old free games you could play online. Something you can do alone for hours, and still have fun. Played them all the time when I was a kid.”
“Yeah, I remember those old arcade-style games.” I fold my arms over my chest, looking from behind Ralph’s shoulder. “Man, you don’t see them like this anymore. Pretty much thought these were extinct.”
Ralph shakes his head again, his eyebrows knitted. “Yeah, because they - are.”
He stares at the screen for a second with wide, nostalgic eyes. Then, without a word, he clicks the play button.
It opens a new tab, one with a black background, and a small square in the middle where the game should be. The little pixelated wolf runs on the spot for a second, and then -
“Oh, shit,” I blurt out, as the game actually loads up. “Is it really gonna work?”
The wolf is set on a flat plane of colorful, pixelated trees. A very simple forest background.
“Can you do anything?” I ask, pulling up the other chair behind the desk.
Ralph experimentally presses some buttons on his keyboard, and the wolf begins to trot along the single plane. The background doesn’t move with it, and the wolf stops at the edge of the screen, where there’s a graphic of a stone wall with a door with a big lock. Ralph tries to go the other way, and the first tree he tries to walk the wolf past - the dark red one - lights up with a faint background glow.
“Oh, the trees are interactable.”
“Nothing happens when I click it, though.” Ralph tries another button, and the wolf takes a big bite, swipes with its paw, but causes no effect on the tree. “Alright, looks like I’ve got an attack button, but nothing to use it on.”
Ralph guides the wolf past the other colorful trees, which each light up in turn, but do nothing else. And there’s nowhere to go at this edge of the screen, either.
“Aw.” I make a sad face at Ralph. “Guess the game is probably broken?”
“No.” Ralph stares at it for a long moment, his eyes slowly lighting up. “No, it’s a puzzle. It’s a puzzle - this is from Calla!”
He flashes me an enormous smile over his shoulder, then turns back to the computer.
“That’s part of why I’ve been worrying, dude, she didn’t leave me a puzzle, but here it is! Gimme a sec, hang on…”
“Calla made this?” I ask, in blank disbelief.
“I’m telling you, man, the digital world is her playground. This is her. Let me think, hang on.” Ralph’s eyes narrow at the screen. “I think…”
He hesitates, then trots the wolf to the dark red tree and clicks on it. Again, nothing happens, but Ralph doesn’t seem deterred. He sends the wolf around to the trees in a specific order, and then -
The little door set into the stone wall slides open, and some words pop up on the screen. Level One Cleared.
“What - how did you know?” I ask, staring wide-eyed at Ralph.
“Can Your Wisdom Pass the Test, Wolf?” he repeats, then points to the different colored trees. “Crimson. Yellow. White. Pink. Turquoise. White again. First letter of every word corresponds to the colors.”
“Are you s-? How the fuck did you figure out-?”
“There’s another level, dude,” Ralph says excitedly, trotting the wolf towards the door. “Wonder what’s - oh, shit!”
We both gasp as he’s instantly attacked by something upon stepping into the second level. Ralph instinctively hits the attack button, swipes a big paw at - what turns out to be a pixelated cop. The hit brings up a half-down health bar over the cop, so Ralph attacks it again, and it disappears.
Some text pops up. +1 Bacon added to inventory.
Ralph and I both stare at it, then burst out laughing at the same time.
“Oh my god,” Ralph says, grinning from ear to ear.
“This game is really tailored to you, isn’t it?” I swat his shoulder. “Look out, man! More enemies coming-”
“I see it, hang on! God, I’m so out of practice, my skills are for shit.”
“Want me to-?”
“No, get away dude, I’ve got this!”
Ralph and I sink into the game, absorbed completely. The levels get longer and more complicated as we go on, even though the game has very simple mechanics and graphics. There are enemies to beat on every level, and a hard puzzle, too. I help out with some of the puzzles, and others Ralph figures out before I can even try. Some of them are hard enough to stump us both for a while, but eventually Ralph always sorts it out.
We both burst out laughing when we discover that the wolf can pick up speed bonuses, only they’re called Noah Boosts, and they’re twice as effective if a cop is within a certain range.
I can tell that Ralph used to love games like this when he was a kid. There’s something almost childlike about the eagerness on his face, the bursts of wild laughter.
I don’t think I’ve ever seen him like this. Between that and the game, I’m paying enough attention that I’m startled as hell when I look up to find that night has fully fallen around us, that I need to leave soon to go pick up Aiden.
Right as I realize, Ralph emerges out onto the final level, where there’s a big boss. It’s a much bigger, scarier wolf, with red eyes and fangs roughly the size of our little avatar.
We’re both yelling the whole length of the boss battle, and it takes Ralph three tries to beat it - even this is a puzzle, because you have to collect the Noah Boosts in a specific pattern to survive - but he does.
Ralph and I both let out a victorious cheer as the door at the end of the level opens. Ralph runs the little wolf through, and it emerges onto a new screen.
There’s a pixelated version of a building that I actually recognize. It’s a tiny, cozy little diner about halfway between Port Sitka and Ketterbridge, open late.
There’s a second pixelated wolf sitting on the roof of the diner, and it stands up when Ralph’s wolf trots onto the screen, digital tail wagging. It tips its head back to howl, and a little pixel heart rises up over it.
A message comes up on the screen: Congratulations, Wolf! You Passed The Test!
And then, beneath it, a second later - Night after tomorrow, 9:30.
Another pause, and then - Or, you know. A different time, if you’re busy at 9:30. You already beat the game, we can discuss options. Text me and let me know. :)
Ralph stares at the screen in complete silence for a long moment. Then he breaks into a slow, huge smile that makes his cheeks get all round in a way I’ve never seen before.
I poke his shoulder. “Guess we know why Calla was too busy to text you back all day, huh?”
Ralph doesn’t answer, just smiles and smiles.
I bite down on a massive smile of my own. I’m glad that I didn’t say anything before, when Ralph was trying to get a foothold on what exactly it is he’s been feeling for Calla. What he thought he might have felt back from her this weekend.
He’ll figure it out on his own, soon enough.
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