Chapter 38: Garlic

FieryKathy

When Sam starts cooking the chicken both my sister and Nikki sit down at the dinner table.

“Can you put out plates, Amicia?” Sam asks, while adding salt and pepper to the meat.

“Yesh!” I take 4 plates and bring them to the table. “No-one needs utensils right?”

“Maybe a small fork to eat the things that fall out of the wrap.” My sister answers.

“Ah, right!” I put down 4 small forks as well. “And what sauces do you want?”

“Mayo.” Élise and Sam say at the same time.

Élise nods at Sam. “Mayo girl as well?”

“Yeah, it’s not that I don’t like garlic sauce or anything but I just prefer mayo.”

“Same here.”

“And Nikki?” I ask.

“Garlic sauce is good.” She smiles, looking up from her phone for a second.

“Anything interesting happening on the world stage?” Élise turns her attention back to her girlfriend.

“Nothing much, looks like the colonization of Mars will be a thing soon though!”

“Launching from the moon?”

“Yep - apparently they’ve already set up some autonomous bases with drones, domes are sitting ready for the first human inhabitants.”

“A bit like Persevering Mars then?” Sam looks up from the frying pan.

“You’ve played that game, Sam?”

“Yes! I love scif-fi citybuilders! Well, especially the sci-fi part.”

“Oh, right! We have a sci-fi nerd amongst us now.”

Sam sticks out her tongue. “Indeed, you do.” She turns over some of the chicken before looking back up. “Hey, Élise, could I ask you a question?”

“Uh, sure, go ahead.” Élise tilts her head a bit.

“How do you feel about your entire parents situation?”

“Oh wow, that’s definitely a question.” My sister laughs.

“You don’t have to answer if you don’t want to.”

“No, no, it’s fine. Well, I’m definitely not feeling bad about it. The relationship with my parents was pretty shit really, and the only real reason I still visited them was to visit my cute little sister here.” She pats the seat next to her, signaling me to sit down, after which she starts softly petting me. “Hearing those homophobic slurs all day long while being pretty darn gay myself wasn’t very fun at all. And after Amicia explained over the phone what had happened today, made the decision to completely drop them even easier. Nothing of value was lost, most of the people who matter are here, and Hilda of course.”

Sam nods. “That’s valid, it’s just stupid people like that exist, I can’t even imagine my parents being like that.”

“Luckily parents like ours get rarer every day... The only thing I feel bad about is not getting Amicia out of there sooner...”

“You know I don’t blame you, right?” I look up behind me.

“I know, I know, but it’ll take a while to stop blaming myself for it.”

I give my sister a big hug and she returns it immediately.

“Oh,” A question suddenly comes to my mind. “How did you befriend Hilda, by the way?”

It’s Nikki’s turn to answer. “Your sister and I started working at our company at the same time and we got placed in the same team, led by Hilda. At first she looked pretty strict, and at some times even kinda scary.”

“Very scary.” Élise adds with a laugh.

“But quickly we found out that she’s actually a major cutiepie and that she just has some issues expressing herself to people who she doesn’t really know.”

“Hmmm. I haven’t really noticed that, she was pretty open with both me and Sam from the start.”

“She definitely got a bit better over time, but I do think it helped that she already knew us.”

“They can’t be bad if they are the friends of your best friends, that kind of thing.” Élise clarifies.

“Anyway, we quickly bonded over our love for board games and games in general.”

“Must be a pretty fun working environment.” Sam puts down the heat on the stove.

“It definitely is, when you are at work for a big part of your day, it is pretty nice if it doesn’t suck balls and your team leader is your friend you can fool around with.”

“Fooling around? With Hilda?” Élise smirks.

Nikki laughs. “You know what I mean, you idiot.”

“Teehee.”

“Anyway, they call us the nerd squad at work, if that is any indication.”

“Haha, that’s amazing.” Sam laughs while bringing over the pan to the table and placing it on top of the trivet. “There you go, dinner is ready.”

“Hurray!” Élise pets me a final time and starts to preparing her wrap. “Oh, and you got peri peri as well? Nice!”

“Yeah, I love a bit of spice.”

“Totally valid.” Élise smiles and continues.

We all follow Élise’s lead and start getting our food ready. It doesn’t take long before we are all eating.

“I love eating wraps, they are so good.” My sister almost moans out of pleasure.

“And because they are easy to make?” Nikki teases.

“That as well.”

“I like making them when I’m home alone, most of the time I use chicken, although lamb is pretty good too.” Sam takes a bite out of her wrap.

“Are your parents out a lot?” I take a bite out of mine.

Hmmm, maybe I should add a bit of that spice...

“Occasionally. They like going around the neighbourhood to hang out with other people their age, or get invited to dinner. I’m often too tired from training to want to go along. So I just make something quick and easy so I can rest a bit.”

“That’s a big mood.” Nikki laughs. “When we’ve had a busy day at work, a quick and easy meal is always super tasty.”

“Exactly.”

Élise takes another bite from her wrap before addressing Sam and me. “By the way, would you both be interested in testing a new game today? It’s not Turn of Destiny, but I thought it would be fun to do something like that together.”

“Oh, that could be fun. What kind of game is it?” Sam asks with great enthusiasm.

“It’s a bit of a futuristic, apocalyptic shooter. With some rpg elements as well, but completely different from ToD.”

“Eh… I don’t know how I feel about shooters, really.” I hesitantly reply.

“I do kinda want to give it a shot though.” Sam winks.

“Oh, you didn’t.”

“Yes, I just did.”

“Fine, but please no more puns.”

“Yay!”

“We can message Hilda so she can join us too. She’s been dying to test it but today is the first day we can.”

“Oh, that’d be amazing!”

“Just try not to run into a Goddess this time, okay?”

“I’ll try.” I stick out my tongue and continue eating.

After dinner we put our plates in the dishwasher and put away the rest in the fridge, we also take a bit of the leftover chicken and divide it over the two cat bowls for Pocky and Mochi.

“You can make a salad with this and take it with you to your uni tomorrow if you want.” Nikki addresses us.

“Thanks! I’ll make it for us in the morning then.” Sam still looks pretty enthusiastic about the game.

“I'll put two lunch boxes here for you.”

“Thank you, Nikki.” I give her a big hug.

“It’s nothing. If you two still need to wash up, me and Lise just need to brush our teeth before we head to the bedroom, we’ll call you when we’re done.”

“Okido!”

Nikki smiles and leaves for the bathroom as Elise crosses her halfway with another D3u5XMachina in her hands.

“Have you worked with this before, Sam?”

“Not really, no, only with computers.”

“Okay, as Amicia will tell you, it’s very simple to use. Just press this button and you’ll get to the game lobby, where you can select your different games. The game we are going to play today is ‘The Echelon’ so just go there. After that we will group up and go to character creation all together, this game apparently has a group character creator so you can see what the others are doing.”

“That sounds interesting.”

“It does, so that’s one thing we definitely wanted to look into.”

“How will we find each other?”

“That’s mainly why I’m here. Just think of a nickname you can use, so we can quickly find you. Nikki’s is probably going to be NikkiHeat again, just as an example.”

“What about CaptainSam?”

I snort.

“Yeah, that should do.” Élise laughs as well. “What about you Amicia?”

“Amicat…?”

“Cute.” I hear Sam say under her breath.”

“Alright. I’ll add you both once we’re all in game.” Élise hands over the headset to Sam and waves us goodbye while walking to the bathroom.

“Aren’t you looking forward to it?” Sam asks me when my sister walks out of the room.

“It’s not really my genre, but if it”s with you it’ll probably be fun either way.”

Sam smiles and quietly hugs me, tilts my head up and gives me a soft kiss on the lips.

“I’m sure it will be.”

I smile as well and kiss her back. Staring into her beautiful eyes..

I definitely wouldn’t mind drowning in those…