Page 65 of Taming Georgia

This relationship thing between us is new and unfamiliar, so I force myself to play it cool. But, deep down, she’s always been the girl who held my heart whether my pride allowed me to admit it or not.

And now, she’s here. I’ve held her and touched her. I’ve been inside her. I’ve cherished every part of her body, and she’s mine. It’s surreal really, so very mind-blowing, but that’s life.

“Grab the light switch.” I shoot a look to the guy beside us and correct myself before he can. “I mean, the hammer,” I say to Georgia right as a barrel falls on the little dude’s head on the screen, and she dies.

“Stupid monkey. He’s an ass, isn’t he?” She turns and wraps her arms around my neck.

“Definitely,” I agree.

I softly kiss her, pulling her bottom lip out as I lean away from her.

“I saw some type of bowling game over there that looked fun,” she tells me.

“Lead the way.”

We grab our small buckets of quarters and close in on the “bowling” game, which is actually called Skee-Ball.

This place is fun, but it makes me realize how different both of our childhoods were from others. I was working side jobs in an attempt to make money to feed myself and take care of my drug-addicted mother while other kids were playing video games and going to birthday parties. Georgia was sipping lattes in Rome or getting manicures at a spa instead of going to bowling alleys or bouncy houses with friends. Our histories were vastly different though unusually sad at the same time.

Georgia jumps up and down with excitement when her ball lands in the small hole at the end of the aisle labeled one hundred. “I got it in the hundred.” She claps with excitement as a string of tickets shoot out of the machine. “I got tickets!” She snatches them up. “What do you think you do with these?”

“I saw a counter with prizes and stuff. I think you cash them in for something.”

“Oh my gosh. This is amazing. We need to get more tickets!”

My lips turn up in a grin, and I shake my head as I watch her bite her lip in concentration, trying to get the ball in the big-numbered holes. Every time one of her balls lands in anything, she cheers. I insert quarters into the Skee-Ball machine beside her and work on earning some more tickets for her. The two of us spend the rest of our change playing this game.

With empty quarter buckets and a handful of tickets, we head over to the prize counter and are instructed to insert our tickets into the ticket counter.

“A ticket counter. That’s fun,” Georgia says, wide-eyed.

She then excitedly places the tickets into the counting machine. When all of our tickets are entered, the machine prints out a receipt that says,237 tickets.

“Two hundred thirty-seven. That’s a lot. Let’s go see what we can get!”

She pulls me over to the prize counter, and the arcade employee shows us our options.

“Are you freaking kidding me?” Georgia says with huff. “We put at least thirty dollars of quarters into that game, and all we won are two small packages of fruit snacks?” She holds the small square packages in front of me, her lips turned down.

I can’t help but laugh. It turns out that two hundred thirty-seven tickets is in fact a very low number here at Pinball Pete’s. Our options were fruit snacks or a pencil.

“We could’ve bought thirty twelve-count boxes of fruit snacks for thirty bucks. Seriously, what a rip-off. If we wanted a tiny bag of chewy sugar, we could’ve had…let’s see. Thirty times twelve is…” She works the math out loud, her eyes looking up to the ceiling. “Well, thirty times ten is three hundred, and then thirty times two is, what, sixty? So three hundred plus sixty is three hundred and sixty.” She takes a breath. “We could’ve taken our money and purchased three hundred and sixty packages of fruit snacks!”

She holds the two small packages in front of my face, emphasizing our lack of prizes.

I snatch one from her. “Eat your fruit snacks. You worked hard for them.” I chuckle, tossing a red gummy candy into my mouth.

We walk out of the arcade and cross the street.

“So, what’s next?” I ask her, actually excited to see what else she has planned.

She was adamant about planning a fun date for me. I was resistant at first because it knocked my man pride down a few notches, but an arcade was something I never would’ve planned, and it was a blast.

“There’s this place that everyone around here raves about. It’s called Bubble Tea. Have you ever been?”

“Can’t say that I have.”

“Well, you pick out the flavor of tea you want, and I think there are juices you can choose, too. Then, you pick out what gummy you want. It’s right here.” Georgia leads us into the building.

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