Page 40 of How We Play the Game
“All right, love birdies, enough,” Trieu calls from the kitchen table. “You two have a lot of work to do.”
“We do?” Ivan asks. “I thought we were crushing this. Or at leastIwas.”
“You crushed the trial run.” Kavi feels around the back of the TV for a place to plug in an HDMI cord. “It was the first meet and greet, everyone was a little off their game. But the two of you—got it.” The TV screen bursts into a riot of cutesy colors that form the menu forOvercooked! 2.”
“What,” Ivan asks flatly. “This is the secret plan? I thought we were going somewhere.”
“It’s a multi-phased plan,” Kavi says. “This is just phase one. Also I didn’t finish my thought,” Kavi reminds us. She pulls two Switch controllers out of her bag and tosses them to Cass one after the other. “Calibrate, please. Make sure there’s no drift.” Cassius begins to calibrate the controllers.
“The two of you need to get on the same page. You slipped up on Wednesday with the ‘how did you meet’ thing. And by the end of the meet and greet both of you looked like murder was on the menu.”
“So we’re taking it off the menu,” Trieu adds. “And putting something new on the menu. Food, if you can believe it.”
Ivan takes a deep breath, like he needs to calm down before he speaks. “Kavi,” he begins politely. “Could you perhaps enlighten me as to what exactly I’m doing wrong?” He looks over at me. What, for support?
“Sure.” Kavi takes the calibrated controllers back from Cass and begins setting up a new co-op campaign while she talks. “Ivan, you’re overcompensating. As for Zora, you are overthinking.”
“I don’t know what those words mean in this context,” I whine.
“I’m only overcompensating because she—”
“She,” I defend myself, “can barely get a word in edgewise whenever he decides to—”
“To what? Carry this grift on my back like Atlas?”
“Does anyone else hear this?” Kavi interrupts. “It’s the diner all over again. Am I the only one paying attention to the tools we have at our disposal?”
The room is silent; neither Trieu nor Cass look up from their phones. “Anyone. Nobody? Cassius?”
Cass frowns at her. “Yes,” he says very deliberately. “You are the only one.”
Kavi rolls her eyes. “Lie to yourself, Cassius,” she says. “Not to me.”
“Fine.” Cass points to Ivan and me like he’s picking us out of a police lineup. “You two have been literally obsessed with each other from day one. The only thing you talk about when the other one isn’t aroundis the other one. You even finish each other’s sentences. But none of that is coming across on camera because Ivan never shuts up and Zora always has this look on her face like she’s solving a Rubik’s Cube at gunpoint.”
“Because it’s all lies!” I argue. “It’s really hard to control my face when I’m too busy staring slack-mouthed at the part where nobody notices Ivan doesn’t mean a word he says, ever.”
“Hey!” Ivan protests, but Cassius talks right over him.
“Zora, I mean this from the bottom of my heart:Who cares if he means it?”
“Zora, we talked about this before,” Trieu adds. “Just because you think Ivan doesn’t mean what he says doesn’t mean you can’t pretend it’s not nice to hear it. Did that make any sense? Did I double my negatives?”
“I do mean what I say, by the way,” Ivan says quietly. “Sometimes.”
“How am I supposed to tell the difference? We only know each other through this whole, you know …” I wave my arms frantically around at the people in the room, hoping they’ll get what I mean so I don’t have to sayfake dating emotional fraud team alliance that’s actually workingout loud.
“Exactly,” Kavi interrupts with a smile. “Hence:Overcooked! 2. The only game out on the market that’ll either forge bonds stronger than iron, or make you hate someone with the heat of ten suns.”
“I have a question.” I raise my hand.
“Yes, Zora?” Kavi answers.
“What if it’s the ten suns?” A younger, more naïve Zora might’ve thought there was no way a game with such cute little cartoon animal chefs on the case could incite that much rage, but I’ve been burned enough times to know the cutest games are the most infuriating.
“Then we keep trying,” Kavi says with a casual shrug, eyes narrowing. “Even if it takes all night.”
“Seriously?” Ivan asks with a choked laugh. “It’s the Fourth of July; shouldn’t we—”
