Erik nods, showing me he’s listening. For the first time since I revealed why I asked him out, he looks interested in what I’m saying. There are still remnants of the poker face in his features, but now his eyes tell me he’s concentrating on my words, not on a plan to get rid of me.
“I talked to the recruiter and some designers,” I go on. “They liked me and I liked them. But there was one person who made the biggest impression.”
I lower my eyes to the bar top, the nodes in the wood turning into shapes that build a full picture of that day in my mind.
Cristina—so beautiful, confident and successful. Mikkel, Cristina’s handsome and kind Danish husband, who followed her around not only with love and devotion but with all the attention and help she needed. I watched them, fascinated—and more than a bit jealous.
“Who was it that made the biggest impression on you?” Erik asks me after my long pause.
“A game director I met,” I say, looking down, thinking back to that day again.
I wasn’t prepared for what I’d feel when I talked to them. To her. This successful young woman who had everything I suddenly needed in a dreamy land that felt like the one and only place to live the life I always knew I wanted.
She was proof it was possible.
“I realized I wanted to get where she’d gotten,” I tell Erik.
Cristina wasn’t Scandinavian. She was Spanish. She told me how she had adapted. How Denmark had changed her habits and turned her into the best version of herself. She was excited about the prospect of being a mother in the near future because Denmark was such a great country to raise children.
She convinced me. She lured me. And after that I couldn’t think about anything other than getting the kind of life she had.
“What was her name?” Erik asks. “Maybe I’ve met her.”
“Cristina.” I’m about to say her last name, but Erik doesn’t need it.
“I’ve worked with her. She left a month or two after me.”
“Yeah, I never talked to her again. She wasn’t there when I started. I heard she got an even better opportunity at another studio.”
“Yeah, she was great.” He looks down, his fingers distractedly folding a napkin. It’s like his aura changes whenever Scorpio Games is mentioned. His shoulders tense up, his voice gets weaker, and his eyes roam around as if seeking a way out. I want to ask him why he left, but I’m not entitled to that question. This interview is about me.
“What is your role?” Erik’s gaze finds mine again.
“Level designer,” I answer in a tone I judge as neutral, but the minimal way his lips stretch up reveals he saw right through me, all the way into the corner where I bury my hostile feelings toward my current position.
“And now you have the opportunity to get the job you actually want?” His gaze stays firm on mine as he studies me. I fight against the urge to look away. This is how you win, a voice in my head encourages me. Laying yourself bare.
“Yes,” I answer his question, swallowing hard because I feel like I’m naked under this man’s stare, and such a thought makes me blush from head to toe. Gosh, Sol. Pull. Yourself. Together.
“And then you’ll find your fairy-tale ending in the happiest country in the world?”
I empty my lungs with a sound that resembles laughter. I’m not letting his teasing, his skepticism, get to me. “Yeah, exactly. Dream life, dream career, and maybe even a prince. Sadly, the princes and counts of Denmark are either already married or too young for me. But you never know.”
Erik pretends not to laugh, but I see the corners of his mouth turning up. His approval of my humor makes me want to smile too, but I stop myself.
“I’m sure you have dreams too,” I say, looking at him. “Come on, Erik, help me save mine.”
He puts on another poker face, this one gentler but impenetrable nonetheless.
I add a new entry to my “desperate moves” list. “I’ll pay you two thousand crowns more for the rent.”
He snorts. “I won’t extort you.”
“Please, Erik.” I hate begging, but I’m doing it.
He takes a deep breath and leans very close to my face. He smells of beer and some fresh citrusy cologne that gets my hormones dancing. I repress them.
“Since we are being honest with each other, I’ll tell you why I turned you down.” As he is basically whispering, I get my ear closer to his mouth, eager to hear the truth. “Because you’re a woman,” he says, and I almost fall off my stool. The anger that was gone returns in a boiling wave.
“What? I can’t believe that’s—” but he doesn’t let me rage out.
“It was unfair, I know. I’m sorry I jumped to conclusions when having so little knowledge, but I was right in the end.” I shake my head in disbelief, and he raises his hand to make a point. “I don’t want to live with an attractive, straight, cis woman, okay? I assumed you were that by your voice, which was wrong, but I was right in the end.” He sounds much less confident now, embarrassed even.
I laugh to digest all I heard. “That is simply—”
“Don’t judge me when you don’t know my history,” he says, clear and sharp as a razor.
And then I understand everything.
“Your former roommate broke your heart, didn’t she?”
Erik’s short, mirthless laugh and the way he averts his eyes tell me I’m right.
“Why do you even want to be a game director?” he asks me out of the blue. The interview—or should I say interrogation—is not over yet, it seems.
I fix my posture and look straight into his eyes. He needs to see how much I care. “Because I want to have creative freedom and decision-making power over a project.” Martin’s smug face pops into my mind, and I smirk. “And it wouldn’t be bad to wipe the smile off Martin’s face.”
Erik goes rigid. “Who?”
