Summer with Kittyhead

"Fucking toast-ass son of a bitch!"

Kat shakes her controller with a white-knuckled grip like she's throttling it for its failures. The protagonist of her game, Super Doughboy, puffs up into a familiar shade of golden brown as he dies in a pit of fire for the twenty-fourth time in a row.

"Hey, don't blame the little bread dude." I tell her. "He's got the entire world against him. How's he supposed to make it if you give up on him?"

"I can't help him if he won't help himself!" Her controller veers through the air as she guides the doughboy to another death.

If I had watched Kat playing this game four months ago, I would have thought she was tormenting herself. I barely knew her back then, despite having been in classes together since the beginning of high school, and I've never seen another person actually start yelling at a game character in real life. But that was four months ago, and I've learned a few things since then.

First, Kat lets her frustration wind up like a rubber band, and as soon as she actually makes that jump it's going to unravel and she'll whip all the way back into exhilarated triumph.

Second, She's incredibly expressive about everything, not just video games. What I used to think was her acting normal was actually just how she acts when she's shy and closed off around people she doesn't know well. The real Kat projects her feelings so hard, she couldn't sell a lie through a closed door.

Third, Kat is the sweetest, most adorable, and my favorite person in the world.

Somehow, after vaguely knowing each other for years, all it took was spending a few weeks working together on a class assignment as the only members of a group project to actually get anything done, and we basically fell for each other like something out of a teen romance movie, complete with the part where we dramatically got together right before prom. Now, a few weeks later, we've moved on to the stage of our relationship that they don't show in the movies, where I come over to her house pretty much every day of the summer and watch her play video games.

"Oh! Oh my god, finally!"

Kat leaps up in excitement as her doughboy finally makes it across the fire pit intact. She dances in front of the couch in celebration.

"I beat the le-vel! And I'm done getting toasted!"

She does a little shimmy, sending her chestnut hair flying around her shoulders. Her worn pink t-shirt and loose sweatpants do nothing to show off her figure, but seeing her dance around in house clothes like nobody's watching makes me feel so indescribably lucky, I can actually feel my heart throb.

"You don't know if you actually beat the level though," I point out. "There's still another screen after this."

"No! Fuck no, there's no more! I'm done!" she declares as she crosses over to the next screen.

True to her word, the level goal is right there waiting for her.

"See?" she says. "It would have been too much of a dick move putting anything after that."

"Isn't this game all about dick moves?"

"That would be too much." she says. "I'd cry."

Before we got to know each other, I mostly thought of Kat as a kind of tomboyish girl in some of my classes. A bit cute, but she didn't really stand out in my head as "pretty," maybe because it never seems like she's trying to be. But the truth is, she's really not tomboyish at all.

Marie, my previous girlfriend, could make herself up like a cover model, but she was actually way more of a tomboy. She was a track team member, really competitive, with a never-back-down attitude and a sort of commanding presence which made her seem bigger than she really is. In comparison, Kat wore a cartoon print t-shirt to our first date, and occasionally tells her friends to suck her dick, but she's basically a marshmallow. She doesn't have a commanding bone in her body, she couldn't be much less of an athlete, and she basically never makes the first move at anything. She's also freer with her emotions than anyone else I know, and incredibly sweet. And she always makes me laugh.

"Well, if it did, I'd kick its ass for you, Kittyhead." I say.

She purses her lips like she's trying to fight down a grin, and a blush spreads across her cheeks. I'm the first person ever to give her a pet name, and she still reacts to it every time.

"Uh huh. Well, it's kicking my ass right now. I'm literally sweating, look." She flaps her shirt to cool herself down.

"You want to play something else then?" I ask.

We have the house to ourselves right now, but just for the moment. Kat's father probably won't be back for a few hours, but her mother or sister could turn up any minute now. The fact that we can never really be sure how much time we'll have alone together kind of limits our activities, but it's not so bad. As it turns out, I'm actually Kat's first boyfriend. And when we kissed for the first time a couple of months ago, it was very obviously her first kiss. She's adorable, and there's a huge part of me that wants to have my hands on her pretty much constantly, but more than that, I want to still be together with her years down the road. Right now, all the time we spend together, and all the new things I'm learning about her, just make me so happy. So I don't mind taking things slow if it means her parents are okay welcoming me over as her boyfriend. Also, watching Kat play video games is genuinely entertaining.

"Um, actually, I have something we could play together, if you want?"

The slightly bashful look she gives me makes me think for a second that she might have something other in mind than video games, but instead, she turns around and shuffles through her game library and pulls out another game. The grim cover is enough for me to recognize a horror game, even before I read the title, "Slaughtered by Sunrise."

"Are you okay with scary games?" she asks.

"Sure, but it's also the middle of the daytime." I point out. "That's not really the best ambiance for a horror game."

"Look, I need you and daylight on my side to handle this one, okay?" she says.

I had no idea Kat was bad with horror until just now. It's the kind of adorable thing about her which would have seemed totally out of place a few months ago. I feel almost guilty about how much I want to see how she reacts to it, but she's the one inviting me.

"Sure, but I'll need you to teach me how to play." I tell her.

"Oh god, I'm gonna be so bad at that. Okay..."

She starts the game up and gives me the rundown of the rules. It's a cooperative game where we work together to activate devices scattered around the map while being menaced by an unstoppable killer, and we manage to get ourselves slaughtered a couple of times while I'm still working my way up the learning curve.

"Kat, save me, I'm getting spike-murdered over here!"

"Sorry, no time, I'm too busy winning the game!" she shouts back.

While I have the killer preoccupied, she activates the last of the devices and escapes by herself, achieving our first technical victory of the game. The game offers up a screen congratulating us on our win, although it acknowledges my ending status as "dead."

"Wow, it seriously encourages you to straight up abandon people to win, huh?"

"It kind of does." she says. "It's like it's going for that horror movie vibe where normally only one person makes it out alive. Except instead of being a goody two-shoes, it's easier to make it out by running away and letting other people get killed instead."             

"Well, at least it's in the spirit of the game." I say. "But you'd still come back to save me if I were getting spike-murdered in real life, right?"

"Dude, no way." she says. "If this were real life, I'd probably hide and pee myself."

I laugh. For all that she technically just told me she'd abandon me to die in a crisis, the look she gave me when she said it still made it feel like terms of endearment. Maybe it's because she's the most resolutely un-macho person I know, but Kat gives me a primal feeling of wanting to protect her in a way that I've never felt for anyone else.

"Fine, okay." I say. "But I'd definitely come back to save you from getting spike-murdered."

She blushes, and fails to fight down a smile.

"No you wouldn't." she says.

"Sure I would." I say. "Running away and leaving you to die sounds way worse than that. I'd be fucked up for life."

"Okay," she concedes, "but you wouldn't actually be able to get me off the wall. 'Cause you have to lift the other person up to get them off the spike. So I'd be stuck, and I'd just end up getting killed right in front of you, which would be way worse.

That makes me laugh again, in a different way. I'm not a huge guy, and Kat's not tiny or anything, but she's definitely not too heavy for me to pick up. If she thinks otherwise, she either has a totally skewed body image, or she just has no frame of reference for how strong to expect a normal-sized guy in decent shape to be.

"I could definitely pick you up." I say.

"No you couldn't." she says.

She manages to sound almost sure, but the look on her face says she's starting to reconsider whether that's actually true.

"Sure I can."

I stand up from the sofa, and she stares up at me uncertainly, contemplating whether she ought to get up, or whether I'm about to embarrass both of us.

There's no need for me to wait for her to decide though. I reach an arm around behind her back, and hook my other behind her knees, and scoop her off the sofa into a bridal carry.0

She's even lighter than I expected. I've picked up Marie a bunch of times before, but despite being a little taller, Kat actually feels like she weighs a bit less. It's not that she's thinner than Marie, but she has less muscle to weigh her down. I can feel her plush thighs squish against me through the fabric of her sweatpants. Her arm, thrown around me in surprise, feels warm and tantalizingly soft.

"Eeep!"

She lets out an audible squeak, a couple octaves above her usual pitch.

"See?" I say. "No problem."

She stares up at me, blushing, her mouth slightly agape. I can almost see her mentally discarding her entire hand of quips and teases and reshuffling her deck. While she's still caught completely off guard, I decide to press my advantage, and bring my face down to hers for a kiss.

With sitcom-esque timing, the door opens at that exact moment. I have enough time to straighten up as I hear the sound of the latch, but no time to let Kat back down, short of dropping her like a sack of potatoes. So I'm left standing in front of the couch in the middle of the living room, holding Kat in a bridal carry as her younger sister stares at us from the doorway.

"Oh my god, were you two waiting in here to show off the entire time I've been gone?"

"Nope, you've just got perfect timing." I tell her.

I hang around for a bit longer after Kat's sister gets back. She's pretty cool, and too much like Kat for me to really be uncomfortable around her, but she's also fourteen, which makes even mildly flirting around in front of her kind of awkward. In the end, Kat and I head out into town together before her parents come back. While we're out, I manage to find a moment when nobody's watching to kiss a speck of ice cream from her lip. We hold hands as she walks me back home, and she keeps glancing at me and blushing the whole way.

Even in the middle of the summer, we can't spend literally all of our time together, but I can't help wanting to. Like every night so far this week, we facetime together before bed.

"Oh, you know that book I'm supposed to read over the summer for college? I started that after you left." she tells me.

"Did you finish it already?" I ask.

Kat's a really fast reader, and she's constantly plowing through books in her own time. It gives her all sorts of stuff to talk about that I never get from anyone else.

"It is," she says, "the dumbest fucking book I have ever opened."

"Really?"

"Let me tell you how dumb it is." she says. "The book starts with an old woman at home on her birthday. She heads downstairs, and her family shouts 'Happy birthday!' because they're throwing her a surprise party, and it startles her so much she flashbacks the entire book. There's over two hundred and fifty pages of flashback out of a single 'happy birthday.'"

"Does she fall down the stairs at the end?" I ask.

"Oh no, now I'm actually going to have to read it to find out!" she giggles.

"I guess I'll tell you whether she had a crash landing tomorrow. Buuuut..."

She pauses, blushing. I don't think she knows I can see her feet out of the corner of my screen, flailing softly against her bed.

"But what?" I ask.

"...But I really wish you were here instead." she says.

I don't think I'm as transparent as Kat is, but that still gets a huge grin out of me.

"So, what would you want to do if I were over for the night?" I ask.

She grabs a pillow and holds it up in front of her, covering most of her face and preventing me from seeing if her blush can get any deeper.

"Umm..." she pulls together to offer up an answer. "I was thinking it'd be fun to watch a horror movie together actually."

"What, really? You wanted to play Slaughtered by Sunrise while it was still daylight out."

"Yeah, but with that I have to be able to focus enough to actually play the game." she says. "I can't watch horror movies by myself, but I thought it would be fun if we were doing it together."

Even if she doesn't say it outright, I'm sure I'm not the only one imagining us cuddled up in bed together watching them. I don't know if she realizes how much of a thrill it is for me to imagine her holding onto me with her heart racing. But then, she is the one making the invitation.

"Yeah, it'd be awesome if I could stay over for that." I say.

"Um, actually..." she squeezes the pillow again for a moment, then lowers it back to the bed.

"My family kind of has a trip coming up in about a week, and I was really... not looking forward to that? Because it'd mean we wouldn't have any time together for a couple weeks. So I finally asked my parents today if I could just not go."

"And they said yes?" I ask.

"Uh huh." She smiles. "Lily told them I'd obviously be miserable and spoil the whole trip if I came anyway."

"That's awesome!" I say. "Your sister's a great wing-girl."

"Oh my god!"

For a few moments, all I can see on my screen is the dark surface of her pillow pressed up against the camera. She holds it there until I start making muffled noises at her like she's holding the pillow up over my face. When she shows her face again, she's mostly regained control of her expression, but she still has a deep blush spread across her cheeks.

"Anyway," she says, "we won't have the place to ourselves for another week, but it should be okay if you want to stay over for a while after dinner tomorrow? I mean, they already know you'll be here the whole time they're gone."

"That sounds great. Pick something really scary for when I'm over, okay?"

"Not too scary! I still have to spend the night by myself afterwards!"

But only for the rest of the week. This won't be the first time I've had a place alone with a girlfriend over the summer, but the idea has never felt as exciting as it does now. Even after Kat finally says goodnight, it takes a long time for me to get to sleep.             

Kat's sister is there again next time I show up. It seems she was surprisingly cool with walking in on me carrying her sister like a princess, and she sticks around to play games with us for a while. She and Kat share the same attitude towards games where they charge into things headlong without ever really stepping back to practice. It makes me feel bad if I try to play against them, but at the same time it's really fun to watch, and kind of makes me wish I could enjoy things the same way. Despite being the younger sister, Lily doesn't scare nearly as easily as Kat though. She's the reason they have horror games in their collection in the first place, and it seems like between the two of them, she's the tough one while Kat is the adorable one.

As much as I'm looking forward to having time alone with Kat, it's really nice to feel welcomed by her family. We're not headed for the same school in September, but we'll be close enough to see each other a lot, and when I stay over for dinner, it feels a bit like her parents are inviting me to take care of their daughter when we go. Maybe that's reading into things too much, but I can't really help it.

Staying overnight with them under the same roof still seems like it would be going too far, but her parents make it clear that there's no problem with my staying a while to watch some movies with Kat. The sun still hasn't gone down yet when we head up to her room to pick one out.

"So," I ask, "Do you want to start out scary while it's still light out, and then dial it back with the next one, or do you want to start with something milder and work up from there?"

"Hmm..." Kat mulls it over for a bit. "I think maybe we should start out with something lighter? The sun's probably going to set before the movie's actually over anyway."

She shuffles through a horror movie recommendation list, and picks out a sea monster action thriller from the 90s.

"How about this one?" she asks. "Sea monsters are always at least a bit scary."

"Even stuff like that giant worm in Spongebob?" I ask.

"That thing would be terrifying if it weren't Spongebobified."

I concede the point, and we start up the movie. She laces her fingers with mine as she sits down next to me. Even from such a small, cute gesture, I can see her cheeks starting to flush.

It takes a while for the movie to really get going, but once things get underway, the monster still stays mostly offscreen. It's probably a concession to the costs of practical effects and 90s era CG, but the tension has Kat squeezing my hand tight, and when the first character gets crunched offscreen, I can feel her jolt.

"I have to say, I wasn't expecting them to kill off the badass Asian girl first." I say. "I thought she had Last Survivor written all over her. It feels like they could kill off any of these people now."             

"Oh god, it does. Fuck, now I'm super nervous." She leans against me, and I put my arm around her shoulder.             

In the end though, the movie isn't daring enough to actually kill off everyone. The sun sets just as the last few characters make it out alive, with the classically beautiful and glamorous girl who provided most of the movie's fanservice taking her place among the survivors. The movie tries to play up her vulnerability to get the audience invested, but it's almost funny how cold she leaves me compared to the girl resting her head against my shoulder.

"So, is it easier watching this stuff in company?" I ask.

"Yeah, a lot." She shifts her body, nestling closer to me. "But it doesn't hurt that we're like, a hundred miles from the ocean right now."

"Yeah, it's not exactly pushing that feeling like the danger could be around you for real. Maybe it'd be scarier if we were on a water bed "

"Pfft." She swings a pillow lightly at my head. "You can pick a scarier one if you'd like."

She moves my hand off her and slides off the bed.

"I'm gonna go change into something better for bed, okay?"

She's facing away from me as she says that, probably so I can't see her blush. She pulls something out of her dresser, and heads to the bathroom to change. I can't help imagining her coming back decked out in lingerie, but of course, that wouldn't be her style. I take her permission to pick out a scarier movie while she's away, and she comes back right after, dressed in a nightshirt and soft pajama pants. It's not even really any more revealing than what she was already wearing, but the cozy feeling of seeing her dressed for bed hits me in a way that none of the movie's fanservice did.