“Totally not your fault,” I reminded him.
“If you say so,” he replied. He hunkered down in his seat and pulled down the brim of his cap. “Only ten more minutes before it disappears.”
I shook my head, and looked down at my phone. I had caught a monster that most people would never even see in the game. It made me think of my trading idea and for a moment I wished I had the ear of the game designer. It would be so much fun to play the game with him.
Chapter 9
After almost forty minutes, Jacob and I were finally able to get out of the craziness in the park. Luckily, Jacob had a tablet in his car, so we used the time to continue creating the imaginary updates for the game.
I couldn't believe what the game was capable of. I hadn’t experienced anything like it in my life. One minute, we were enjoying a peaceful picnic and the next we were practically getting trampled over by a bunch of tweens and their parents, all in an effort to catch a rare Monster. I was still excited to tell Tommy about what had happened, but that was going to have to wait until I got back home. My date wasn’t over yet.
“Thanks for agreeing to finish our date at my place,” Jacob said, as he pulled off of the highway. “I had no idea that was going to happen.”
“How could you? That was crazy,” I said, as I reached over from the passenger seat and touched his arm. “I didn’t want the date to be cut short either, so this works out perfectly.”
“I still can’t believe what happened back there,” he said. “I know the game is popular, but I never expected that. Especially not here.”
“No kidding,” I said. “Did you see how many parents that were there, too? They seemed just as excited as the kids.”
“Pretty amazing,” he agreed. “I’m just glad we got out of there before we got trampled.”
I couldn’t help but to laugh. “That would have been kind of a lame way to die. I can picture the headlines now. Couple Trampled In Search of Rare Monster.”
Jacob chuckled. “That wouldn’t be cool at all. If we died like that, I’d hope that someone would at least make a better story out of it. Like maybe we jumped in to save a kid from the crowd and we ended up getting trampled ourselves.”
“That does sound a lot better than dying for a phone game,” I agreed.
We drove for another five minutes before Jacob turned into an apartment complex near the edge of town. It was a nice area, one that I didn’t frequent often because I never knew anyone who lived there. It was usually referred to as the 'rich side of town.' This apartment complex seemed to fit right in.
“You live here? At The Boulevard?” I asked. The apartments looked even nicer up close than they did from the highway.
“Yep.” He shrugged. “I pretty much looked up apartments online and this place had the best reviews so I went with it.”
I couldn’t imagine what he was spending for rent at the place. Even the crummy little apartments on the other side of town were renting for almost double what I paid for my college apartment. Housing was scarce in our town, so prices were high.
“They look really nice from out here,” I said, admiring the floor to ceiling windows that adorned the apartments.
Jacob pulled his SUV around to the back and into a multi-leveled parking garage. We drove all the way up to the top, where he parked. “You ready?”
Jacob opened the trunk and gathered the picnic basket, blanket and bottle of wine; all of the things that we’d stuffed in the car during our escape from the park. I hopped out and looked around.
Every car in here is super nice, I thought.
Lexus, BMW, Audi, and even a couple of Tesla models filled the garage. It made me feel like I was at a car show. Jacob walked stepped around the back of his SUV and took my hand.
“This way,” he said, with a fake British accent that caused me to giggle. Now that we were away from the Monster GO crowd, his confidence and positive attitude had come back.
I followed Jacob into the hallway the led to his apartment. He unlocked the door and held it open for me. When I stepped inside, my eyes went straight to the very back where the floor to ceiling windows were. The view overlooked a lake and I could even see the park where we had first met.
“Is that the fountain?” I asked.
“Yes, it is,” he said, glancing over at the window as he set his sunglasses and hat on the kitchen counter. “It's actually the view that made me go to the park that day. It just looked like people were having fun and it was too beautiful not to go look.”
I said a silent thank you to the window for providing Jacob the impetus to go out. Sticking out of the park was the giant white fountain where Tommy had led me that first day to play Monster GO. It was a ways away, but I could still see tiny figures of people standing around it.
“I’ll bet Tommy is there,” I said, with a smile. I went over to the balcony door and held it open so Jacob could carry our picnic outside.
“It wouldn’t surprise me,” Jacob said. “Thanks for holding the door.”