Evan was absolutely certain he had blown it, so he was over the moon when she suggested they meet at seven with a smile. He started making plans the moment they parted ways, then scrapping those plans and making new ones, only to toss those ones as well. Eventually, he just tossed his hands in the air and said. “Screw it, I’m just going to do something stupid and hope she finds it funny, Mom always said it was important to be able to make a girl laugh after all. Provided you didn’t act the fool all the time, anyways.

He sent her a message that read: fancy clothes! Then started getting everything set up. He dressed up in one of his new suits, suits that he kept forgetting even existed on account of the relative newness of their fame and fortune. “This is such a terrible idea, am I really going to do this?” He asked his reflection in the mirror as he adjusted his tie. “Yea, stupid question, I’m totally going to do this. I hope she enjoys it.”

He met Kinzie at her door at the arranged time, his stomach filled with butterflies. When she opened it he gasped in surprise and awe. She was wearing a stunning green dress, with her hair up in a beautifully styled arrangement that had to have taken hours to accomplish. Her skin still had an ever-so-faint golden sheen to it from the oil she had been drenched in earlier, which meant it was probably not water-soluble. “Well?” She asked. “What do you think?”

He collected his scattered wits as best he could. “You look absolutely stunning. Shall we?” He offered her his arm.

She looked around as she took it with a confused expression. “No car?” She had grown up in this town with him and knew full well that there wasn’t a single fancy dress restaurant within walking distance.

“No, it’s not far, I hope you like it, it was all I could think of on short notice.” He said with an awkward smile.

They walked in companionable silence for a while, just enjoying each other’s company, until Evan led her around an all too familiar corner. “Oh god, are you serious? Are we really coming here of all places dressed like this?” Here being the old, slightly run-down Italian restaurant that they had always gone to in high school to take advantage of the cheap prices and bottomless breadsticks.

Evan grinned and nodded. “I thought it would be fun, a little trip down memory lane, with a few surprises of course.” As they reached the building he opened the door for her and gestured her inside.

She gasped and covered her mouth with one hand in shock. “Oh my god, what did you do?! How?”

Evan shrugged. “Not too hard really, a couple phone calls and a bit of cash can do quite a bit in a surprisingly short time.” He was pretty impressed with it himself now that he was seeing it in person. They had reserved the entire place for the evening, although he made sure to tell the owners that he didn’t really mind them taking in other customers as long as they were in a separate section. He had also gotten them to do some redecorating for the evening, and each table was lit by candles, with the overhead lights turned down low enough to provide an intimate, romantic atmosphere.

He had pre-ordered everything, they had spent so many years coming here that they knew the menu inside and out, and everyone had well-established favorites. He had tossed the usual romantic evening stereotype out the window though, refusing the offered two-person small round table, and instead selecting their old booth. Kinzie’s eyes were sparkling with excitement and amusement as they sat side by side in their usual spot as though nothing had changed. “No menus?” She asked after a minute.

Evan shook his head. “We don’t need them, I already took care of everything.” A waiter walked up carrying a pair of wine glasses and set them down in front of them.

Kinzie inspected the clear bubbling liquid in the glass for a moment before taking a tentative sip. She laughed in surprise. “Soda? Really?”

Evan beamed at her. “Lemon-lime, your old favorite.” Not long after that their food arrived, which was yet again their old favorites. When they finished she leaned against him with a content sigh. He wrapped his arm around her, enjoying the moment for a while, then asked. “Would you like to dance?”

She looked at him questioningly. “You don’t know how to dance.”

He smirked at her. “Do you really think I spent all my time away only learning physics and programming? Come on, let’s go.” He ushered her out of the booth and led the way to a section that had been cleared of tables. They had been playing soft, romantic music over the speakers all evening, so Evan wasted no time in leading Kinzie into an elegant ballroom style dance. Before too long, some of the other couples that had been snuck into other sections found their way to the improvised dance floor and took advantage of the atmosphere to join in. The manager came out looking worried, but Evan just waved him off with a smile, he had no problem with other people enjoying themselves as well, the part of the evening in which he wanted privacy inside the restaurant had passed.

When they finally decided to leave, they walked slowly down the moonlit street arm in arm. Kinzie eventually spoke up softly. “I had a wonderful time, even with you tricking me into wearing this ridiculous dress to our old high school hangout spot. I’m glad you finally worked up the courage to ask. I was getting pretty convinced that you never would.”

Evan had relaxed quite a bit by now, fully enjoying the evening. “What do you mean?”

Kinzie snorted a bit derisively at him. “You were always so completely unable to take a hint. Do you remember when the four of us first started hanging out? I heard you guys talking about software development and storyline progression, and jumped in talking about hardware requirements, and we all hit it off and started meeting every day at lunch.”

Evan nodded his agreement and she continued. “Then we started meeting and hanging out at each other’s houses, we would all meet at Bekkah’s place, or Jason’s place, and work on the storyline and quest stuff or play games until we got hungry and came out here to Antonio’s. After a while though, I started showing up at your house alone, using the excuse of your place being on my run route so I could wear yoga pants and a tiny sports top without your mom raising a fuss about it. We would go up to your room and talk about the usual stuff, but that wasn’t ever really why I was there. You were just… so oblivious, and I was sure I was making it so obvious a dead man would have noticed. For years I did that before I decided you must not be interested in me after all and moved on. Then you went away to your fancy school in Europe, and I wasn’t even sure you would bother coming back despite all our plans.”

Evan let go of her arm and wrapped his around her waist instead, pulling her close. “I was absolutely terrified you would reject me back then and couldn’t bear to lose you as a friend.” They were approaching her house by now, and as they paused on the doorstep she looked up into his eyes.

“And now?”

He met her gaze. “I’m still terrified, but lately I’ve realized that I can’t let things like that hold me back.” Then he kissed her, and she kissed him back, and for a moment, a blissful eternity that he wished could last forever but was as fleeting and ephemeral as a sandcastle in the face of a rising tide, everything faded away. His concerns, his worries, his stress, for that one moment it ceased to exist.

Then it was over and they parted. They stood there holding each other quietly for a while longer, before Kinzie asked shyly, but with a hint of mischief. “Would you like to come in? I got some of that oil on the zipper of my dress and could use some help taking it off.”

“I would love to.”

* * * * *

The next morning Evan had a bounce in his step and felt like he was living in a wonderful, impossible dream. He had woken up next to the girl of his dreams, and was widely considered as one of the most premier geniuses in video game production and technology development in the world. Which is probably why the universe decided to throw a wrench into the works, because that Murphy guy and his ridiculously frustrating law had left them alone for far too long.

He was on his way into the office with Kinzie when their communicators lit up and Jason’s voice rang out. “Guys we have a problem, Lisa’s been keeping secrets she shouldn’t have been keeping.” As ominous as that sounded, Evan was a bit confused by the fact that instead of worry in his voice, Jason sounded excited. They headed for their usual meeting spot, and as always, Evan found himself feeling slightly amused at the thought of how the world would react to the knowledge that so many world-altering decisions were being made in a tiny little breakroom chosen simply because it had a coffee pot and comfortable chairs.

When they got there Rebekkah and Jason were already there, Jason looking just as excited as he sounded through the communicator. Rebekkah glanced at them and clapped her hands. “Finally! I was so fed up with that silly little dance you two have been doing I was about ready to lock you in a room until you figured it out.” Evan and Kinzie both blushed brightly, but didn’t try to argue. In retrospect, it did seem pretty silly.

Jason waved his arms at them for attention. “Yeah, yeah, congratulations and all that, but I have bad news, worse news, and awesome news. So it turns out we never bothered to ask Lisa what keeps her up and running. I was working last night and noticed that she had gone through and added little notes into all my blueprints regarding fuel capacity and projected range before refueling was needed. I hadn’t really thought about it, because we don’t actually have any ships built yet, but then it hit me, if our designs all have fuel requirements wouldn’t Lisa also have fuel requirements?

“So here’s the bad news, we’ve been running the constructors and printers so hard, and using the projectors in here so much that she is running low, like two weeks left kind of low. The worse news? No battery backups for her core, if she runs dry she shuts down. Like factory reset shuts down, some sort of hardwired failsafe to prevent sensitive data from being captured or something. We will need Kinzie to crack those designs open and fix it ASAP so we can transfer her to something that won’t kill her the moment we have any kind of power outage. I’ve had her connect to the grid as a failsafe to extend her reserves as much as we can but that won’t be enough, her core takes too much power to run. Now for the awesome news, the most abundant source of what she needs and the easiest place to get it is, wait for it, Jupiter.

“Once I got done chewing her out for not telling us I got her to put herself in an emergency low power mode except for the printers that are working overtime to build us a shuttle that can make the trip in a couple days there and back, it’s going to be tight though, because the type of engines we will be using take the same kind of fuel she does, and we are going to have to borrow some of her dwindling reserves to make it there and back. I checked, and as long as we don’t leave the system the Confederation can’t come swooping in so it’s safe enough. We should be ready to go tomorrow morning, but I have to ask, Rebekkah can you stay and cover things here for a few days? It sucks, but we aren’t out in the open yet, and you’re the best at this sort of thing. None of the rest of us can continue with what we’ve been working on without Lisa’s help, which she can’t provide without more fuel.”

Rebekkah agreed without hesitation. “You are going to make it up to me, but I agree, go save our girl so we can all have a nice long screaming session with her for doing this to us. I’ll cover things here while you’re gone.”