Dustin chuckles beside me on the plush couch in my apartment. We had come back from the Patty Shack and ever since then he'd been laughing nonstop. "Raegan again?" I ask, annoyance sheltered in my tone.

"Yeah, man. She's hilarious!" He laughs again while his fingers punch at the keyboard on his phone.

"I know." I roll my eyes at him and press down on the right trigger of my controller. It's not like I've known her longer than you have, jerk. 

Onscreen, my character shoots bullets from an AK-47 right into zombie heads. I've been playing Left 4 Dead 2 for the past two hours while Dustin texts Raegan.

"Plus, she's a total babe." He nudges my shoulder, and I decide to spare a moment of my gaming time to look at him. His dirty blond hair is slicked back under a backwards baseball cap and his blue eyes shine with lust.

"Here, look. This is her profile picture on Facebook." Dustin passes me his phone that's glaring a picture of her.

Raegan's blonde hair with black tips was big and wavy, something I found incredibly sexy. Her tongue darted out of her firetruck red lips, and her right eye was closed in a wink.

Damn. She is hot.

"Wow." I choke out, passing the phone back to him. I start my game up again without another word. Mentally, I'm going fuck you fuck you fuck you I wanna be her friend on facebook, not you.

I decide to put all of my frustration into playing this stupid game.

Over the next hour, Dustin is constantly laughing at his phone. They must already have inside jokes- funny, because me and Dustin hardly have any. I can't believe they are friends on Facebook already. I don't even know her last name!

I take my anger out on the zombies in game. I bash their heads in with a frying pan, shoot their limbs off with my AK, and blow them up with pipe bombs and a Molotov. By the time I've made it to the end of the campaign, Dustin has begun to video chat with Raegan on Messenger. He's in the kitchen eating my Doritos, and chatting her up, headphones tucked in. This dude is seriously violating the bro code. 

Rule #1: Don't touch another man's Doritos.

While I'm busy glaring at my controller, the Xbox chimes.

Thatsnotmywallet is now online!

Oh, thank the lord! Yeah, right. As if I care that she and Dustin are video chatting, and are now talking while she logs onto her console. Like I give two shits.

Well. I kind of do.

"Bro, do you care if all three of us play a game together? Like, we could do Reach?" Dustin nudges my shoulder, facing the camera so it looks at me.

I exhale loudly in response. "Yeah, that's fine. I guess." I exit my current game of Left 4 Dead 2, go to my downloaded games and start up Halo Reach. Meanwhile, Dustin sits his phone on a kitchen chair that was dragged over to the living room, facing us. He finds a controller, turns it on, then places himself beside me on the couch. Raegan is looking at her phone, laughing.

"I was just thinking- how crazy is it that we actually met?" She ruffles her free hand through her curled hair.

"Yeah. Pretty crazy." I reply in a monotone. Raegan makes a face at me before looking back up at her television. Dustin signs in and we start up a game of online Infection, with Raegan in our group. Since the release of Halo 4, Reach has become mainly full of hackers, but that increases the fun. Sort of.

The first round starts up, and from the screen I see that Dustin is infected. I'm human.

"Guess who's infected!" Raegan says in a singsong voice.

"No fucking way, dude! We're like twinning or something." Dustin tells her as he slashes a human.

I roll my eyes, but proceed to dodge attacks and shoot at the infected.

You have just killed Thatsnotmywallet!

"Oh, fuck you!"

"My mom doesn't allow me to go on those kind of play-dates yet." I'm shooting infected as I sass her. Bulltrue! I'm a freaking god with a shotgun.

She sighs loudly on the other end. "Whatever." Her brown eyes are focused on her television screen.

I ignore her, irritated. I'm in the process of shooting the infected in front of me when I'm struck from behind. God dammit, I should have paid more attention to the red dots on the map.

TrustyDusty69 has infected you!

Wow, Dustin literally stabbed me in the back, both with Raegan and now online. I'm a little salty.

I shake my head, wondering why I'm getting so possessive and angry. It's not like I know Raegan. Not as well as Dustin seems to anyway.

I'd only just met her a few weeks ago online, playing Flood on Halo 4, which is essentially the newer version of Infection. Humans v. Flood (zombies).

"Nice job, Dustin!"

As I wait on my respawn, my eyes flit to look at Dustin and see a proud grin on his face.

"Thanks, babe," Dustin flirts back easily. I roll my eyes and glare back at the screen.

"Shut up."

Now it's my turn to grin stupidly. Good. Reject his advances.

"How was work?" I ask, eager for her attention to be on me. I find her avatar and we tag team and kill another human, turning them into an infected too.

She grunts as her character gets shot and falls to the ground. Sparing a glance at the phone screen, I see her eyes cast downwards, eyebrows knit together in concentration. "Good, I'm just glad to be home now."

"Bet the highlight of your day was meeting me, huh?" Once I'm sure she's looking into the camera, I wink.

Raegan chuckles, shifting her pretty hair off her shoulder to drape off her back. "You know it, doll."

"How long were you working?" I ask, genuinely curious. I don't have an actual job, the money I make comes from the YouTube channel I have for cheat videos and commentaries. I'm kind of like pewdiepie because I play games live and show my reaction, but I also say what's up and if it's worth buying. I've got a decent following and my subscribers make me the money that just funnels back into the gaming fund.

"Eight hour shift, so noon to eight." She shrugs, nonchalant about it.

I let out a low whistle. For some reason, that's a lot longer than what I expected. Maybe it's because I have never had a "real" job, but that just sounds tiring. I focus back on the game, slicing people with my energy sword until there's only one person left alive. I'm shot down before I can even press the trigger to kill him.

"That was pretty clever, by the way." She's the one to make the kill and the screen starts loading the next round. I push my back further into the couch and grunt.

"Huh?"

"Throwing your wallet at me like that," she continues. "But it probably would've just been easier to admit that you recognized my voice, Clifford."

My heart seems to stop in my chest at the sound of her voice saying my name.

"I've never been the one to take the easy route," I admit. It's true.

The game loads and I find myself to be infected.

"I'm human!" Dustin cries out happily. I smirk and look around my surroundings in game. I'm infected, and from the accompanying gamer tag on top of my fellow zombie, so is Raegan.

"Sucks to be you," I grin, my character and Raegan's racing off to infect others. We make quite the team, claiming new members to the infected team. Our first victim being Dustin.

He pouts, crossing his arms across his chest and putting his controller down. "No fair! I want to be on a team with Ray Ray!"

She groans, her face coming really close to the camera screen until I can see the light dotting of freckles across her nose.

"Don't call me that."

Great, now they're both pouting.

"I do what I want, Ray Ray." Dustin says persistently.

Am I the only one still actually playing?

"Well stop."

Dustin grabs the phone off the chair and holds it close to him as he taunts her. "Make me."

"Fine."

The call ends and his phone screen goes black. Raegan's avatar disappears shortly, as she's quit the game. I quickly check to see if she's still online, but she's not. 

"What the fuck did you just do?" I ask, turning to my friend with wide eyes.

"No clue."