“Oh my god, just get in the fucking ball!” Jo yelled, flipping yet another pokéball across the screen. The growlithe jumped at the last second, and the ball missed completely. “Oh my god!” Jo grumbled, throwing her head back towards the sky.
She was new to this whole Pokémon thing. Jo hadn’t really grown up with it. She preferred catching real critters outside rather than catching imaginary ones on a tiny green screen. Still, Sam had been talking about it nonstop and even Dean had gotten in on it, so she might as well give it a shot. Her mother was happy that it gave her something to do other than hustling her mother’s patrons at pool and darts. It was fun so far, but it was also immensely frustrating.
She flung another ball, but this time, she overshot and it went right over the Pokémon’s head. “What the fuck?”
A soft snicker came somewhere just behind her, and Jo whipped her head around, just in time to see a flash of copper red hair jerk away. The woman with the copper hair tucked her head, curling in on herself on the park bench where she sat.
“What’s so funny?” Jo demanded.
The woman looked up, holding her hands out, a flat palm raised in defense, the other hand curled around her phone. “Nothing,” she said, her voice barely more than a mumble.
She looked a little frightened, which Jo mentally winced at. “Sorry,” she muttered, taking a step across the grass and closer to the park bench. “Are you playing, too?”
“Yeah!” The woman perked up with a toothy smile that pushed her high cheeks up, crinkling the skin around her eyes. Jo was unable to help smiling back.
“Cool,” she said, “I’m trying to catch this bear-tiger-dog thing but it doesn’t wanna get in the damn ball.”
The woman jumped up off the bench, rushing to Jo’s side and crowding over the phone. She smelled like a sugar cookie.
“Oh neat, that’s a growlithe,” the woman said, “high CP, too. What level are you at?”
“Uh, like six I think,” Jo said, glancing back at her phone.
“Neat. What team are you on?”
The redhead scoffed, crinkling her nose adorably. “Boo. Team Mystic all the way,” she laughed.
“Hey, whatever, you’re just jealous ‘cause all your gyms around here have been taken over.”
“Well I guess we don’t have much to worry about if all the trainers let their Pokémon get away,” the redhead said, pointing a single slender finger at the screen. Jo glanced back in time to see the weird tiger-bear thing rush away, leaving an animated dust cloud behind.
“Goddammit,” Jo grumbled. “I lost like five balls on that thing.”
“Hey, don’t worry about it, happens to the best of us,” the redhead offered. She gasped then, looking back at her phone, “someone just dropped a lure at the pokéstop across the street for the fro-yo place! Come on, let’s go!” She hooked her arm around Jo’s and marched off towards the road.
Jo chuckled. “You know, my mother always warned me about strange men but maybe she should’ve warned me about weird women.”
“I’m not that weird,” the redhead said.
“Says the stranger dragging me across the street to catch Pokémon.”
“Charlie. My name is Charlie,” she stopped when they reached the end of the sidewalk, glancing in both directions before smiling at Jo again. “Now I’m not a stranger.”
As excitable as Charlie was in the park she only got worse once they reached the pokéstop. She was practically vibrating. The sound that escaped her when she finally caught the vulpix that had escaped two pokéballs was something like and eagle screech. She shoved her phone in Jo’s face, squealing “It’s she just the cutest thing!”
“How do you know she’s a girl?” Jo asked with a chuckle, waiting for the game to load.
Jo spent the rest of the day with Charlie, waiting out the end of the lure and catching more Pokémon than Jo had all day. When their phone batteries started to tip dangerously in the red, Charlie pulled them into the fro-yo shop, dragged her laptop out and on a table, and charged both her and Jo’s phones (because you never know if you’re gonna need it) while they enjoyed small cups of fro-yo. Charlie didn’t say anything when Jo swirled both strawberry cheesecake and coffee flavored fro-yo in her cup, and Jo only smiled when she noticed the mountain of gummy bears on top of Charlie’s vanilla chocolate swirl.
They bantered back and forth about nothing and everything for a while. Charlie was a whirlwind, and absolutely enthusiastic about damn near everything. She had some definite opinions about the Star Trek reboots and Captain America, and pretty much every popular movie Jo hadn’t seen in the past two or three years. Jo really got excited when Charlie started talking about the replica samurai swords she had in her apartment, and she listened intently when Jo described her collection of very real and very sharp throwing knives.
When they finally looked at the clock it was only fifteen minutes before Jo was scheduled to start her shift at the bar. Jo said a hasty goodbye and snatched her phone off the table before heading off. Charlie seemed a little deflated by her hasty retreat, and Jo had to admit that she was, too. It was nice to have someone to talk to who was so unafraid to be excited about all kinds of weird things. Jo may not have been the geekiest person on the planet, but she had her moments, especially when it came to her knives and table top games. Her cousins, Sam and Dean, had come the closest to indulging her in her geekdom, but as they got older Dean stopped playing Dungeons and Dragons and Sam was too busy with law school to do much of anything cool. Ash was always there but half the time he spoke in code and the other half he was higher than a kite. Being around Charlie was a nice change. Of course, she forgot to get Charlie’s number so the likelihood that they would ever see each other again was pretty small.
Jo’s shift at the bar was as boring as ever. Drunken patrons hit on her and buzzed dudes offered to get her wasted; same shit, different day. That was of course until Charlie came in through the door, glancing around the room before hesitantly sitting herself down at the bar.
“Hey there.” Jo greeted her with a smile, resisting the urge to let the ‘what’s a girl like you doing in a place like this’ line that was threating to slip past her lips fall.
“Hey, uh, you took my phone and I kinda need it back,” Charlie said fishing the phone out of her pocket.
Jo’s smile faltered just a bit. She had almost dared to hope that maybe Charlie had been as interested in her as she was. “Right,” she forced a small laugh, pulling and identical phone out of her jeans pocket, “sorry about that.”
Charlie batted at the air, “Pffft, no big.”
For the first time, an awkward moment passed between the two of them, neither of the women moving or saying anything.
“So, can I get you a drink?” Jo asked.
A sly little smile pulled at the corner of Charlie’s lips, “Are you offering to buy me a drink?”
“Would you take it if I offered?”
“Hell yeah,” Charlie said, slapping her hand against the wood grain.
