The Imitation Game ✓

THIRTY-SEVEN | EXILE, PT. II

They needed to return to the party—if you could even call it a party. They needed to return to the party, yet Cora might have preferred to keep hiding away in the bathroom and letting Rasmus soothe her. They needed to return to the party because Gideon was probably going to show up any minute now.

So she settled for turning around in his arms and giving him a long, slow kiss on the lips before she took him by the hand and pulled him back outside. Siena and Anais were chatting amicably, pretending that Cora and Rasmus hadn't been gone for a concerning amount of time.

As the two of them sat back down at the table, Sie was attempting to read the mood of the room. "Does anyone want something stronger to drink?" she offered.

"Yes," they all immediately answered.

So Sie poured the wine, and conveniently, it was just as the liquid was sloshing into the third glass that the doorbell rang. She grabbed a fourth while Cora answered the door.

"Sorry I'm late," Gideon told her, sounding genuinely apologetic.

"No worries," she smiled. You didn't miss much, just my spontaneous breakdown. "I, ah, I hope you like red wine, 'cause I think my roommate is already pouring you a glass."

He laughed. The table was a sad disaster zone of burger wrappers, empty styrofoam cups, and salty crumbs. There was still some food leftover if Gideon was hungry, but perhaps they ought to relocate somewhere that looked less like a frat house.

"Does anyone want to watch a movie?" Cora suggested.

If anyone was opposed, they didn't speak up. She, for one, felt sluggish enough after eating all that grease that turning into a couch potato sounded highly appealing right now.

So they all settled onto the sofa, Rasmus and Cora sitting on one end and Sie on the other so that Gideon and Anais were forced to sit next to each other in the center. Using that tactic made Cora feel like she had all the maturity of a middle schooler, but that wasn't to say that she regretted it.

And as she propped her feet up next to her boyfriend's and held his hand, as the warmth of the wine slowly began to fill her stomach and replace the uncomfortable knot that had formed there, her nerves began to ease.

The others were already making small talk as Siena scrolled through movies on Netflix. She had only met Anais once prior and had never met Gideon at all, so there was no shortage of things to learn about one another, and the film they settled on, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, faded into background noise (despite being a very good movie) as they all discussed Illicit Affairs. It was, after all, the one thing they all had in common. Sie had apparently been thinking a lot about the writing and told them that her Feminism in Literature professor had given her permission to use it as the topic for one of her papers (a fact Cora hadn't even heard before now). She and Rasmus were the ones who knew all the challenges that came with actually performing said script, and Anais and Gideon's roles behind the scenes were just as important in making it come to life. Cora teased that she liked to think that she was easier to put up with than Rasmus, though the reality was that her costumes were by nature a lot more complicated to handle and maintain than his were. Gideon confessed that he was so nervous during previews that he'd accidentally turned one of Rasmus' undershirts pink in the wash; Anais laughed, nearly spitting out her wine.

It didn't take Cora long to drain her first glass of wine, and once she did, she poured herself another. Once that one was empty, she briefly considered having a third, but instead leaned over to rest her head on Rasmus' shoulder. Her eyelids were already so heavy, the fatigue of doing the show earlier that day finally catching up with her...