Restaurants and Ragebait

You’re three people back in line, running through the mental math of whether you can afford wings and a drink, when a hand closes around your arm like a vice.

You turn. It’s Karina — doctorate-of-engineering Karina, the one who once explained load-bearing torque to you for eleven minutes when you asked what time it was during a tutoring session for physics— and she does not look like someone doing torque math right now. She looks like someone who has seen a ghost, or worse, an ex.

“My stalker is here,” she whispers, eyes fixed somewhere over your shoulder. “Can you pretend to be my boyfriend?”

You consider this for exactly one second too long. “What if I’m also a stalker?”

Her face falls so fast you feel it in your own chest, a little elevator drop of oh no, wrong joke, abort.

“Sorry — bad joke,” you say quickly.

She scowls and swats you across the arm, hard, the way an actual girlfriend might when you’ve embarrassed her in public. “Don’t joke like that.”

You’re trying very hard not to laugh. You fail. It comes out anyway, undignified, and Karina pouts even as she loops her arm through yours and holds on tight, and for one strange, suspended second everything just — clicks. Your brain, unhelpfully, supplies: oh. This is why people date. So they can affectionately ragebait each other for the rest of their lives.

“Yeah, babe, it’s time to order,” Karina says, loud enough for the cashier, and hauls you back into the moment.

You turn, blink, and hear yourself say, “One large pizza, two drinks, and wings,” in a voice that sounds far steadier than you feel.

The cashier nods, takes your card, hands over two cups. You and your new, entirely fictional girlfriend make your way to the fountain machine — sweet tea for her, fruit punch for you, and the two of you settle into a booth by the window.

She studies you for a long moment. “Why are you wearing sunglasses inside?”

Before you can answer, she’s already reaching, plucking the pit vipers off your face and sliding them onto her own like she’s trying them on for size. And that’s when she sees it — the black eye, the bandage crossing the bridge of your nose.

“Car accident,” you say, calm as anything, easing the sunglasses back out of her hand and settling them back into place. You don’t particularly want to explain the actual story to your brand-new pretend girlfriend. Not yet. Maybe not ever.

She keeps staring, though, the particular stare of someone assembling a puzzle in real time. “You played football. For the university.” A beat. “You’re the linebacker. Ragnarok.”

You shake your head automatically, then stop, replaying what she just said. “My name’s Reginald Rockwell Jr. — where’d you even get Ragnarok — oh. Regi-rock. Ragnarok. I get it.”

Karina’s mouth curves into something dangerously close to a smirk. “You just said Ragnarok twice.”

“No I didn’t.” You wince. “…Okay, yeah, I did.” You realize, half a second too late, that you’ve been ragebaited in real time, cleanly, by a woman you met four minutes ago.

You drag a hand through your hair. Karina watches you do it with open delight.

“So,” she says, “I take it that’s a yes on the boyfriend thing.”

You pinch the bridge of your nose — gently, on account of the bandage — and sigh. “Sure.”

She breaks into a small, private, victorious dance in her seat, shoulders bouncing, and you can’t decide if it’s the most ridiculous thing you’ve ever seen or the most charming.

“So,” you ask, once she’s settled, “who exactly is this stalker?”

That’s when he arrives — pale, hair slicked back with military precision, goggles where eyes should be, moving like a man who has rehearsed this approach in a mirror. Something about him tugs at your memory and refuses to resolve.

“Hello, Mrs. Jimin,” he says. Then, turning to you with the same solemn formality: “And Mrs. Jimin’s friend.”

You wave. Karina waves. It’s all very civil for a stalker encounter.

“Otto,” Karina says, sliding an arm around yours, “this is my boyfriend. Ragnarok.”

“Reginald Rockwell Jr., actually,” you correct, mild as milk. “Only my girlfriend calls me Ragnarok.”

Karina nods along, entirely pleased with herself, and turns back to Otto with a smile so polite it could cut glass. Otto, for his part, goes the color of a stop sign, gaze bouncing between the two of you.

“Oh my god, I’m so sorry, I didn’t realize—” He’s already backing away. “My mistake. Sorry. Bye.”

And then he’s gone, moving at the brisk, mortified clip of a man fleeing a crime scene of his own making.

You and Karina watch him go in silence. Then it hits you both at once.

“That’s Octavius Leary,” you say slowly.

Karina turns to you, startled. “You know him?”

“Fenced against him. Uni fencing team.”

“You fenced?” She says it like you’ve just told her you used to compete in synchronized swimming.

“After I broke my leg sophomore year and football was out for a season, his older brother Oscar who I played football with said to try out. Stuck with it for two years after that.”

Karina is still absorbing this new and frankly devastating information about you when the food arrives. She claps her hands together, delighted, and you brace yourself, close your eyes, say a quick and quiet grace out of pure habit — and when you open your eyes, she’s still bowed over her hands, lips moving silently, finishing her own.

You clock the rosary resting against her collarbone at the same moment she looks up.

“Oh,” you say. “That explains it.”

She goes instantly wary. “Explains what.”

“My dad’s a Baptist preacher.”

Karina actually recoils, half a foot, real scandal on her face. “No way. I’m Catholic.”

“Ew,” you say, purely to watch her reaction.

She balls up a fist like she might actually throw down over doctrine, and you’re laughing before she even swings, and then she’s laughing too, and it’s several minutes before either of you manages to actually eat.

By the time the boxes are empty, Karina leans back, entirely at peace with the world. “Good thing this was just pretend,” she says. “We’d never work out. Heretical heathen.”

“Better that,” you say, “than pretentious prude.”

She gasps in mock outrage, and you’re both laughing again before the sound even finishes leaving her mouth.

When it’s finally time to go, she stands, all smiles. “Thanks for lunch, babe. But now we go back to being strangers.”

“Nooo,” you say, clutching a hand to your chest. “How will I ever find my glorious Christian waifu now?”