Curry
The contents of the box take up the entire (admittedly small) front room as Tim struggles to figure out what the point of the game actually is. He’d tried looking it up on the internet, which only proved frustrating after he failed to find a single product review. It wasn’t until giving up and opening it anyway did he even notice the copyright date of 2007 printed along one of the edges.
2007? Well, that’ll give him plenty of time to get good at it before anyone else even hears of it.
The drum kit - which is laughable when compared to the actual drum kit he keeps in his mum’s garage - is a right pain to assemble. It doesn’t seem to be the right height for the cord to the kick pedal, and there isn’t really a space in the flat big enough to keep it once it is assembled.
The guitar is... confusing. A switch and a bunch of buttons replacing strings. It’s not even a full five minutes before he’s trying to figure out if he can take the shell apart to repaint it.
It only takes him a few minutes to get everything hooked up and ready to go, opting for the guitar on account of drum kits and bean bags not really being compatible. It takes him a few moments to work out that the track list is the game, and he eventually settles on Ballroom Blitz, and having no idea what the point of the game is, he fails the song within 30 seconds.
Through all this, he’s been so distracted that he hadn’t even noticed Daisy standing in the kitchen until she laughs at him.
“Tim, what is that?” she asks.
“I don’t know!” he insists. “Someone gave it to me.”
Daisy muscles her way down next to Tim and picks up the box. “Oh, this must be a typo,” she declares. “It says 2007 on it.”
“No, I think that’s right,” Tim says simply. He tries the song again, and it isn’t until about half-way through losing yet again that he realises that the bits on screen are colour-coded to the buttons on the guitar.
“Tim, it’s 2005,” Daisy says flatly.
“Yep.” He fails the song again.
“Well, where did you get this, then?” She turns the large box over, hitting Tim on the side of the head with it.
Tim sighs as he takes the box out of her hands and puts it down. “From that guy,” he answers. “Said he was sorry for thumping me like that.”
Daisy just looks at him flatly. “What’s so embarrassing that you’re not telling me?”
“Nothing!”
“Well, you’re keeping something from me!”
Tim puts the guitar down on the floor and pinches the bridge of his nose. “I am not going to fight over this,” he mutters quietly.
Daisy is less than amused. “Over what?”
Sighing, Tim puts his hands on her shoulders. “If I tell you, do you promise not to have me sectioned?”
“If you have to ask, then no.”
That doesn’t sound very promising. At all. Still, he’s known he’d have to do this eventually.
“There’s a magical pub between my bedroom and the corridor,” he says simply. “I go there sometimes and get pissed, even though I said I’d stop going to the pub because you can’t anymore.”
Daisy just blinks at him. “Tim, I think you need to cut down on your working hours,” she says slowly. “I know you’re stressed, but we can work through this.”
He shakes his head and gets up. “Fine,” he says, making his way to his bedroom. “Come here.”
Daisy cautiously gets up and follows, sighing when he takes her by the hand and leads her through the door. In the bedroom, he closes the door, and then opens it again.
“Go on,” Tim says, gesturing.
Heaving a sigh, Daisy steps back out of the bedroom and into the corridor. “Was something supposed to happen?” She asked.
“Damnit,” Tim curses. He searches frantically round the room as an idea hits him. “What do you want, right now?”
She eyes Tim suspiciously. She can see where this is going, and isn’t sure if she should humour him or not.
“A curry, watermelon, and a pineapple Fanta,” she says.
“You don’t even like pineapple,” Tim argues.
“But I want one.”
“Fine!” He shuts the door and opens it again, with a paper takeaway container in one hand, a watermelon under his other arm, and a bottle of pineapple Fanta in his mouth. Daisy watches in shock as he takes the lot into the kitchen, carefully setting it all down on the table.
“Tim...” she starts cautiously.
“What?” he asks.
“Where...” She looks at everything on the table. “From the pub?”
Tim just nods and opens the take-away container, revealing a still-steaming curry. “Yep.”
She cautiously approaches, taking a few moments to get up the nerve to take the curry from Tim. Either Tim’s telling the truth, or his madness is spreading.
“Well, you can have the pop, because I don’t like pineapple.”
Tim muscles her over to the sofa, a fork in his hand. “Well, you’re sharing that, because I had to pay for it.”