So we went down into my studio, and I turned on the lava lamp down there and got us some beers, and Mandy noticed that the video game was open on my computer, and she was like: Whoa, what the fuck is THIS thing? And I was like: Fuck, I can’t believe I forgot to close that. My first impulse was to lie about it and keep it a secret—you know, because I’ve been pretty committed to no one finding out about it until it’s done—but then I thought about it for a second, and I was just like: You know what? I’m not even sure I like this thing anymore. I’d actually be really interested to see what Mandy thinks about it. So I said to her: This is the thing I’ve been working on. You wanna see it?

And Mandy was like: Yes.

So I sat her down in front of the computer, and I told her about the concept of the game a little bit, and I loaded up one of the early demo levels, and I watched her play.

It was the level where you’ve just arrived in L.A. and you meet Mandy at the head of the label’s place in Malibu, and you have to play this, like, little flirting mini-game in order to get with her. It’s mostly just little conversation trees—Mandy asks you if you miss St. James, and you have a few options, like, “Nah, not really,” or like, “Yes, all the time,” or like, “Yeah, but L.A.’s amazing!”—and depending on what you say and depending on what she says like, the flirting either goes really well or it goes really badly. And even if it goes badly, like, the whole time you’re there, there are still all these other people at the party who give you boosts here and there and give you extra bonus points whenever it looks like you’re about to lose, so you have to be trying really hard if you wanna fuck it up.

And I expected Mandy to kind of think it was cute and like, maybe remember what it was like to be around at that time, you know, remember what it was like to fall in love with me, but instead, at a certain point, she just pushed the keyboard away from herself and looked down at the ground, kind of pissed, and I was like: Whoa, Mandy, what’s wrong? You don’t like it?

And Mandy was like: We were so young then … We weren’t even people …

And I was like: No. LOL. We were babies.

And Mandy was like: We were child soldiers. We didn’t own a single part of ourselves.

And I was like: I guess not. But it really felt like we were in love then, didn’t it?

And Mandy was like: So many things felt real that weren’t. We were the last people on Earth who would’ve known the difference.

And there was this silence for a bit, and we both just kind of sat there, and then Mandy looked at the video game for a second, and then she looked back at me, and she was like: Would you quit?