The Princess and the Fangirl (Once Upon a Con #2)(65)

He looked about ready to kill him.

I shouldn’t have snapped at Ethan like that. He was only trying to help.

Yeah, but he’s a burnt Hufflepuff, I try to reason with myself, and you’re getting food with a Gryffindor.

A clap of thunder rumbles overhead, and lightning reflects off the skyscrapers around us. We made it to the diner just before the storm hit in full swing, and I shake off errant water droplets on my arms.

The diner is red-and-white checkered, with neon signs glowing in the windows and the smell of greasy fries and sweet ice cream hanging in the air. I sit on one side of the booth, assuming Vance would go for the other, but instead he slides in next to me, stretching his arm across the back of the booth behind me.

He smells like a mixture of motorcycle exhaust and some sort of expensive cologne, and sitting this close I can see stubble on his cheek. This feels really, really cliché, straight out of a ’90s rom-com starring a rough leathery bad boy and a chaste good girl.

Oh, if he knew me—the real me—he’d realize I am not that good at all.

“You looked upset earlier. Is everything okay?” he asks softly, as a preppy waitress comes over and hands us two menus.

“I’m fine. A strawberry shake, please,” I say before I can think of what Jessica would order. I’m too tired to play that game.

“Um, yeah, chocolate malt. Thanks,” he adds, giving the waitress a dashing smile before turning his gaze back to me. She stares at him, blinking, for another moment, realizing that yes, it is Vance Reigns, before she hurries off to tell the other waitstaff.

“Are you sure you’re fine?” he asks. “Is there anything I can do?”

I toy with my words, arranging them in my head, before I say, “Do you ever have a little voice in your head that tells you that you aren’t good enough? And you’ve never done anything in your life, so you begin to think that maybe that little voice in your head is right? That maybe you aren’t smart or talented or pretty enough—”

“Pretty? Jess.” He angles himself in the booth to turn his full attention to me. “I think you’re beautiful.”

It’s a phrase I’ve never heard in my life. At least, not directed at me. Not while some utterly gorgeous guy stares into my eyes, his gaze curving down my cheek, resting on my mouth. He knows what beauty is—he must, because he is beautiful. The way his shoulder-length blond hair is twisted back into a bun while wavy locks escape, framing his chiseled face. The intensity of his icy blue eyes makes it a little hard to breathe, and a lot hard to think.

He called me beautiful.

VANCE REIGNS.

CALLED ME.

BOOOTEEF—

“I-I do?” I stutter. “I…I am?”

“Of course. Why do you seem so surprised?” His thumb trails down the side of my neck.

Gooseflesh prickles my skin before I can remember that I’m Jessica and not Imogen, and Jessica is told that she is beautiful all the time. She lives in a land where she’s probably never been told anything else.

She’s probably reminded that she’s beautiful every day of her life.

I love my Kathy and Minerva—they tell me I’m pretty and special and so Gryffindor I probably need a disclaimer, but it’s not the same. My moms love me to the moon and back, but they’re my family.

A stranger has never called me beautiful until now. Not sincerely.

All my life I’ve thought that maybe if I didn’t rush in, if I grew my hair out, if I put on makeup or liked Gossip Girl or sports or anything besides Starfield and animes, maybe I would’ve been asked to study sessions or proms or football games.

Maybe Jasper wouldn’t have bailed on me at ExclesiCon last year.

And yet, when I slip into playing Jessica, people take notice. I’m interesting as Jessica—I’m smart and talented, and this boy I barely know just called me beautiful.

Then why does it feel weird, and wrong?

“No one has ever called me beautiful before,” I say softly.

Vance laughs, deep and rumbly. “Now I know you’re lying. Everyone knows you are, Jess. It’s part of the package.”

That word gives me pause; his hand rests on the side of my neck and he leans in close. I ease backward a little. “The package? Like I’m some made-to-order special on QVC?”

“It’s just a saying, Jess. You’re gorgeous,” he says and twirls a finger through my hair. I really hope it’s human hair and not, you know, fake, but he doesn’t seem to mind either way. “And you’re mysterious, and not easy to take out on a date, that’s for sure.”

“A…date?”

“Isn’t that what this is? You finally agreed to go out on a date with Vance Reigns.”

Oh sweet baby Carmindor, he just referred to himself in the third person.

“And I finally get to go out with one of the most elusive girls on the market.” He lowers his face as if to kiss me—

NO HE IS COMING TO KISS ME.

I plant a hand on his chest and push him away.

“Whoa, we barely know each other, Vance.”

He scoffs. “Barely? Jess. We run in all the same circles. You dated that cad Darien Freeman, and we both know I kiss much better than him.”

Oh no.

I’ve made a grave mistake.

The Vance in my head, the one who is kind and charming and puts a finger down to “Never have I ever had a crush on Ron Swanson,” is dying in a blaze of bad acting.