Bookish and the Beast (Once Upon a Con #3)(13)

“Never mind.” He sighs and massages the bridge of his nose. “All right. All right—but I do have a few questions and some concerns,” he adds, and his eyes flicker back to me.

My back stiffens at the insinuation. Honestly, I’m too busy ruining my own life to ruin someone else’s. Elias agrees and asks the girl’s father to walk with him while they discuss the details, probably with the owner of the house. He disappears into the library again with Elias, leaving the girl and me in the living room alone.

She sits quietly, twirling a lock of wet hair around her finger. What kind of game is she playing? Her father was clearly ready to write a check, so why didn’t she let him? And why does Elias think that her helping me with that stupid library will cover the cost of that book?

I’m not so self-absorbed as to think that she’s staying because she wants to get close to me—I’m not stupid. The tabloids have been the opposite of kind, having all but set my career on fire. And anyone who comes near me gets the same treatment. My manager said that I should lay low for a while, advised my stepfather to put me somewhere where I can’t get into trouble. Let the rumors die down before the release of Starfield: Resonance—or else my reputation might bleed into the movie.

And my stepfather’s business.

But I can’t think of another reason why she would agree to sacrifice her afternoons to come to a library of all places. I clench my teeth and feel a muscle twitch in my jaw.

I don’t like her.

After a moment she turns to me and says, “My name is…” but I’m already halfway up the stairs, and gone. I don’t need to know her name. I don’t need to get to know her.

It’s best if I don’t.





WHEN DAD AND I FINALLY make it back to the apartment, he tugs his tie loose and heads to the liquor cabinet and the bottle of bourbon at the top. “Well, that was an interesting evening,” he says with a sigh. “And interesting people. Isn’t that boy—?”

“Vance Reigns,” I reply, dumping my bookbag down at the kitchen table. Even though I finished my calculus homework during lunch today, I still need to start on that essay for my college application, and that English report due next week—my life feels like a never-ending stream of to-do lists.

“Vance Reigns, Vance Reigns…” Dad mutters, pouring himself a drink. “Doesn’t he play Sond?”

“Bingo.”

Though he did seem familiar for moment before I took a splash in the pool, but it’s probably my imagination. He has been trending a lot on social media recently, after all—and never for anything good.

“Well, it seems you’ll be getting to know him rather well these next few weeks,” Dad says as he grabs the plethora of menus from the counter and slides into a chair opposite of me at the table. “Mr. Rodriguez and I talked it out, and as long as you sign an NDA and don’t, you know, write about your experiences on a very public forum, it should be quite the experience. Since you got fired from the grocery store,” he adds in a deadpan voice.

I give a start. “How did you…?”

“Annie called me at work,” he replies. “Told me that you got fired.”

“I quit, actually,” I reply nobly.

He sighs and waves the menus at me, deciding to drop the argument. Which means he isn’t that upset with me. “What do you want to eat?”

“I’m not really hungry,” I mumble in reply, taking out my laptop from my bag, and I open it up to the Word document, and the title, WHY I SHOULD BE CONSIDERED FOR NYU. The rest is still, unsurprisingly, blank.

Because honestly? I am not all that remarkable. I’m just known as the girl whose mom died last year, and I don’t want to write about that. I don’t want to remember how the hospital smelled so sterile, and how Mom’s hand was so cold, and her breath so shallow. I don’t want to remember the last words she said to me (“Be good, Rosebud”), and I don’t want to remember that I had to leave the room. I don’t want to remember walking to the soda machine at the end of the hallway and getting an Orange Crush when I asked for a Diet Coke.

I don’t want to remember the slow walk back to her room. Dad standing at the door. Tears dripping down his face. The Orange Crush forgotten on the ground. The swell of grief that seemed to root all the way down into my toes.

No, no, no.

The moment that changed my life was the moment that ruined it, and I’m sure no college wants to read about that.

I wave my hand at the menus. “You pick.”

He sighs, raking his hands through his gelled hair to dishevel it. It’s somewhere in the range of silver, the sides darker to fit his natural color. When he started going gray a few years ago, his barber convinced him to just go full silver, so he now dyes it. He hasn’t gone back since. He says it makes him feel cool, and honestly the silver hair makes it easier to spot him in a crowd. Dad used to be in a punk band in the ’90s. There are a few pictures floating around of him on the dark web, but the less people who know that my dad used to tour with the likes of Green Day, the better.

He scrunches his nose and says, “How about sushi? From Inakaya?”

“Whatever you’d like,” I reply with a wave.

“Two Californias and a salmon?”

“And a few spring rolls?”