Bookish and the Beast (Once Upon a Con #3)(26)

His eyebrows furrow because he didn’t expect that. “Well, I mean, you can’t actually like them.”

“No, I do. I love them. They’re great. I have a poster of Sond on my wall, actually,” I reply, and pop open the tab of my cola. Garrett fishes for something to say, because he absolutely just dissed me without even knowing it, but I can’t stand the slack-jawed look on his face, so I help him out a little. “Garrett, just a little piece of advice: if you’re trying to woo someone? Get to know them first.”

One of his friends calls his name from a few cars down. It’s one of the cheerleaders running for Homecoming Queen, Myrella Johnson, her dark curly hair pulled up into a high ponytail.

The previews for the Star Wars film begin to play.

“See you at school,” I tell him, and for once he takes the social cue. He slides off the tailgate and returns to his friends.

How come the only people who want to date me are the ones who don’t know me at all—don’t even want to know me? I’m the girl with the dead mom, I guess that’s enough, isn’t it? I guess that’s what I liked about the guy at ExcelsiCon. He didn’t know I had lost a piece of my heart. He didn’t look at me with pity, secretly glad it wasn’t his mom who died. He looked at me. He got to know me as we walked in downtown Atlanta and ate scattered and smothered hash browns from Waffle House and played Twenty Questions. It was probably one of the best nights of my life. It was a night, for a moment, when I wasn’t boring and dull Rosie Thorne, still waiting for her life to begin.





I WAKE UP WITH A PS4 CONTROLLER pressing into my cheek. What time is it even? The blackout curtains make my room dark, but between the middle seam some sort of light finds a way through. Morning, then—or at least early afternoon. I slowly force myself to sit up, wiping the dried drool from my chin. My console must’ve turned itself off at some point in the night, and I uncurl myself from the edge of my bed.

My mouth feels like sandpaper, and every one of the glasses in my room is empty.

“Elias,” I call hoarsely, but when he doesn’t answer, I pull up my hood over my greasy week-unwashed hair and crack open the door to my room. “Elias?”

Some indie-pop band blares from the speakers downstairs in the kitchen, so I highly doubt he can hear me. He must be baking—there’s a sweet scent in the air. Apple pie?

I shuffle down the hallway and descend the stairs, rubbing at my eyes. I either sleep too much or not enough and I don’t know which it is. I fell asleep at some point last night, but I can’t remember when, just a lot of shooting and dodging and capturing stupid neon-colored flags with Imogen, until she had to go to bed. She—for some terrible reason—decided to choose morning university classes, something which I will never understand.

“Elias, could you turn that trash down?” I call as I shuffle into the kitchen.

But Elias is not here.

There’s a pie in the oven, but I don’t see Elias anywhere. He must’ve gone to the loo or something. So I check the pie—definitely apple, one of my favorites—and yank open the refrigerator to grab a cup of yogurt.

And I hear footsteps.

I close the refrigerator door, about to tell him how unsafe it is to leave the kitchen while cooking when— “Mr. Rodriguez, I’ve got a question about the organization of volumes fourteen through twenty of the Starfield extended—” The girl freezes the second she turns into the kitchen, empty pitcher in one hand, glass in the other, and realizes that it’s me. Her face closes off like the snap of a mousetrap.

In the daylight she looks just about as normal as they come—brown hair pulled up away from her heart-shaped face, framed with a fringe that curls every which way in that endearing sort of way I don’t quite understand. There is a peppering of freckles across her cheeks. Surprisingly long eyelashes framing hazel eyes. And she can’t be more than five-one, so tiny she barely reaches my shoulders.

And in the moment she reminds me of the girl I met at ExcelsiCon. Her hair had been pulled back the same way, exposing a rose-shaped birthmark just behind her left ear— Bloody hell.

The yogurt cup slips from my hand and clatters onto the ground.

It’s her.

She blinks at me.

I know what I must look like—a tall, barely washed guy in a gray hoodie and Naruto boxers (that I am kicking myself for sleeping in). And it’s her. The girl from the balcony.

Her.

She doesn’t recognize me, does she? No, she can’t. I wore a mask that night. She did too, but that birthmark is unmistakable. I asked her about it over hash browns.

“Oh, yeah, I’ve had it since I was born,” she had said sheepishly, picking at her hash browns. “My parents named me after it.”

“Rose, then?”

She smiled, and even behind her mask it made something strange flutter in my stomach. “It’s a secret, unless you tell me yours.”

“I’m no one,” I lied.

It seemed innocuous back then. I didn’t want to ruin the moment by telling her the truth, but then when morning came, I thought I heard my name so I looked over my shoulder. And the next second, she was gone.

And now here she is, again, reappeared like some reoccurring dream.

Or perhaps a nightmare.

She hesitantly puts the pitcher down on the island counter. “Um—sorry. I thought you were Elias.”