Bookish and the Beast (Once Upon a Con #3)(44)

Elias says, “Everything okay? She didn’t lobotomize you while I was away?”

“What? Oh, no.”

“Then did…something happen?” he asks. “I was going to fire her, you know.”

“I know. I just—changed my mind.”

“Oh?” He crosses his arms and leans against the doorway.

I take a deep breath. “Do you remember that night at the con in Atlanta? When I disappeared and didn’t return until morning?”

“Your mother about killed me, of course I remember.”

“You know the girl? The one I was with?”

His eyebrow shoot up. “It was Rosie?”

I nod, and find myself twisting my fingers nervously. “Um—you know me better than anyone, so I was wondering…how do…how…” I scrub the back of my neck, pursing my lips. Get it together. You aren’t like this.

“You’ve dated a lot of people, I’m sure you don’t need my expert coaching,” Elias fills in with a shrug.

My stomach turns. “She said no.”

“Oh?”

“Don’t sound so shocked, please.”

“Well, I just—I’m not, really,” he replies. “I honestly can’t blame her.”

“Thanks.”

He cocks his head. “Well, c’mon, you’re going to help me make enchiladas tonight. You said you wanted to learn how, yes?”

I swallow the knot in my throat, and nod. “I’m terrible at cooking.”

“And that is why we practice and say to the god of burnt food—not today.”

Not today.

As I follow him back into the house to start the enchiladas, I catch my reflection in the sliding glass door. My T-shirt is still damp from the rainstorm, and my sweatpants hang on me heavily, and my orange-ish hair is wild and curling out from the sides of my head. I don’t look like a prince of Hollywood right now. I am so used to having to entertain people. To use them. To be used. Dates with paparazzi, with scheduled outings and scripted meet-cutes.

But when I was with Rosie in the pool house, for the briefest moment I felt like— Like she didn’t want anything of me at all, not a piece, not a part, broken off to be hoarded and sold to the highest bidder. She was just there, and she was nice when she had absolute no reason to be.

It was a gift I wasn’t expecting, and her no was an answer that had been coming for a long, long time.





ANNIE, QUINN, AND I MEET FOR BREAKFAST at the diner as we usually do. Quinn is trying to write out their Homecoming PSA for this afternoon, but they keep on crossing out everything they start. How do you write a thirty-second speech about why the student body should vote for you in a popularity contest? For anyone who isn’t self-involved or rolled a twenty on Charisma when they were born, it’s pretty tough, I imagine.

I’m still a little distracted by yesterday. The rainstorm, the conversation, me actually turning down the Vance Reigns. I must be absolutely out of my mind. Any girl would die to date him, but in the moment…

He ticked me off, honestly.

I wouldn’t want to go out pretending to be anyone else, and when he adopted that accent—the accent I met him in—everything sort of just fell into place. He wouldn’t mind going out with me as long as he wasn’t himself when he did.

Like we couldn’t be a match if he was his true self.

I shouldn’t be surprised.

I’m not a heroine in a rom-com, and guys like that don’t fall for girls like me. Besides, he’s so infuriating I sort of want to smother him between my thighs and not in the sexy way. Like literally smother him.

Maybe I can write that as my college essay. Which is what I’m trying to work on right now, staring mindlessly at a blank Word document, but my mind is still stuck in the pool house, my thoughts still damp and my heart beating like a thunderstorm.

“…Okay, but what if I don’t do a speech at all and just do, I don’t know, an interpretive dance?” Quinn asks.

Annie gives them a pointed look and spears one of her eggs. “Too avant-garde for the viewership. Ugh, if only there was a way to be really flash and extra.”

“They’re holding auditions for the mascot again after Bradley broke his leg diving off a bleacher,” they muse. “Maybe I should audition…”

Annie rolls her eyes. “Ugh, who wants to be a mascot?”

“I mean, I would.”

“Don’t—Rosie, tell Quinn not to ruin their senior year.”

I snap out of my thoughts. “What?”

“Have you really not been paying attention?”

“Um…”

Annie throws her hands up. “What has been up with you today? You’re disassociating hard.” She leans over the table to glance at my laptop screen. “And you haven’t even written a word in your essay!”

“It’s hard,” I mumble in reply, and then I frown, because that’s not quite the truth of it, and I need to tell someone about what happened yesterday. If I keep it bottled up, I feel like it’ll just become this gnarled, tangled mess. “Vance asked me out yesterday.”

Both of my friends sit at attention.

“Excuse me?” Annie gasps.

“When’s the wedding?” Quinn adds.