Bookish and the Beast (Once Upon a Con #3)(48)

“I…did. And managed to start a fire?”

“Dad!” I squawk.

“I was heating up some chocolate and I didn’t realize you couldn’t put tinfoil in the microwave! I walked off for two seconds and, well…the good news is we still have an apartment?”

“And the bad news?”

“We…do not have a kitchen and currently cannot live in our apartment again until our landlord inspects it for safety. Which should be after this weekend! And renter’s insurance covers imbeciles like me, apparently. But, um…yes. Your father caught the kitchen on fire.”

I don’t know whether to laugh or cry. Maybe a little of both? Mr. Rodriguez is on the other side of the kitchen, trying not to glance over at me too often, but it’s very clear that he wants to know what’s happening and I can’t wait to tell him that my wonderful, smart, and yet exquisitely idiotic father caught our apartment on fire.

“And…now for the meat of the problem. Do you have somewhere you can stay for the weekend?” Dad asks hesitantly. “I just got off the phone with the hotels in the area, and because of the college game this weekend, they’re all full up. The closest one is about forty-five minutes away.”

“That far?” I blanch.

“Yeah. I—I guess I’ll do it, but it’ll be a pain. Do you have any friends you can stay with?”

Quinn is away with their parents this weekend touring Duke, who early-accepted them, and Annie lives in a two-bedroom row house that can barely fit her family. I can’t ask her. But just as I begin to shake my head—I pause.

Mr. Rodriguez cocks his head as I glance at him, an eyebrow raised.

“I think I know someone,” I reply, and hope I’m not wrong. “For the both of us.”





I TRY NOT TO BE NOSY—I truly don’t want to be—but they have been talking in the kitchen for the last half hour and I am growing very, very impatient. Another agonizing minute goes by and I hear them laugh. About what? I don’t care, I tell myself, picking up one of the books I had gotten down for her. She’ll come back in at any moment and enlighten me, I’m sure of it.

But when another minute passes, I creep toward the library door. I am not eavesdropping, I tell myself. I am simply wondering if— Suddenly, there are footsteps.

I try to move back, but the door swings open a moment later. Directly into my face. I curse and double over, holding my nose. Rosie gasps, “Sorry! I didn’t see you there!”

Mortifying, mortifying, this is all so very mortifying. Before I can sink myself any lower, I quickly turn around, holding my nose, to walk away. She reaches out and takes me by the arm. She stops me.

“You’re bleeding,” she says.

I look down at my hand that held my nose. It’s full of blood. “You broke my nose!”

She bristles. “I didn’t know you were at the door!”

“It’s my house!”

“It is not.”

“Well…I’m living here.”

Her mouth purses into a thin line. “Then you should’ve just come into the kitchen instead of loitering like a creeper.”

“I was not loitering.”

“Then you were just standing by the door?”

I pull myself up to my full height, which is a good head taller than she is, but she has her hands on her hips as if I’m the short one. Which is not endearing. Not at all. And no, I am not afraid of her. Not even a little.

…Perhaps a little.

“I can stand wherever I please,” I finally reply nobly. “What did your father want?”

She takes me by the arm. “C’mon, let’s stop the bleeding before you get any on the books,” she says, and guides me into the kitchen, where I run my face underneath the faucet in the sink, and hiss as the cold water hits the cut on my nose. She didn’t break it, apparently, just sliced it open.

I’m not sure which is worse.

Elias finds the first-aid kit and tells me to take a seat on a barstool. Rosie comes into the kitchen, her arms folded over her chest, and watches as Elias applies ointment and a Band-Aid on it. “Will I have a scar?” I ask Elias courageously.

He snorts at my bravado, which deflates me quite a bit. “Not likely.”

“That’s sad. Chicks dig scars,” Rosie adds woefully.

Elias finishes placing the Band-Aid and sighs. “Dios mío, this is exhausting.”

“I agree,” I agree.

“Both of you,” he replies pointedly, and puts the first-aid kit back underneath the sink. “Please try to get along this weekend.”

I give him a strange look. “This weekend?”

Rosie becomes suspiciously fixated on a brown spot on the ceiling.

Elias informs, “Yes, this weekend. Rosie and her father’s apartment had a small fire, which is why he called, and since we have so many vacant rooms I figured we could offer them both a little hospitality.”

“All weekend,” I repeat. My brain is short-circuiting.

“Yes, all weekend. So please try not to kill each other. I need to go out for some groceries—how do you feel about spaghetti tonight, Rosie? Will your father be joining us?”

She hesitates. “I don’t think so—he’ll be here later tonight, though.”