Bookish and the Beast (Once Upon a Con #3)(55)
“?Ay mijo!” he says, shaking his head. “You’re falling hard.”
I put my face in my hands. “Oh God, I am, aren’t I? What do I do?”
He puts a hand on my shoulder.
“I just want her to be happy,” I mutter, realizing it’s true the moment I say it. Because every time I close my eyes, I see the way she looks at that library full of stories, and I’ve never seen anyone look so hopeful and alive and…home, somewhere before.
There’s a warmth in my chest—it’s been there for a while now—that is soft and sure, and I realized last night, as I watched her walk into her apartment, what the feeling was.
Happiness.
The kind I’ve never felt before.
And that’s when I get the idea.
“Elias, do you have Natalia’s number? Can I have it?”
He gives me a peculiar look, but he doesn’t ask why.
I WILL NEVER TELL VANCE REIGNS THIS, but I wake up to him every morning.
Literally.
Because on my wall is a fanart poster of Ambrose Sond, shirtless and more than a little disheveled, one hand behind his head, the other snaking underneath the sheets that artfully cover up the bits of him that probably are also unclothed. It’s such a trash poster. I got it from ExcelsiCon last year on the down-low and smuggled it out of the convention so strangers wouldn’t know my shame.
And now I see the real-life version of him almost every. Single. Day.
Every morning, his sharp cerulean eyes remind me how much smut I’ve read online and how much smut I probably should not have read online. I have so much PWP bookmarked on my secret fanfic account that if anyone ever found it they would try to exorcise the demons that are most definitely in me.
And now I can’t even read any of them because instead of Sond? I see Vance. Instead of my sweet, wonderful Ambrose, all I hear is Vance’s soft, subtle English accent as he reads to me my mother’s favorite novel.
My phone goes off a moment later—a text. I reach over to my nightstand. It’s the group chat with Quinn and Annie.
QUINN (6:45 AM)
—RISE AND SHIIINNNNEEE~
—IT’S COFFEE TIME!
ANNIE (6:45 AM)
—ugh
ROSIE (6:46 AM)
—morning lovers!
—* LOSERS
—** I MEANT LOSERS
ANNIE (6:46 AM)
—also lovers.
—I will take no alternative.
QUINN (6:47 AM)
—That’s McLovin to you.
Sunlight creeps in through the lace curtains, and I groan and roll onto my back. And Sond stares at me from my wall, smirking at me like he knows my secret.
“Starflame.” I groan, shoving my pillow into my face so I don’t have to look at that smug, beautiful face. “I am so, so boned.”
* * *
—
QUINN AND ANNIE ARE WAITING at the edge of the cul-de-sac when I swerve around to pick them up. They hop in, greeting me with, “Hey, lover.”
“Hi, McLovin,” I sigh in reply. We have ten minutes to get to school and said school is, oh, fifteen minutes away, so we say our morning pleasantries on the road.
Annie begins to rage about the Homecoming game coming up as I pick up her coffee from the middle console and hand it to her. “Thank you—I mean can you believe my brother? He’s so stupid. Like, he knows he’s no match for the quarterback of this Friday’s Homecoming game, and yet he just bet fifty bucks on himself! That he’ll win!”
Quinn nods regally. “I hear the quarterback for this week’s team is massive,” they say.
“He’s only a junior! He’s the youngest first-string quarterback in that school’s history. His name is Milo something-or-another. Ugh, if only Redfair High didn’t have that doping scandal last year, we could actually play a local rival team. Instead, we’re paired with some team from Asheville and we’re gonna get pulverized.” Annie sighs and sips her iced latte. “No, correction: my brother is going to get pulverized.”
I frown. “Aren’t we supposed to play easy teams so we can win Homecoming games?”
“You’d think,” Quinn replies with a shrug. “I can’t spare the brainpower to worry about that. Garrett is still in the lead for Homecoming Overlord, and I’ve run out of ideas…”
And if Garrett wins Homecoming, then it’ll just make my life even worse, because I am not going to the dance with him with or without the title. But if I don’t, everyone will think I’m some kind of stuck-up snob. Is it too much to ask to go back to the days of when I was absolutely invisible?
In all honesty, I wouldn’t mind going to the Homecoming dance if I had someone—besides Garrett—to go with. Vance flashes in my head, and I wonder for a moment what he would look like in the Federation’s perfect shade of blue—
“Red light!” Quinn cries, and I slam on the brakes as the light changes.
“Sorry,” I mutter.
Annie, in the passenger seat, slowly releases her death hold on the oh-shit handle. “Are you okay?”
“Yeah, I just have a lot on my mind.”
“Oh?” my friends ask.
The light turns green and I turn left onto the main drag that leads to the high school. “Well, Dad caught the apartment on fire and…I spent the weekend with Vance.” I try to make it sound nonchalant, because it’s not like anything happened. I just stayed in a house with a lot of rooms with my father and one of the most-hated guys on the internet. No biggie.