Geekerella (Starfield #1)(78)
Maybe I can get a second chance.
“I don’t think you got me wrong at all,” I tell the princess.
“Try me.”
“Honestly? I’m…” I take a deep breath, looking down at my feet. “I’m no one.”
She tilts her head toward me as the eyebrows behind her golden mask scrunch together.
“I always thought I was no one too,” she replies. “But we’re wrong. We’re anyone we want to be. Anyone we can be.”
“Yeah? Do you think I could be a good Carmindor?”
The couple snogging in the other corner giggle, pulling each other to their feet. They stumble inside to dance out Michael Jackson’s “Thriller,” and silence settles between the princess and me. We’re the only two people on the balcony. It’s so quiet we could be the only two people left in the world.
“My dad said that anyone could be Carmindor,” she says. “That anyone can be Amara. That we have bits and pieces of them inside us. We just have to shine them off and let them glow.”
“He sounds like a great guy.”
“The best. He…he died when I was little.”
“I’m sorry, I didn’t…”
She ignores my apology. “This was his cosplay, you know.” She fondly touches the starwings on her lapel. “And my mom’s. They used to come to ExcelsiCon dressed as Carmindor and Princess Amara every year. ExcelsiCon was Dad’s brainchild. He had all these big dreams for it, you know? He would’ve loved to have seen this ball. He used to talk about it after Mom died. I miss that the most, I think, how much he talked about this con and this ball—a masquerade of stars, he’d say. I didn’t think he meant literally.” She elbows me in the side.
A ghost of a smile begins to tug at the edge of my lips—the first real one I can remember in a long time—and she begins to mirror it, but then it falters.
She looks away. “I know I wasn’t the best cosplayer at that contest. Did I get second place because I’m the old con-director’s daughter?”
I chuckle to myself, shaking my head. She can’t even begin to understand the irony in all this.
She frowns. “What’s so funny?”
“Princess, I voted for you because when you walked out on that stage you made me believe it.”
“Believe what?”
“What your father said—that anyone can be Carmindor and Amara. You just gotta find that piece of them inside you and let it glow.”
A flush rises in her cheeks. She looks down into her lap, where her fingers are weaving the ends of her hair into a million braids. Why does she seem so familiar? Not from the blog. Not from the office. From somewhere else. I’ve heard these stories before, played out at a slower pace, like a waltz unwinding.
I begin to open my mouth to say something when she jumps up from the bench and spins around to me, hand outstretched. “Do you want to dance? With me, I mean. Would you want to dance with me?”
Do I?
“Only if you lead, Princess,” I reply. I take her hand and she pulls me to my feet.
Her smile broadens. “I was hoping you’d say that.”
I LEAD HIM—CARMINDOR, DARIEN FREEMAN, WHOEVER—INTO the ballroom, into the crowd, straight to the epicenter. The DJ spins a new tune and the crowd disperses until only couples remain.
His fingers curl tighter around mine. The song is soft and slow, and with a shiver I realize it’s the Starfield theme song. Darien seems to notice at the same time, and he grins. “What good timing.”
“Sometimes the universe delivers,” I say, and then realize it’s true, though only in other universes.
“Maybe we’re secretly in a movie,” he mock-whispers.
“Maybe the universe just likes playing tricks.”
People around us turn to watch. Their eyes fall on us like laser pointers, as hot and focused as the moment I stepped onto that contest stage. My skin tingles, as though every move I make is the wrong one.
He lowers a hand to my hip and we begin to sway slowly. My cheeks get hot as the music soars. It’s full strings, the woodwinds, and the swell of an orchestra rising, rising, whisking you across the galaxy. It’s the sound of Dad dancing Mom through the living room, around and around, as she laughed and stumbled along. It’s the sound of Dad waltzing me through the living room after Mom’s turn is over, telling me about a grand ball, this dream of his, where for a moment—a breath of time—you’re the person you always dreamed you could be.
Like the Federation Prince, unafraid of anything. Like a daughter, living up to her father’s memory. Like a self-rescuing princess, dancing with…
My eyes flicker back up to his, and I swallow hard. “Do you even know how to dance?”
“Do I know?” He laces his fingers through mine, pulling me closer. He smells like cinnamon rolls and coat starch. “I am Carmindor.”
As the orchestra crescendos into the second verse we step out in unison, catching the note in one fluid movement; the ballroom becomes a whirl. We spin across the dance floor, around swaying couples, our feet in sync in this strange sort of cadence, as if I know every step he’s about to take—or he knows mine. Flickers of light twinkle around us, cutting through the fog that swirls in our wake. It feels like the entire universe orbits us in an impossible moment.