Geekerella (Starfield #1)(79)

An impossible moment in an impossible universe.

What would it be like to dance with my Carmindor? The one I’ve bared my soul to? Would it be anything like this?

“Thank you,” I whisper, looking into Darien’s masked face.

“For what?” He leans closer.

“For tonight. For—for everything.”

“I thought you said you were self-rescuing,” he jokes, grinning.

“Even self-rescuing princesses sometimes feel like no one.”

We’re so close I can feel his breath on my lips, and my heart is tugging, telling me to kiss him even though I don’t know him. Even though my heart, battered and bandaged and taped together, is still rattling from the text a few hours before. But there’s something familiar in the cadence of his words, the way he phrases sentences, the way he articulates thoughts, like a voice I’ve heard before.

Closer, closer—

Then, as always happens in the impossible universe, the moment disappears. Someone grabs me from behind and spins me around. Suddenly I’m face-to-face with Chloe.

And she is not happy.





IT’S THE BEAUTY VLOGGER FROM BEFORE. She grabs the arm of Princess Amara—jeez, what’s up with me not knowing anyone’s name? Ever—and jerks her away.

“You!” the vlogger girl sneers.

“Chloe,” Princess Amara whispers.

The vlogger girl—Chloe—looks her up and down with disgust. “You did steal it,” she hisses. “I knew it. I knew you took my dress!”

A wave of murmurs ripples across the crowd. The music carries on but this Chloe is impressively loud, and the hairs on the back of my neck start to rise.

Princess Amara wrenches her arm away. “I didn’t steal anything, Chloe.”

“Of course you did! And now you’re dancing with him!” She jabs a finger at me.

I hold up my hands. “Whoa, now—”

“Stay out of this!” Chloe snaps at me. I step back. Okay. She glares at Princess Amara, her pretty made-up face warping with fury. “You got everything, you know that? You had everything. And just for once—for once!—I wanted something too.”

“Chloe, I don’t know what you’re talking about—”

“Don’t you?” she advances toward Amara, who steps back defensively.

I look around for a security guard—where’s Lonny when you need him? “Can we get some security over here?” I say behind me, but that only serves to enrage the girl even more.

She glares at me. “Don’t bother. Once you find out who she really is, you’ll run for the hills.”

“Stop it, Chloe,” Amara replies. “I’ll leave.”

“Oh no! Stay all you want! I just think you need to tell him the truth, yeah? How you’re an orphaned, friendless little worm whose father was a loser geek who liked weird space crap more than his family!”

Amara’s eyes widen and she freezes. Her mouth falls open. “Wha—what?”

The crowd begins to thicken, murmur.

“Oh come on,” the girl says with a laugh. “Your dad was weird and you know it. He was the cream of the crop in weird! He treated you like you were so special, just because you were bizarre like him. Like you were his only daughter. But did we hold that against you? No. And what do you do? You steal my dress. I worked hard for that!”

Amara snaps. “Liar!”

“You stole it! I’m sorry if you messed up your life, but don’t mess up everyone else’s. And now you think you can get with Darien Freeman?” She snorts. “Dream on, Elle. You’re no one.”

Elle?

I stand in the crowd, growing cold.

Her name is Elle?

The text message, Amara’s puffy eyes, the costume—oh man. She can’t be my Elle. She can’t.

“And,” Chloe adds, advancing on Elle, who, like a flower in winter, curls up, shrinking, “you never will be anyone—”

“Stop it.”

Chloe turns a wide-eyed gaze to me, not believing I’d take her side. Elle’s side. A part of me can’t believe it either, but not for the same reasons.

I remember the nights talking with Elle—my Elle, the Elle in my head, the one who apparently doesn’t exist. Wanting to text her. Waiting for her to text me. The first time she called me ah’blen. The nights we stayed up late, and how little we really knew about each other, and how much I wanted to know about her.

Me and her—that girl. That Elle.

Us.

How could I ever mistake Elle for someone like Brian? Think they were the same person? I was blind and stupid and she had been here all along.

“Don’t you want to know who she really is?” Chloe asks. She’s horrible, just like I imagined Elle’s stepsisters. She described them perfectly. “She’s just some weird little geek.”

“I know who she is,” I reply. Elle glances over to me. I can see her tears. I can’t take back that text message, but I can give her what she gave me over these last few weeks. I was such a doofus. “She’s kind, and she’s smart, and she’s stubborn and very, very passionate. But not in a bad way. In a good way. In a way I aspire to be. She grew up in a universe without anyone to appreciate her—and what gives you that right? What gives you the right to treat her like she’s no one?”