America's Geekheart (Bro Code #2)(2)

“Creep!”

“Jerk!”

“You go home and get your own damn apron!”

My pulse amps into sprint territory.

“Hey, hey.” I hold my hands up in surrender while I jog backwards, because seriously, what the fuck? “Y’all know I love you. What’s—”

A shoe hurtles at my face. Another yoga brick clips my shoulder.

“Get him, ladies,” the Braveheart lady yells.

Oh, shit.

They want blood.

I don’t have a fucking clue what I did, but these ladies want blood. My blood.

My run morphs into a sprint, but for once, my brain’s spinning faster than my legs.

The mother and her stroller and her middle finger. The grandmother and her cane. And now a yoga class.

I’m outnumbered.

Probably outsmarted and outmaneuvered too.

Another yoga brick.

And I’m still too far from safety.

“Shut up and let your underwear do the talking!” A clump of—oh, man, that’s disgusting. Flying horse poop. Awesome.

I pump my legs harder. Knees higher. Like I’m gonna beat Usain Bolt. Running. Sprinting. Away from a mob of angry women.

This is new.

As is having a mob of angry women gaining on me.

The ladies usually love me. Or if not, at least they tolerate me with patient smiles.

Maybe a run wasn’t the best cure for jetlag.

But how was I supposed to know today’s International Beck Ryder Is The Enemy Day?

“I’ll show you where you belong,” one of the women screeches.

I don’t have a clue where she thinks I belong, or why she thinks I belong there, but I know one thing.

I am totally fucked.





Two





Sarah Dempsey, aka a geek with no intention of having Beck Ryder’s babies

The last time I wore sunglasses, a ball cap pulled low over my eyes, and a sweatshirt to go to the store—in June—I was in LA, seventeen, and all I wanted was a pack of Pokémon cards.

Today, I’m low on toilet paper, which is literally the only thing in the world that would make me leave my house. It’s not until I’m in the checkout lane with my four-pack of Charmin clutched to my chest that it occurs to me that people aren’t staring because Beck Ryder tweeted me last night to shut up and go make some babies, but not with me, of course, but because there’s no legitimate reason for me to be acting like a celebrity in hiding since no one here knows I’m @must_love_bees on Twitter, and honestly, @must_love_bees isn’t a celebrity by any measure anyway.

Damn underwear model.

He’s screwing with my head. And my life.

My regular cashier gives me a once-over. “You goin’ to a party?” she asks, her gaze drifting between my sunglasses, hat, and the toilet paper on the belt.

“Social experiment,” I reply. “Are you more or less likely to talk to people when they come into the store in sunglasses?”

“More,” she says the same time the guy at the other register says, “Less. Gotta respect the privacy.”

“People only dress like that when they want attention,” the grandma behind me informs us all. She taps the cover of one of the tabloids. “Like this guy claiming to be Genghis Khan reincarnated with a penis shaped like a dragon. He wears sunglasses everywhere.”

So long as no one asks to see my peen-dragon, I think I’ll be okay.

I escape all of them and hustle my toilet paper back to my car, which I now feel foolish for driving, because the temperature is in the high seventies, the sunshine is broken up by drifting fluffy white clouds, and it’s only a ten-minute walk from my house to the store.

When I reach my neighborhood three minutes later, none of my neighbors are snooping in my windows.

Not even Ellie Ryder next door, who’s undoubtedly related to the underwear ape, though we’ve never talked about family, because reasons, but who’s also out of town this week.

Or so she said when her boyfriend showed up with his kid last weekend. Something about a pirate festival in the mountains. I didn’t ask any more.

I don’t get close to people.

Most people, I should specify. There are exceptions. But not my neighbors.

My cat, Andromeda—Meda for short—is sleeping in the front window of my little Craftsman bungalow. And there aren’t any unusual cars parked on the street under the oaks and hemlocks.

It’s not that I’m paranoid.

It’s—okay. Fine.

I’m paranoid.

You would be too if you had my parents and my childhood.

I should probably call them.

I pull into the garage and hit the button to drop the door behind me before I get out of the car with my toilet paper. I drop my haul in the bathroom and bypass my little computer hidey-hole because ugh.

It will be weeks before my social media feeds quit blowing up over that stupid underwear model and his asinine suggestion that I’m nothing more than an ugly baby factory.

Might as well reinvent myself.

Again.

Especially if the neighbor is related to him. And if she remembers my Twitter handle.

She’s an environmental engineer.

I’m an environmental engineer.

She likes animals.

I like animals.