America's Geekheart (Bro Code #2)(29)

“Your mom’s psychic is Madame Susan?”

She turns after demolishing the third level to pin me with those fascinating eyes again. “That’s what you picked up on?”

“No, I heard it all. That’s just the least uncomfortable part. I’m loogry. Sorry.”

“Loogry?”

“Yeah. I don’t get mad when I’m hungry. No hanger here. I get loopy.”

“Would you like to take a break to go eat?”

She’s adorable when she’s all logical. “Nah. I’ve been through worse.”

Her lips part again, her brow furrowing, and she’s shaking her head as she turns back to the game. “This is never going to work.”

“Why not? I like you. You tolerate me. That’s exactly the sort of chemistry all these people will eat up, wondering if we’re for real, because this whole show’s gonna go down with you ultimately releasing a statement that we’re better off as the accidental friends we became after I was a public ass, but that you prefer a quiet life trying to save the bees and giraffes and educate people on solar eclipses not actually being the work of witches. Your parents will go on Ellen and talk about how proud they are of you and your engineering work, tell the world I’m a good guy doing good things, plug Persephone again, and in two months, none of your coworkers will care anymore who your parents are.”

But I have a very strong suspicion I’ll care.

And that’s my burden. Not hers.

She’s quiet while she runs Kong up the fourth level, and I think she’s concentrating on the game, but I’m wrong.

Not unusual.

“I always wondered if I was adopted. My mom can’t balance her own checkbook. My dad came home once bragging he’d gotten a role as an engineer, but he was a train driver, not a math-and-science engineer.”

“Heh. Ultimate dad joke. That’s funny. Desert Heist, right? Fun movie.”

She slides an unamused grimace my way. “It was not a dad joke.”

“You sure?”

She pauses, and a light stain of uneven color dances over her cheeks. “Well…no. I guess not. But they still didn’t get it when I asked for science kits and Legos and memberships to the science center and birthday parties at planetariums. Mom would always ask if I didn’t want a pedicure party instead, and Dad would offer to build me an art hut off the pool house.”

I snag a stool and sit, scooting close to her. My childhood was the exact opposite—parents running their own environmental engineering firm, little sister with straight A’s, and then me, the goofball who had big dreams but not enough brains to pull them off—but I never questioned if I fit in.

Had to be hard growing up in Hollywood, in the limelight, and not fitting the mold. “Your mom said they hopped a red-eye as soon as they saw the video last night. They were worried about you.”

“I worry about them too,” she tells me. “Mom went a few years without getting a role, and I thought she was going to fall apart. She had one director tell her she needed a facelift. Another told her she needed to lose ten pounds. One flat-out told her she was too old to ever work again. And meanwhile, Dad’s actually declining roles left and right because old is distinguished on men but he wants to slow down. But I can’t tell her to say fuck it and walk away, because it’s what she loves. It’s who she is. I don’t understand why, but I guess it would be like someone telling me I was too old to care about clean energy or that I had too many gray hairs to talk about endangered species.”

“Limelight sucks sometimes.” I lean in and point at the screen, because Donkey Kong’s about to get a barrel to the head.

“I see it,” she mutters. “You know what’s really stupid?”

“Soy milk?”

She barks out a surprised laugh. “Are you for real?”

“I spent six years touring the world with four of my best friends. Gets boring. Somebody had to entertain us all, and that someone was me.”

“And now I understand why you’re famous for your pictures instead of for your interviews.”

“I’m going into personal coaching whenever I finally retire from modeling. More people should be surfing this wavelength.”

She laughs again, a short, I can’t believe I’m laughing at this guy laugh, and my day is made.

“So. Tell me what’s stupid in your world.”

She bites her lip while she leans into the game, battling past the last obstacle before going on to level five.

She has nice lips.

Full.

They’re easy to overlook without makeup or gloss, but they’re perfect.

It’s like she’s hiding in plain sight.

“When I was sixteen, I asked my parents if they’d help me set up a blog about pollution. I wanted to be famous for saving the world.”

“That’s not stupid.”

“Maybe. Maybe not. But I thought I’d use their public platform to launch one of my own, when it turns out, I’m not built for life in the spotlight.”

I don’t answer, because I don’t agree. If there’s one thing I’ve learned in fifteen years in public life, it’s that you never know what you’re capable of until you try, and there’s no shame in using the path you’ve got to get there.