CHAPTER 13

FINN

I arrived at Comic-Con earlier than the less die-hard fans and used my pass to get in the back entrance. I wasn’t sleeping anyway, so I figured it wouldn’t hurt to get here early. I’d woken up at three again after another dream about Maggie beneath me. I was starting to think it was time to see a shrink. I couldn’t keep doing this to myself. Maybe it wouldn’t hurt to go out with one of the women Scott tried to set me up with. Hell, I might even let my mom play matchmaker. I was that desperate. Something had to change, and soon.

I made a pass around the area where all the booths were setting up. It was the calm before the storm. As I finished the lap, one of the headlights fell off my costume and rolled across the floor. Fucking Scott. The shop scrambled to make a new costume when I told them it was no longer going to be a team situation. They attached some car parts to a stretchy suit that was tighter than necessary. On one hand, it was better than having no costume. On the other, I was going to kill Scott.

Pieces had been falling off the suit all morning, which meant I would be spending a lot more time than I wanted in the bathroom, reattaching key parts. This thing was held together with glue and prayers. I popped open a compartment hidden in the radiator on my chest and pulled out the glue the shop had given me. I glued the headlight back on, wondering what would happen if this suit were porous and I ended up gluing this shit to my skin forever. Again, Scott was a dead man.

I made another couple of laps around the show floor of the Javits Center to kill time before the door opened. That was my favorite part of any convention—the instant switch from quiet to loud stampede when the crowd came in. It was like the building came alive like Frankenstein’s monster, jolted by electricity. I loved it.

I stationed myself near a set of doors to watch the mayhem start. The doors opened and it was like rush hour on the subway times one million. There were more costumes here than on public transportation, but only by a small margin. I liked to watch people and figure out their stories. For instance, the Jack Sparrow who just raced in was a happily married investment banker with three children. He built model boats with his oldest son and drilled his wife twice a week.

Egon the Ghostbuster was a middle-aged man who had just quit his job to find himself after his longtime girlfriend had left him. He was traveling and painting to fill his time. He liked western movies and eating cold pizza for breakfast. He was thinking about moving to Japan to teach English.

The sexy quinjet behind him had a safe job during the week, but she tore up the town on the weekends. She was always up for adventure. I could imagine her lover pulling her long, blond hair as he bent her over their table after a day of skydiving. I could imagine the way her perfect lips parted when she moaned his name. Shit, my dick was getting hard just thinking about it. I needed to move on to the next subject of my game, but I couldn’t stop staring at her. The way she moved was hypnotic. I couldn’t look away.

She walked in the direction of where I stood. She paid no attention to the crowd around her. She had a purpose to wherever she was headed. Her eyes never moved from the area beyond the throng of people. Watching her gave me the same feeling as hearing my favorite band live. I watched the way her hair bounced as she moved. I watched the way her long legs moved and her hips swayed to some unheard music. I watched her face, set with determination. It hit me like a punch to my radiator.

It was Maggie.

Maggie was here.

She was older, but I would know her face anywhere. I wasn’t capable of forgetting it.

I pushed off the wall and walked straight toward her. I didn’t usually let my dick do the thinking because he was an idiot, but I couldn’t deny him this time. He was running this show. She didn’t even notice me until I was right in front of her. I thought there would be some wind blowing or sappy music, but it was a lot of pushing and loud talking around us. I couldn’t have cared less that we were in a crowd of strangers. Maggie was here. And I had to touch her.

Her eyes widened with what I hoped was recognition when I got to her. I had too many things to say that would all cost me my man card. Instead, I put my hands on either side of her face and pulled it toward me. Our mouths connected and it was even better than I remembered. She pushed her tongue into my mouth and let out a moan that had my dick punching through the codpiece of a muffler on my costume. The metal parts of both our costumes made gruesome scraping noises as I pulled her tighter against me.

I moved one hand to her hair. It felt better than it had in my dreams. I wrapped the length of it around my hand, forgetting to be gentle. Not being able to touch every inch of her was torture. We were each inside a giant chastity belt. I was never wearing a metal costume again.

Her lips were the softest things I’d ever felt. I wanted to know what other soft parts of her felt like. I couldn’t hear the crowd around us anymore. I could only feel her face against one hand and her hair in the other. I never wanted this to end.

Please don’t let me wake up. Please don’t let me wake up. Please don’t let this be a dream.

She reached up to my face and gently pushed me away. It only then occurred to me that I might be about to get a face full of pepper spray or thrown into the back of a police cruiser. Walking up to a woman who probably didn’t remember me and grinding on her while I tongue-fucked her face wasn’t near the top of the list of my smartest ideas.

“Finn?” I couldn’t read her expression, but the fact she recognized me made me hopeful that marrying her and not having to register as a sex offender were both options still on the table.

“Yes, it’s me. How have you been, Maggie? You look great.” I wanted to tell her she looked like a fuckable angel, but I toned it down. My grandmother would rise up from the grave and kill me if I ever said that to a woman.

“Finn?” She touched my face. “I can’t believe you’re here. I never thought I’d see you again. What are you doing in New York?”

I could’ve asked her the same thing. I had no idea where she lived, though. “I live here. You?”

“I live here, too.” She smiled and took my hand. “I can’t believe this is real.”

Adult me wasn’t about to be as stupid as teenage me. “Can I have your phone number? Can I get it this exact second?” I pulled out my phone and opened my contacts list. “I’m so sorry I never called you after Comic-Con. I went to the Nickelodeon booth after you left and I dropped my damn phone in a vat of slime. I had to get a new phone and number. I didn’t have any way to reach you. You must have thought I was such a jerk. I’m so sorry.”

She blew out a huff. “I knew something must have happened. I knew you wouldn’t ignore me intentionally.” She gave me her number. I read it back to her to make sure I tapped it in right. I screen-capped it and e-mailed it to myself. I was not going to lose track of this woman ever again.

Maggie pulled out her phone. “Can I get yours?”

Of course she could have my number. I would give her anything she wanted. We could start with a phone number, I guess. I gave her my number, and she plugged it into her phone.

“So, are you here alone?” I asked the question I should’ve asked before I kissed her. Not that I wanted to take it back. Her boyfriend could get in line. I saw her first.

She pulled me out of the way of one of the maintenance workers pushing a large trash can. “Yes, my friend ruined her costume in some kind of sex circus accident, so she bailed on me.” She gestured toward her outfit. “I couldn’t let a good costume go to waste.”

My dick knocked on the muffler again. It was a good costume. It fit her perfectly. She was covered in jet parts, but it was easy to see she had a body that wouldn’t quit. I couldn’t help but think about how well my car would fit inside her plane. It didn’t answer the boyfriend/husband question, though. It was time to be direct.

“Do you have a boyfriend? Or a husband? Or anyone who’s going to take a hit out on me for kissing you?”

She stepped close enough for our costumes to touch. “No, I’m available. Very available.”

I had never had this kind of reaction to a woman before. I was about to be that creepy guy rubbing one out in the handicap stall at a Comic-Con. I tried picturing my grandmother to calm myself down, but I wanted Maggie in a caveman way that was beyond control.

She grabbed my hand again, stroking my index finger. “Are you . . . available?”

I fought back images of throwing her down on the table of the cape manufacturer near us. “I’m available for anything you want.” Please want to move in with me and never wear clothes again.

I was glad she didn’t ask if I were here with anyone because I had no intention of letting Scott anywhere near Maggie. He was going to be pissed that I ditched him when he didn’t want to come anyway, but I would deal with him Monday.

“Tell me everything about yourself. Don’t leave anything out. What have you been up to since the last decade? How tall are you? What’s your favorite color? How do you like your steak? Do you have your dental records on you?” Maggie stopped to take a breath.

She hadn’t changed at all. She was still the right amount of crazy. “I’m six foot. Red. Medium rare. And I think my dentist is here somewhere, so he can fill you in on my dental history. I’m boring. I want to hear about you, Maggie. Do you want to go sit somewhere and catch up?”

“Yes.” I loved her damn smile. “But hold my hand. I don’t want to lose you in the crowd.”

“Don’t worry. You’re not going to lose me.” I took her hand with her bright red fingernails.

We found a table with a couple of chairs near the food vendors. I pushed my chair closer to her so I could keep holding her hand. That might make me a pussy in Scott’s book, but I didn’t care. “Tell me what you’ve been up to.”

“Pretty standard stuff. I went to college. I have a job I love. I have a best friend named Cici. I spend a lot of time immersed in the subcultures of truck driving and lumberjacks. I want to be in Gryffindor, but I think the sorting hat would put me in Hufflepuff. My favorite color is also red, and I have one filling in my number thirteen tooth.” She squeezed my hand. “I can’t believe you’re here. Are you sure you’re real? This isn’t a dream?”

I leaned over and kissed her again. “If this is a dream, then all we have to do is stay awake, right? Then the dream can’t end.” I brushed her hair behind her ear, and she made the tiniest noise. I wanted to know what noises she would make if I touched other parts of her.

“Kind of like having a cheat code in a video game? I like it. Let’s never sleep again.” She looked around at the food court. “We should make a toast. What kind of soda do you want?”

“Oh, I’ve got that covered.” I popped open the compartment inside my radiator and pulled out two soda cans. “Cheers?”

She laughed as she clinked cans with me. “I can’t believe you still do that. I love it.”

She reached over to touch my fingers. She inspected each one carefully, starting with the pinky and moving toward my index finger. She stopped when she got to my right thumb. “What happened here?” She stroked the small scar.

“Oh, that? Failed attempt at lion taming.”

A hint of a smile raised the corner of her mouth. “You really suck at lion taming. Have you thought about a less dangerous profession, like a shark dentist?”

I covered her hand with my other one. “I tried that, but the hours were terrible and the patients were always grumpy.”

She used her free hand to touch a tiny scar on my left hand. “Is this a shark-related injury?”

“No, that’s actually related to the other scar. I cut my hands while climbing a tree when I was eight. Lion taming makes a much manlier story.”

“Lion taming is way better. My doctor still thinks I got the burn on my foot from fire walking in Fiji, but I really just dropped a candle while I was attempting to give up electricity for a month. I had just wrapped up a Little House on the Prairie marathon.”

“Wow, a month? That’s really impressive. I couldn’t do it.” Maggie was so passionate about everything she talked about. Her animated voice and gestures could keep me entertained for days.

“Technically, I only made it twenty minutes. I definitely should’ve charged my laptop before I started. That was an amateur mistake. I also planned to live-tweet the whole thing, but I’m sure you see the inherent flaw in that.”

“Yes, no electricity makes social media challenging.” I took another sip of my soda.

“So, you have a scar on each hand from various manly activities. Do you have any other defects? I have to make note of this, like with a rental car. I don’t want you trying to hold me responsible for previous damage later.”

My mind wandered for a second to all the damage I would love her to do. I snapped back to reality when I realized she was still waiting for an answer. “Nothing exciting, except my monkey heart.”

Her eyes widened in what I could tell was fake surprise. “You have a monkey heart? Can I see?”

“Well, they put it on the inside. The surgeon said it was more effective that way.”

She nodded. “That makes sense.”

I looked back at her and looked away again. I still hated talking about this. “I just told the kids in school that it was a monkey heart to freak them out. It’s actually a human heart. I did ask for a monkey heart, but the doctors said the other would be more compatible with my body. The old ticker wasn’t working too well since birth. I had congenital heart disease. Surgery when I was nine months was a temporary fix. It had to be swapped out when I was six. I only have to go in for annual checkups now, so it’s not much hassle. I do have a pretty big scar from it, but it makes me four percent closer to being Frankenstein’s monster, so that’s a fair trade.”

I prepared myself for the usual look of pity. Everyone had it when I told them I had a heart transplant. I told fewer and fewer people as I got older. It was part of me, but other people made it define me. They didn’t mean to, but they treated me like I was fragile and broken. And I fucking hated it.

Maggie laced her fingers through mine. “Four percent isn’t very impressive. Talk to me when you hit double digits. Or maybe you should try to become a Transformer. That would be pretty cool.” There was no trace of pity in her eyes. Maggie was magic.

A man dressed as Deadshot stumbled into our table and broke the spell.

Maggie laughed. “How do you do that?”

“Do what?”

She rubbed the pad of her thumb along my hand. “Make everyone else disappear. I forgot we weren’t alone.”

I hadn’t forgotten we were in public. The presence of other people was the only thing keeping me from mauling her like an animal. I needed to calm down. This wasn’t like me at all. I blamed it on repressed teenage hormones. My fantasy girl was here in the flesh, and she deserved better than me dragging her back to my place so I could blow my load in ten seconds.

I stood up, still holding her hand. “Why don’t we go walk around? I wanted to hit up the Midtown Comics booth, and I know you have a list of things to see.”

She stood up with me, her costume rattling as she did. “I had a list committed to memory, but I’m drawing a blank as to what was on it right now.”

I tossed both of our empty sodas into the recycle bin as we walked away. “Then I guess we’ll just have to walk around until you remember.”

***

We walked half the floor and ate most of my snacks. I only gave partial attention to all the vendors. I kept checking to make sure Maggie hadn’t evaporated into thin air.

We were venturing too close to where I knew Scott would be stationed, and I didn’t want to let him meet Maggie. For starters, he would most certainly tell her I’d been having vivid sex dreams about her. Very vivid. If that didn’t send her running for the hills, his aggressive pickup style certainly would. Scott wasn’t used to being turned down, but he also frequented bars where he knew his brusque nature would be welcomed. Maggie was gorgeous and he wouldn’t be able to keep his stupid mouth shut. Then I would have to kill him. And that could ruin our day.

I wrapped my arm around her waist. “Hey, do you want to get out of here? I have an idea.”

She smiled. “I’m game. What did you have in mind?”

I wanted to keep her away from Scott because he was a sexist beast, but I also wanted to keep her away from my bed, or any place with soft surfaces because I was fighting with this beast inside of me. I didn’t trust anyone with a penis. Even me. Especially me.

“I have my car down the street. We could go catch up on some of the dates we’ve missed over the years. We have a lot to make up for.” I wasn’t ready to let her leave yet, and I was serious about staying awake to make sure this wasn’t a dream.

She bounced up and down on the balls of her feet, making her costume clang. “I think that’s a great idea! There are so many things we should’ve done already.” She was quiet for a second. “Do you think we can zip line in the costumes? No, you’re right, we’d better not.”

I took her hand and walked her toward the doors. “Your brain is like an amusement park.”

“I don’t know if that was a compliment, but I’ll take it.” She kissed my hand.

“I love roller coasters. That was definitely a compliment.”

We walked outside of the Javits Center. She looked left and right down the street. “Which way did you park?”

I let go of her hand to pull my phone out of one of the compartments on my arm. “Oh, I left it with a valet at the DoubleTree. I just need to text him so he can bring it over. I’ve got a contact list full of valets all over the city. Smartest thing I’ve ever done. You tip them extra and you never have to worry about finding a space, or remembering where you parked.”

I looked up from my phone to see her staring at me with her mouth open.

“What?” I wiped the corner of my mouth, making sure I didn’t have any food stuck there.

“What is wrong with you?” She sounded angry.

“I . . . don’t . . . know? Could you be more specific?” I hadn’t even taken her on a first date yet and I’d managed to piss her off already. Sounded about right.

She closed her mouth and stared at me for a full thirty seconds. I waited for the bomb to drop.

She opened her mouth and then closed it again. She took another beat before she spoke. “No, I mean, you’re perfect. What is wrong with you? What are you hiding? Do you have orgies under the stars and impregnate groups of women? Are you a closet sexist or racist? Do you rob graves? What is it? Just tell me now.” Her hands were on her hips, and she looked furiously stunning. I almost wanted to make her madder to see if she got any sexier.

“I can safely say I’m none of those things, and I must have missed the invitation for the nighttime orgies. I’m not hiding anything. I’m an open book. Ask me whatever you want.” I didn’t have any skeletons in my closet, but I was still nervous about what she might ask. I gave her a verbal blank check, and she was about to cash it.

She twisted her mouth while she thought. “Which animal would you say is most likely to want you dead?”

I tried not to show my relief. “That’s easy. Flying squirrel.” I loved keeping up with the way her mind worked.

Her mouth formed a perfect O again. “That’s the correct answer. I don’t understand this witchcraft.”

That seemed like the perfect excuse to kiss her again, so I did. It was slow and gentle, but my dick couldn’t tell the difference. All it knew was we were kissing Maggie. She tasted like the jelly beans we had twenty minutes before. She ate all the purple ones. I held her face close to mine. “It’s not witchcraft, but I think it might just be some sort of magic.”

The valet pulled up as I started to cringe from saying the cheesiest thing I’d ever said. Hopefully Maggie was too hypnotized by my kissing skills to hear it. Hopefully.

I opened the door for her and tipped the driver before getting behind the wheel. She ran her hand along the dashboard. “Beautiful car. What is it?”

I cleared my throat to get rid of the lump. “It’s a 1961 Shelby Cobra. It was my grandfather’s car. He had it since my dad was a child. He said he won it in a poker game, but we never knew if he was kidding or not. I used to sit in it when I was a kid and pretend it was a spaceship. We had a lot of memories in this thing. H—he passed away last month. My grandfather. He left it to me.”

I hadn’t talked about it since it happened. Grandpa Henry and I were close. He was a huge part of my life. I went to his house at least once a week for as long as I could remember. I even told him about Maggie after I came back from that Comic-Con trip. He would have loved her.

She put her hand on my leg. “I’m so sorry. He must have been a great man. I’m glad you have something that helps you hold onto those memories.” She looked out the window while I pulled into traffic. “One of my grandfathers passed away a couple of years ago. I miss him.”

I picked up her hand and brought it to my lips. “They’re probably both looking down on us right now and laughing at how their descendants became such nut jobs.”

She laughed. “Probably.”