“Who’s the extra seat for?” Nadiya nods at the empty place setting at the breakfast table while she loads her plate up with toast.
“Oi! Leave some for the rest of us.” Bede makes a snatch for the top slice and she smacks his fingers with a teaspoon.
“Keep your grubby little mitts to yourself,” she says. “I know where those hands have been.”
“Re-taping the microphone leads in panel room two, that’s where they’ve been,” he snaps back, waggling his fingers at her. She rolls her eyes and throws the piece of toast at him.
“Actually,” Dad says, far too loudly, “I thought that Lexi might want a place for Aidan…”
The whole table – my friends, most of their parents and even bloody Rodney, sitting at the far end – all look at me and make “Oooooooooooh!” noises.
“Another convention couple,” says Mike. “Just like Marie and Paul.”
I stare at Marie, who is smiling at Paul beside her. “You two met at a convention?”
“Yep. And went to another one for our honeymoon.”
“Some people don’t need the Seychelles,” says Paul, peering down the table at Dad.
Dad nods. “And some people want their honeymoon to be peaceful,” he mutters, and prods his breakfast. “Passes the sausage test.”
“But enough about your honeymoon…” Bede chimes in.
This time, I throw the toast at him.
And this is what Aidan walks in on: all of us, in full convention-breakfast flow.
“Don’t ask,” I say, pulling back his chair for him.
I’m running through the to-do list as we finish breakfast. “Sam, can you go and check we’ve got all the leads from the karaoke machine back in the ops room? It needs to be returned to the rental place this afternoon and they’ll charge us from the deposit if we lose any of the cables.”
Captain America nods at me as she finishes her tea. “Sure thing.”
“And when you’ve done that—”
“I know, I know. Put the mic stand back in reading room two. I have done this before.”
“You have?”
“Oh, my sides.” She puts her hands on her waist. “Oh, wait. Not even slightly splitting.” And then she blows me a kiss and wanders off towards the ops room – right as the Brother walks in and makes a beeline for our table. But it’s not Dad he goes for – oh no. It’s Aidan.
“Mr Swift.”
Aidan swivels in his seat to look up at him, his mouth still full of scrambled egg. “Mmmpffhhy?”
“Damien – we spoke briefly while you were in Detroit?”
“Oh, wow. Yes.” He gulps down the egg. “Good to see you again.”
The Brother has come to mark his territory.
(And Detroit? Really? The Brother kept that little gem to himself, didn’t he?)
I’ll be civil. “Hello again, Damien.”
“Hey there, Laura.”
“Lexi.”
“Lexi?”
“Lexi. Not Laura. My name’s Lexi.”
“I don’t…?”
“You always call me Laura, but it’s Lexi.”
“Oh. Oh, sure.”
There’s a pause, and I raise an eyebrow at Aidan, mouthing “Detroit?” at him. He looks like he wants the ground to swallow him whole.
“Well, brother…” Damien’s lost interest in me, and now it’s back to Aidan. “We – the committee, that is – have been looking at the guests we’d like to invite to come on over to New Orleans next year. The official invites haven’t gone out yet, but seeing as we’re all friends here I don’t think it would be too much of a problem for me to say that we’d love to bring you over as one of our guests of honour!” He rocks back on his heels slightly, waiting for…what? A round of applause?
There’s a stony silence, punctuated by a tapping sound from the other end of the table as Dad aggressively stirs his coffee. The tumbleweed should be blowing through any second; either that or Dad and Damien are both going to throw down and wrestle for the title of Winning Convention Organizer. And now Dad’s got his cane…
It’s Aidan who speaks first though, smiling at the Brother as though they’re the greatest friends in the world.
“I don’t know what to say. That’s…so generous. And such an honour. But – and I’d have to check the dates to be absolutely sure – doesn’t New Orleans clash with Max’s first convention of the year?”
The Brother opens his mouth and closes it like a goldfish that’s fallen out of its bowl, and my heart is suddenly so full I’m almost sure it’s going to burst.
Aidan, as politely as possible, continues: “Because, obviously, when it comes to conventions, Max has first call on my time after all the support he’s shown me this year. It’s the least I can do.” Under the table, the tips of Aidan’s fingers brush my palm as he takes my hand.
Dad takes a sip of his coffee and looks – on the surface at least – completely unmoved. But I know what this will mean to him; above everything else, my dad cares about loyalty. It’s why he has the same people around him that he’s had for years. It’s who he is. And Aidan has just bumped himself right to the top of his friends’ list without even really trying.
More than that, it shows that Aidan understands. He understands all of it.
All of me.
And that, I guess, makes me an idiot for what I did after the wedding. For once, I’m okay with having been an idiot. I’m actually happy about it.
Well. As happy as I can be, given the circumstances.
Making a swift recovery, the Brother’s smile is back. “Of course, of course. You have to do what you have to do. But if those dates don’t work for you, brother, how about Miami? Or Dallas, in July? We were hoping you’d be able to let us in on some of the plans for your next book, give us a bit of a scoop, seeing as Max here got the jump on us and found you first…”
“You know I can’t do that. I’m not telling anyone anything! But don’t worry – they’re all safe in here.” Aidan taps the side of his head, then pats his phone on the table. “And here.”
“You’re a tease, brother, but I see how it is.”
That conjures up a terrible, terrible mental image. Thanks for that.
The Brother shakes Aidan’s hand and sighs. “You’ll still get that email. Let us know, won’t you? It’d be a pleasure to have you any time.”
“You’re too kind. Thank you.”
Aidan lets go of Damien’s hand, but Damien holds on just that tiny bit longer…and then releases him, disappearing across the breakfast room in search of another victim. Or breakfast, maybe.
I raise my eyebrows at Aidan. “Everything Max has done?”
There’s another chorus of “Oooooooh!”s – and Dad splutters into his coffee.
“Aidan, I wanted to talk to you about something.” Time to get all our cards on the table, clear the air…pick a metaphor: one way or another, I have to know.
“Sure.” Oblivious, he slides a hand around my waist and pulls me closer, so I’m walking with him and it’s the easiest thing in the world, like we were always meant to be in step. We’re crossing the lobby; I’m about to open up registration for the day – and double-check that Sam’s handiwork yesterday has been put right – and he’s going to look in on the Writing the Strange panel. So it seems like a perfect time to talk. Of course it does. If it was a big deal, I wouldn’t be asking this now, would I? It’s just…casual. Yes.
“When you were away last month…”
“I still feel bad about that.”
“You do?” Mild panic, nothing I can’t handle. What does he feel bad about? What? What happened? Why should he feel bad?
“Not being around when your dad was taken to hospital. In case you needed…” He pauses. “Someone.”
“That? That’s not what I meant at all!” I realize how this sounds. Because of course my father being rushed to hospital in an ambulance doesn’t matter. Nope. I try again. “I mean, thank you, obviously. But I really meant that I wanted to talk about the whole…photos thing.”
“The photos thing?” He looks at me blankly, but it’s too late to pull back now so I might as well charge straight on.
“Umm. So, funny story. Stupid, probably. But the editor of SixGuns came up to me at the time and asked if we were friends and, if we were, did I know anything about you and…whatsherface. From the film. At breakfast. Because there were photos of you together in Naples and there was breakfast and it was in a hotel? But I didn’t, and I don’t, and I just wondered whether it was anything I need to know about so…umm. That. All that.”
Smooth, Lexi.
“You mean Carly?”
Oh.
Carly. Not “Carly Senekal, who’s been cast as Ali”. Just Carly.
Well. That’s just dandy.
“She was down the coast shooting while I was there for the literary festival, and she wanted to meet up. She had some questions about Ali’s backstory – stuff she wanted to bring into her performance or something. The only time we were both free was crazy early one day though, so she came up to the hotel.”
“Mmmmph.”
“Lexi?” He studies me carefully. “Photos?”
“It’s nothing. I mean, I didn’t even see them, so…” If I thought I could fit my entire fist in my mouth, I would do that now. I couldn’t possibly look like more of an idiot than I already do.
“Hold up…you mean those shitty pictures where they’d cropped everyone else out? The ones that made it look like it was the two of…” He tails off. He understands.
“I…everyone else?”
“Hang on.” Shaking his head, he slips his phone out of his pocket and scrolls rapidly through screen after screen of pictures. “Maybe this’ll show you what I mean.” He hands me the phone, flicking away a low battery warning as he passes it across.
I recognize the setting immediately from one of his Instagram photos: the stone balcony, the blue sky. Definitely Italy. But this one includes a starched white cloth across a table…and gathered around it, at least a dozen smiling faces. It wasn’t just Aidan and Carly having breakfast; it was half the crew.
“That’s Tony, the unit director,” he says, pointing out a guy in sunglasses at the end of the table. “And Rhodri, the location scout. That’s Tash and Anna, and Marina…and that” – he taps a handsome suntanned face at the very edge of the shot – “is Rufus, Carly’s husband.”
I blink at him. Luckily, he has no idea what’s going on inside my head. Good. Instead, he’s tucking his phone away – still talking.
“You’d love it out there. It’s amazing. Naples, Ischia…you should go sometime.” He pauses. “Maybe we could go sometime. You know, if you wanted?”
“Husband.”
In my head, I’m casual and I smile and I dismiss the whole thing with a mere wave of my hand…but what actually comes out of my mouth is: “Husband.”
I mean, forget the fact that he just asked if I wanted to go to Italy with him, because there are too many things in my head and not enough space for all of them.
OH FOR GOD’S SAKE, LEXI. GET A GRIP.
“Husband,” Aidan repeats. “They’re pretty private, and she keeps it quiet – it’s bad for her image or something. I don’t know. But I can see how it might have sounded if you heard about it from SixGuns, of all places…”
“Sorry.” I feel small and stupid, like a kid who doesn’t want to share the toys at nursery.
I have to share Haydn. I know that.
But it’s Aidan who lays his hands on either side of my face and gently – so gently – tilts my face up towards his; looks into my eyes like they’re all he wants to see and everything else is just dust.
“Aidan Green? Dude! Is that you?”
Both Aidan and Haydn are snatched away from me by the stranger standing in the middle of the lobby, grinning and looking right at us.
“Nick?” Aidan’s hands slip from my face.
“Ade! I thought it was!”
And now the stranger with a buzz cut and skinny jeans with too much stuffed in the pockets is striding towards Aidan, who is frozen to the spot.
Nick.
Nick?
Nick…
Nick, Aidan’s friend.
Nick and…
Suddenly she’s there and she’s as annoyingly pretty as I expected she’d be.
She looks just like he described her in the book. Long, glossy hair. A perfect smile, eyelashes as long as my arm – and to add insult to injury, she’s exactly the same height as he is.
Ali.
“Oh. Ali. Ali…hi.” Aidan is blinking like a deer caught in oncoming headlights. Headlights attached to a tank. “What are you doing here?”
“Thought we’d come and check out the…convention.” Nick leaves the slightest gap before the last word and sniffs after it.
I do not like Nick.
“Right, okay. I didn’t think you came to conventions?”
I’m about to step forward, to say hello – to do anything – when Ali opens her irritatingly perfect-shaped mouth and blows me out of the water.
“Not exactly. But I was in the bookshop down the road and I saw a big poster in the window for this…” She holds up a very familiar book and my heart sinks. “And it just happened to have your photo at the bottom.” She flips it open with a smirk. “Haydn Swift, hmmm? Oh, don’t worry. Your secret’s safe with me.”
Is she…is she flirting with him? Despite the fact her other arm is looped through Nick’s?
Christ, no wonder Ali ends up badly in the book. I always liked Lizzie better anyway.
“Hi, I’m Lexi.”
Clipboard up, smile on and Effie Trinket the shit out of it. This is your Hunger Games, Angelo.
They both look at me, and then through me. I am invisible. I am nothing.
Well, you know what? Clipboard or not, bollocks to that.
“Are you here to pick up your convention memberships? Day memberships over to the left, full memberships to the right. Banquet and ball tickets should be in your membership packs…”
“We’ve already got ours, thanks. Just here for the day,” says Nick, pulling a lanyard from his pocket and waving it at me.
“Fantastic.” My voice is too shiny. Too sparkly, like glass on a pavement. “If you could wear those at all times that would be really helpful. Otherwise security might accidentally throw you out – and we don’t want that.”
All three of them are now looking at me like I’ve turned into a horse.
No, not a horse. An ass.
An actual, giant, talking ass.
So much for not having to share Aidan…
“I’ve got to run, okay?” I say to him. I have to scrunch my fingernails into my palms to stop myself from touching him, from laying some claim on him. “I’ll catch up with you later.”
I’m gone before he can answer, but as I walk away I hear Ali asking: “Who was that?”
“Sorry – that was Lexi. She—”
Nick cuts him off. “Nah, nah, never mind her – tell us what’s been going on with you! What’s up with this book?”
And then Bede runs up to tell me one of the inflatable ghosts in the ballroom has exploded, and I’ve never been so happy to see him in my life.
I spend my day scuttling between the ballroom and the ops room. I can’t face checking in on any of the panel rooms, or the readings. I don’t even walk the halls in case I run into them. Am I hiding? No. I’m not hiding. I’m working. Not hiding; working. There’s a world of difference, even if my work happens to be keeping me in a closed room away from all the people. But I’m definitely not hiding. Instead, I busy myself with filling balloons from the helium cylinder. What was Aidan about to say? Was he going to tell them I’m a friend? A member of the convention staff? Nobody?
Sorry – that was Lexi. She’s nobody.
No. He didn’t say that.
Ali though.
Ali. The girl he wrote into a book.
I’m not sure how I’d feel if I were her (other than, you know, amazing because, well, those eyelashes). About being written into a book, I mean, because it’s not like it’s the real her, is it? It can’t be; could never be. All fictional Ali can ever be is Aidan’s impression of her.
Which was obviously pretty good.
I am not helping myself.
Ali. Ali is here. The real Ali; walking around my convention.
The girl he wrote a book for. My book.
The balloon I’ve been filling goes BANG, jerking me back to the ballroom and out of thoughts about people I don’t even know. I overfilled it. I sigh, and peel the remains off the nozzle and reach for another one – just as Sam comes crashing through the door with a bag of ribbons.
“So this is where you’re hiding!” She hurls the bag onto a table. It scoots straight over the top and lands on the floor; she looks at it for a moment, then shrugs. “It’s fine there. I thought I hadn’t seen you in ages.”
“I’ve got a headache,” I lie. “Figured being away from the crowd would be a good thing. I don’t want to feel shitty tonight.”
“Mmmm. And this ‘headache’” – she makes finger quotes around the word – “wouldn’t have anything to do with those friends of Aidan’s turning up, would it?”
“How do you know about that?” I open the nozzle on the cylinder and the new balloon fills up with gas.
“He’s looking for you.” She takes the balloon from me and ties it, looping a ribbon and weight around it and letting it go. It rises, then drops, hovering a metre off the floor.
“He’s with his friends.”
“You’re his friend. And if you ask me – which of course you will, because I’m me and I have many, many wise things to say as always – he’s not that fussed about the pair of them. So leave me to do the balloons and stop moping.”
“You sound like my mother.”
“Your mother,” she says, pointing a finger at me, “is my guru.”
“You have no idea how disconcerting it is to hear a girl dressed as a superhero say that.”
“Disconcerting…or amazing?” Sam pulls herself into a full-on power pose; chin raised, hands on hips.
“The first one. Definitely.”
She’s right. This is stupid. It’s more than stupid; it’s embarrassing.
“Here.” I pass her the packet of balloons. “They all need doing.”
She snaps into a salute. “Yes, ma’am. Now get out there!”
“What’s that accent even meant to be? Texan? Because it wasn’t.”
“I have no idea. It just felt like the right thing to do.” She clamps a balloon over the nozzle and fills it – then lets it go. It flies around our heads with a prrrrrrrrrrrp noise, and she snorts. “You know I’m going to keep doing this till you go, right?”
By the time I make it to the door, she’s done it another three times.
The first person I see outside the ballroom is Aidan, walking straight towards me.
Alone.
I can feel my heart expanding a little more in my chest with every step he takes; by the time he actually gets to me, my heart will be too big for my ribs and will either explode or break out and go flying around the ceiling making a prrrrrrrrrrrp sound just like Sam’s balloons.
“Hey,” I say, and all I want to do is throw my arms around him.
But something’s off. Something’s not right.
“Lexi. I need to talk to you a minute.”
“What’s the matter?”
There’s some tiny little sensor built into everyone that automatically responds to a particular tone of voice, a particular look in the eye, with “What’s the matter?”
“My phone.”
“You cannot be serious.” He’s joking. He has to be, after last time. It’s his attempt at a particularly unfunny in-joke, right?
“Lexi, I’m completely serious. It’s gone.”
“Gone?”
“It’s either been stolen or…” He stops; frowns.
“Or what?”
“Or Nadiya’s lost it.”
I don’t understand. “Why would Nadiya have your phone?”
“You really want to have this conversation in public, Lexi?” Aidan gestures to the groups wandering past us. He’s right. This isn’t a conversation I want people to eavesdrop on, not if something’s been stolen.
“Okay. Right. We’d better carry this on in the ops room.”
“Lexi?”
“Yep.”
“You should know – if anything from that phone gets leaked, I’m in real trouble.”
Uh-oh.
“Trouble…how?”
“I’ve got emails on there about the film. Script drafts. Set photos. It’s not just notes for the next book – although if those get out I’ll be screwed anyway. But I’ve signed a non-disclosure agreement with the studio, so if any of the film stuff ends up online, I could be sued. For a lot of money.”
Yeah, that sounds like trouble to me.
I rest my hand on the ops room door and stop. I don’t look at him, because if I do that, it’ll be too hard.
“Aidan, before we go in there, I need to know how serious this is. Is this Aidan-from-the-roof who’s lost his phone again, or is this an author with an issue?”
“Does it matter?”
“Aidan, please. If there’s a problem, I need to deal with it. If it’s just you, and you’re freaking out because you’ve forgotten your phone in your room or something, that’s different.” I pause. This is not going the way I expected: his expression is getting colder by the second. “It’s not like this would be the first time you managed to lose your phone, would it?”
He lets out an angry laugh. “Fine. Well, if it’s so important for you to fit me into a box on one of your little grids, I’m an author and I’m coming to you with a work problem. I have not left my phone anywhere – other than with Nadiya.”
“Fine, then! That’s all I needed to know.” My reply is probably more prickly than it needed to be, and I push the door open.
Nadiya is in tears. I look from her to Dad to Rodney, then back to Aidan and the hotel’s security guy.
“It was there. On top of my bag, under the registration desk.”
“Okay, so tell me what happened.”
Nadiya sobs again, her shoulders heaving up and down – and I can’t bear it. This is my friend.
“Nadiya. Nadiya, it’s okay. Nobody’s blaming you.”
“Actually I am,” Aidan mutters sulkily.
I put an arm around her shoulders. “That kind of attitude isn’t helping.”
“Neither’s Nadiya.”
“Excuse me,” I snap, rounding on him – if he’s seriously accusing my friend of losing a phone which should never have been her responsibility, I don’t have to be nice. “Don’t you dare speak to our convention staff like that.”
Even Nadiya stops sniffing.
“Perhaps you can help by telling us why, precisely, you thought it was appropriate to leave your phone with a member of staff?” I add. “Especially if it has so much sensitive material on it – surely that’s your responsibility?”
Aidan rubs his face with the heel of his hand. “I left my charger at home. I was asking Nadiya if she knew where I could get one near the hotel and she said I could borrow hers. Seeing as there’s a plug right behind the table, it didn’t make a lot of sense to go all the way back upstairs. She said she’d keep an eye on it.”
“Oh, right. And because she offered to help you, this is her fault?” This is bad. It’s bad – but it’s not down to Nadiya.
Nadiya’s a mess. She keeps looking at Aidan and saying, “I’m so sorry. Aidan, I’m so sorry.”
“It’s just a phone,” I say…but one look at Aidan tells me this comment isn’t helpful. I’ve never seen him look so angry and he keeps rubbing his face and muttering “My agent’s going to tear me apart when I tell her” to himself. “I’ll have to scrap the whole of the next book and start again. I’ll blow my deadline by a mile – and that’s before I even have to deal with the studio guys. I swear, she’s going to kill me.”
My father has been listening to this quietly, one hand resting against his chin. “How would anyone know you had anything so important in your phone?”
“You mean anyone other than the everyone who happened to be in the breakfast room this morning and heard me talking? Gee, I don’t know.”
“Then maybe you should try keeping your mouth shut.” So much for me being Professional Lexi talking to a convention guest. This is pure, concentrated Crazy Lexi yelling at crazy-making Aidan; the Aidan who invaded the green room and made everything so complicated – and who, after all the effort I’ve made to let down my guard, has clearly reverted to Prick Mode. He gives me a look so dark that all the light in the room fades to nothing, and slams out of the ops office.
As the door bangs shut, Nadiya visibly flinches in her seat and squeaks uncomfortably. Behind her, Dad has his lips pressed so tightly together that they’re almost white. His whole face has assumed a general Sort this out, Lexi expression.
With another quick glance at Nadiya, I wrench the door open and chase Aidan down the corridor.
“Hey!”
I don’t know whether he can’t hear me or whether he’s ignoring me.
“Hey!”
He slows just a little, but he doesn’t stop and he doesn’t turn – it’s enough for me to catch up and duck in front of him though; I plant my feet and force him to look me in the eye. Everything about him is cold and unforgiving and suddenly he’s a stranger. But I’m not exactly in a warm and forgiving mood myself – not after that.
“What’s the matter with you? You were completely unfair back there…”
“Was I?” He cuts across me. “Was I really? What you said wasn’t exactly nice. Is this how you’d treat anyone else with the same problem?”
“Look… Sorry…but you aren’t anyone else though – are you? You’re you. And that’s the only reason Nadiya would have offered to look after your phone herself.”
“Do you have any idea how important the stuff on there is, Lexi? To me? To my career?”
“Important enough for you to be a dick about it, clearly. It’s just a shame it wasn’t important enough to keep it safe, isn’t it?” I draw myself up to my full height and stare straight at him. “You do not get to talk to my friends like that. I don’t care what’s lost. I don’t care what goes wrong. There is literally no circumstance in which it is okay for you to be that way to the people I care about when they’re doing you a favour. And don’t you dare tell me I’m not doing my job right.”
“Did I say that?” His voice has dropped to a hiss.
“You might as well have.”
“Oh, here we go.” He shakes his head angrily at me. “It always comes back to the clipboard, doesn’t it?”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“You know what I think, Lexi? I think you’re using this – the conventions, the work, all of it – as an excuse. You act like it’s a big deal, but the truth is you don’t know what you’d do without it. It’s easier to play the martyr than it is to actually go and figure out what you want. It’s easier and it’s a hell of a lot less frightening, so here you stay – a big fish in a little pond.”
I have never been so angry in my entire life. The inside of my skin burns and bubbles. “Right. Sure. This coming from the guy who hides behind a fake name,” I laugh.
He glares at me for a moment…and when he speaks, his voice is soft and it’s nearly the voice I know, the voice that has become so familiar. It’s almost that voice – but it isn’t.
“I might be hiding behind a fake name, but at least I picked it myself. I didn’t just use my father’s. And I’d rather be doing that than clinging onto a clipboard with a bunch of lists on it, hoping it’ll keep anything I can’t control away from me.
It hurts so much that I can barely breathe. Every muscle in my body wants to fold in on itself.
It hurts so much – and even as the words leave his lips, I know.
I know.
He’s right.
That’s why it hurts.
Because after all this, he does know me – and this is the time he picks to prove it.
He knows me – and right now I hate him, because with him I have nowhere to hide.
And I am falling in love with him and have been for months, and I am falling too hard and too fast to stop without it tearing me apart.
We stare at each other.
“I shouldn’t have been a dick to Nadiya,” he says, after the longest time.
“No. You shouldn’t.”
“Tell her I’m sorry?”
“Tell her yourself.”
He pauses. “What did you mean a minute ago – about Nadiya helping because of me being me?”
He doesn’t get it and I don’t know if I can risk any more hurt by explaining, after everything that’s been said. I look away, then back at him – because how can I not?
Something flickers deep in his eyes.
This is not how it was supposed to go. But I guess that’s life; things change and you have to figure out how to move things around to make it work. You can’t control people like you can a programme; can’t plot their emotions on a grid.
And just a moment too late, I realize he’s worth the risk.
Aidan Green, here, now, in this hallway and with the clouds gathering over our heads, is worth risking something – risking everything – for.
“Nadiya wanted to help you out. She wasn’t doing it for you. She was doing it for me – because everybody here knows how I feel about you.”
Say something, Aidan.
Don’t just stand there.
Say something.
Say anything.
We are locked into this moment, the two of us. Trapped in the middle of the electrical storm.
And it feels like it goes on for ever.
And it burns.
I have aged a thousand years before he says something, and I can barely hear what he’s saying over the ripping sound in my head. He has told me the worst truth about myself – something I’ve known for a long time, inside… And that is the exact moment – of all the moments in the whole, glorious span of eternity – that I decide to tell him how I feel?
Say something, Aidan.
Say anything.
“Nick and Ali asked me to go out and get dinner with them tonight. Maybe I should go.”
Over his shoulder, I can see one of the posters for the masked ball.
Tonight.
I guess that means he won’t be there.
I will not let my heart break. I can’t. Not when all I have to stick it back together with is Blu-Tack, and the world where I want to run for comfort is the one he created.
“Maybe you should.”
“Okay then.”
Rip. Rip. Rip.
I walk back to the ops room alone.
There, I find Dad crouched down in front of Nadiya, her hands in his. “Nadiya, nobody is blaming you. Not for a second – I want you to understand that.”
She looks at him and nods.
He carries on. “These things happen. We can be as careful as we like, but sometimes these things happen.”
Nadiya nods again. “I was only trying to—”
“I know. We all know. Now, I want you to think back over the afternoon. Is there any time – any time at all – somebody could have got near your bag?”
“No. I was there the whole time, and I didn’t…” She shakes her head…and then she stiffens. “Wait. There was the guy who fell over.”
Dad glances over at me, and on autopilot I pick up my clipboard and a pen and start writing as she talks.
“About half an hour ago – about quarter to five. This guy bought a ticket for the banquet tomorrow – and he dropped his change. And while he was picking it up, this other man came up and sort of…I don’t know. Tripped over him? It was really weird.”
“He tripped over him?”
“Right next to my bag.” Her eyes widen and she knows, we all know, that’s when it happened.
Dad’s voice is low and calm and soft, and he’s still squeezing her hands. “Think very carefully,” he says. “Was he wearing a lanyard?”
Nadiya screws her eyes shut like she’s trying to picture him, trying to remember.
“Yes. Yes, he was. He’s a member.”
I reach for the membership list. “Then we should be able to find him.”
“I don’t suppose you remember who it was?” Dad tries, but Nadiya shakes her head.
“Just…a guy. I’m sorry, Max. I wish I’d never offered Aidan my charger.”
Dad doesn’t say anything; he just nods as a strange ringing sound fills the room. It starts quietly, then builds and builds. Everyone looks at everyone else.
“Lexi.” Rodney glances up and nods at me.
“What?”
“I think that’s your phone, pet.”
“My phone?”
And sure enough, it is. With one tiny, feeble bar of signal, someone has managed to get my phone to ring. I yank it out of my pocket.
“Hello?”
“Lexi! It’s Bede. Nobody’s answering the walkie.”
“I must have left it in the ballroom. We’re kind of in the middle of a crisis here…”
“I know. That’s why I’m calling. You and your dad better come through to the main hotel lobby. Pronto.” And he hangs up. I stare at my phone, and then at Dad.
“Dad? It’s Bede. He says he needs us.”
“Can’t it wait?”
“I don’t think it can…”
Waiting for us at the hotel’s main reception desk is a small group of people. Bede, the hotel’s security guard, the Brother and – looking half-ashamed and half-defiant – Andy from SixGuns. And sitting on the reception desk in front of them is a phone. I pick it up and turn it on, and the cover of Piecekeepers flashes up at me. It’s Aidan’s. I give Dad a nod, and turn to Bede.
“How did you do that?”
“It was all Damien actually.” He nods at the Brother and folds his arms as the Brother beams.
“Well, brother, I was just heading to the room party up on the fourth floor…”
I note Dad’s involuntary twitch at the mention of a room party, but he says nothing.
“And Andy here said he might have a scoop on the next Piecekeepers book – and would I be interested, seeing as I’d been talking to Haydn Swift about that very thing at breakfast?”
“He was eavesdropping?”
“So I told him I’d be interested, and he said he might be able to get hold of some information—”
Bede interrupts. “And then he came to find me. Me, you’ll note.”
The Brother shrugs wearily. “Brother, you were the first one I could find.”
Bede looks a little put out, but Dad? Dad looks furious.
“Andy. What were you thinking? Have you lost your mind? It’s unethical – never mind illegal – and most of all, it’s deeply, deeply disrespectful of what we’re trying to do at my conventions!”
“Dad!” Typical of him to put the emphasis on that.
“Oh, hush, Lexi.” He waves the end of his cane at me, then peers over my shoulder to where Rodney has just materialized. “Rodney, would you escort this gentleman to the ops room, please? I’m sure we can make him comfortable while we have a little chat in private.”
Rodney nods and clamps a hand the size of a boiled ham around Andy’s arm. “This way.”
The Brother turns as though he’s about to go, but I call after him. “Damien?”
“Lexi?”
“You got it right!” I clear my throat and pretend I didn’t say anything, hoping he’ll think he imagined it. Dignity and all that. “Thank you. It would have been such a mess, for Aidan…Haydn…and for Dad.”
At first, he narrows his eyes and tilts his head a little to one side as though he’s measuring me. I’m not quite sure what I should say – or whether I’m even supposed to say anything. And then he smiles and says, “The thing about conventions, little lady, is that we’re family. We fight and we try to outmanoeuvre each other and show off…but when it comes down to it, we’re all family. And family always sticks together when it counts. Tell your boyfriend I look forward to hosting him next year.”
And with that, he turns to shake Dad’s hand and admire his cane – and the two of them walk off practically arm in arm, with the Brother telling him that, funnily enough, this has given him an idea for a game to run over the course of New York.
Tell your boyfriend…
I can’t quite get the Brother’s words to stop echoing in my head. They bounce off my heart like a handful of spiked pinballs, punching holes in me every time they touch. I already regret everything that happened with Aidan in the corridor. I was angry because he was right, and I knew it. I love conventions, I love this world…but even I know I’ve been using it as an excuse not to let people in when perhaps I should; not to take the risk and see what else, who else, is out there. Throwing myself into schedules and planning and running around (running away?). Shrugging and saying that the people at college are fine, but they’re not my people… The truth, though – the truth I’ve been carrying inside and not wanting to see – is that I’ve been too scared to do anything else. I’ve never been brave enough to admit it because the rhythm of a convention, the routine of it, is like a comfort blanket I’ve grown up with and can’t let go. I mark time by the number of days to the next event, the number of emails I send, or crates of books and flyers I unpack.
Big fish, small pond.
Who do I want to be?
Who do I want?
I already know.
And he called me on it and I was already so angry with him that I didn’t stop and listen.
I couldn’t admit to someone else, anyone else, what I’ve known deep down for a while.
That I need to stop hiding behind my clipboard and my father’s name…and make my own.
Because I can be who and whatever I want to be.
It’s just that a little bit of me was kind of hoping he’d be around to see who that turned out to be…
There’s a decidedly unsubtle cough beside me. “Sorry to interrupt this…moment but, Lexi, the city needs us.”
“Samira. Can it not wait, like, five minutes?”
“Nope,” says Sam. “The guy in charge of the ghost tour won’t let one of the cosplayers on his bus.”
“Why not?”
“Because he’s dressed like the alien from Alien, and he’s just made one of the authors’ wives cry in the lobby. The cosplayer. Not the ghost-tour guy. Obviously.”
I give myself a moment to process this information.
Nope.
Going to need several moments.
Everything else can come later.
Everything.
Maybe I should go.
It hurts too much, and I don’t have time.
Sam is waiting, hands on hips.
“Come, my trusty sidekick!”
“No.” I fall into step beside her.
“My faithful—”
“Just no.”