Bookish and the Beast

I close my eyes and listen as another rumble rattles the small pool house. “My mom loved thunderstorms,” I say. I don’t know why I say it. I don’t know why it matters.

After a moment, he replies, “So did my dad.”

A flash of light—and then another rolling, long rumble of thunder.

“You, too?” I ask, but really I say, You have a hole in your heart as well?

He nods. “My biological father. I didn’t know him very well, though. He died when I was pretty small, before I became the patron saint of disappointment.”

I tilt my head, looking at him—really looking, for the first time since I met him. It’s strange because I’ve memorized what he looks like from all of the promo posters and the movie trailers, but it doesn’t hit me until just then how…human he looks. It’s easy to forget that he isn’t even eighteen yet. He’s been in the spotlight since he was a kid. I watched him grow up in the newspapers and on television shows. His father—stepfather, I guess—is the CEO of some big Hollywood studio, and his mother is one of those gorgeous philanthropists you see heading charities in Las Vegas and LA. He didn’t make it big, though, until his role on The Swords of Veten Rule, and by then he was already being treated like the adult actors who work beside him, so I hardly thought of him as someone my age. Someone who needed to make some mistakes to figure out how to make fewer of them.

And that reminded me of a conversation I had with him that night at ExcelsiCon. “Sometimes I feel like I’m trapped,” he had said, picking around the onions in our hash browns. “I have these expectations on my shoulders, and I just keep screwing up and disappointing everyone.”

“Well, you haven’t disappointed me yet,” I had replied, propping my head on my hand as I leaned on the table.

He gave a sad sort of smile behind his mask. “It’ll just be a matter of time.”

Is that why you didn’t tell me? I want to ask. Because you thought that I would be disappointed? I know he didn’t mean to run off the road with Elle Wittimer, and I know he didn’t mean to break up her and Darien, and I begin to wonder, when are you able to learn and grow from a mistake—and when does it haunt you for the rest of your life?

As if he can sense what I’m thinking, he says quietly, almost too quiet to hear over the rain, “I didn’t want this. Any of this. I make so many mistakes, and I ruin so many things. I guess that’s why…back at ExcelsiCon, I didn’t want us to take off our masks. I didn’t want to ruin things because I think I—” But then he stops himself, and shakes his head. “It doesn’t matter.”

And, for a moment, the mask of Vance Reigns drops, and there’s just a boy sitting here beside me, orange hair and too-blue eyes, looking more tired than he should.

I want to reach out and comfort him, but I curl my fingers into fists in my lap and keep them there. He was about to admit to me that I was perfect, but I can’t say I feel the same about him. So what right do I have to reach out?

“You know…” I find myself saying. The rain is beginning to let up a little, a shaft of sunshine streaking through the sky beyond. “I like you when you aren’t being a spoiled, selfish jerk.”

He puts half of the blanket over my shoulder as I shiver again, and I quietly grab the edge, resigned to share the smelly, moldy blanket with him. “Maybe because you’re not being as stubborn and insufferable as you usually are.”

I roll the words over my teeth before I finally voice them. “We could…call a truce? I mean, I’ll be working here for at least another few weeks, and honestly, I’d rather not hate you. So…what do you say?”

“It’s not impossible,” he replies, and turns his cornflower gaze to me. There’s a glimmer of amusement there that makes my heart kick in my rib cage. It’s nothing, I tell myself.

It’s nothing at all.

I CAN’T LET ELIAS FIRE HER.

I realize it as the rain lets up and we abandon the pool shed into the muggy afternoon sun. She’s out the door first, stretching her arms wide as the sunlight hits her face. The rays catch in her brown hair, turning it to copper. There is a cowlick in her fringe that curls up at an odd angle, and I find myself fixated on it.

For someone so odd and infuriating, how did things change? And it would feel so awkward to tell her now—that oh, today was supposed to be your last day, pack up your things, you’re gone—after I spent the better half of the afternoon with her. It strikes me then—out of the blue, like a bolt of lightning—how much of an insufferable jerk that actually makes me.

And while that realization surprises me—the fact that I am a jerk doesn’t.

A knife twists in my chest.

I’m ashamed, and quickly I pry my eyes down to the wet grass. The humidity clings to me, and the embarrassment crawling up my cheeks just makes me more uncomfortable.

Why am I so embarrassed?

She squints at the sky. “That was such an unexpected way to spend the afternoon.”

“Bad unexpected or…?”

“Are you fishing for a compliment?”

My shoulders stiffen. “Of course not.”

The edges of her lips quirk up into a smile. “I’m not sure what kind of afternoon it was yet.”

But it wasn’t bad, at least, I think, and as I do it makes my shame run deeper. Because why do I think I can enjoy an afternoon with a girl who I’ve all but insulted for the last week? I open my mouth to ask her when the sliding glass door opens and Elias pokes his head out. “There you two are! Dios mío, I thought you’d killed each other—why are you wet?”

Rosie laughs. “We locked ourselves out.”

Elias tsks. “Both of you? That’s a surprise. Come on inside and get warm so you don’t catch a cold. And Rosie, I need to speak with—”

“No!” I interrupt quickly. She gives me a strange look. So does Elias. I add, quickly, racking my brain for some excuse to my outburst, “No, we…won’t catch a cold. Because Rosie found a blanket?”

That was terrible. I should feel ashamed.

But I hope Elias understands. He gives me a one-eyebrow-raised look, and then he smirks in that I told you so way. “Well, I’m glad you found a blanket. I have to get the groceries out of the car, so let yourselves inside, unless you want share that blanket a little longer,” he says, and leaves the sliding door open for us.

I am mortified.

Rosie, for her part, seems oblivious as she runs her hands through her wet hair. “I should probably get going. I told Dad I’d eat some chocolate murder pancakes with him tonight.”

“Sounds dangerous,” I say.

She nods solemnly. “Double the chocolate, double the murder. I’ll see you tomorrow, Vance?”

My skin prickles when she says my name, with a smile that is both secretive and brilliant. Get a hold of yourself, mate. You aren’t a schoolboy.

“Tomorrow,” I reply, but before she disappears into the house I add, “Hey, um…”

She pauses in the doorway, and glances back. “Yeah?”

I take a deep breath. Well, if I’m going to feel this way, I might as well do the things she wants. “Since we hit it off so well before, and clearly we don’t hate each other, what do you say about…going out with me?”

She turns to me slowly, and her eyebrows furrow in this strange, disappointing sort of way. Did I say something wrong?

“We could go out as different people. I can pretend to be a hotshot American again,” I add, adopting a midwestern accent—the same one I had the night we met—“and you can be—”

“I don’t think so.” Her voice is soft, a sigh. “I’m sorry, Vance.”

And she disappears into the house, leaving me alone with this weird shiver across my skin, even as I rub my arms to make it disappear.

I don’t understand.

I’ve always gotten everything that I ever wanted. All I’ve ever had to do was ask. Money. Cars. Dates. Even parts in studio movies.

I—I don’t understand.

No, I do, but I don’t want to admit it. And her no feels different from any breakup I instigated, or any friendship I ruined. I’ve always known what I wanted from someone—their fame, their lips, their companionship. But wanting anything of her feels wrong.

She said no.

And a strange part of me agrees.

I must have stood in the backyard for longer than any normal person, because Elias comes back outside to check on me, a kitchen towel over his shoulder. He leans against the side of the sliding glass door as Sansa squeezes her way in, wet fur and all.

Elias says, “Everything okay? She didn’t lobotomize you while I was away?”

“What? Oh, no.”

“Then did…something happen?” he asks. “I was going to fire her, you know.”

“I know. I just—changed my mind.”

“Oh?” He crosses his arms and leans against the doorway.

I take a deep breath. “Do you remember that night at the con in Atlanta? When I disappeared and didn’t return until morning?”

“Your mother about killed me, of course I remember.”

“You know the girl? The one I was with?”