Geekerella

I close my eyes and take a deep breath. Holy overload, Batman, how can Darien do this twenty-four-seven?

I hold Franco a little tighter to my side. “Talk about star-crazy, huh, buddy?” I whisper to him. “C’mon, maybe I can get you a hotdog at the concessions stand—if there is one.”

Behind me Cal gasps, grabbing Sage by the arm. “Oh my god, that’s Jessica Stone!” She points down the red carpet to a beautiful dark-haired girl signing a fan’s Starfield poster. “God I love her—not as much as you, though.”

“Oh no, I’d be okay if you loved her more,” Sage replies. “Maybe we can share her. Hey, Elle, is that Darien with her?”

A knot forms in my throat. It is Darien. He came to my high school graduation a few weeks ago—briefly, in sunglasses—but seeing him across the red carpet feels like I haven’t seen him in years. He looks so different in his natural habitat, relaxed and magnetic, an arm around Jessica as he talks warmly to a news camera. Everyone around drinks him in, wanting more. And for a moment, I feel so, so small.

“We should go over,” Sage says, but I catch her before she can. She shoots me a strange look. “Why not?”

“I just—he’s busy. It’s fine. I’ll find him later.”

“But he’s right there now,” she insists, furrowing her eyebrows.

“If she doesn’t want to go, she doesn’t have to,” Cal says. “I mean, he does look busy.”

“Too busy for his own—”

I cut her off. “Ssh. We’re not, like, official. To the press.”

Sage glowers but quickly gets distracted. “Ooh is that Calvin What’s-His-Face?” She loops her arm through Cal’s and pulls her down the red carpet.

I swallow the knot in my throat and look down at Franco. “Well, at the very least, you’ll be my date tonight, right, Frankie?”

“Replacing me already, are you?” asks a velvety voice above the din of the crowd.

I glance up.

Darien, standing a few feet away, puts his hands in his pockets. His suit cuts him at all the right angles, sharp and acute. He’s not quite as bulky as last summer, his hair is a little longer for the new season of Seaside. He raises a single dark eyebrow. It’s infuriating how well he does that.

A blush burns the tips of my ears. “I mean, he is a better actor than some people.”

“Ouch.”

“And he matches me perfectly,” I add, fanning out my dress with my free hand. I told Sage to sew me a dress the exact color of Darien’s Carmindor jacket. Brass buttons line my corset, glitter sweeping up the bottom hem as though I ran through a puddle of gold. Franco has a matching blue vest that almost doesn’t fit around his belly.

The edges of Darien’s lips quirk up. “It’s the wrong color blue, you know.”

I glance up into his eyes. “I dunno, I hear the Carmindor in this new film wears it right enough.”

He smiles. It’s wide, unabashed, no secrets tucked into the edges. “You look beautiful.”

I return his smile. Why am I so nervous talking to him here? Like I’m balancing on a tightrope, afraid I’ll fall. “You look—you know how you look. I don’t have to inflate your bratty ego. You look terrible. That’s how you look. Like you didn’t go to sleep until 2 a.m.”

“Actually four-thirty, and you know your nose twitches when you lie, right?” He touches his own nose, approaching me slowly.

I scrunch my nose and look away. “It was around four-thirty for me too.”

His shoulders sag a little. “I’m sorry I texted so late last night.”

“It’s fine! Seriously. I know you were off saving the galaxy—” I wave my hand toward Jessica. Getting my drift, he gives me a level look. “I know things are going to get crazy for you for a while—”

“Exactly,” he interrupts, “which is why I wanted to ask you…”

A reporter calls his name. “Who’s that girl?” the reporter asks.

“Are you two a couple?”

“Where’s she from, Darien?”

“Is she the girl from last summer?”

Another chimes in, then another—or maybe it’s a paparazzo, they all look alike now. Even blogs are considered newspapers here. Everything is. Tweets and instas and tumbls and snapchats being fired off faster than warp speed. The sooner we axe whatever rumor is brewing, the better.

“We’re just fr—” I say when Darien steps closer, taking his hands out of his pockets. He reaches for my free hand and laces his fingers through mine. My words catch in my throat.

He turns his face down toward mine, pressing his lips against my ear. “Quick, when the Nox invaded District Eleven in episode thirty-four, what did Carmindor and Princess Amara do?”

My eyebrows furrow. “They…joined forces?”

He nods gravely. “Elle, would you join forces with me? Together we can defeat the Nox.”

I stare at him wordlessly. Cameras continue to flash. Franco woofs, his tail spinning like a windmill.

“Elle?”

Do I want to? Do I really want to? I try to imagine the opposite—a universe without Darien. A universe without his goodnight texts, and teasing words, and those secret smiles he reserves only for me—the ones that are crooked and caring—and suddenly I realize that I don’t like that universe at all. It wouldn’t be nearly as impossible.

And what good is this universe if it isn’t impossible?

“But what about—what about your promo stuff?” I grapple for words. “And marketing? And making alliances and playing the field and—”

He brings my hand up to his lips and kisses it. “I want you, ah’blena. I want to try this thing with you, whatever this is. I want you to be my copilot. And I want to ask you before the movie, in case you really hate it.”

Of course he would be afraid of that. Of course he’d be that big of a doofus. I press my forehead to his, the paparazzi snapping so many photos they blind me like stars. “If you screw up Carmindor,” I say between my smile, so it looks like we’re whispering sweet nothings instead of throwing shade, “then I will personally make your life a living hell on my blog.”

Beneath us, Franco sticks out his tongue, looking from me to Darien expectantly.

“Do you really mean that, ah’blena?”

“I promise-swear, ah’blen.”

He bends close, despite the crowds, despite the cameras, despite Franco’s nose-diving into his suit pocket where he’s probably keeping a snack, and kisses me. Around us, the flashes flare like the thrusters of the good ship Prospero, sending my heart rocketing into the farthest reaches of this impossible universe.