“I thought you’d hate me,” he says, standing up. “I didn’t write that last text message—it’s a long story but I didn’t write it. But I didn’t own up to it either. I was scared. I thought if I told you who I was you’d hate me.”
“Oh you big dork!” I wrap my arms around him in a hug. He puts his arms around me too, and buries his face in my hair. “Stop crying, you’re gonna make me cry.”
“I’m not crying,” he strangles out, clearly crying. “Just to clear the air, I won’t always look this good. So if you’re just charmed by my killer abs…”
I press my hand against his stomach. “We both know they’re airbrushed.”
“How dare you. I won’t look as good is what I’m saying.”
“Well, it’s a good thing I didn’t fall for your charming looks.”
He hesitates. “So you can forgive me? For lying to you? For—”
I press a finger to his lips. It’s a good question. One I don’t know the answer to, but I remember our waltz, and his coming to my defense, and I think…“I think I could forgive you if…”
“If?”
“If you call me ah’blena again.”
He takes my hand and steps closer, so close my bones are jittery. He smells like the Magic Pumpkin and fresh deodorant and cinnamon, and it’s a scent I want burned into my memory. I want it on my clothes. I want his gaze, the way he looks at me—like I’m the last star in the night sky and the first one at dusk—branded on my heart. He’s tall, but not so tall that I’m looking up his nose into his cerebral cortex. And he’s unsure and he’s courageous and conflicted and so very…Darien.
The real one.
“Ah’…,” he begins, enunciating every syllable, raising his hand to my chin, “blen…,” tilts my face up, slowly drawing toward me, like two supernovas about to collide, “…a.”
And somehow, in this impossible universe, his lips find mine.
“Got it,” James says somewhere behind me. “And…uploaded!”
“Uploaded?” Chloe echoes, her voice bordering on a shriek. “No—no take it down! Take it down right now!”
“Excuse me, miss?” A huge burly guy in a suit—Darien’s bodyguard, I guess—claps a giant hand on her shoulder. “I’m going to need you to calm down.” When he sees me looking, he shoots me a subtle thumbs-up.
Darien slowly pulls away from me, smiling. We can’t stop smiling, can’t look away enough to care. The entire world could be falling to the invasion of the Nox and we wouldn’t be the wiser. “I’ve wanted to do that ever since you called me ah’blen.”
“I’m glad you know what it means,” I reply, tongue-in-cheek, remembering Hello, America. “But what if I was bald? You didn’t even know what I looked like.”
“Shared it,” Cal confirms, looking at her own phone.
Sage peers over her shoulder and nods. “Nice. Twitter, Tumblr—want to hashtag it?”
“Done.”
“Stop it! This isn’t funny!” Chloe cries. “You are the worst! I can’t believe you’re ruining this for me! You all are!”
Darien chuckles. “You’re behind Rebelgunner. That’s worse.”
I scrunch my nose. “Is it, really?”
“Oh yeah. You’re the enemy.”
“I’ll just keep you on your toes.”
He mock-gasps. “I wouldn’t want to jeopardize the integrity of a critic!”
I grin against his mouth. “Then you better kiss me again. I want to make sure I get that part right for my next post.”
“Now that I can do, Princess.” And he kisses me again. It isn’t the kind of kiss to end a universe of possibilities. It’s the exact opposite.
It’s the kind of kiss that creates them.
EIGHT MONTHS LATER
I STARE OUT THE TOWN CAR window in amazement.
“They’re monsters,” I mutter to myself, looking at all the fans. I imagined myself getting out onto the red carpet with the greatest of ease, but there’s no way that’s happening with this crowd—let alone in this dress. I couldn’t even wiggle out of the Magic Pumpkin at prom, and now I’m supposed to just casually slip myself out of the back of a black SUV? Ha.
Sage and Cal gaze out their windows too, their hands laced together. I don’t think they’ve stopped holding hands since that day at the country club. And I don’t think they’re going to stop anytime soon. They’re even going to the same city for college. I mean, New York is a huge place and there are tons of colleges there, but they’ll still be in the same city. Sage even designed their wardrobe for the premiere tonight: a sleek pantsuit—with a subtle print in the shape of starwings—for herself, and a slinky dark-purple dress that swirls in and out of itself like the Black Nebula for Cal.
“I’ve never seen so many people—uh, dog!” Sage scowls, shoving the brown Dachshund off her pantsuit. “This is premium quality! Next time you jump on me I’ll skin you and wear you as a hat!”
Frank the Tank swishes his tail and gives a yip. I pick him up and stroke him under the chin. “Shhhh, Auntie Sage didn’t mean that.”
“Oh like hell I didn’t!”
“You’d clash with her wardrobe,” I whisper into the Frankenator’s ear. “You’ll never be a hat.”
He barks again, tongue lolling happily out of the side of his mouth, and Sage scowl-smiles. Under her thorny exterior, she’s actually grown attached to the Frank.
After the con, Catherine was still…well, she was still Catherine. She never apologized for her words, but I never expected her to. I just began treating her with the exact courtesy she showed me. Which was none.
So on the night of my eighteenth birthday last September, I packed my bags, got into the Magic Pumpkin idling in the driveway (surely drawing the ire of all the neighbors), and left. I didn’t even write a note. For the rest of my senior year I lived with Sage and her mom. At night, I missed my house. I missed the way it creaked and groaned. I missed the leaks. But I learned that when I closed my eyes, I was still home. I still saw my parents waltzing in the living room. I still smelled Dad’s burnt roast in the oven. I could still remember following him around as I read my fanfics. It was all still there, tucked tightly away inside me. The house might have belonged to my parents, but Mom and Dad weren’t the house. They were in me, and wherever I went I carried them along.
The car slowly moves up in the cue line. There are so many people out there, waving signs and shouting Darien’s name. Some say I HEART DARIEN, others I WANT TO WABBA-WABBA WITH YOU. It reminds me of the crowd I first saw on Hello, America.
I lift Franco so he can see all the crazy people too.
“So is your lover boy gonna meet you on the carpet?” Sage asks.
I shrug. “I think so.”
“You think so?”