Page 16 of My Cosplay Escape
“Me?” Adam’s eyes go wide, and somehow I get the sense I’ve missed something embarrassingly obvious. Maybe it’s just been an epically long day, and his chill façade has worn through. In any case, he shakes it off and lands on his feet before I can figure it out. “I want a piece of the industry,” he says. “I think I could make enough to pay my student loans. Look, Sabine. May I call you Sabine? You spent hours making this costume. You clearly love being in this character’s skin. Wouldn’t it be nice to get paid to do that?”
A Dark Morph Angel with feathered wings jostles me closer to Adam.
I put one of my gloved hands, complete with wired claws, on his chest to steady myself. He tries to steady me but overcompensates. And now I’ve got my other hand around his neck. It’s either that or fall. But ooh, maybe there is not much of a difference.
Chapter Four
Adam smells really nice. Nicer than any man should after working a convention all day. The air inside the convention center must be compressed with sweat and stale nacho cheese. I’m sure the smell is permanently stuck to me, but not to this guy. This guy… He’s exactly the type of clean-cut man that Mom would pick out of a church lineup for a family dinner invitationbecause you need more friends, Sarah.
Conventiongoers and cosplayers continue to shuffle past us to the exit. Sweat drips down my back. I feel uncomfortably clammy. The crowd clearly has conspired to push us closer. Now when I close my eyes, it will be too easy to imagine a casual—no, comfortable—hand resting on my lower back.
He’s waiting for an answer, but I’ve temporarily lost my mind and am enjoying the pressure of his skin against my vinyl. I close my eyes, inviting the fantasy in, but instead, that idea of Mom inviting him to a family dinner IRL has taken hold. He’d say no. Everyone says no when they connect the dots of my last two years.The whack chick who gets married at twenty-one and divorced at twenty-two and now lives with her mom—yeah, something is obviously very wrong with her. Steer clear of the sad, little crazy-pants. Don’t make eye contact. Move along now.
I don’t live up to the cosplay IRL.
I try to catch my breath. “I’ll pass.” I nimbly duck and jostle my way through the crowded exit until I’m outside in the limitless ocean air.
Adrenaline shocks and seizes my tired body as arms and legs wrap around me from behind. “Catstrike!” Gwen sings out. “Where have you been? Nightbat and I are gonna get out of here. Save Abandum City. Wanna come?”
Gwen is too tipsy to scold. I gently but firmly unwrap her from my torso, like she is a Kids Clubber. “You’re a villain,” I say. “You don’t save Abandum.” Seriously, what this woman doesn’t know about comics.
Gwen smirks. “Then I’ll enjoy frustrating Nightbat’s plans and every other part of him.”
Ew.
Gwen pulls me aside. “It’s Tony,” she whispers with a giggle.
“You sure?” I steady my friend. “Maybe you should ask him to put his mask back on.”
“Please.” Gwen snorts. “This isn’t my first rodeo.” She sloppily twists a lock of hair in her fingers but pulls too hard and tangles it. “Ow. You wanna come?”
“And risk being identified by my boss? No, thanks.”
“Suit yourself.” She digs the key out of her bustier and hands it to me. “You can change at my place. Help yourself to a hoodie.”
“Text me?”
“You know it.” She gives me a quick kiss, which makes a few of the departing attendees cheer. “Enjoy your last few minutes of nerd ball. Don’t leave a glass slipper or anything behind.”
“You mean a sharp claw?”
“Sure.”
Tony pulls up, and the two of them drive away.
“Hey, Catstrike! Say meow!” A dude with a selfie stick jumps in front of me.
I raise a single eyebrow and deadpan, “Meow.”
“Classic!”
A yellow Camaro appears with a Lyft light in the window. I check the license plate against my app. “Are you my Lyft?” I ask.
A goateed man with a midlife-crisis stud in his ear reluctantly reaches for his phone. “Catstrike and Poison Hemlock?”
“Hemlock made other plans.”
I reach to open the door, but the driver takes one look at my clawed fingers and screams, “Watch the paint job!”
