Page 70 of My Cosplay Escape
“You don’t like spicy?”
“I love spicy.” Adam looks up. “It was the villains.” He shrugs. “AJ has the better villains, and it was also orders of magnitude cheaper to license the characters.”
“What came first? Your Halifax Sisters Studio internship or your escape room idea?”
“How does anyone ever answer a chicken-or-egg paradox? They both came first.”
“They can’t both come first,” I say, taking a bite of my Korean taco. Slaw with red cabbage, carrots, cilantro, and pickled red onion was something I needed to remember to try at home.
“Sure, they can.” Adam leans back against the wall. “I had the idea to angle cosplay into escape rooms. I also applied for a studio internship. Entertainment is huge business.”
“And the fact that you landed on superheroes while interning at Halifax Sisters, which owns Nightbat—”
Something like a wistful expression graces his face. “I’ve been coming to these conventions since… since middle school. Superheroes are a safe bet.”
“Safer than Dr. Leto?”
Adam grabs the grilled shrimp taco and inhales it. “There are some excellent villains in Dr. Leto.”
“What is up with you and villains?” I try the shrimp taco and want to weep. They added a coconut curry sauce on top, and it is mind-blowingly delicious.
“They are more fun. A hero is only as good as his villain. The real difference between Nightbat and Magnificent Man is that Nightbat gets to fight better villains and a lot of them. Badpun, Conundrum, Mallard, Ad Hominem, the Shoemaker, Poison Hemlock, Fair Play.”
Did he purposely skip Catstrike? Why? Is he embarrassed? Does he not consider her a villain but an antihero? Is he still mad at me?
“What about Catstrike?” Was the question too obvious? Should I have not said anything? Oh fudge, is he going to put it together?
His face reddens. It could have been the spicy sauce. “Everyone loves a good villain.”
I hand him a Diet Hansen’s soda from the pocket of my hoodie. When I pull out a second one for me, Adam laughs.
“Now the hoodie thing makes perfect sense.”
“Shut up,” I say.
He pops his soda open, and the hiss echoes in the stairwell. “There’s a small computer lab on the fourth floor of the econ building. No one will try to pick you up there.”
I recoil. “People are not—”
“Yeah, they are.”
He’s sitting right next to me, and I’m gripped with the need to hang on him, hold on to him, touch him, inhabit his space. We could kiss. And with the convention behind the closed door at our backs, it would be a spectacular first kiss.
Except it wouldn’t be a first kiss. That happened already. Goldfish, that has happened a few times.
I stiffen. “I should get going. I’ve gotta get back for my shift.” I stare down at my Converse and toe the swirly pattern in the grey concrete.
“Yeah, let’s get you back to your second home.”
“No, I’ll get a Lyft. I don’t want to pull you away from more interested fans and would-be franchisers.”
“It’s a small convention. I’ve already talked to everyone here.”
“Yeah, but—”
“And it’s over in another twenty minutes. Half the vendors left an hour ago.” He rises and offers me his hand. “Let’s go.”
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