Page 86 of My Cosplay Escape
“What are you doing?” I say.
“I want to kiss you.”
“You didn’t ask.”
Adam is still chill. “Please, may I kiss you?”
“No.”
He smiles, his eyes crinkling in that gorgeous array of wrinkles I like so well. Until they don’t. “You’re serious?”
“We’re not dating. And even if we were, I’m not…” I’m not giving myself away. I’m not taking the risk that he’ll remember how I taste. I’m not giving Adam an opportunity to connect the cosplay dots. And I’m certainly not going to be here when he realizes I’m not the sexy, tongue-thrusting, kiss-first-ask-later, full package. That’s an act. That’s not me. Sorry to disappoint you, Adam, but I’m not going to show up for this. I’m not giving you the chance to run away from me in real life. “I’m just not,” I finish.
Adam swears. He’s angry.
I want to run. It is all kinds of messed up. If you care about someone and fantasize about someone and have snogged that someone on more than one occasion, you should want to kiss them. And I did, but how do I explain,Oh yeah, by the way, I’ve been lying to you this whole time. I work for you. I’m your Catstrike. I dress up every weekend, and I’ve done things to you that I’m not proud of.
Even in my head, it sounds wrong.
“You want to tell me why?” Adam asks.
“I just can’t.”
“You just can’t? Sarah. ‘I just can’t’ isn’t a good reason.”
“Do I need a good reason? I don’t want to kiss you, Adam.”
He stumbles backward, like he’s just fallen off a treadmill. He slips a little on the wet rocks and is now standing knee-deep in a tide pool. He sloshes out but manages to get even wetter.
I reach in for his wet loafer that didn’t make it out. “Can we just be friends?” It kills me to ask. I don’t want to be his friend. I want to be his last thought before drifting off to sleep and his reason for getting out of bed in the morning. I want to be the author of his favorite meal, hisMississippi Bake-Offbuddy, and the keeper of his inside jokes. A good man, but a better one for me. And yes, I want to bite his bottom lip and run my hand across his stubbled cheek while I purr in his ear… But that isn’t me. I mean, it is me. Me dressed up like a caricature of a woman, a superhero who is more about sexy one-liners and black boots than anything else. Goldfish, if he knew, he’d run away screaming.
“Sure,” Adam says with little to no enthusiasm or sincerity. Asurespoken to save face. My face. His face. Goldfish, his face is gorgeous. Even now, when he’s looking for all the world like he needs a run and a good ten rounds with a punching bag. “I’ll see you around.”
Chapter Twenty-Five
I miss Adam. He isn’t at the escape room. He isn’t on campus. I’m worried, and I’m angry at myself. I sucked him into my crazy. He doesn’t deserve to be in my crazy. He deserves the truth. And if telling him the truth is what it takes to see him again and to extract him from my den of crazy, I’ll do it.
He’s not responding to my texts, so I send them from my Sabine Kennedy number.
Sabine Kennedy: Still there?
Nothing. Nothing for hours.
I try again.
Sabine Kennedy: Haven’t seen you in ages.
More nothing for hours. If this is what life is like without Adam, I don’t want it. I can’t take it. Staring at my phone every five seconds, trying to will it to ping. Swiping back and forth between my texts and email to see if anything has changed in the half second since I last refreshed my screen. Feeling an empty, sinking weight pressing against me until all my breaths are uselessly shallow.
I grip my phone, and my heart hammers. Adam is the real deal. Not a speed bump. He’s the one I want sitting beside me on the epic cross-country road trip. I want him in the front seat with me, keeping me focused and awake on mile two hundred.
This car analogy thing is getting weird. The point is, I know as I hold my cracked phone, which is still inert, that this awful I’m feeling isn’t going anywhere and will only get worse with time. I let a man, an understanding, kind, sweet, and gorgeous man, go. Unless I do something about it, the awful will grow into a devastating regret. And as scary as doing something about it is, it’s worth the risk. Adam is worth all the risk.
Sabine Kennedy: Maybe we should meet.
My phone pings. A text from Adam. My heart beats so fast it hurts.
Adam: Lost my appetite for costumes. Thanks just the same.
