Bookishly Ever After (4 page)

“Admit it, you liked it.” He tugged at my extensions before peering over at the refreshment table. “I seriously need something to drink. Do either of you want anything?”

I shook my head, but Em grabbed his arm. “I’ll come with you.” Before I could follow, she pointed at my feet and the gold ribbon trailing off of the ghille on my right foot.
“Your laces are untied.”

“Crud.” The boning keeping my bodice up didn’t let me bend over to reach my feet and I dropped back into the chair to fiddle with the slippery satin. “Trixie warned me about satin ribbon, but I--” I looked up and trailed off, realizing I was talking to empty air. Once my laces were fixed I started towards Em and Dev, but they were already deep in conversation by the refreshment table. I froze midstep—they looked serious and I totally didn’t want to play third wheel. It was like I was eavesdropping, even though they were all the way across the room. Since when were Em and Dev so close?

My eyes searched the room for anything else to watch. Jon stood by the speakers, basking in the flirt-vibes coming off of a curvy sophomore blonde dressed in one of those genie outfits. It relieved me more than it probably should have.

What
would
Maeve do right now?

She sure as heck wouldn’t hang around here. She’d be running into the Otherland and back into Aedan’s arms. Aedan’s strong, magical arms that helped protect her from the dark fae and…I sighed, and the dance fell away. Really, they gave me no other choice. I pulled my book out of its hiding place under a pile of coats, slipped onto one of the opened bleachers beneath a bundle of fairy lights, and dove back into book two of Maeve’s world.

Even though she was supposed to focus on self-defense, she was acutely aware of how close Aedan had gotten in his last attack, especially when his laughter had pressed more of his battle-trained hard body against her own. With her back up against the hay bale, she couldn’t roll away…and a part of her really didn’t want to. The prickly hay snaking in between the laces of her leather bodice and scraping her skin was no competition for the whisper of his breath across her forehead and cheek. Maeve shut her eyes for a second, took a deep breath to regain her focus, and, before he could finish his attack, mimed a cutting motion against his neck with the point of her arrow. “And I win.”

Aedan laughed even harder, grasping her arrow hand and pinning it to the ground. Slowly, he moved his mouth towards hers and…

“You’re coming with me.” Em grabbed my arm none too gently, and dragged me off of the bleachers.

“Hey!” I shut my book with my free hand and tripped after her, trying to keep upright. “What the heck, Em?”

She pulled me into the girl’s locker room and pushed me unceremoniously onto one of the benches. “We need to
talk.” As I watched, she rushed about the room, checking to make sure no one else was in there.

I tried not to laugh at the sight of her crouched on the floor and looking under the bathroom stalls.

“If this is about Jon, he was the one who dropped me for genie girl.” I tilted my head and corrected myself. “I think.”

Satisfied we were alone, she got up and dropped onto the bench next to me. “Forget about Jon. This is important.”

I frowned at her. “Is everything okay?”

She took a deep breath and focused her serious brown eyes on mine. “How do you feel about Dev?”

Out of everything Em could have asked me, I wasn’t expecting that. What did Dev have to do with anything? “Dev? I’m not mad at him about the dance thing, if that’s what you’re asking.”

“No, dummy. I mean, do you like him?”

“Dev?” I blinked at her stupidly for a few seconds. The image of him sliding across the dance floor rose up in my mind. “I…I never really thought of him like that. I mean, we’re sort of friends, I guess—”

She had that expression on her face that let me know she was getting frustrated. “But do you think he’s hot?”

“I—” I had no idea what to say. I cringed under her stare. “I guess? I mean, he’s really cute, but he’s
Dev
.” His grin popped into my head again and I had to shake my head slightly to focus. “What’s all this about?”

“He’s totally crushing on you.”

My brain just couldn’t compute this complete and total
course change. It was as if someone had switched books on me and I was having plot whiplash. “No, he isn’t.”

She grabbed my arm and shook it like she was trying to shake some sense into me. “Yes, he is. I saw him staring at you at the pep rally, then I noticed that every time you’re at your locker, or God, even in the middle of orchestra, he keeps looking at you. It’s almost stalker-y. And then this whole dance thing—”

I cut her off. “He needed a redhead. I was just the closest one.” I ran my fingers through the waterfall of extensions currently brushing my lap.

Em shook me even harder. “Please. Ms. Zhdanova was, like, two people away from you. And her hair is freakin’ fire hydrant colored. He totally strayed from the teacher theme on purpose to dance with you.”

“Stop being such a conspiracy theorist.” I yanked my arm out of her hands.

“I’m not.”

I lay back on the bench and stared at the ceiling. “This is ridiculous. I’ve never seen him watching me.” I ran a mental inventory and came up with nothing. “I’d know if someone was watching me.”

“You never see anything. You’re always buried in your books or one of your knitting projects.” Em lay down on the other end of the bench, mirroring me so we took up the entire bench, our feet pressed against each other’s. “I think the two of you would be freakishly adorable together.”

My neck grew warm again. Of everything I had to
inherit from my father, this insta-blush thing was the worst.

I pressed my neck back until it touched the cool wood of the bench, and replied, “You said the same thing about Jon.”

“Jon was an experiment. Unless you like him, which I doubt, because you’re not out there trying to keep him from the harem bunny.” She kicked the side of my foot. “Just give Dev a chance. This girl,” she sat up and pointed at herself with a flourish, “is never wrong when it comes to guys. I’m like the Oracle of Delphi of relationships.”

“You’re just trying to yenta us together.” Maybe that conversation by the cupcakes was Em trying to do the same thing to Dev about me, which made me want to crawl into one of the lockers and hide.

An amused tone came into her voice. “No, I swear, he’s been following you like a puppy dog.” Em shrugged. “For some reason I can’t totally understand, weirdly dressed book nerds must be a major turn-on for him.”

I threw one of my arms over my face, partly to be dramatic, partly to hide my blush. “Oh my God. You are so making all this up.”

“Am not.” She stood and pulled my arm off of my face so I had to look directly at her. “So? What do you say about dating our Bollywood Casanova?” She faked a swoon.

I swatted at her but she jumped away, laughing. “Stop that.”

“He’s just so dashing and debonair, I can’t help but be equally dramatic when I’m talking about him,” she said with a flourish, then forced me up to sitting. “Here’s the thing. I
think you need to give him a chance. “

“I’ve never not given him a chance. He doesn’t think of me like that and I don’t think of him that way. Because we’re just friends, Em. And not even sitting at the same lunch table kind of friends. We’re more like ‘snarking about Ms. Osoba making us sit out in forty degree weather for pep band’ kind of friends.”

“Sitting at the same lunch table regularly will be a good start. I’ll get on that Monday.”

“Em, don’t,” I pleaded. Now that Em had me and Dev on her matchmaker radar, I couldn’t even imagine how I’d even be around him without turning as red as the lining of his clarinet case.

She shook her pirate sword at me. “We’re going out there right now, you’re going to look cute and be nice to him, got it?”

“I’d rather stay in here and finish my book.” As soon as the words came out of my mouth, though, I cowed to her unblinking stare and stood. “Tell me why I listen to you?” I checked my reflection in one of the long mirrors on the pillar behind me. The sparkly face powder did a pretty good job of hiding the red in my face.

“Because I’m doing what’s best for you.” She smoothed down a layer of chiffon in the back of my dress and started pushing me out the door. “Now, smile.”

I pulled the heavy comforter over my head. Snaking my hand out from my cocoon, I felt around on the nightstand for my glasses. A hard corner dug into my back and, as soon as I slipped on the glasses, I reached under myself to free
Glittering
. My fingers ran down the still-straight spine and unbent cover and I breathed a sigh of relief. I had to stop falling asleep on books. Glasses-to-nightstand became automatic after I had broken my last pair by sleeping in them. Waking up to a bent frame pressing against my nose was enough to train me out of that habit. But somehow, I always ended up sprawled over the latest hardcover.

I didn’t bother looking for my book light. If I started reading now, I’d never get out of bed. Late night or not, I had to get ready for work teaching the Brunch n’ Beginners learn-to-knit class at Oh, Knit! The money was good and I got to be surrounded by tons of yarn and books while sipping bottomless lattes.

I rolled out of bed, grabbing the first pair of jeans and a long-sleeved shirt that crossed my path. Catching a glimpse of myself in my vanity mirror, I cringed. I had fallen asleep with wet hair and now half of it was curly, the other half
stick straight and practically standing on end. And still a bright shade of red, despite all the scrubbing I gave it last night after the dance.

I stayed in the bathroom just long enough to decide that I really didn’t need to put in contacts today and gave the tub a wide berth on my way out. I didn’t want to look. The last I checked, the tub was still dyed an insane shade of pinky orange from my hair dye. My blue towel was still draped over the side, too, now stained with brown blotches.

After trying a few times to tame the mess on my head, I just threw my hair into a claw clip, slipped my ‘The book was better’ t-shirt over my top, grabbed my knitting bag, and headed out. It didn’t matter. Only knitters were going to see me, anyway.

Oh, Knit! was only fifteen minutes from my neighborhood, and usually, I loved the walk this time of year through the piles of leaves in the early morning autumn chill. Today, though, I dragged myself there, barely noticing anything around me until a familiar tug on my messy bun made me jump.

“Sorry, didn’t mean to scare you.” Dev’s voice came over my shoulder.

I stopped midstep and tried not to seem too thrown off as Dev and Alec came up alongside me. “It’s okay. Now I won’t need coffee since you just gave me a heart attack.”

Alec hadn’t gone to the dance, so I could understand how he managed to look semihuman that early on a Sunday,
but Dev? Even with slicked back wet hair and grungy clothes, he was too awake and too pulled together for someone who had probably been up later than me. Before I could stop myself, I checked my reflection in a passing shop window. Yup. Still looked like a human version of yarn barf. Embarrassment tickled up my neck and I was thankful for the chill that had already colored my cheeks and was keeping my face from getting too hot.

“Nice shirt.”

I glared at Alec for calling attention to how utterly ridiculous I looked. He didn’t seem to notice.

“Going to work at the bluehair store again?”

Pull yourself together. Maeve would just straighten herself up and keep walking as if she were wearing a designer gown instead of a goofy t-shirt
.

As I pulled my back ramrod straight and tilted up my chin, I answered in my best Maeve-y tone, “You realize that a ton of young A-list celebrities knit, right?”

“And grandmoms.” Alec kicked a rock off the sidewalk and it clattered into the mostly deserted street. “Besides, it’s not like you care about what celebrities do.”

“I care about them if they knit.” I pulled my circular needles out of my bag and pointed them fencer-like at Alec. The metal needles were gorgeous and a little dangerous in the faint sunlight. “And I have a great way to defend myself when weird guys jump me in the dangerous streets of Lambertfield,” I added with a flourish of the needles.

Dev, who had been watching us like a ping-pong game,
broke into the conversation. “Hey, does that mean you can make me a sweater?”

Still on my silly dramatic high, I gave my needles one last twirl and started slipping them into my bag as if I were putting them into one of those sword-holster things. “You have to be knitworthy to get stuff from me, maybe something small, like socks. And you, my friend, aren’t knitworthy yet.” We shared a grin and I wiggled my needles at him teasingly.

“So, what do I need to do to become ‘knitworthy?’”

“I’ll…I’ll let you know.” Suddenly, what Em told me at the dance popped into my head and the air became incredibly heavy—uncomfortable, like a shrunken and felted wool sweater. I was going to strangle her for sticking ideas into my head and making things so awkward around him. I wracked my brain for some change in the subject. “So, where are you two going? The diner?”

Alec had perched himself on one of the cast iron streetlamp bases a few seconds before, but now hopped off. “We’re on our way to McCaffery field. Damien’s brother is home for the weekend and he said he’d teach us how to play rugby.”

I couldn’t even look Dev in the eye, so I focused on Alec. “Rugby? Just you two are playing against him?”

Dev answered, instead. “Nah, we’re meeting up with some of the other guys there.” We reached the store and he waved in the direction of the field. “Stop by when you’re finished here, if you want.”

My hand froze on Oh, Knit!’s fancy brass doorknob. “I don’t think I’ll be able to.” I let my focus drift to the store’s big picture window of yarny goodness. In a few minutes, I’d be inside and I could just sink into the Manos display.

“It’s not like you’re trying to impress anyone. And I know you don’t have anything else today.” I was going to kill Alec later.

Dev was making weird faces behind Alec, puffing his cheeks out and bent over like he was using a walker.