More Than Comics (13 page)

I cringed inwardly at the white lie, but I couldn’t exactly say I’d forgotten to call him because Hector had been banging my brains out. I fumbled through my bag for my phone and yep, there they were: five texts from Andy, plus a voicemail. I hadn’t checked it while Hector had been distracting me so thoroughly, but now I felt like a total bitch.

“That’s okay. We can go get something to eat now.” It was such an Andy response. He was always polite, always kind, always forgiving.

“Oh, um...I can’t.” Ugh, I really was the worst.

Hector turned onto the aisle with our cart, but froze mid-stride when he saw Andy. The two of them stared at each other for the longest minute of my life. My perfect night instantly turned into my worst nightmare.

Andy slowly looked back and forth between me and Hector. “Ah. I didn’t realize the two of you were hanging out tonight.” He held out his hand. “I’m Andy. Tara’s told me so much about you.”

Hector shook his hand, though he looked like he’d rather touch a dead fish, despite being allergic to them. “Hey, man. Nice to meet you.”

I caught myself biting my nails again and forced myself to stop. “We, uh, ran into each other at the Black Hat party, and um…”

“Cool, cool,” Andy said, shoving his hands in his pockets.

An awkward silence settled over us and I had no idea how to end it. Finally, Hector cleared his throat. “I’m going to find the others. See you later, Andy.”

After he left the tension eased by a small percent and I stepped closer to Andy. “I’m really sorry about dinner. Maybe we can do something tomorrow? I’m busy in the morning, and I have a signing in the afternoon, and then I’ll be at the Masquerade that night, but…”

“I’ll definitely be at your signing. Maybe we can grab a coffee after?”

“That’d be great.”

Another uncomfortable silence. My ten minutes for the game were probably up by now. I glanced behind me, trying to figure out a polite way of ending this conversation. “Well, I better go…”

“Oh. Yeah. Me, too.”

Andy looked so lost and alone I almost invited him to join us tonight, but that wasn’t my place. Instead, I hugged him and was surprised by how comforting his familiar, easy presence was. “It was good to see you.”

“You too.” His hands tangled in my hair as he squeezed me back. “I missed you.”

“I missed you, too.”

It was true…except now that I’d been with Hector my time with Andy seemed shallow and lacking in comparison. If I was completely honest with myself, one of the reasons it had never worked with Andy (or any of the previous guys) was because Hector had always been there. He’d been unattainable, but even so there had been an ever-present feeling of wrongness with anyone else. I’d felt guilty, almost like I’d been cheating on both guys. I’d done nothing wrong, but it had always
felt
wrong.

I still cared for Andy a lot. How could I not, when we’d been together a year? He’d been a good boyfriend that entire time. There had never been anything
wrong
with him. He was a great guy, but it was clear now—I’d never been able to love Andy the way he deserved because there had always been the shadow of another man in my thoughts.

I left him in the wine aisle and found the others waiting for me by the bananas. They gave me curious looks as I approached, but didn’t ask where I’d been. Hector searched my eyes and I gave him a weak smile.

“Sorry,” I said to the group. “I ran into a friend.”

“No problem,” Jared said. “Now that you’re here, we can present our goods. Maddie is our defending champion, so our team will go first.”

“Our theme is, ‘who thought this was a good idea?’” Maddie reached into a basket and pulled out her finds. “We have cappuccino potato chips. Watermelon Oreos. And…bacon mac and cheese ice cream! All of which somehow got past many committees to arrive on our shelves.”

“I can’t decide if I’m intrigued or horrified,” Kyle said.

“Same,” Julie said. “We should buy each of them and try them tonight.”

“Good idea,” Jared said. “Okay, Kyle and Alexis, you’re next.”

“The theme for tonight is ‘naughty food.’” Alexis said, while Kyle displayed the items one by one. “We start with some delicious Perky Jerky, then move on to Breast Munchies. And for a happy ending, some creamy white finishing sauce.”

“Gross,” Carla said, wrinkling her nose.

“We could not even make this stuff up,” Kyle said, shaking his head.

“Yeah, not super tempted by any of those,” Jared said. “Okay, who’s next?”

“We’ll go,” Julie said. She gestured to Carla, who looked embarrassed as she pulled out the items in their cart. “Behold, three items we call, ‘so wrong, it’s right.’ First up, condoms with superheroes on them. I think some of you might need to buy these.” That got a few grins from the group. “But for those of us flying solo this weekend, we can still have some fun with a
Harry Potter
vibrating wand.”

“What the actual fuck,” Hector said.

Alexis covered her eyes. “No! My childhood!”

“Okay, then maybe I can tempt you with this perfectly shaped frosting decorator?” Julie waved at the item in Carla’s hand that looked suspiciously like a clear plastic dildo.

Maddie shook her head. “That is definitely wrong, but I’m not sure it ever goes all the way into right.”

Julie grinned. “True, it’s a bit small for my tastes.”

Everyone laughed and some of my apprehension over seeing Andy faded away. This felt good and right, and I couldn’t spend my entire time at Comic-Con worrying about him. I had to find my own happiness, and he had to find his.

“Very nice,” Jared said, once the laughter died out. “And now, our final team…”

Hector raises his eyebrows at me, and I nodded for him to continue. He grabbed a six pack that he must have picked up while I was talking to Andy. “We call this theme, ‘you sure you want to drink that?’ First, we have sticky toffee pudding ale.” He triumphantly held up another six pack. “Along with…spicy chipotle beer.”

The group all groaned or made faces, and Julie said, “I’m going to throw up.”

“It’s either going to be amazing or disgusting,” Maddie said.

“I’m voting for disgusting,” Kyle said.

“Let’s buy it and find out,” Jared said. “What’s your third item?”

Hector grinned and pulled out two cans of the item I’d picked out. “For the grand finale: alcoholic whip cream in a wide variety of flavors.”

“Okay, we definitely have to get those,” Julie said. “All the flavors. Multiple cans.”

“Don’t worry, we’re buying some,” I said.

“Thank you, Hector and Tara,” Jared said. “All right. Time to pick a winner. Keep in mind you’re not allowed to vote for your own team.”

He went through all the teams and we each voted for our favorite, but it was clear that Carla and Julie were the winners. For their prize they got bragging rights for the rest of the night, which Julie seemed much more excited about than Carla.

We all split up again to put the items back and get food and drinks for our little evening picnic. I didn’t see Andy again, luckily.

Now if only I could scrub the lingering guilt and sadness from my mind, I could get back to having a good time.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN
HECTOR

T
he line for Hall H was already long by the time we got there. It wove back and forth on the grass outside the convention center, where a cold breeze came in off the nearby marina. Our group got a spot in line and spread out our sleeping bags, settling in for the night.

I popped open one of the sticky toffee pudding ales and took a whiff. “Well, it smells good.” I held it out for Tara, who took it and nodded. “Anyone else brave enough to try?”

A few of the others agreed, and I passed the bottles around. I grabbed one for myself, popping the lid off with my bottle opener keychain.

“Okay, we down it on the count of three. One…two…three!” We all took sips, and I nearly gagged. “Fuck, that is repulsive.”

Jared made a choking sound. “It’s like if a cat pissed on an ice cream cone.”

“If someone made a cake, waited ‘til it got moldy and then ate it, that’s what this would taste like,” Tara said.

“It can’t be
that
bad,” Maddie said.

“Oh no, it really is. Try it.” Tara handed the beer to her.

She took a sip and made a face. “Okay, you were right. It is that bad.”

The spicy chipotle beer wasn’t quite as terrible, but not something I’d ever buy again either. We tore open the rest of our food and snacks, trying out the items we’d found in the store and testing the different flavors of alcoholic whip cream on each one.

“I have a great idea for what to use these for,” Jared said, spraying some of the whip cream in his mouth. He pulled Maddie in for a kiss and she licked it off his mouth.

“Later,” she said.

I threw a bag of chips at them. “Knock it off, you two.”

Jared grinned. “Don’t tell me you didn’t have the exact same idea.”

He’d got me there. My eyes darted to Tara, who smiled at me but then looked down at the grass. She’d seemed quiet and reserved ever since we’d run into Andy.

That moment had been pretty fucking weird for me, too. I’d spent the last year resenting Andy for being with the girl I loved, even though he seemed like a decent enough guy and he’d always treated Tara well. If I had to pick some other guy to date her I doubt I’d find anyone better than him. In a different situation, he and I might even be friends. But from the way he’d looked at Tara in the supermarket I’d known he wasn’t over her, and something had definitely changed in her after seeing him, too.

Did she still have feelings for him? The two of them had just broken up, and I sure as hell didn’t want to be a rebound. I knew how Tara worked—she immediately moved from one boyfriend to the next, and I was the newest link in her chain. But I didn’t want to be a temporary boyfriend. If we did this I wanted to be the last guy she was with. The one she stayed with forever.

We spent the next few hours eating, drinking, and playing Cards Against Humanity, and Tara relaxed with each round. It was past midnight by the time we climbed into our sleeping bags to get a few hours of rest before they let us inside Hall H early in the morning.

Like I’d warned Tara earlier, I only had one sleeping bag, but it was a two-person bag because I could barely fit in a normal-sized one on my own. Tara and I both slipped inside, but she didn’t snuggle up against me as I’d hoped. Instead we lay on our sides, facing each other but not touching.

“You okay?” I asked, keeping my voice low since the others were trying to sleep.

“Yeah.” She sighed. “Running into Andy just threw off my night, I guess.”

“Trust me, it wasn’t my favorite thing either.”

“No, I suppose not.” She rolled onto her back, staring up at the stars.

“You two were pretty serious. Makes sense you’d be upset after running into him.”

“It’s extra hard because we broke up only a few days ago.” She let out a sad little laugh. “And yeah, we were pretty serious. My parents loved him, too. Wanted us to get married and have babies the second we graduated college.”

The thought of her marrying Andy and having blond babies with him made me want to punch something. Or someone. Or myself. I wasn’t sure.

And of course her parents loved him. From what she’d told me, they’d rather have their daughter end up as Tara Smith—or whatever Andy’s last name was—than Tara Fernandez.

“Is that what you wanted?” I asked.

“No. I’m not ready for any of that. I think Andy was, though. And sometimes the fantasy did sound pretty good….” She covered her face with her hands. “God, I’m such a mess. I’m sorry.”

I didn’t need to punch myself after all, ’cause her words hit me right in the gut. There was a whole future she’d imagined with Andy that had never included me. She obviously still had feelings for him, even if she didn’t want to admit it. We were having fun this weekend but it didn’t even come close to what they’d had. And how could it? They’d been together a year. We’d been friends for three, but she’d never thought about me as anything more than that until what? Yesterday?

“Enough about me.” She propped herself up on an elbow to face me. “Tell me something about you I don’t know.”

“Um, there’s not much you don’t know after all this time.”

“No? You never talk about your past. I want to know everything!”

I hated talking about my past. Or thinking about it at all, if I could help it. But her enthusiasm made me grin, and for once I didn’t mind. “Like what?”

She played with the chain around her neck. “Like…how did you become friends with Jared and Kyle? I know you met in high school, but I want the whole story of how the band got started.”

“Not that exciting of a story, but okay. I was always pretty good at drawing and shit, and my
abuelita
got me a scholarship at this fancy high school for visual and performing arts. Freshman year, Jared and I got teamed up for a project in English class where we had to write a poem and create a corresponding art piece to go with it. He wrote the words, I drew something, and after that we started hanging out.”

“Sounds kind of like what we do for
Misfit Squad
.” She rested her hand on my chest, tracing idle patterns in my shirt. “Did you like going to school there?”

“For the most part. It was a good school, but there were some guys who liked to give me shit for being the poor scholarship kid. First time Jared punched one of them, I knew he would always have my back.”

Her eyebrows shot up. “The
first
time?”

“Uh.” I coughed. “We used to get in a lot of fights, but that was years ago. We’re both done with that shit now.”

“Good.” Her hand moved up to my neck, her fingers warm against my skin. The more I talked the more she touched me. I’d have to remember that. “Then what?”

“I used to hang out at Jared and Kyle’s house all the time. One day I tried out their drum kit and was hooked. Jared said we should start a band and it took off from there.” I shrugged. “Like I said, not that exciting of a story. Though it’s kind of crazy how fast it all went down. Seems like only yesterday we were playing frat parties and parking lot shows, not huge stadiums.”