Bookish and the Beast - Ashley Poston Page 0,1
to find love somewhere romantic, why couldn’t it be me? Why not this year? Why not make something memorable to lessen the pain in my chest?
Still, though, I should’ve listened to my gut telling me to just stay in the hotel room. Because not five minutes after Quinn and Annie dragged me down to the ExcelsiCon Ball, I had lost them in the masses of people.
There were just so many.
I tried looking for them—they were hard to miss, dressed as floating glowing neon goldfish (“We’re the snacks that smile back!” Quinn had said with a wink). I had put together a closet cosplay that I found in my, well, closet—an unassuming black crop top and a white skirt, and an empty shot glass around my neck.
…A shot in the dark, get it?
No one ever does.
It only took another few minutes for me to become absolutely overwhelmed, run into a Nox King who spilled his Galactic Twist all over my cosplay, and bail from the ball. I returned to the elevators and squeezed into the first one available, damned which floor. To my utter chagrin, it only took me up to the tenth floor, and I let myself out to escape the smell of sweat and hairspray clogging the elevator.
The tenth floor was mostly a lobby overlooking the chaos below. It was quiet here, at least. Much quieter than I expected, given the thumping bass down below. There wasn’t a chance I was getting back into those elevators anytime soon—it looked like the one I just came out of broke on the fifteenth floor, and the other two were…well, to put it politely, not in the best shape.
Great, I guess I wasn’t going back to my room after all. And I was stuck in a damp skirt.
There was a door that opened to a small outside area, and I let myself out. The night air was crisp, and warm. I sucked in a lungful of fresh air to calm my nerves. There were only a few people on the garden balcony—a couple dressed as Pokémon making out in the corner, and a guy leaning against the balcony rail.
Oh, I thought as I walked up beside him to enjoy the view, he’s got a nice butt.
Not that it really mattered. I leaned against the railing and tried to see the damage to my outfit in the low rooftop light, patting down the stains with the wad of napkins I stole from the drinks kiosk on the way here. For once, I was happy that everyone was downstairs dancing the night away to a dubstep version of “The Imperial March,” because here it was so nice and quiet—so quiet my ears rang.
My skirt was ruined, that much I could guess. I just wanted to go back to the hotel room and get out of these heels and take a hot shower to get all of the con grime off me. There was a book in my suitcase just calling my name—the new Starfield: Resonance companion novel.
I’d rather be saving the galaxy with the insufferably kind Carmindor than be on this balcony praying for the night to end already.
“A shot in the dark, right?”
The voice startled me.
I glanced up to the guy, because it certainly wasn’t the couple playing tongue hockey who asked me. He was unnervingly tall, but then again I was known for two things—being stubborn, and being short. “What?” I asked.
He motioned to my costume. He wore a very well-put-together General Sond costume, complete with beautiful long white-blond hair and a crooked smile, and a mask that covered just enough of his face to make him look alluring and absolutely unidentifiable. “Your cosplay,” he followed up. He had a strange accent. I couldn’t place it—but it sort of sounded like those fake American accents you sometimes hear on TV from actors who are very clearly not American. It was too hometown, too clean. “A shot in the dark?”
I glanced down at my costume. “Technically I’m cosplaying the title of the thirty-seventh book in the extended-universe saga of Starfield, A Shot in the Dark by Almira Ender.”
His eyebrows jerked up over his mask. “Oh, well, I stand corrected.”
“It’s a really deep cut, though,” I quickly added.
“Oh, I do see it,” he replied, cocking his head. He pointed down to the hem of my skirt. “The little Starfield logo trim at the bottom. That’s a very nice touch.”
“You think?”
“Of course. There’s thought to it.”
“I just didn’t have the money for a nice costume,”