it’s a blatant threat,” she said casually.
His smile was almost indiscernible; there was just the barest upturn of his mouth and the slightest indentation at his cheek.
“Good, because if you were trying to scare me away, it really had the opposite effect,” he said. “I won’t do anything weird or weird adjacent, I promise.”
She took a deep breath. “I’ll text you my address. And you can let me know what you want for dinner.”
“Are we having dinner, too?” He was still leaned back in his chair, his gaze on the screen. The question was playful, but he was looking at her like he was concentrating. Like she was a puzzle that he was trying to figure out.
“Of course,” she said, indignant. She wouldn’t invite someone over and not feed them, even if she was saving their ass.
“Maybe we can order the Domino’s three for $9.99,” he suggested. “That’s easy.”
“I’ll order pizza,” she said. “Real pizza.”
“Show-off,” he said playfully, his smile widening. “I guess we’re not watching tonight. I don’t want to start via video and then watch the other episodes in person.”
Reggie understood this logic. It was like reading one comic in print and then the next in digital. She’d do it, but only if necessary.
He squinted at the screen in a way that made it clear he was no longer looking at her, and the sound of him clicking his mouse filled the brief silence. “I dug up my old thesis, which is a treasure trove of boring that will put you right to sleep.”
“Something even more boring than last night? Give it to me,” she said, yawning. When her eyes opened, Gus’s cheeks were pink.
She almost pulled the cover more firmly up to her neck.
She didn’t.
Chapter Four
Gus wasn’t a math genius, but he knew a thing or two about probability. It was important when trying to solve numeric puzzles. He knew that the probability of him living within walking distance of 26InchRims, a.k.a. Reggie, wasn’t totally weird if you factored in things like rent prices and popular areas for people in their age range. But it still kind of felt like something more than chance drawing them together.
When his SuperLyft pulled up in front of her house, it was clear that, though they lived relatively close to one another, there was a different kind of distance between them.
The place was basically a mini-castle, especially compared to the decrepit house with aluminum siding where he was renting the cheapest bedroom he could find. He could have afforded better, but cheap rent meant more savings and more leeway with jobs. He was fairly certain his apartment was illegal in some way, but it wasn’t a firetrap and he would take what he could get. Reggie’s house wasn’t huge, but it was impressive, as was the well-maintained yard in front of it. It even had a small turret, covered with green ivy that had wound up from the garden and covered one side of the brick house.
She was turret-in-Queens rich.
He got out of the car, bringing his huge duffel bag of props with him. He almost slammed the door of the car shut, then reached back in and pulled out his grocery bag containing produce from the vegetable market near his house and a jar of his secret weapon.
The street was quiet, apart from the occasional shriek of kids playing inside one of the houses. The afternoon sun beat down on the neighborhood, joining forces with humidity to immediately sap the energy from anyone who dared step outside.
Gus was already wilting as he walked up to the gate surrounding the house and pushed the buzzer on an intercom. He expected to have to state who he was to a butler or something, but the latch to the gate popped open and he walked up a smoothly inclined ramp that started right at the gate to ensure that the angle wasn’t too dramatic. Good design, and uncommon because most ramps were crafted with no real thought to the user beyond being serviceable. It also said something to whoever entered, as all design subtly did: Reggie was not the type to make do—she made sure her needs were met in a world that usually didn’t.
There was a branch off of the ramp, a concrete path through a garden, curving toward the back of the house under a trellis covered by the brambles of a rosebush. The grass was mowed and neat, but the flowers and other plants were all just a little wild.
The