T-shirt now, though, and looks to be around my age. Does everyone work here?
I shake my head and mumble, “Just looking,” and she goes off to help the next customer. I pretend to be checking out a rack of comics but pull out my phone and google Vera instead. There are tons of pictures of her and Lillian, but I have to scroll forever to find one of their whole family. Maybe Peak’s an outcast like me, which shouldn’t make me feel reassured, but it does.
But then I find it, an old wedding picture that Vera posted on the Verona blog a few years ago. And there’s Peak, smiling, walking them both down the aisle. The logical explanation is that Peak is . . . Vera’s stepdaughter. Shit.
And I happen to know that Vera’s shop isn’t all that far from my dad’s house. Which means Peak might not be that far from my dad’s house. Which means . . . absolutely nothing. Because I’m flying back to the other side of the country tonight.
fuckfuckfuckfuckfuck
I’m still squinting at the wedding picture so hard, it’s blurry from my eyelashes, when a text message scrolls down across my screen.
I don’t recognize the number, but the response is unmistakable: Hey! How goes it in the Batcave?
I flick my eyes up, glancing at Peak, who is now staring down at her phone. I shouldn’t respond. I should blend back into the crowd and forget any of this ever happened. Forget about everything but going back to grab my duffel bag and getting as far away from her as possible because this can’t happen. It couldn’t before, but it definitely can’t now.
I look down at my phone. I mean to slide it into my pocket, I swear I do, but instead I find myself firing off another text: Glad to see you didn’t get eaten by any tigers last night, Peak.
And as I turn to leave, my stomach in knots, I can see that she’s smiling.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Jubilee
“PUT YOUR PHONE down,” Jayla practically growls, swiping it out of my hand. Her car swerves a little when she leans over, and I glance behind us with a guilty look.
“Careful,” I say.
We’re driving back home from the con, just me and her. My parents are driving in the store van right behind us, definitely ready to scream if we so much as go a mile over the speed limit, but still, it’s like being in a tiny little freedom bubble for the next hour. But if they think we’re goofing off in here at all, I’m going to be back in the van, suffocating under a pile of comics, while Jayla drives alone in her little Civic.
“You’re a terrible copilot. Who are you texting, anyway?”
“Nobody,” I say, trying to swallow down the smile threatening to break across my face.
“You’re talking to that guy again, aren’t you?”
My cheeks get all warm. I hate being obvious. “Maybe.” I scoop my phone up off the floor. We’ve been texting nonstop since he sent that endearingly formal It was nice meeting you text. Who even does that? It was six thousand shades of cute.
“What do you guys even talk about? The fact that he decided to go to the biggest cosplay event of the weekend dressed as Office Batman? Or the fact that it’s weird people want to cosplay as a maladjusted man who dresses in a bat suit at all?”
“Close.”
She glances at me out of the corner of her eye, one perfectly arched eyebrow reflected in the rearview mirror. “Really?”
“Well, close in the sense that he just texted me a picture of a baby-bat nursery.”
“I’m lost.”
“It’s a long story.”
“Try me,” she snorts.
“You kind of had to be there?”
“I was across the hall, so I basically was.” She sighs, messing with her septum piercing until the ball is centered. “Just tell me.”
“Well, we were talking about bats having belly buttons last night—”
“As one does.” She laughs.
“And then today he found a picture of an actual bat