Maybe you don’t want me in your bed.
Oh man. Gus had seriously reactivated her he could get it hormones, and they showed no signs of calming the fuck down. Maybe it was the lack of sleep. Except she’d slept well the night before. Thanks to Gus and that voice of his.
“Hey,” he said, and Reggie realized she’d heard this tone from him twice before—both times he’d been about to change their arrangement. Excitement and anticipation did a nervous twirl through her stomach.
“Hey what?” Her voice was a little sharp.
“Tomorrow is Saturday,” he said.
“Yes?” Her heart was starting to beat faster.
“Do you have work?”
“I’m always working,” she said.
“Even at night?”
“I am the night,” she said, wanting to smack herself for spouting a random Batman quote at him. But her brain was moving in reverse from what she knew was coming because, frankly, she was nervous.
“Okay, The Night. If you’re free at any point, we could binge watch the whole series this weekend and figure this out. Together.” He rubbed a hand over his cheek. “I really need to get a lock on this project. The con isn’t for a few months, but I need to have something solid to show them by . . . two weeks from Monday.”
“Two weeks?” Reggie groaned.
“I have it basically figured out,” he said. “It’s just missing something in the overall flow, something that makes it cohesive.”
“Fine. Watching the show will take six hours total. And we can spend two hours going over what you have so far. I have some things to do during the day, but maybe we can do five hours Saturday night and five hours Sunday night?”
“Okay,” he said, his expression still serious. “My place? Your place? What are you comfortable with?”
Reggie’s breath caught. “Wait. You want to watch together?”
His brows lifted. “Yeah. That’s what I said.”
“I thought you meant together like live stream together. But yeah, that’s what we’re doing now, why would you suggest it again.” She didn’t do panic, supposedly, but that was what she felt—mostly because, though Reggie was fairly cynical, she . . . didn’t think this was a horrible idea. She knew it was one, agreeing to spend hours with an internet person she’d never met IRL, but she didn’t feel it was one.
Reggie trusted her instincts—that was the difference between her and her twin. People called her the smart one, but she wasn’t. She was the twin who felt something and then didn’t tear that feeling apart with doubt. But most of those feelings had to do with business, not pleasure, and her gut was also telling her that if she met up with Gus—Gus of the sexy voice, lush mouth, and dexterous fingers—she might want to do more than talk about Reject Squad Ultra, and she’d thought there was nothing she wanted to do more than that.
“We can do that instead,” he replied. “Live stream again. Yeah, that makes more sense.”
“You can come to my place,” she said, her voice a bit breathier than she would have liked.
Though most of her friends were online, scattered around the globe IRL, there’d been a time when Reggie had friends over often to watch movies, play board games, and generally nerd out. Those get togethers had dwindled in the last couple of years. Between her dedication to the site and her friends having kids or moving to more affordable areas, she hadn’t sat with someone physically beside her as she watched a show she loved in way too long. She hadn’t done much of anything besides work. Even when watching shows alone, she was often live-tweeting or taking notes for posts.
Just watching and getting to geek out while Gus was the one taking notes would be a nice change of pace.
“Yeah, my place is good. I’m not going to try to navigate your apartment in my wheelchair,” she said firmly. “Bring everything you can related to the project, though. And I’m going to let people know you’re coming, and will make your life a living hell if you try anything weird. I’m not mega-rich, but I’m vindictive enough to destroy you and everything you hold dear.”
He leaned back in his chair, his desk lamp throwing shadows over his face. “Is this some kind of psychological trick to make me not want to come?”
“No, 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.