“I hope you like artichoke leaves,” she said. “My favorite pizza topping.”
All he knew about artichokes is that they’d once been considered an aphrodisiac—he’d picked that up in a trivia puzzle game.
“Artichokes are great. And I left a jar of this dressing in your fridge,” he said after he’d swallowed the cheesy slice, voice so deep he felt it rasp in his throat.
Her head whipped up and her gaze was warm as she looked at him. She ran her tongue over her bottom lip, and paired with the way she was staring at him, he couldn’t tell if she was reacting to the dressing or him. That he wasn’t sure made his brain rewind back to that whole licking scenario.
No, he was here to work on a project. Not to think about Reggie’s tongue swiping over her lower lip, or his tongue running over her—
“The escape room!” he shouted. She jumped in her seat and he recalibrated his tone. “You think the overall idea is good?”
“Yeah. I think your initial idea of having it be a mission to retrieve information from the traitorous Captain Kelso’s camp is good . . .”
“But?”
“But while the puzzles you’ve incorporated so far are cool, overall they don’t match the spirit of the show or the escape room in general. Also, Kelso is a bad guy but he’s not important. The evil queen is Aurora’s nemesis, so something related to her would have much more emotional impact, especially given the ending of the show.” She paused to chew her pizza, her eyes darting back and forth as if she was reading something only she could see. “Oh, and this escape room is a cooperative game. Many of the people playing it will be taking on the personae of these characters while they play, and the puzzles should match the strengths and weaknesses of the characters on the show and also make the people playing feel a growing sense of community, mirroring the Reject Squad itself.”
Gus was no longer thinking about licking, but only because something much more intense was distracting him.
“Your brain,” he said. His heart was beating fast and he wanted to maybe get down on one knee because that was what he linked with the sudden, overwhelming feeling welling up in him. “You’re a genius.”
“I wouldn’t go that far . . . no, you’re right, I guess I am when it comes to some things,” she said with a shrug. “I’ve spent my entire life ingesting media then discussing why I love it with other fans. And then I turned that into a website, where I had to build trust with thousands of readers, had to really figure out what they wanted and how to give it to them—how to show them that they are just as important to me as the stuff I talked about—and also how to bring some of them together in a safe place. So yeah. You can call me a genius, I won’t fight you on that. Polymath sounds good, too.”
Gus just stared at her because even though he was impulsive, he knew he couldn’t always act on things. He needed to take several steps back and try to come at this from a different angle, but his thoughts were like a maze puzzle with every path leading to Reggie. Reggie and her brain and a tub of dressing, which didn’t sound sexy at all but was really working for him in that instance.
Get it together.
She finished the last of her salad. “I have more notes, but let’s watch the first few episodes and then we can see where your head is at.”
He tried very hard not to let his suddenly active imagination take that and run with it.
She pulled the two boxes of pizza toward her and stacked them on her lap before heading down the hall toward what she’d called the TV room. It was exactly that. One side of the small room was taken up with a huge red couch that was basically a king bed with arms. The walls were decorated with what looked like oversize black-and-white comic book pages in red frames at matching intervals.
The wall facing the couch had a HUGE TV hung on it—it appeared to be some kind of projector screen.
“Holy crap,” he said, helping her place the pizza boxes on a long tray table that passed over the couch and could be rolled away and pushed against the wall when not in use.
“This is my second office,” she said as she pulled up to one side of the couch, and he caught a trace of that defensiveness in her tone. “I do a lot of work in here, since watching things is part of my job.”
“It’s awesome,” he said. “And watching stuff is hard. I can’t always manage to sit down and focus. Understanding some things can be even harder, which is why I’m here, I guess.”
She locked the brakes on her chair, gripped the handles, and then pushed herself to a standing position. Her arms shook a bit, but she transferred herself to the couch smoothly, crossing her legs before reaching for the remote resting on the table.
He dropped onto the other side. It was big, but not big enough that he could forget she was beside him. The lights dimmed and he shifted in his seat.
They’d had dinner and were going to binge watch a show, and Gus hadn’t felt uncomfortable at all yet, but he was definitely starting to feel nervous.
“Why’d you name your site GirlsWithGlasses?” he asked to distract himself.
“Because I’m a jerk. Well, that and because when strangers decide to ask what’s ‘wrong’ with me, I tell them that my vision is 20/80,” she said drily, before pushing her glasses pointedly up her nose.
Gus laughed.
“Oh, I have something for you.” She leaned over the side of the couch suddenly, her T-shirt riding up to reveal a swath of brown skin. Gus quickly looked away because his impulsive mind was already wondering how that skin would feel under his palm.
No. She’s a friend.
A friend who was pretty and smart and probably a really good kisser.
When she popped back up after digging in the pouch on the side of her chair, she handed over what at first looked like a broken Rubik’s Cube, but when he took it into the palm of his hand, he realized it was a Rubik’s Snake, kind of like an upscale fidget toy.
“I know it’s not really a puzzle, but I got one in a promotional box and they’re supposed to be fun to just twist into different shapes. I know you like keeping your hands busy . . .” Her eyes went wide, and she looked down. “You know what I mean. Anyway, if you want it, it’s yours.”
Gus tossed the toy from one hand to another, then began twisting it into a different shape, a small smile playing at the corner of his mouth. She was thoughtful, even if she tried to pretend she was helping him for purely selfish reasons. “Thanks.”
“Ready?” she asked.
“Let’s do this.”
Chapter Five
Reggie had worried that maybe something like this would happen when she invited Gus over. She was a passionate woman—of course she would be too into the show at episode six to say no when he turned to her with pleading eyes and asked, “Can we keep watching?”
A half-series binge had turned into a full-series marathon fueled by Mountain Dew, a second round of salad and pizza, and a dessert of strawberry cheesecake.
There had been no awkwardness—well, there was, but it was the awkwardness of catching yourself being way too comfortable with someone you didn’t really know.
The awkwardness of wondering whether the person next to you felt your presence like a static shock, even when their eyes were glued to the screen, because you certainly felt theirs.