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.