Maya squeezes a little further into my room but stays in the doorway. “I think the yak was something like ‘my dream is to party with Loren Hale on his birthday’—not at all detailed.” She casts sly glances from Garrison to me, back and forth, but she’s not as worried as when I first brought him over.

As the Superheroes & Scones manager, she finds his attitude troubling. She was worried he’d steal the comics and sell them online.

The fact that I brought him to our apartment—that he’s grown closer to me—made her a bit more protective and apprehensive too. I think she thought maybe this all might be a trick. Get close to the geek for other reasons.

Burn her. Make fun of her. Humiliate her.

Like classic teen movies. He’d try to change me, so that I’d become popular like him. Or he’d pull some cruel prank in the very end.

Neither has happened.

Outside of lacrosse, he spends nearly all his free time with me. He’ll message me on Tumblr first. (We still haven’t exchanged phone numbers.) Sometimes, he’s already in the parking lot before he asks if he can come up. Sometimes I wonder if a tree was outside my apartment complex, if he’d climb it and knock on the window.

I think he would.

Garrison might not be up-to-date on comics like the other Superhero & Scones employees, but he has a geeky side that he’s repressed and hidden from his friends.

He loves computers.

He loves video games. Retro things like Lion King on Sega and Pokémon. We spent three whole days playing Mario Party on N64, and if he asked, I’d waste another three weeks doing the same thing with him.

That doesn’t feel like someone tricking me.

And so far, he’s proven trustworthy at the store. No theft. No vandalism.

“Garrison,” Maya says, catching his attention from the video game. “Just a heads up, I’ll be quizzing you about Cable’s history on your next shift. Two wrong answers”—she holds up two fingers—“and you have toilet duty.”

“Shit,” he mutters and mouths to me, who’s Cable?

I try to restrain a smile. “I’ll help you.” Cable is in X-Men and has a complex history, tangled with Scott Summers, so it might go over his head at first, but he’s caught on with other superheroes before.

Garrison swings his head back to Maya. “Should I take this heads up as you partially liking me?”

Maya wears a great poker face and then says something in Korean, knowing he can’t understand. She grips the door, about to leave.

“One day I’m going to learn Korean!” Garrison calls after her. “And then what are you going to do about it?”

She pops her head back in. “That’ll be the day.” She slips out, just as quickly. Then she pops her head in one more time. “Friendly reminder: I’m to report back to Loren if anything R-rated is happening in Willow’s room. I don’t like being a spy, so don’t make me be one.”