“Okay, I’ll do it,” I say. “If you agree to be on our show at some point.” I have no ideas for a sketch right now, but him climbing with one of our characters could be hilarious.
Jason laughs. “Sweet, will do.” He looks back at Emily. “So, I—”
“We need to get the rest of this set up,” I cut him off before he can chat his way into Emily thinking she should be dating him instead of my cousin. “So we’ll see you around?”
He blinks, then shrugs. “Cool beans, Hobbit. See you both around.” He gives us—mostly Emily—one last grin, then saunters off with his hands in the pockets of his slouchy cargo shorts.
Emily watches him go. “You know, I never thought a guy could actually sound hot saying ‘cool beans,’ but he makes it work.”
I wrinkle my nose.
Emily laughs. “What? He’s super cute.”
“Yeah, sure. But he’s a little on the loud side, don’t you think? Like awfully yell-y.”
Emily considers. “Well, yeah, but there’s a lot of noise here, so we’re all being loud.”
“But he’s like that all the time.” I feel a twist of guilt for talking bad about Jason and especially bad for what I say next, because I know this is the clincher. “And he’s kind of a player.”
Now it’s Emily wrinkling her nose. She really doesn’t like players. Not that shenevercasually dates around, but she’s always transparent with where she’s at with a guy, and generally doesn’t feel like dating is worth her time if there’s not the potential for it to go somewhere serious.Technically I don’t know if Jason is a player, but from what I’ve seen, I don’t think he’s the kind of guy who does serious relationships.
“Besides,” I say, pulling out my phone and doing a quick Facebook search. “You’ve got this guy showing up tomorrow and looking forward to reconnecting.” I hold up my phone, which now has a great pic ofTate making a cute mock-disgusted face in front of a bowl of Panda Express’s orange chicken—which is actually his favorite food.
She laughs despite herself, and I smile. “You really think he’s still into me?” she asks, pursing her lips.
“I know it. But you’ll see yourself when he gets here.”
Emily sighs, shaking her head. “Fine, I’ll keep an open mind and see how it goes. No promises!”
I throw my arms around her. “None needed. You guys are so great together. I have full confidence it’ll work out.”
“Of course you do,” she says with chuckle. “Because Su-Lin plans never fail.” She doesn’t sound sarcastic about this, though—just amusedly resigned.Then she clicks theTV, which powers on. “Oh, hey, the outlet works! Great job,” she says, as if I had anything to do with it.
But I’ll take it. Maybe this is just my lucky week.
Four
Brendan
It feels like Su-Lin takes forever to come up to the room, though this may be because I’ve barely been apart from her since her sister’s wedding. We had the excuse of preparation for the con, but the truth is, we were already prepared.
And I’ve gotten clingy. Not that Su-Lin seems to have noticed—or minded—yet, but I sure have. I’ve always been happiest when we’re together, and she’s pretty constantly on my mind. But now I begrudge the universe every minute we’re apart. If I had my way, we’d always be near each other, always be laughing, always be touching.
I look over at the second bed, where Su-Lin has left her open suitcase and her small pillow that’s shaped like a puffy stick-person and covered in tufted clouds. She sleeps cuddling it—I’ve seen this a number of times when I’ve crashed at her house.
Of all the things I thought dating again might do to me, making me irrationally jealous of a freaking pillow is not one of them.
Besides, we can’t share a bed.That’s the opposite of casual. I’m just glad we booked this room long before we decided to casually date, or there’s no way we would have been able to justify spending our nights together.
The con is local to LA, but we decided to get a hotel room so we wouldn’t have to drive and park downtown everyday, and most importantly, so I would have somewhere to retreat to when I start to get overwhelmed.The quickest way to a panic attack is to leave myself no escape. While, yeah, technically I have editing I could be doing, the real reason I didn’t stay at the booth is because I’m starting to get nervous about pacing myself through this thing. Besides, Emily had things well in hand, and I’ve gotten the impression that she prefers to do things herself so that they get done exactly the way that she wants them.
I’ve been to cons before—that’s where Su-Lin and I met, at a con where a documentary on geek culture that I edited made its debut. But even then, I wasn’t the talent.The talent gets recognized. Everywhere. I am not looking forward to this.
I keep telling myself it’s like the hair. Here, when people approach me, they’re going to want to talk about the show, about how I came to work with Su-Lin, about what it’s like to work together. I have answers for all of that, so it’s not like I’ll be at a loss for things to say.
The door opens, and Su-Lin breezes in, shaking her head. “You’ll never believe who was hitting on Emily down in the dealer’s room.”
“Tate?” I guess.Though I’m thinking she’d be happy about that, and she looks peeved.
