Chapter 11
Jo’s group text with her California friends completely blew up over the next few days. One person (usually Max) would send a random text that said “INDI-CON” with a long string of exclamation points, and everyone else would reply with whichever excited gif suited their mood. Then there were the vital discussions about which games they’d signed up for, their dinner reservation for Friday night, and, of course, Felix. Only Aida (and probably Trey, because those two shared everything) knew about her feelings for him, but Jo gave everyone a rundown of her volunteering and a heads-up that he was tagging along.
Everyone said all the right things about being excited to meet him, but as the day of the road trip approached, Jo couldn’t stop her growing worry. Sure, Felix had seemed to enjoy their sample game once he’d gotten into the swing of things, but Indi-Con was different. She was about to throw him headfirst into two straight days of gaming, plus make him meet her closest friends all at once. What if it was too much? What if they walked into the convention center and he immediately regretted coming? What if this whole thing was her worst idea ever?
Jo did her best to keep those thoughts at bay by busying herself with preparations for the trip. On Wednesday, she went through her MnM backpack and character sheets to make sure she had everything she needed for her games. On Thursday, she treated herself to a manicure and dropped off her spare key with Vanessa so she could catsit for Merry. Then, she packed.
Jo took packing very seriously. First, her usual con attire: her softest leggings, nerdy T-shirts she’d cut into crop tops, comfy shoes and socks, and her trusty jean jacket. Into a second bag went her pajamas, hair dryer, curling iron, makeup, toiletries, emergency tampons, and extra underwear. And a book. Just in case. A few other necessities—her MnM backpack of course, plus two tote bags full of car snacks, and a flat of water bottles—and she was ready to go.
She loaded everything into her trunk to make sure there was room for whatever Felix was bringing. As long as he packed lighter than she did, they’d be good. If he didn’t? God help them.
Finally, she cuddled in bed with Merry until the pre-con jitters settled. She spent the night dreaming of rolling dice, hugging Aida, and adventuring alongside a dragonkin fighter with a wicked right cross.
When she pulled up to Felix’s address the next morning, he was waiting for her. A rush of relief hit her that he hadn’t backed out at the last minute. He was even smiling, as if he were happy to see her. She smiled back, waving through the windshield.
His house was single story, with pale yellow siding, a bright green door, and a few stone steps leading to a fenced-in porch. A porch where Felix was standing in charcoal lounge pants, a plain black T-shirt, and his Rutgers hoodie with a backpack over one shoulder and a duffel bag over the other. He held two drink tumblers in his hands. His hair was damp, his jaw unshaven.
“Jesus Christ, dude,” she murmured to herself as he jogged over. She popped open the hatchback and heard his high-pitched chuckle as he tossed in his bags.
“Think you brought enough stuff?” he teased as he settled in next to her, juggling the tumblers. Several additional swear words flew through Jo’s mind as the heady scent of a freshly showered Felix hit her square in the face.
“Good morning to you too,” she replied with an ease she hoped hid her sudden horniness. “Did you bring coffee?”
“I should’ve asked how you take yours,” he said, “but by the time I realized that, I figured you’d already be driving.”
“You’ve taken up your hero’s calling today, my friend. I’ll drink anything that’s not plain, unsweetened black,” she said.
“So regular con leche or vanilla?” he said, holding up the tumblers. “Café con leche is kind of like a strong latte.”
“Regular.”
“Thank God. This one’s yours.” He indicated the red tumbler with gold polka dots and set it in the cupholder for her. He held onto a yellow one covered in bees and daisies and put his seatbelt on.
“Last chance to back out,” Jo said, resting her palm on the gearshift. Her heart clenched with anticipation.
“No way,” he replied with a laugh. The click of his seatbelt in its buckle punctuated his statement. “I’m game if you are.”
“Was that a pun?”
“Yes.”
Her confidence renewed, Jo reversed out of the driveway and eased onto the street. Her phone chirped robotic directions to I-35 North.
“I like your place,” she commented as they pulled away from it.
“It’s Tito’s house,” he said. “And these mugs were Lita’s. She adored her café. Taught me how to make con leche, americano, cortado, just about every way there is to drink coffee in Spain, plus some of her own concoctions.”
Jo lifted her coffee in toast. “To Lita. I’m honored to partake of her legacy.” She took a sip and caught Felix’s gaze momentarily when she put the tumbler back in the cupholder. What she glimpsed there was enough to make sparks flash like lightning all over her skin. She shivered and quickly bumped up the heat so Felix would think she was cold.
“First of all, that’s delicious,” she said. “And second of all, can I ask you a question?”
“Sure,” he said. He pulled sunglasses out of his hoodie pocket and slid them on. Jo fought to keep her eyes on the road.
“Are your parents in the picture?”
“How do you mean?”
“You’ve never talked about them, and when Tito needed somebody last year, it was you who showed up. I wondered if maybe your parents weren’t part of your life.” Suddenly worried she was overstepping, she added, “Sorry, is that too personal?”
“No, it’s fine,” he said evenly. “I have a decent enough relationship with my parents. A few years ago, they retired to Spain, so I don’t see them much. They did come out here when Lita was sick, but they went back shortly after the funeral. They talked about taking Tito back to Spain with them, but I’d already decided to stay here. He would never leave the place where his wife is buried anyway.”
“I hope I find that someday. That kind of love,” Jo breathed, barely aware of what she was saying until the words were already out.
Felix turned toward her, his expression inscrutable behind his sunglasses. After a moment, he said, “Me too.”
They fell quiet while Jo merged onto the highway.
“Are both your parents Spanish?” she asked, hoping to steer the conversation somewhere a little less intense.
“Just my dad,” Felix said. “Tito and Lita came to the U.S. in their twenties, when she was pregnant with him. I don’t know the details, but apparently it was a rough childbirth, and she almost didn’t make it. They never tried for any more kids after that. Mom doesn’t speak a word of Spanish, but she always thought Spain was so romantic. She and Dad went to Barcelona on their honeymoon, and she’s the one who convinced him to retire there.”
He paused for a long sip and said, “Your turn. You’ve never talked about your parents either. Or any siblings. I have none, by the way.”
Jo reached for her coffee and bumped into Felix’s elbow where it rested on the console between them. She muttered an apology and hoped he didn’t notice her blushing. “My parents divorced when I was in high school. My mom moved to NorCal once we were all in college, and my dad is still in Garden Grove, where we grew up in the shadow of Disneyland. I’m the middle child, between two brothers.”
“Are they also named after Dolly Parton hits? Let me guess: ‘Nine-to-Five’ and ‘I-Will-Always-Love-You’?”
Jo tossed a look his direction. “You know she has a song called ‘Joshua,’ right?”
“Damn it,” he cried, smacking his palm on his knee. “That would have been much more clever.”
She reached over and patted his shoulder. Even through the thick hoodie, she could feel its firmness. “I forgive you. You -haven’t finished your coffee yet.”
He sighed and took a long gulp. His loud swallows and the smack of his lips were probably meant to be funny, but each sound his mouth made sent a shockwave of desire rocketing through Jo’s body. She bit down, hard, on the inside of her cheek. She could still smell the cloves-and-sweet-coffee scent of him and his damn vanilla café con leche. How adorable was it that Felix liked vanilla in his coffee?
Jesus fuck. This road trip was definitely her worst idea ever, but not for the reason she’d feared all week. Being beside Felix was like sitting too close to a fire. She was going to combust before the nine-and-a-half-hour drive was over. Maybe even before the first hour was up. At least she would go surrounded by pretty country—-all these amber waves of grain, waist-high prairie grasses, and fields of sunflowers as far as the eye could see.
“I didn’t expect Kansas to be so beautiful,” she said. Hopefully Felix didn’t mind the sudden change of subject, but she needed to say something to distract herself.
“Beautiful?” he asked.
“Yeah, look how green it is!” She gestured through the windshield. “All this rain you get—back home, everything turns brown in the summer. And the smog, God. The air out here is so clean you can see forever.”
Felix quieted, turning away from her to look out the passenger window.
“You don’t think it’s pretty?” she asked.
“It’s not that,” he said softly, almost wistfully. “I suppose I just haven’t really thought much about it since moving back to the Midwest.”
“I guess if you grow up with it, you get used to it.”
“Maybe,” he replied. He turned back to her, and she stole a glance to see a gentle smile on his face. “But it’s nice to see it through your eyes.”
Jo’s whole body felt even hotter. She turned the heater back down and checked the clock on the dashboard. Only nine hours and thirteen minutes to go, not including lunch, gas, and pee breaks. She was never going to make it to Indianapolis alive.
Felix took a minute to breathe in the rest stop men’s room, which, given his surroundings, was not the smartest decision. They were stopped in Missouri, between Columbia, where they’d gotten lunch, and St. Louis. Four-and-a-half hours down, five to go. He was losing his mind. He was crawling out of his skin.
The night before, lying in bed at two in the morning, wide awake and horny as fuck, he’d made a decision. He was tired of settling for his hand and his imagination in the shower. Tired of making excuses about professionalism. Tired of pretending he didn’t want Jo. Tired of pretending he didn’t see the way she wanted him too. She’d always thought he was hot. That much had been obvious from their first Friday after hours in the library. Even without the text from Aida he wasn’t supposed to see, he would have known. Jo wasn’t exactly subtle about it.
But there was more to it now. They were friends, and they liked each other, and they wanted each other.
So he’d decided: he wasn’t going to hold himself back anymore. He wouldn’t admit his feelings right away. On the off chance he was misreading her, he wouldn’t risk making things awkward when they were about to spend four straight days together. But he was done pretending. By the time she dropped him off at home on Monday night, she was going to know exactly how he felt about her.
He’d finally been able to sleep after that and had woken up in the morning resolved to be as kind and caring and charming and gentle as possible. Everything he wanted to be for her. Everything she deserved. He just hadn’t expected that the moment he sat down in the car beside her, his insides would turn into jelly, and he’d regret making the comfortable choice to wear sweatpants.
He stepped out of the men’s room into the blazing afternoon sun. Jo was standing next to her car, her legs wide, rocking side to side to stretch out her hips.
“Fuck everything,” he mumbled, hypnotized by the sway of her teardrop-shaped body. No, not a teardrop—that was much too sad an image for Jo. She was a dew drop hanging off the point of a leaf on a damp morning. A bead of sweat running down heated skin. He wanted to stick out his tongue and drink her down. To take all that she was inside of him and finally, finally quench his thirst. To drown in the flood of her magnificence.
Apparently, Tito wasn’t the only poet in the family.
Jo grinned at him, oblivious to the storm raging inside him, the thunder roaring in his ears. “Ready?”
“Would you like me to drive for a while?” he asked. “I’d be happy to give you a break if you don’t mind me driving your car.”
“Seriously? That would be amazing. Think fast!” She tossed her keys at him, and he caught them easily. She ran around to the passenger side and dove for the door, as if he might change his mind if she didn’t get there first. This woman was going to destroy him.
Fuck, she already had.
Back on the highway, he said, “All right, we’ve talked about family, the beauty of the Midwest, childhood vacations, minor high school traumas, and your California friends. What’s next?”
“Actually, do you mind if we put some music on?”
“Sure,” he replied. “Here. Use my phone to save your battery for the GPS.” Felix dug his phone out of his pocket and unlocked it with his thumbprint. He opened his music app before handing it to Jo. Their fingers brushed as she took it, and he didn’t hurry to pull away. “Pick whatever you want.”
She quietly connected his phone to the car speakers and scrolled through the app. He tried to keep his eyes forward, but her nails were painted a distractingly pretty kelly green with orange d20 shapes on her ring fingers. Suddenly, she gasped and tapped something. Before he could ask, a bass-y synth hit sounded, followed by an electronic “whoop.” He’d know that intro anywhere.
“‘Aughts workout mix’?” Jo said, holding up his phone as the lyrics to “Circus” kicked in. She’d found his boxing playlist.
“Don’t you dare make fun of me,” he said, completely deadpan. “Britney is a legend.”
“Nobody is arguing that,” she laughed. “It was just unexpected. Are you a ‘put on a show kind of girl’?”
Felix gave her his most flirtatious smirk. He slid his sunglasses down his nose and winked. “When the mood strikes.”
Her jaw slackened, and her cheeks went bright pink. Felix pushed his sunglasses up as he turned back to the road. The pre-chorus kicked in, and he belted it out. Jo laughed again, that loud sound he loved so much, and joined him. They sang every word together. As soon as the song ended, the next one kicked in. A guitar riff solo started the track, then violins joined in, then drums and synth trilling up and down the scale.
“Wait, this is ABBA,” Jo said. “It’s from the seventies. Why is this on here?”
“What does it say in parentheses?” Felix asked.
Jo tapped the screen to wake it up. “‘A Man After Midnight’?”
“The other parentheses.”
“‘Original Motion Picture Soundtrack,’” she read.
“From Mamma Mia.”
“That’s not in the parentheses, but yeah.”
“Which came out in 2008,” he explained in a tone that would accept no argument. “It counts.”
“Fucking librarians,” she scoffed. “Got an answer for everything.”
“Be quiet and sing.”
She opened her mouth to argue with that logic, but Felix was already singing the chorus.
They passed the afternoon eating junk food and singing along to Lady Gaga, Jimmy Eat World, Flo Rida, and, of course, more Britney. Felix drove them through St. Louis, across Illinois, and over the state line into Indiana. Jo offered to take over for the last leg into Indianapolis, and he accepted. Twenty minutes past seven o’clock, she pulled up to the Hotel Paragon, a tall building across the street from a convention center boasting giant green and orange “Indi-Con” banners.
“Your nails match,” Felix said.
Jo grinned. “You noticed?”
“Of course.”
They parked in the underground garage, stretched their legs and backs, and loaded themselves up with their weekend luggage. Jo told him to leave the water bottles where they were. She’d grab some the next day to pass around so people didn’t have to pay five bucks a bottle from the convention center vendors. Felix didn’t quite have words for how much he admired that thoughtfulness of hers.
The lobby of the Hotel Paragon was packed with nerds. As he and Jo stood in line to check into their rooms, he cast his eyes around to take it all in. MnM T-shirts everywhere. Clusters of people in full costume as elves, wizards, red-skinned demonkin, and blue-finned merfolk. Folks of every race and gender and age and body type and hair color, united by their love of Monsters and Mythology. What was it Aida had said? Drinking from the firehose of MnM. That seemed pretty damn accurate. He only understood about a third of the conversations happening around him with all the abbreviations and jargon. He was in way over his head.
Jo is here, he told himself to calm the jitters in his stomach. She’ll help me. It’ll be fine.
“Next, please,” said the woman behind the front desk. Jo moved aside to wait for him, holding her room key booklet between her fingers.
“Checking in. Felix Navarro,” he said as he approached. He set down his duffel and pulled out his wallet for his credit card.
“JO!”
Two people were running in their direction. Felix recognized them from Jo’s descriptions in the car. Kim Capell, a plus-sized white woman with alabaster skin, blue eyes, and freckles, was wearing her signature style of fifties vintage. From the curled jet-black hair tied up with a red kerchief to the wide-necked white top and red cigarette pants, she was head-to-toe rockabilly. Alongside her was a short, slim white man with piercing emerald--green eyes. Max Kelly, most likely, judging by the baggy jeans, shaggy teal hair, and Super Mario Bros. T-shirt. According to Jo, Max had never been seen by a member of their group in anything other than a video game shirt.
Jo squealed and dropped her bags to hug them both at the same time. Kim and Jo started chattering a mile a minute while Max silently grinned.
“Sir?” said the woman at the desk. “I’m sorry, could you please spell your last name for me?”
Felix did so, and the woman clicked her tongue. “That’s what I have here. I’m not finding your reservation, I’m afraid. Could it be under a different name?”
“No, just me,” he said.
“Do you have your confirmation number? I’ll try that,” she said. “It should have been emailed to you.”
Felix searched for the hotel name in his email but didn’t find anything. Strange. He searched again in the trash in case he accidentally deleted it, but there was nothing. He moved aside and told the woman he needed a moment to find it, gesturing to the person behind him in line to come forward.
“Is everything okay?” Jo asked.
“They can’t find my reservation, and I don’t have a confirmation email,” he said, scrolling through his inbox carefully. He checked his work email and his credit card app to see if there was any evidence of his booking there. Nothing. He pushed a hand through his hair. “It must not have gone through when I booked it.”
He returned to the desk when the woman was free, explained the situation, and asked if he could book a room now. She gave him a pleasant, dead-eyed smile and a speech she’d probably delivered a hundred times today. “I’m terribly sorry, sir, but we’re booked up. I have vacancies starting Sunday night, but nothing for tonight or tomorrow.”
Felix puffed out a breath. “I understand. Completely my fault. Thank you for your help. I’ll try another hotel.”
“Good luck,” she singsonged as Felix returned to Jo and her friends.
“I need to try a different hotel. They’re booked,” he told them.
“Uh, everywhere’s booked, dude,” Max said. “It’s fucking INDI--CON!” A few people near them cheered and huzzahed.
“I gathered,” Felix said flatly.
“You could… stay with me?” Jo said, barely audible.
Felix went weak at the knees. He couldn’t. Could he? He shouldn’t. But what other choice did he have? He should try the other hotels first, at least. He should refuse. Definitely. Refusing was the gentlemanly thing to do.
But the look in Jo’s pale brown eyes was… hopeful, almost pleading.
Fuck being a gentleman.
“Are you sure, Jo?” he asked. Gentleman or (decidedly) not, he had to be certain the offer was genuine. He watched her closely for any sign of apprehension. “You’re comfortable with that?”
Without so much as a blink, Jo’s gaze sharpened. She pulled one of the keycards from her little booklet and held it out to him like a precious offering. “Yes.”
He reached out with both hands, enclosing them around her fingers and letting her release the key to him. He withdrew with deliberate gentleness and watched her breath catch in her chest. He inched half a step closer to her.
“You guys are joining us for dinner, right?” Max blurted.
Felix looked past Jo. Max was distracted by something on his phone, but Kim was watching closely, her wide eyes darting back and forth between them, wearing an expression that plainly said, Holy shit, are these two fucking?
Jo spun to face her friends as if nothing had happened. “Yup! We’ll take our stuff upstairs and meet you back here in a few.”
“Jo,” Felix said. “I’m pretty tired. Mind if I take a raincheck on dinner?”
The disappointment on her face was a knife between his ribs.
“If that’s what you want.”
“I’ll meet everyone tomorrow, I promise,” he said quietly. “Go catch up with your friends. I’ll take your bags upstairs for you.” He stooped to gather everything; he could manage it all in one trip if he planned it right.
“Okay,” Jo said. “It’s room eight-thirteen. I’ll text you when I’m headed back.”
“I’ll see you in a bit.” He raised his voice to call, “Kim, Max, good to meet you. I’ll see you all tomorrow. Have fun at dinner.”
Her eyes burned into his back all the way to the elevator. As the doors closed between them, those eyes, wide and anguished, were the last thing he saw.
“Fuck, fuck, fuck.” Felix squeezed his own eyes shut so he wouldn’t have to look at himself in the mirrored walls that surrounded him. “I’m sorry, Jo.”