Chapter 23
I follow Mike into his kitchen when we get back.
I’ve got ten minutes before I have to head to Mitzy, and changing my shoes will take only two.
While he heads into the hall, I run my hand over the new white cabinets.
“Look at you moving up in the world,” I call.
“What’s next? Countertops? The kitchen sink? ”
I help myself to an open pack of Oreos I find in the newly installed pantry cupboards. Oreos are not as good as the cookies that were in the jar the other week, but I’m not choosy when it comes to sugar. “You wouldn’t happen to have any more of those snickerdoodles, would you?”
“No,” Mike yells from down the hall.
“Oh.” I bite into my Oreo. “Tell me where they’re from, and I’ll pick some up after my last walk today.”
Mike returns with a bottle of sunscreen in his hand. “No.”
“What’s that for?”
“You.”
“You want to rub it on my shoulders?” I dramatically sweep my hair to the side and turn around before making pouty lips at him over my shoulder. Yes, I’m being ridiculous. It’s the only way I can keep from blushing.
“Out. Go walk your dogs and talk to your cats. Make videos in your adorable cactus crown, and leave me be.”
I spend two hours with Princess Kitty, one of which is filled by doling out treats as she presses random buttons that I pretend lead to conversations. “Yes, I am a friend. More? Yes, you can have more treats. Yes, you are Mitzy.”
Afterward, I walk Kenny the Basset Hound, who poops more than any dog should. Then I meet and greet a new client in Bird Rock, a Pomeranian named Skibby who likes routine.
“Just sit on a bench when she gets tired. She likes to be outside and people watch.”
“Do I need to film content for her TikToks? Turn on a GoPro?” I ask.
The owner looks at me, confused. “She’s a dog.”
“Never mind.” I smile.
She’s my last walk of the day, and I have an entire Saturday evening with nothing to do after.
Ordinarily, this would be amazing. Except it means an entire evening to think about Mike on the other side of the fence and all his books that contain all his clever thoughts.
If he were just a pretty face, it’d be one thing, but I know what is inside his head.
I find a bench, and Skibby happily bounds up next to me. “Do you like Shakespeare?” I scratch the dog’s fluffy head and pull up the video of Mike’s performance from earlier today. I texted it to myself before I handed back his phone. “Don’t worry. I deleted the incriminating evidence.”
Skibby is panting hard and drooling as we watch the video, and it’s not lost on me that if I don’t do something drastic, this could be my future.
I send a text to Adam. Have a minute?
My phone rings. “Long time,” he says when I answer.
“Does your offer still stand? I’d love to pick up a shift or two at the escape room.”
“Are you kidding? We can always use the extra help. Especially on Saturdays. You wanna come in tonight? It’s Customer Cosplay Night, so it’s bound to be wild.”
Fun. “Count me in.”
“Cool. Find yourself a costume, and Stacey will put you to work.”
“You’re not going to be there?”
“I don’t know if I’ll be able to make it. I’m in LA today meeting with some contacts from my internship at Halifax Studios.”
“Are you an entrepreneur, or are you a grad student?” I tease. “Because if you’re this busy, I really don’t think you have time to be both.”
Adam laughs. “I was interviewing them for my thesis, okay? But they’re raving about this new Indian restaurant in Santa Monica.”
“And when have you ever said no to Indian food?”
“Well, I was going to show up in my vintage Nightbat costume tonight.”
I gasp. “The one you bought from that stunt double? You never wear that. You say it’s a piece of history and have it buried in archival-quality tissue paper in a box at Mom and Dad’s.”
“But then my friends said they wanted me to meet someone for dinner who has a case study I might be able to use for my thesis. Meanwhile, Stacey called and said we are booked to capacity. I called Mike this morning and asked if he could persuade you to help out tonight.”
“I heard.” Well, overheard. I grab Skibby and head back to her house. My lips curl into a smile. “So it sounds like I’m the one doing you the favor…”
“Nice try, but either we call picking up shifts an equitable arrangement, or the offer is rescinded. I can’t owe you one again.”
It was worth a try. “Fine. I’m going to let you get back to it. I have a costume to scrounge together.”
This is how I wind up in a vintage Starship Cruiser doctor’s uniform at Superhero Escapes. Blue fatigue jacket with rank and insignia, black pencil skirt with sheer black tights, and knee-high boots. Plus a white lab coat. It’s totally iconic.
“Bea?” Stacey says, barely pausing to look up from her tablet. “What are you doing here?”
“I’m picking up a shift. Adam said you were swamped. Something about Customer Cosplay Night?”
“Right. Try to embrace the ‘immersive’ in our experiential entertainment because I don’t have the energy to handle customer complaints in character tonight.”
I press my lips into an unamused smile. “I’ll do my best.” And I try—I really honestly try—not to smirk when I see the other employees dressed in cosplay scurrying around. But come on, they’re grown adults wearing superhero outfits and a lot of spandex.
Stacey looks up from her tablet and does a double take when she sees my costume. “No,” she says, gesturing to my Starship Cruiser insignia. “Absolutely not.”
“Excuse me?” Is this what happens when you smirk at spandex?
“Vanessa!” she yells.
A spunky young woman with red and blue pigtails appears. “S’up?”
“Can you help Bea with her cosplay?”
“On it!” Vanessa pulls me into the break room.
She looks me up and down. “This I think we can work with.” She pulls off my lab coat. “Not this, though,” she says of my fatigue jacket.
“Starship Cruiser is cool,” I say.
"Cool is the new Ohio. What you need is sigma." She shoves a green bustier and a new pack of green fishnet tights at me. “I think we can salvage the rest between your black skirt and boots. Is your skirt stretchy?”
“What?”
“It’d look cuter if you hiked it up past your navel.” She tugs the waistband of my skirt up higher. “See? Now you have legs.”
“What sort of self-respecting Starship Cruiser officer would I be in a skirt this short?”
Vanessa grabs a box of safety pins and is transforming my pencil skirt into a high-waisted, formfitting mini. “You wouldn’t. This is a licensed AJ Comics venture. If you work here, you have to represent. Lucky for you, Dr. Penelope Rose Hemmel is just your size.”
“Who?”
“Poison Hemlock. You know, the botanist who becomes a plant-woman hybrid?”
I freeze. “Is she into cacti?”
“Most comics have her with like tropicals and skibidi, but sure, they’re plants, right?” Vanessa stands back and tilts her head, staring at me. “Better. But you’re going to need a mask and glitter.”
“Better? I won’t be able to walk.”
“Yeah, well, you should have worn spandex. Spandex stretches.” Vanessa grabs a pair of scissors, and before I can stop her, she cuts a thigh slit into my skirt. “There. Now you’ll be able to walk.”
Well, I’m definitely never wearing this skirt in a courtroom again.
Vanessa pulls a fire-engine red wig from the closet, looks at me, and tosses it back in. “Come on.”
“Where are we going?”
“The ladies’ room. You gotta change into the rest before I do your makeup and streak your hair.”
Twenty minutes later, I cannot believe who I am in the mirror.
My eyes are covered in dark green glitter, and so are my lips.
My hair has taken on an auburn glow, and ivy vines—actual ones that Vanessa pulled from a wall outside—are in my messy topknot that for once looks absolutely sexy and not at all sloppy.
My green metallic bustier stops just an inch above my altered miniskirt.
Vanessa told me to put the green fishnets over my sheer tights, and I have to say my legs have never looked better.
“Hold still,” Vanessa says as she affixes a black mask to my skin. “Come find me at the end of the night when you want it off, K? There’s a right way and a wrong way to remove these things.”
She helps me into my lab coat, which she’s pinned into a completely different shape with a cinched waist and more vines spiraling artfully down the sleeves. She looks at me and nods. “Perfection.”
“Am I a hero or a villain?”
“Level ten baddie of the highest aura, present company and Badpun excepted.”
I brush my fingers over my mask. “How did you learn to do this?”
“YouTube. We’ve all had to boost our rizz since Adam brought on Catstrike.”
“This isn’t ‘boosted rizz.’ This is incredible, impossible.”
“Helps when you have good cheekbones.” She rolls up her makeup brushes. “Come on. We’re late for the all-staff.”
The level of detail in Adam’s escape room is unreal.
His cosplayers are next-level. I feel like I am on a movie set, and what’s weirder, I feel like I belong.
I look every inch the part of a mad scientist who got drenched in sexpot villain magic.
I feel it too. It might not be superpowers thrumming inside me, but I’m definitely feeling a heady rush that makes me forget that I walked in that door in an old boring pencil skirt I used to wear to work.
Self-doubt, prickly nature—those are gone, and in their place is a sexy, devil-may-care confidence.
Mike walks in and does a double take when he sees me, and in that instant, I make a decision. I’m committing to the cosplay. Tonight, I am Poison Hemlock. Last time I was here, Mike could hide whatever he wanted to say underneath the cosplay. Now it’s my turn.
Mike walks with the languid arrogance of a predator. “Well, well. Who knew one cactus crown would lead to this? How does it feel, Bea, to be a deranged psycho with the rest of us?”
“Tonight, I answer to Dr. Hemmel, Penelope Rose, or Poison Hemlock.”
Mike chuckles. He doesn’t leave my side.
“Checking out my handiwork?” Vanessa asks.