Chapter 7

Matt

It was stupid to feel so disappointed, but I was.

I followed Julia out of the elevator and we separately checked in at the front desk. I led the way to the elevators again and we compared room numbers.

“Neighbors,” she said with a bubbly smile that made me feel even worse.

Where had the Julia from the car gone? For a second there she’d been a human being—not just that, she’d been interesting and intelligent and there’d been depth and layers to her personality, and now? Now I was walking beside Bimbo Barbie again, all smiles and awesome personal insights like ‘it’s just fun, I guess.’

I scrubbed a hand over my face as we exited the elevators and headed down the hallway. Maybe I was too quick to judge.

You think? It was Suzie’s voice I heard in my head, dripping with sarcasm.

That’s how well I knew my friends—I knew exactly what they’d say if they were here. Margo would have chimed in with a loud laugh as she regaled us with all the many times I’d been a judgmental ass. Those would have been her words, not mine.

So fine, maybe I was a bit too quick to judge. But that didn’t change the fact that Julia’s sudden shift from a cool, interesting comics-obsessed hottie to a closed-off, impossible to read, seemingly shallow flake was hard to swallow.

It was like I’d gotten a glimpse of the Holy Grail and then had it snatched away from me just as it was my turn to hold it.

My disappointment might have been out of proportion, but it was real. The girl walking next to me commenting on the artwork that dotted the walls? She was definitely not real.

“This is me,” she said as she stopped in front of her door.

I stopped a few feet away in front of mine. “Right, well I guess I’ll see you—”

I was cut off by a blood-curdling screech coming from down the hall. Julia and I both turned to see a pretty dark-skinned girl with awesomely wild curls come bounding down the hall in our direction. “Jules!” she cried in that same high-pitched screech.

To my complete and utter amazement, Julia joined in on the screaming and a second later the girl hurtling down the hallway had tackled her to the ground.

They were both laughing and talking as the new girl’s friends came down the hall to join us.

“I told you I was coming, Thea,” Julia said through her laughter as she struggled upright.

“I still can’t believe you made it,” her friend said as she wrapped Julia in another hug now that they were sitting upright.

As the girl’s friends approached—a mix of three guys and a couple girls—they eyed me with friendly smiles, but their attention was largely on Julia.

“Good to see you, Jules,” one of them said. Some of the guys were helping them to their feet and soon Julia was surrounded by a group of people who obviously knew and loved her.

Really, it wasn’t all that different from all the years I’d seen her in the hallway at Grover High except that instead of being surrounded by football players and fellow cheerleaders, she was surrounded by a bunch of…well, geeks.

I wasn’t saying that in a mean way, but the overall vibe I was getting here was so not cool. I mean, one guy was sporting flip-up glasses. You know, the ones that went out of style somewhere around 1989? Another was wearing an oversized Doctor Who T-shirt while one of the girls wore Laura Ingalls-style braids and the most unattractive pair of overalls I’d ever seen.

But the truly amazing part was—Julia seemed to fit in with this crowd just as easily as she did with the Joels and the Caras of Grover High. She was throwing herself into hugs and laughing at their jokes and…

She was freakin’ amazing.

I took a step back and shook off the thought. Just because she was hanging out with a different crowd didn’t mean she was different. But the Julia from the car? She was back around these guys. I couldn’t stop watching her because the transformation was night and day. That broad smile of hers was the same but so very different. Maybe because it reached her eyes and made them dance with laughter. But it went beyond just the genuine smile, it was everything about her. She seemed to light up from the inside out, her whole being vibrated with energy and happiness.

It was only when I saw her like this that I realized what had always bothered me about the great, beloved Julia Farrow, head cheerleader at Grover High. She’d always seemed happy and smiley but…soulless.

I’d never even known what was missing until I saw the difference in her now. Unlike in the car, standing here in the hallway I could watch her. I could see the transformation happen right in front of my eyes.

One of the guys turned away from Julia to eye me. “Who’s this?” The question wasn’t unfriendly, just a request for introductions.

“Oh, uh…” Julia seemed to only now remember that I was standing there watching this reunion unfold. Her smile faded and I caught a hint of embarrassment that tugged at something inside of me. Another sign that the great, unflappable Julia Farrow was indeed vulnerable.

I should have known that by now, but it seemed I kept relearning the lesson.

Seeing that hint of uncertainty had me stepping forward and taking the lead. “Hey, I’m Julia’s friend from school.” I stuck my hand out to the guy who’d asked for the introduction. “Matt. Nice to meet you.”

He grinned as he shook my hand. “Alan. Any friend of Jules’ is a friend of ours.”

Her friend Thea was openly eyeing me from head to toe. “Jules, are you holding out on us? Do you finally have a real boyfriend?”

Finally? I shot a look over in Julia’s direction, but she didn’t meet my eyes. The girl has rarely not had a boyfriend, as far as I knew.

And I knew. One couldn’t attend Grover High without knowing all the details of this girl’s love life. The few months at the start of this year was the only time she hadn’t been linked to one of Grover’s top-performing athletes. The girl had been a serial monogamist since middle school.

She still didn’t meet my eyes as she answered. “Matt and I are just friends. He’s here to cover the con for our local paper.”

“Ooh, you write?” The girl with the braids lit up. “I’m Marnie,” she said as she thrust a hand in my direction.

I opened my mouth to reply but she was already off and running with more questions. It seemed Marnie was a budding journalist herself, though she was here strictly as a civilian, she was quick to report.

The girl rarely let me get a word in edgewise and I caught Julia watching us with amusement as she caught up with the others in the group. I didn’t catch much of the conversation but I did take note when Thea started pleading. “Oh, come on. You can’t miss it. You never miss it.”

It wasn’t Thea’s words that caught my interest so much as Julia’s reaction, which was to flick worried glances in my direction.

“Can’t miss what?” I asked.

Julia shot her friend a warning glance that she either didn’t notice or outright ignored. “The costume contest,” Thea said. “We go every year, don’t we, Jules?”

Julia gave her friend a little grimace. “Yeah. Um, I don’t think that’s Matt’s cup of tea.”

“Sure it is,” I said quickly.

She shot me a look that I took to mean “stay out of this” but as ‘this’ was all about me, I ignored her just as easily as Thea did. “Count us in.”

Us. It sounded way more intimate than I’d meant it to. Like there actually was an us. The only reason it felt odd was because Thea had leapt to conclusions about us, and it seemed she was still reading way too much into our relationship. Thea’s smile was way too knowing. “You two are so cute together.”

Julia shook her head. “Thea, I told you we’re just friends.” She shot me a withering look that I couldn’t even pretend to ignore. “And Matt here doesn’t even have a costume. Isn’t that right, Matt?”

“We can find him something,” Thea said, waving aside Julia’s concerns.

“Yeah,” I said. “We can find something.” I grinned at Julia, oddly amused by her discomfort. I mean, maybe I should have been insulted by the fact that she clearly didn’t want me coming along to this party tonight, but I had a feeling her hesitation had more to do with her own embarrassment and less to do with not wanting to be seen with me.

Some of my certainty faded when she narrowed her eyes at me, a wicked little smile playing over her lips. “Okay, yeah.” She turned to Thea and her smile lost its mischievous edge. “We’ll both be there.”

“Great!” Thea beamed at me like we’d just scored a win.

It dawned on me that maybe this Thea knew Julia far better than I did. I mean, obviously she knew her well—not many people tackled strangers in a hallway—but maybe she knew the real Julia.

The Julia I actually sort of liked.

“We’re grabbing lunch, do you two want to come?” Marnie asked.

I shook my head. “I’ve got to check out a workshop that Julia said I shouldn’t miss.”

Julia gave a satisfied little nod, clearly pleased that I’d been paying attention to her little lecture in the car. How could I not? The girl was enchanting when she talked comics. I imagined it had less to do with the topic and more to do with her passion—I’d never found talk of anything so captivating, least of all comics.

Thea gave me a wink as she nudged Julia’s elbow. “You’re in good hands with our girl here.”

Her friends all exchanged a grin. “You two have fun,” Doctor Who guy called out, already on his way to the elevator.

You two? Was it my imagination or were they all acting like we were an us?

Better question, why did that make my heart pound and my hands grow clammy? I’d never once gotten this nervous around…well, anyone, least of all Julia Farrow. But sure enough, the moment her friends disappeared into the elevator and I found myself alone with Julia…there was no denying the weird nervous energy that made speech impossible.

“So I take it you’re coming with me to that workshop I told you about,” Julia said, her smile smug.

Rightfully so.

“If you don’t mind me tagging along…” I started.

She shook her head. “Of course not. Let me just drop off my stuff.” She flashed me a brilliant smile that was filled with excitement as she swiped the key card and headed inside.

I stood there in shocked silence for a heartbeat before I finally did the same, tossing my bag onto the hotel bed before coming back out in the hallway to see her already waiting, that same excited grin lighting up her features and making her eyes dance with something so intoxicating it made me dizzy.

Margo’s words of warning from the day before hit me smack in the forehead as I realized in complete and utter horror that this thing I was feeling went beyond attraction. It wasn’t an objective response to a beautiful woman. This sensation? I’d never experienced it before, but I’d seen it happen all around me.

Oh man. Was I developing a crush on Julia Farrow?

No, that wasn’t possible.

Was it?

My body said otherwise because my heart was racing at the sight of that smile. My chest was closing in on itself as she snagged the elbow of my jacket and started tugging me along beside her. “You ready for this?”

Was I ready for this? No. Whatever was happening here between us, I was so not ready. I forced a smile to match hers when she turned to look back at me. “Ready as I’ll ever be.”