America’s Geekheart

by Grant, Pippa

  “I don’t know if I’m in the right headspace for this,” I whisper to him. “I feel like the atomic structure of my bones is shifting from a calcium construct to powdered sugar.”

  “Just follow my lead, okay?”

  He smiles at me—not that goofball grin, and not the smolder, but a real, friendly I’ve got you, Sarah smile—and my racing hearts starts to slow.

  “Ready?”

  I lick my lips and nod.

  His eyes drift to my mouth, and his pupils go big and round, hiding all that beautiful deep summer sky and now I really don’t care that my ribs might shatter with the barest jostle of the spun glass fibers, because holy crap, Beck Ryder is into me.

  He’s not just playing.

  He’s into me.

  And if he were just a vapid, superficial underwear fashion model who only cared about his bottom line and creating a foundation to make himself look good or to get some kind of tax break, I could write him off in a heartbeat.

  But this guy?

  This guy loves his family, and food, and life, and he makes everything brighter.

  I’m in so much trouble.

  He shifts back on the couch and crosses one knee at the ankle, then smiles at Charlie, who’s watching behind a phone on a tripod. Mackenzie points to him, and he starts talking. “Hey, there, awesome people of the world. Beck Ryder here with my friend, Sarah, because I read her blog yesterday and now I’m obsessed with stars.”

  “You can’t see the stars from the city,” I tell him like a complete and total know-it-all. “There’s too much ambient light.”

  “You ever seen the stars in Hawaii?” he asks me.

  He doesn’t have gel in his hair, and it’s flopping over adorably, like he just rolled out of bed, and oh, actually, he did just roll out of bed. But he showered, so he shouldn’t have such perfect bedhead that’s making me want to run my fingers through it.

  “Yes,” I say quickly, realizing I’m staring and not answering the question. Which requires some truth on my behalf. “That’s where I saw the Milky Way for the first time. We used to go to Hawaii once or twice every winter when I was growing up.”

  He’s watching me so closely, I can’t tell if it’s because he likes what he sees, or if it’s because he’s totally on in celebrity mode, waiting for a sign that we’re supposed to cut the video because I’ve gone completely dorktastic.

  “Ah, when you were growing up.” There’s a teasing note in his voice, and the smile that goes with it seems to both relax and speed up my heart all at the same time.

  That’s biologically impossible.

  Clearly I’m dying.

  “There are rumors flying all over the internet about who your parents are,” he says.

  “The ones about me being adopted by a band of cheetahs and raised by wolves are all completely true.”

  And now he’s smiling wider. With the eye crinkle. And the smolder which might not actually be a smolder, but more of a that’s my girl, which is even more dangerous.

  “Raised with wolves is probably more accurate, yeah?”

  “Yeah,” I agree softly.

  “How old were you the first time your parents got mobbed by the paparazzi?”

  I frown. “I don’t know. I can’t ever remember a time when it wasn’t just normal to go anywhere in LA with them and have people screaming their names and taking our pictures.”

  He grins and shakes his head.

  “What?” I ask.

  “Once, when I was…thirteen? Fourteen? Somewhere in there. Anyway, the guys and I—all the guys from the neighborhood—we all set our alarms for like two in the morning on a school night, and we climbed out our windows and met up to go move this giant dinosaur we picked up at a flea market so it was staring directly into the high school principal’s bedroom window.”

  I gape at him. “What—but—how?”

  “Ah, one of us was old enough to drive. Not really well with that trailer hooked to it—we used every cent any of us made mowing grass that summer, swear we did, because we had to buy the trailer too—but we did it. We got this giant—what’s the dinosaur with the long neck? The giraffe of the dinosaurs?”

  “You’re making this all up.” I’m smiling as I’m calling him on his bullshit, because there’s no freaking way.

  “I’m not,” he says. “What’s that dinosaur called? I can never remember it.”

  “Brontosaurus?” I suggest. “Or a brachiosaurus?”

  “Sure. Let’s go with one of those. Anyway, we did it. We got it all set up on the principal’s front lawn, positioned just right, and that sucker was heavy, took like eight of us to move it, and then we went back home and hid the trailer in the garage of this empty house a couple blocks away. Got to school that morning and everyone’s talking about the greatest prank ever pulled.”

  “Oh my god, that was you!” Mackenzie gasps. “I remember that!”

  Charlie shushes her quietly, but Beck points to her and winks. “Beautiful, wasn’t it?”

  “It’s still there.”

  “What? No way.” He squeezes my knee. “We’re taking a field trip. I’ll show you.”

  “Why?”

  “Because you don’t believe me.” His eyes are twinkling, and I’m still smiling back so big I’m practically laughing.

  “No, I mean, of all the pranks you could pull, why that one? It’s kinda…lame.”

  “You’re just saying that because you’re jealous you didn’t think of it first.”

  “If I’d done that, the tabloids would’ve said Sunny Darling’s daughter warped the space-time continuum and brought back real dinosaurs. Or that I concocted them out of DNA samples I stole out of a museum.”

  “Exactly. We did it, and until, well, right now, when I have a feeling a few mothers are getting ready to kick our asses, nobody knew it was us. If you’d even had the thought, you probably would’ve been followed by the paparazzi for weeks with them just waiting for you to screw up. That had to suck.”

  “It did,” I concede with a sigh. “You got away with putting a freaking dinosaur in your principal’s front yard, and the time I spritzed my hair with gel before combing all the knots out and then squirted myself in the eyeball with detangler spray when my mom’s stylist was trying to help fix it, they had to pay off the paparazzi to not run the pictures of me walking into school.”

  “Damn, Sarah. That sucks.”

  Control the story. Control the story. I shrug and take a page out of his book. “Seriously, what seventeen-year-old hasn’t had a bad hair day?”

  His eyes bug out, and I let myself grin. “Kidding. I was six. But my parents still paid off the paps. And that’s the only time in my life I’ve had really short hair. It works on my dad, but on me, I look like a confused poodle.”

  His eyes are going soft. “You were probably adorable.”

  “You could pull it off, but I scared small children and exotic pets.” Okay. Yeah. I can do this, because he’s right.

  Letting go and being willing to poke a little fun at yourself makes it all easier.

  Like it’s not so real.

  Maybe I could do a video series on my blog.

  “You want to talk about prom?” he asks, and there I go, tensing up again.

  But I’m safe here.

  If I say no go to putting this video on the internet, then he won’t put it up there.

  But maybe I do need to tell my side of the story. Even knowing people will twist it and call me stupid and ugly and a whore—though I don’t know how you get whore out of an owl story, but it’s the internet, so clearly it’ll come up—maybe it’s time to really face it.

  “I was in the geek crowd in high school, and there were probably six or eight of us who’d sit in the halls and trade Harry Potter cards before school and during lunch, so we thought it would be fun to go to prom like the whole cast. Who doesn’t like Harry Potter, right?”

  “He’s no Buffy, but yeah,” Beck says. “He’s cool. Even if everyone knows wizards
aren’t real.”

  “Not like vampires?”

  “Exactly. You went as Hermione?”

  I shrug. “I had the hair for it. And my dad was able to get us a few props from one of the movie sets, which we thought was really cool, especially since most of my friends didn’t have parents in the industry. And my mom had connections with a guy who raised owls for movies, so when I asked her if we could get a couple owls, she made the call for me and said it was all set, that we’d have two or three owls—and their trainer—to go with us on prom night.”

  “Your parents are pretty awesome,” he says.

  “They are.” I smile and leave it at that, because I’m not dragging them into this too any more than they’ve already dragged themselves. “So we all had our costumes fitted, one of my friends found a stuffed dragon that was fairly epic—at least, until I just heard your dinosaur story—and another’s parents owned a restaurant that converted itself into a whole Harry Potter theme for the night, so we had a delicious dinner there, and then we headed to prom, where we were supposed to meet the owl trainer.”

  “Supposed to?” he squeezes my knee.

  “It’s Hollywood. Plot twist, right? Obviously, he wasn’t there. I called my mom, and she said she’d check in with him, so we went inside, and yeah, people were staring, but who wouldn’t? My friend Jasmine was dressed up like Hagrid. She was on stilts even, because she had skills and she’d also found a furry beard and wig to rival mine. We found a corner of the dance floor and we were all dancing and passing around her stuffed pet dragon when the owls arrived.”

  I realize Mackenzie’s chewing her nails like she does during ballgames. “The owls wouldn’t have been so bad by themselves,” I tell her, “but it was all the panic that started as soon as they started zipping through the ballroom. People were falling all over each other, tripping, and then the paparazzi showed up right as I face-planted into Jasmine’s crotch and totally took her down, stilts and all, but not before an owl up on one of the chandeliers dropped a pellet into my cleavage.”

  Beck swipes a hand over his mouth and shakes his head. “Jeez. And I thought getting booed off the stage at my senior homecoming dance was bad.”

  “You did not.”

  He holds up his hands and grins. “Swear on my underwear. Ask Levi and Cash. It’s what prompted us to start practicing. We were gonna horrify everyone even worse at prom, except…”

  “Except you went viral on YouTube and got a recording contract, and I ended up changing my name and hiding in Morocco for a year.”

  “Yeah.” His grin slips. “That sucks rotten eggs.”

  “It’s what I get for dabbling in black magic.”

  He cracks up, and now that it’s all out there, I’m kinda…free.

  Not weightless, but lighter.

  “I loved Morocco,” I tell him honestly. “The people were amazing. The food—”

  “Delicious,” he finishes. “Hey, you promised me mint tea.”

  “And you promised me you weren’t stuffing your briefs.”

  He snorts with laughter and doubles over, and I go hot in the face.

  “Sorry,” I mutter. “It was there.”

  He holds out a fist, and I bump it. “Well played, black magic lady. Well played. You doing that black magic to get that meteor shower that’s coming next month?”

  “Do you realize we’re sitting just a few thousand miles over a molten core of lava and flinging through the universe at sixty-seven thousand miles an hour? And not just around the sun. The sun is moving through the universe too, which means we’re basically hurtling through space in a controlled spiral of awesome. I mean, how does that even happen? And then we get to live in this little biodome where the most important thing on the internet today is going to be that I made a joke about the size of your package?”

  We officially cannot post this video.

  Fabulous.

  Now I have to do it again.

  But Beck’s still grinning. “Your blog isn’t just about saving the bees and the giraffes.”

  “The entire planet is too fascinating to keep it to just endangered animals. But they’re getting the priority right now.”

  “How’s our girl doing over at the zoo?”

  “She’s completely and totally oblivious to all the attention, and she’s taking her sweet time about going into active labor.”

  “You think she’ll have a boy or a girl?”

  “Yes.” I woo-woo my fingers at him. “Unless my black magic trick to make her give birth to gorillas works.”

  “If you get arrested for doing black magic and making Persephone give birth to a gorilla, can I have your—”

  I clap my hand over his mouth before he can finish asking for my Serenity ship, but I’m laughing. “No. That’s top secret. Shush.”

  “Bu ees oo,” he says.

  “It’s time to say goodnight, Beck.”

  He licks my hand, and I shriek and jerk it away with an astonished laugh. “You licked me.”

  “Can’t sign off until we remind people to visit your blog and check out Persephone’s giraffe cam,” he points out. “Did my mom make you bacon again? I smell bacon.”

  “You always smell bacon.”

  He grins and looks at the camera. “Sometimes I smell hamburgers and pizza too. And that’s the Must Love Bees science blog. Go check it out.” He winks, and Charlie hits a button on the phone.

  “And done,” she announces.

  I drop my head between my knees. “And now we have to do it all over again so I don’t make a joke about your package.”

  “Oh, no, that’s going up just as it is,” Charlie reports. “Because that was hilarious. And it’ll piss off Bruce and utterly enchant the rest of the world except for the trolls who’ll call you both names.”

  “Bruce?” I ask.

  Beck grimaces. “Not important. You worried about anything other than telling the world I have a little willy?”

  “Oh my god.”

  Mackenzie drops to the ground laughing so hard she’s crying.

  “Great,” Beck says. “Post away. I gotta go warn Levi and Cash to get their Dick pics ready.”

  “What?” Seriously, this time I really am putting my hands up to catch my eyeballs.

  “Those guys would do anything for me,” Beck says.

  The door opens, and my mom rushes in with Cupcake, who squeals and darts right to Mackenzie, who’s still wiping her eyes and bent double on the floor. She squeaks and jumps to her feet when the pig tries to hump her.

  “Did we miss it? Honey, tell me you left your clothes on. And are you ready? I booked an appointment for us to go shopping at the downtown boutiques. It’s not Fifth Avenue, but your father pointed out you probably didn’t want to fly all the way to New York in the middle of a publicity storm.”

  “Shopping. For what?”

  “Your dress, sweetheart.” She turns a bright movie star smile on Beck. “And if this video embarrasses my daughter, I’ll be calling my psychic on your behalf.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” he replies.

  “What dress?” I ask.

  “For the black-tie fundraiser for the zoo Saturday night.”

  I look at my mom.

  Then at Beck, who’s actually looking a little sheepish. “It’s just a few hours,” he says. “We didn’t mention it yet, did we?”

  The contract.

  I’m contractually obligated to go to a fancy dinner, which I thought I’d escape, since there wasn’t actually a fancy dinner in the works when I signed, only the possibility if Beck was lucky enough to get an invitation.

  And apparently my parents have been in on setting that fancy dinner up to be a fundraiser for the zoo, which I clearly can’t decline.

  A Black-Tie Fundraiser.

  Code for fancy gala where people with too much money talk about their self-importance.

  “You don’t have to go traditional,” he adds quickly. “Whatever you’re comfortable in.”

  “Not jean
s or sweatpants,” Charlie says.

  “But RYDE sweatpants are so comfortable,” I reply.

  “Fucking right they are.” Beck nods emphatically. “That’s why I picked them.”

  “You guys are ridiculous,” Mackenzie declares. She points at me. “And don’t even try this I don’t get fancy crap. I saw you at your holiday Christmas party, and I know you had a good time. And remember the wedding Trent took you to? You can do this. And you’re going to fucking rock it. Also, the Fireballs massacred Minnesota when you went to that wedding last year, so you basically have to wear a dress to see if it’s still good luck.”

  My mom’s lips part.

  Cupcake sits back on her haunches and twists her neck to stare at Mackenzie like she has a screw loose.

  But Beck grins.

  That bright, haha, she’s got you now, adorable grin. “Can’t argue with that. You owe it to the team. You owe it to the whole city.”

  “Fine,” I say. “But I’m not shaving my legs.”

  I’m totally shaving my legs.

  Beck pulls me into a hug and presses a kiss to my temple. “Thank you, Sarah.”

  And I have issues.

  Because I’m pretty sure I would’ve caved just for a hug from him, even though what I’d really like is to see if that kissing could go somewhere farther.

  “I won’t tell you you’re welcome until you talk my mother out of putting me in Slimzies.”

  “Done.”

  “Not done,” Mom replies dryly.

  “We can discuss this over honey puff pancake.”

  “We can discuss this never. Our appointment’s in twenty minutes. The driver’s waiting, Serendipity. It’s time to go.”

  “I got your back,” Beck whispers to me. “It’s not over until the former boy bander sings.”

  “Amateur,” Mackenzie sniffs. She steps to my side and links her arm in mine. “I’ve got your back, Sarah. He’s staying out of it.”

  Mom looks Mackenzie up and down. “Do you have good taste?”

  “I was raised by two drag queens. What do you think?”

  Mom nods. “Excellent. Come along, Sarah. Beauty waits for no woman.”

  Beck grabs my hand before I can follow. “You know you’re a natural?” he says. “In front of the camera, I mean. You could do regular vlogs if you wanted to. And say the word, and I’ll get you a private visit with Persephone.”