Bookishly Ever After

by Sarah Monzon

  His lips curved. “I’m glad you think so.” He looked down at the paper, flicked his gaze back at me. “I don’t think she’s quite ready yet.”

  “She? I know boats are shes, but I’ve never heard of a song being a she.”

  Tate shrugged. “This one is.”

  My arms fell, and I took a step closer, curious. “Why? What’s different about this song?” Besides it being incredible.

  He reached out and pinched a tendril of hair hanging down the side of my cheek. Pulled down, then released it and watched it spring back up. I pushed his hand away, and he laughed.

  “It’s a special song, Em. No one has heard it but you, and even then I was going to wait to play it for you.”

  “Why?” Now that I’d heard it, I wished I had it on a playlist that I could put on repeat.

  “I told you. She’s not quite ready yet.”

  Our gazes locked, and a bit of the tension I’d felt between us earlier in the day returned. Only not really. Yes, it was tension, but it was different somehow. Not one heavy with discord that hung around me, threatening to crush me. This tension…well, it was like in books, that weighted moment, the seconds stretching between the two lead characters as they stared at each other, not saying anything but at the same time saying everything.

  My breath roared in my ears as the space between my inhales and exhales shortened. I wished my life came with a narrator. Then maybe I could know what Tate was thinking. Why he was standing there, looking at me so intently. Maybe I could know what I was thinking. My thoughts were so muddled, mixed up in the flood of warmth pooling from my center.

  I took a step back, and so did Tate. He pulled a hand through the hair at the back of his head and turned toward the kitchen. “Water?”

  I blinked hard, refocusing. “I’d love some.”

  The springs on the couch squeaked as I sat down on the edge. If only I could hit a Rewind button. Back up from before knocking on his door. Before I saw what I shouldn’t have seen and the electrical circuits in my brain went all haywire. We’d still be Tate and Emory, best friends. What were we now? Tate and the weird girl who couldn’t stop imagining things, whether they were looks with hidden meanings that weren’t there, feelings which were probably brought on by hormones (I was seriously going to check my calendar when I got home, figure out when Aunt Flow was going to visit—these weren’t her normal symptoms, but I wouldn’t put anything unusual past her), or, well, that (and by that I mean Tate without a shirt, just to be clear).

  I leaned forward and let my head fall to the coffee table. What. Whack. Is. Whack. Wrong. Whack. With. Whack. Me?

  “Umm…what are you doing?”

  My head sprung up like it had a Tigger tail attached to it. Tate stood three feet away, a glass of ice water in each hand.

  I waved my hand around in the air. “Oh, you know.” Great explanation, right? Not like I had a better one.

  “Ooookaaay.” Tate drew the word out into four syllables before handing me the water.

  I took a sip and placed the glass onto the table I’d previously been hammering with my forehead. “Well, I should probably go.” And then apartment hunt. A change in address was definitely needed now.

  “Wait.” He put a hand to my knee to stop me. “I need to know what books you’re reading. You know, so I can plan our next literary adventure.”

  Bless Tate. The only one who could watch me make an idiot of myself and go on like nothing happened. Even my mother would have started looking up numbers for a psychiatrist.

  Honestly, I hadn’t started another book yet, but the next in my ever-growing to-be-read pile was the second book in a detective series. He grinned when I told him.

  “Detectives, huh?”

  I took another sip of water. “Here, I’ll even help you out. I propose we stay in and watch The Great Mouse Detective. You can be Basil and I’ll be Dawson, and together we can defeat the evil Ratigan. Sound good?”

  He laughed. Right in my face. “Nice try, but you aren’t getting off that easily.”

  Six

  My neck craned back as I took in the regular-looking strip mall, looking for a clue as to what awaited me. Apparently, part of the bet now was that each little adventure Tate would put me through had to be a surprise.

  Landon and Sydney loitered near the entrance of a glass door.

  “No Jim and Carla tonight?” Of all the new people Tate had introduced me to, the couple in their midthirties made me the least uncomfortable. I wasn’t sure if it was the fact I knew neither was a setup for me since they were married or if it was just their easy manner. Whatever the reason, I found myself missing their presence.

  Tate shook his head. “They couldn’t find another babysitter tonight.”

  Landon stepped forward and rubbed his hands together, eyes bright with excitement. “So are we going to do this?”

  Tate opened the door. “Detective Emory, your mystery awaits.”

  Once I stepped over the threshold, the surprise was a surprise no longer. Metal letters spelling out Escape Room Experience hung on a wall painted cobalt blue. I’d heard of these, and despite my slight claustrophobia, anticipation tingled my fingertips.

  A man wearing a starched suit appeared from down a long hallway. “Good evening and welcome to Mr. Humfree’s home.”

  My brows rose, and I looked at Tate, who wore a grin the size of Texas. Considering this place was definitely not a home, I figured this was all part of the mythology we were about to immerse ourselves in.

  “Mr. Humfree would have liked to have greeted you himself, but he is indisposed at the moment. However, he has instructed me to show you the study, where he is sure you will not find the stolen amethyst, even if you private investigators believe he is the thief. You have only one hour to search the room, but if you get stuck on any of the clues you may think you find, I will be happy to assist you. All you need to do is collectively shout clue, and I will provide the aid you seek. Are you ready to begin?”

  We all looked at each other, adrenaline of the hunt seeping into my body as we followed the butler down the hallway to a door. He opened it and summoned us inside.

  “Remember—you only have one hour. Good luck.” With that he stepped out and shut the door behind him.

  I turned in a slow circle, taking everything in. The room looked like you’d imagine a rich man’s study would look. Floor-to-ceiling bookcases lined one wall, massive tomes stacked side by side like literary soldiers. A large oil painting of a middle-aged woman draped in diamonds—Humfree’s wife perhaps—hung over an ornate fireplace, a leather reading chair cozied up nearby. On the other wall hung abstract artwork of geometric shapes. First a painting of circles, then one of squares, then one of triangles. In front of us, in the middle of the room, housed a solid-wood desk. A picture of a man and woman hugging sat in a gold frame. Pens lined one side of a leather-bound day planner, and a lamp with a green glass shade paralleled the other side.

  There was so much to take in, it was overwhelming. Where were we even supposed to start? Everything could potentially be a clue, or it could be a red herring meant to throw us off track and waste our time.

  “Where do we start first?” Sydney voiced my thought.

  “Let’s just start looking,” Landon instructed as he walked to the bookcase. He began pulling books down at an angle from their spine.

  “What are you doing?” I asked Landon as Tate slid behind me to inspect the desk.

  Landon looked at me over his shoulder and shrugged. “Sometimes these escape rooms have more than one room. I figured one of the books might lead to a trap door or something.”

  “Look at this,” Tate said behind me.

  We all walked toward him and peered over his shoulder. The day planner was open, and his finger traced the names and numbers written next to each name. “Do you think it’s a clue?”

  “Could be.” I squinted to read the text better.

  Mr. Rochester 2:18

  Pip 1:32

&nbs
p; Pequod 1:78

  Amelia 1:40

  “Maybe the number corresponds with time?” Sydney suggested.

  “Not time.” My heart picked up speed. I knew what this was. “Look at the numbers next to Pequod. There is no one seventy-eight hour. And all these names, I know what they are.” I snatched the book off the desk and sprinted toward the bookcase. “They’re characters from books, and what looks like time has to be page numbers. Mr. Rochester is in Jane Eyre by Emily Brontë. Pip is a character in Great Expectations. Pequod was the name of Captain Ahab’s ship in Moby Dick.”

  By this time all four of us were scouring the bookshelves looking for the right titles.

  “Here!” Sydney held a hard-cover copy of Jane Eyre over her head.

  We scrambled to her side and waited in anticipation as she shuffled through the pages. Her finger jabbed at page 218. Silence hung in the room as we scanned the page, looking for some clue to jump out at us.

  Nothing.

  “There’s nothing here,” Sydney said.

  Maybe Sydney could be my life narrator. She was good at voicing my thoughts.

  Disappointment shaved off the edge of my excitement, but I wasn’t giving up. “Maybe it’s only part of the clue. There could be a second part we need to unlock it.” I went back to the desk and opened up the drawers lining the right side. At the back of the bottom drawer, an object slid around. My ears perked, and I reached a hand back, grasped the object, and pulled it out.

  Landon reached out and took the wooden box from my grip. “It’s a Chinese puzzle box. You shift the pieces around to reveal a hidden compartment within. There has to be a clue in here somewhere.” The pad of his thumb turned white as he applied pressure to one end of the box. It shifted, and a piece fell away.

  Sydney grabbed my elbow and tugged. “Come on. We’ll search the other side of the room for more clues while the boys work on getting that thing open.”

  I didn’t want to go. I wanted to stay and see what was inside. But the guys would call us back when it was open, so it made sense for Sydney and me to keep looking. I followed her to the geometric paintings and mimicked her motion of moving the artwork aside to see if there was anything hidden behind it.

  “I wanted to ask you,” Sydney whispered without looking at me. “Tate. Are you and he…”

  Are we what?

  Oh! “Were just friends.”

  She turned her attention to me then, her blue eyes sparkling. “Really.” She stole a glance Tate’s direction. “Do you think maybe he’d be interested? In me, I mean?”

  Umm… What should I say to that? Tate and I were friends, but we didn’t talk about our love lives. Mostly because mine was nonexistent, and his…well, he had his groupies. Would he be interested in Sydney? Why not? She was nice. Pretty. Smart. What guy wouldn’t go for someone like her?

  But acid hit my stomach, and I had to bite back a wave of nausea as I smiled and said. “Sure. Go for it.” The territorial feeling that overpowered me as I thought about Sydney and Tate together made me want to bring out my claws and scratch her unmarred complexion. I had never been catty before in my life, and I didn’t like the unpleasant feeling now.

  “Got it!”

  I swung around to the guys, grateful for something to focus on besides my unhealthy possessiveness.

  Landon unrolled a piece of paper. “It’s a line of shapes. Triangle, circle, square, square.”

  Tate looked beyond me, and I turned.

  “The paintings!” we shouted in unison.

  Tate rounded the desk and jogged toward Sydney and me.

  “But we checked the paintings, the frames, and the wall behind them. We didn’t find anything.” Sydney looked discouraged as she stared at the row of artwork on the wall.

  “Look harder.” I bent forward until my nose nearly touched the glass housing the art. Back and forth my gaze swung, grid by grid, raking past the colors on the canvas, looking for anything that could help us. Numbers on the bottom of the painting filled with triangles snagged my attention: 4/100. I looked up. “They’re prints. Look here.” I pointed to the number. “This one is number four out of a hundred.”

  Landon peered down at the corner of the square painting. “This one is six out of a hundred.”

  I paced in front of the pictures, gathering the numbers. “Four, two, six, six.”

  “We need to look for something with a combination lock on it. These numbers could unlock it.”

  Of course! I went to the mantel to look there, when Sydney shouted behind me.

  “Got it!” A stainless-steel cylinder in her hand, she dropped to the floor and immediately started twisting the mechanisms to put in the number. The lock opened with a click. She peered inside, then turned the cylinder over. Dominoes fell onto the floor.

  “Some of the dots are colored in with different colors. Should we match them up?”

  “You and Tate work on that. Emory and I will see if we missed any more objects with locks on them.” Landon spoke from my side.

  We would?

  He gripped my elbow and led me to the other side of the room.

  I guess we would.

  “What exactly are we looking for?” I ran my hand across the back of the leather chair, aware of Landon’s gaze on me. If he kept staring at me instead of helping me look for clues, our time would run out before we could escape the room.

  “I feel like I owe you an apology.”

  “Apology?”

  “I keep going over it in my mind, our conversation last week on the ferry. Whatever I said that upset you, I sincerely apologize.”

  Oh. That. I turned and offered him a reassuring smile. “That’s not necessary.”

  “So you aren’t upset with me?”

  How could I be? He hadn’t done anything wrong. “No.”

  He seemed to relax. “Good.” He smiled, and the action pulled my gut. “In that case, I’d like to ask you out. I feel like I already know you with how much Tate talks about you, but I’d like to get to know you even better. Just the two of us.”

  “Uh…” That deer-in-the-headlights feeling was not pleasant.

  “Please? Just casual. Two friends getting dinner.”

  Friends? The wariness was still there, but dulling. I could do friends. And maybe if Tate saw that his plan was working, that I was going out more, with his choice of a man even, then maybe I’d save myself from future setups.

  Landon kept talking. “I have to work third shift the next two days, but how about Wednesday? Are you free Wednesday for a casual meal with a friend?”

  My finger ran back and forth along the nailheads on top of the chair. “I always go to hear Tate sing on Wednesdays.”

  Landon smiled, showing an even row of white teeth. “Perfect! I’ve been meaning to go and hear him myself, and that restaurant has a great reputation for their food. Pick you up at six.”

  I looked back to Tate and Sydney, their heads together as they laid domino pieces out on the floor. “How about I meet you there?”

  Sydney raised her head. “Hey, did you two find another lock? Because we’ve got some more numbers here.”

  Seven

  Those numbers had led to another combination lock, which had contained a screwdriver. After some digging around, we found a vent near the bottom of the wall beside one of the tall bookcases. Tate unscrewed the sides, revealing a black-light flashlight and a riddle. We figured out the riddle, which was a clue back to the day planner and the books I’d already decoded. The black light revealed words in each book that had been highlighted. Another secret message. Put together it read, The answer lies with Amelia. That had been when the butler dude opened the door and told us our time was up.

  Not only had we failed, which ate me up, but now the mystery of where the amethyst was hidden in that room gnawed on me as well.

  Maybe I could go back, just to figure out where the amethyst was and escape the room. I didn’t like the big fail stamp, even if it had been just a game.

  Now ba
ck in my apartment, I picked up my phone and glanced at the screen. Five minutes ago I’d texted Tate with a simple question composed of two very important words: You decent? I didn’t need a repeat of last week when he’d opened the door right out of the shower. So here I was, sitting in my reading chair, my leg bouncing up and down like a jackhammer, a book not in my hands, although why not I couldn’t say. I was too keyed up maybe. The escape room had flushed my body with adrenaline as we’d worked against the clock to solve the puzzles. Plus, I was dying to know if Tate had heard back from the music manager yet. A dozen not yet replies to my inquiries nested in my text inbox, but maybe the manager had finally responded. If not, I was armed with another name. A recording studio this time.

  My phone vibrated against my thigh, and I picked it up. Swiped the screen to open the text. A laughing emoji followed by the word decent. Enough for me. I pocketed my phone and the slip of paper with the studio’s information, locked the door behind me, and bounded up the stairs to the next floor.

  Tate waited for me, leaning against the doorframe, a grin in place and that one brow cocked. “Decent?”

  “Gotta make sure.” I walked past him into his apartment and turned, shoving my fidgeting hands into my pockets. “So…heard back yet?”

  He shut the door with a click, then grabbed something from a bowl that rested on the coat rack to the left. A small yellow package came flying at my head, and I caught it midair. Peanut M&M’s. I ripped the package open and popped one into my mouth. “Thanks.”

  The spicy scent of his aftershave trailed him as he passed me, and I found my nose turning to follow the smell.

  “These things take time, Em.” He dropped into the brown leather love seat a few feet away. “I had to squeeze time into my friend’s studio just to record the demo, so the audio file has only been in the manager’s email inbox for a couple of days.”

  I let gravity pull my body down to the cushion next to him. “Yeah, but how long does it take to click on a file and listen to a two-minute song?”