Beauty and the Geek (Gone Geek Book 1) (3 page)

To last.

“Please tell me you didn’t do something stupid.” Rashae’s glare lowered the temperature to downright frigid.

“I didn’t.” Tamara closed her eyes. “At least I don’t think I did.”

“What did you do?” Piper glanced between them, still totally out of the loop.

“Tamara?” Rashae prompted her.

“I didn’t…” Tamara opened her eyes. She’d dug this hole for herself. Now, it was time to hop in. “Look, I never expected things to go this far with Stephen.”

“Dick gif dude? You know him?” Piper’s brows rose.

“Yes. I met him in a chat room. We…talk.” Tamara swallowed. Yeah, no one believed that. “He just…he wanted a picture of me, but I knew that if I sent him my picture that…You know what happens.”

Piper blinked once, very slowly.

No one spoke.

“I don’t understand. I’m clearly out of the loop here. Please spell it out for me.” The way Piper spoke, slow and sweet, with each word enunciated so carefully, was not a good sign.

“It was months ago. I took that Wonder Woman group shot of everyone and sent it to him. I figured—that’s a lot of women. He’d never figure out which one I am. Right?”

“Tell him you’re not me.” Piper’s brows were almost indistinguishable from her bangs.

“I never told him I was you. I never even told him I was in the picture.”

“But you are, right?” Rashae asked.

“Yes, I’m front and center.” Tamara had thought she could hide in plain sight. She should have known she couldn’t out-smart the hot professor.

“You have Internet sex with this guy.” Piper shoved off the table and pointed at her phone.

“Yes.”

“And you gave him my picture?” A red flush crept up Piper’s neck.

“No, not a picture of you, but you are in it.”

“This random motherfucker you have video sex with—you sent him my Goddamned picture?” Piper’s face was red and her hands clearly shaking. “After everything that happened—You. Gave. Him. My. Picture?”

“It’s not just you, Piper. He’s got it all wrong—”

“No. You gave him my picture. After everything Carl put me through?” Piper was practically shaking. And why wouldn’t she? After a very public break-up with a video game engineer touted as the next-great-mind in the industry, he’d set about to destroy her. In so many ways, what had happened to Piper was worse than what happened to Tamara.

“I had no idea he’d think I was you.”

“But he does think it’s me, Tamara, and why wouldn’t he? The girl with all the home-made sex tapes online has to be the kind of girl who can’t get a decent guy to go out with her, right? Shit. What have you done with him? Have you sent him naked pictures? If he hasn’t done a search on my name, when will he? You don’t know this guy. Why are you sending him pictures of your friends?” Piper was screaming now, her face red. “Did you think it wasn’t a big deal? That I wouldn’t mind?”

Oh, God what had Tamara done? She’d never expected Stephen to assume she was Piper. This was a disaster. The kind of hell Carl had put Piper through following their split was… Tamara was nearly sick just thinking about it. All those intimate pictures and videos they’d made were now out there. Public. And now, because Tamara had been completely thoughtless...what if Piper had an episode? She’d recovered from the emotional trauma the gaming world had put her through, but at such a great price. What if this triggered something? What then? Piper wasn’t living in L.A. right now. She was all by herself in Florida.

Terrible events had brought Piper and Tamara together. Life-altering, horrible things—and they’d healed. Together. Sometimes propping each other up, pushing the other on, and they’d made it. But not without scars. Not without scratching out a place for themselves, despite all the hate and the naysayers.

Piper had emotional episodes. It’d been so long since she’d gone through one, too.

Tamara had lost the ability to cry. It was as if she’d cried it all out during her healing.

Tamara took a step toward Piper. She had to fix this.“That’s not—”

“What? That’s not what?” Piper yelled.

Both Rashae and Miranda were still. Silent.

“I didn’t mean for this to happen.” Tamara edged closer.

“Fuck you.” Piper thrust her finger in Tamara’s face.

If Piper hit her, she wouldn’t try to block it. She wouldn’t try to move. She deserved this. God, never in a million years would she have wanted to bring back all that shit into Piper’s life.

Tamara wished she could cry, but as she’d healed her tears had dried up until they’d just…stopped. It was as though she’d cried all the tears she had. Now, she was like Amanda from
The Holiday
. She’d been born with tear ducts that didn’t tear. Instead, Tamara wrung her hands together and tried to come up with words to fix this.

Piper wrapped her robe around herself and stormed back upstairs to her room.

“Wow,” Miranda whispered.

“I didn’t mean…” Tamara’s mouth worked, but no sound came out.

“Doesn’t matter what you meant. You really didn’t think that through, did you?” Rashae shook her head and stirred the remaining cereal in her bowl. “I’m not saying her reaction is right or reasonable, but what did you expect?”

Tamara perched on the sofa’s side table, guilt gnawing at her. “I never thought—”

“Exactly. You didn’t think. Why would he think you are Piper?”

“Because…” Tamara swallowed. Rashae was going to rake her over the coals for this. “Because, three weeks ago when Legend laid me off, he asked me if I was Tamara and I said no. I don’t know how he figured it out, but he did and…” She covered her eyes.

“So what? Pretending to be a white girl is the answer?”

“No—that’s not what I was doing…at least…I didn’t mean to. I don’t even know if that’s what happened. Maybe when I set up my profile, I clicked something? I don’t know, Rashae.”

The phone still lying on the table buzzed.

“I’ll take this up to Piper and check on her.” Miranda unfolded herself, snagged the phone and followed in their friend’s footsteps. Tamara watched her slip into Piper’s room and closed the door.

“Seriously, Tamara, what did you think was going to happen with this guy?” Rashae asked.

“I…thought I’d get bored of him. That it wouldn’t be more than an Internet hook-up. Then…Adam started making work hell, and…Stephen was…he was a distraction I needed to get through this.” Which in and of itself was selfish. Except meeting the kind of guys she was attracted to in real life always meant wondering if it was really her they liked—or if it was the Asian fetish so many geeky guys seemed to be into.

“Use some random person’s face off Google like a
normal
girl. Don’t use your friends. I mean, what if you break up with him now? What if he goes all over Reddit telling people he jacked off to Piper? Or Miranda? Or me? Yeah, they’re just words, but don’t we already have enough people working against us? I’m not going to pretend to understand this whole
no one likes me
thing you have going on, because that shit is stupid, but come on. What you really need is a real guy. Not that dick-gif-Stephen isn’t real, but he isn’t really real until you’re face-to-face with him.”

“I need to apologize to Piper.” Tamara stood up.

“Do not go up there,” Rashae snapped.

“But—I need to make this right.”

“Right now you are the last person who needs any of Piper’s time. She needs to calm down and get her head screwed on straight. You know how she gets when anything with Carl comes up. It doesn’t matter what you meant to happen, this is what’s happening. And Piper’s still got a lot of shit to work through. Don’t go up there at all. You want to make it better for her? You make this right.”

Tamara sat down hard, staring at the floor.

She hadn’t meant to betray Piper’s trust or hurt her. In all honesty, Tamara hadn’t thought anything of sending the picture to Stephen or the repercussions.

Piper was the last person in the world Tamara wanted to hurt. In many ways, they’d helped each other heal. But Piper was different, and Tamara didn’t have video or pictures out there to haunt her, thankfully. Because once something was on the Internet, it was there forever. Which made Tamara’s transgression that much worse. In Tamara’s struggle for acceptance, she’d hurt one of her closest friends, and there was nothing she could do to make it right.

Except one thing.

3.

Stephen checked his phone.
Again. His attention should be on the students, but every five minutes he was glancing at his phone, waiting for some acknowledgment that Piper, a.k.a. Pam, had received the gif.

Maybe he should check out the messenger App. Just in case.

He wandered to the back of the lab, away from the students, to have a moment of privacy.

The robotics lab was the old gym that had been converted for their needs once the athletic program moved into new facilities. A partition divided the space down the middle, and there were workstations set up where individuals or teams were working on anything from the next-gen drones to bitty bots that would revolutionize healthcare. Usually nothing could tear him away from the projects, but that was before Pam was in his life.

He ducked into the bathrooms and pulled out his phone, feeling only a smidge guilty for taking a moment to himself.

The chat screen popped up with a single tap and Piper’s avatar floated below the gif.

She’d seen it.

And hadn’t replied.

Should he leave it at that?

Tracking her down was…stalkerish. He couldn’t deny that his infatuation with her was new territory for him. Messaging her from his real name, where his pictures and contact information were easily accessible, was a new level. Of what, he wasn’t sure.

Maybe she’d seen his face and that was it?

He couldn’t blame her.

But he also couldn’t let it go.

Hey.

He hit send and cringed.

Piper’s avatar floated down below the text…then vanished.

Weird.

He tapped her name, but her profile came up blank. Empty. A white screen.

What the—?

Fuck.

She must have blocked him.

Stephen sighed.

That had always been a risk. He’d known it when he messaged her that pushing for something tangible, something besides gifs and text, could be too much. They’d had a good thing going, and he’d changed it.

He washed his hands, scrubbing off a bit of oil.

By now, he should be used to the rejection. He’d gone through this his whole life—from his dad, to the kids he went to school with, to that one disastrous time he’d tried to go to summer camp. Why did he never learn his lesson?

He chucked the paper towel at the garbage can and paced the restroom.

It’d begun with his father. Stephen’s earliest memories were of a man with thick, sagging jowls sneering at him calling him the Monster Brat. At least his dad had only stuck around into the pre-teen years, but by then the foundation had been set. Others had followed in that son of a bitch’s footsteps, building up a solid narrative. A repeated chorus.

Monster.

Disgusting.

Gross.

Why would she be any different? Wasn’t that the definition of crazy? Doing the same thing again and again, expecting different results?

Just to torture himself a little more, Stephen pulled up the anonymous chat network they’d met on. A PM waited for him.

K4h3l20dk: early flight home

K4h3l20dk: hope thy dont check my bag

K4h3l20dk: ;)

Wait—what?

He checked the time.

Pam had sent the message nearly forty-five minutes ago. Wouldn’t she be in the air if she were flying? She never told him much in the way of her travel schedule, he just knew she was somewhere warm, at the beach, with her girlfriends.

Had he gotten it wrong?

Was Piper not Pam?

T1m3L0rd: Fly safe.

T1m3L0rd: If you end up in LA, give me a call.

He typed in his phone number, because why the hell not at this point, and pocketed his phone. This was now the second time he’d given her that tidbit of information and she hadn’t yet texted him.

Shit.

If Pam wasn’t Piper…

Had he really just sent a stranger a gif of his dick? Christ, he couldn’t think about that. He’d been certain Pam was Piper. Absolutely certain. She was the only girl in the picture that matched both what his Internet lover had said, and what her profile listed. So where had he gone wrong? Who was Pam?

That was a mystery he clearly wasn’t going to solve today. Maybe he never would. And he’d have to be okay with that, if he wanted to keep her in his life. Perhaps this was a blessing in disguise? No, he still wanted to look her in the eyes, but first, he had a job to do. One he loved.

Stephen plunged back into the fray, steering his focus into helping two students with a drone design that was going to revolutionize the way people used them. The problems were tricky and required his complete focus. It felt good to pour himself into something and not be a slave to his phone.

His love for robotics traced back to one of his earliest, traumatic experiences.

Dad had disappeared. Again. But that summer they’d had a little money. Enough that his mother had asked Stephen if he wanted to do something special.

He could still remember the horror on her face when he told her he wanted to go to the city’s sports camp. He’d been maybe six or seven, too young to remember all the details, but the highlights were stuck in his head.

She’d bit her lip and tried to talk him out of it, but he’d wanted to learn from men how to play baseball and soccer. And his sweet mother hadn’t been able to tell him no.

Stephen had lasted all of an hour before the coaches called his mom to come pick him up. It’d been his first experience with the cruelty of other children, but not his last.

On the way home, his mother had stopped to buy him a present.

She’d grabbed an Optimus Prime toy and the rest was history. He’d looked at that action figure and wanted to be the guy inside, safe from the outside world, protected by a suit of metal. He hadn’t known how Transformers worked yet, but he’d become an avid fan of the show.

He still had that toy. It was what set him down a path he was still on, though his goals weren’t the same. He no longer wanted to hide in his creations, just behind them. Putting his robots in the spotlight meant there were deep, dark shadows for him to hide in. The better for people to appreciate his work, and not become distracted by the man behind it.

It wasn’t until hours later when the lab was clearing out that he had the chance to check for a new message. He leaned against a work station while two slow-poke students took their time loading up their bags. They were the most out-of-place pair he’d seen in a while, and that was what he loved about his profession. It attracted all sorts, but the passionate ones were special. Just like those two.

Stephen unlocked his phone and his thumb hovered over the icon. Except he never made it to the chat interface.

There was a text waiting for him from an unknown number. The preview was enough—

Pam
had
texted
him.

From her phone.

He had her number now.

Whoever she was.

That was a good sign, wasn’t it?

Could she be Piper?

Was this her way of ending things?

If she wasn’t Piper…then where had he gone wrong?

He turned the phone off, refusing to look at whatever she’d sent him outside the privacy of his home. Who knew what she’d say? What gif she’d sent him? He wanted to be free to…respond.

Stephen practically herded the last students out of the lab and locked up, only feeling a little guilty. His hours technically ended much earlier but he usually stuck around, ready to help the kids with their pet projects. The campus was dark by the time he made it to his car and hit the road toward home. The short distance had never felt so long, but he made it to the small, studio apartment he’d called home for the better part of three years since being hired on at the university.

At last he could read the text without prying eyes.

He sank onto his sofa and powered the phone on, bouncing his knee through the boot up process until he could click into the texts.

home from the beach. had a great time. cant wait to chat again.

She’d included a new gif. Her bare knee—or at least he assumed it was hers—bending and rising off what looked to be a bed.

It wasn’t a lot, but there was no mistaking the sender. Still no mention of meeting up. Or his Facebook message.

Did he dare press it?

Stephen stood and paced the apartment for a moment. He snagged his notebook from his bag and returned to the sofa, mindlessly listing all the things his exes had excluded him from, the things he hadn’t pushed for because of the public spectacle of just being him.

His last girlfriend had never adjusted to the stares. He’d broken it off with her to avoid the
letting him down easy
approach. It was easier to pour himself into teaching what he loved and fill the rest of his hours with a contract gig or two. He’d avoided any sort of permanent attachment to a woman. Moments of passion, nothing more. But it wasn’t enough.

He’d never met a woman who didn’t add something to the list. The reasons why they couldn’t be together. Why they couldn’t work. Why he was a freak.

Even freaks wanted more. He wanted someone in his life.

Which was why this whole online relationship with Pam wasn’t working. It met some needs, but in the end he was still alone. Perpetuating the fantasy of a long distance relationship was…sad. For him.

Stephen could call her.

He had her number.

He knew what her voice sounded like.

He hit dial before he could think better of it.

The line rang once, twice.

This was a bad idea.

What the hell was he doing?

“Hello?” Her voice hitched up at the end and his heart stopped.

It was her.

A little different, clearer, more vibrant—and her.

“H-hey.” He cleared his throat.

“Hey yourself. Hold on one second, I’m fighting with my suitcase.”

“Okay.”

He leaned forward and listened to the muted, faraway sounds of Pam and her suitcase. Maybe thirty seconds later, rustling filled the line.

“Back,” she said.

“Hey.”

“Hey.”

“I hope it’s okay I called.”

“That was a little unexpected.”

Their relationship was mostly text, thoughts typed out. It was different having instantaneous replies like this. There wasn’t a moment to consider what he was saying before it was out there.

“I’m not bothering you, am I?” He really should have thought of something to say. A line or a question. He began doodling on the edge of the page to ease his mind.

“No, it’s nice to talk to someone. After a week with the girls all up in my business, being by myself is a little weird.” Her voice was richer over the phone.

“How was the trip?” Had she solved the problem of whatever was stressing her out? Would she talk to him about it?

“Good. Good.”

“How long you home for?”

“Um…not sure.”

Stephen knew a hundred details about her. And in this moment he couldn’t think of a single one of them. He just…wanted to listen to her talk.

“So, about earlier?” Again her voice hitched up at the end.

“Yeah?” Which earlier? There were a lot of things that’d happened.

“You suggested a face to face…”

Stephen clenched his hand, as if he could hold onto the strands of their relationship, but it wasn’t a marionette that did as it was told. He couldn’t control Pam like he did one of his robots. If he wanted something he could control, he would build and program it himself.

“You still there?” she asked.

“Yeah, what about it?” His voice was rough. Raw.

“I have a lot going on right now. You…don’t really know me.”

“I don’t really know you?” That stung, probably more than she meant it to.

“Not the real me. I mean—”

“Then who did I finger fuck this morning?” The white hot flare of anger was more at himself than her. He’d allowed himself to get wrapped up in this thing. This fake relationship. And it was all a joke. On him.

“That—I just—
Stephen
.”

He closed his eyes.

Pam wanted to keep them online. His last girlfriend had wanted to keep them home. He was tired of being kept to the fringes of people’s lives just because his face was fucked up. If she didn’t want more, then it was all on him for allowing himself to fall into yet another pattern.

“My name is Stephen Kipper.” His vision hazed a bit, but he’d begun. He couldn’t stop now. “I teach robotics at a university. I’m a little obsessed with
Transformers
, I like Moleskin notebooks, Frixion pens and I haven’t spoken or seen my father in…twenty years. My mom is retired and drives me crazy with all the drama in her life. I’m not perfect, but I’m real. I don’t know what you want, but I want someone I can hold. If you just want a faceless fuck to talk dirty to you online, there’s a dozen teenage boys I’m sure would just about die to get the chance. But not me. I’m done. I want more, and if you don’t, that’s okay, but I’m not doing this anymore. It’s not fair to me or you.”