Something Eric said finally sank in.
“Did you say an appearance by Sean Taylor?” I asked.
He flipped up his helmet slightly, looked around, and grinned at me. “Why yes. He’s supposed to be here. He does a keynote every year.”
“The Sean Taylor?”
“Well he is the author of the books that started everything. It’d be a little silly if he didn’t come to his own convention, right?”
I shook my head. “I suppose so. I just have a hard time believing I’m actually going to see him. I’m actually going to see what he looks like!”
Eric shrugged and grinned. “Yeah, I was a little surprised you didn’t know what he looks like. He doesn’t put his author picture in his books, but there are plenty of pictures available online.”
I walked for a few more steps before, once more, what he said actually sank in.
“Wait a second, how did you know I didn’t know what Sean Taylor looked like?”
“You mentioned it in a chat I think,” he said. Then he was pulling me into a booth that had costume supplies. I didn’t remember having any sort of chat like that with him, but at the same time I was so distracted by all the pretty costumes on display that it left my mind.
Besides, I had my phone on me and I could always just pull the pictures up. I pulled it out and tapped at the screen, but growled in frustration as I realized there was absolutely no reception in the dealer hall. I wondered if they had one of those jamming things going. I’d heard about those before, but it was probably just that this was a massive building made out of material that wasn’t very friendly to cell phone signals, and on top of that everybody and their mother was down here overloading the cell towers downtown.
I did see there was a Wi-Fi network from the convention center, but when I tapped on that it brought up a confirmation page asking for fifty bucks for the privilege of getting online for one day. Fuck that noise. I’d just wait until the session to finally see what the infamous Sean Taylor looked like. No distractions there.
I saw plenty of toys I wanted to get my hands on while we were looking at the costume booth, but the prices were enough to dissuade me from actually trying to buy anything.
“I could get one of these for you, no problem,” Eric said.
I held up a hand to forestall him. “Please. You’ve already done more than enough. You don’t need to spend any more money on me.”
“It’s really not a prob…”
“Seriously, it’s okay,” I said. I glanced down at my phone. “Besides, if we don’t go soon we’re going to miss that keynote.”
I was starting to worry we weren’t going to be able to get into the opening keynote anyways. I’d heard those things filled up pretty quickly, and it was only fifteen minutes until Sean Taylor was supposed to take the stage. I had a feeling we’d get there and find a line of people running through most of the convention center trying to get in and being turned away because the fire marshal frowned on overcrowding rooms even for a major convention appearance by a world-famous author.
Eric glanced down at his own phone and cursed.
“Shit. I’ve really lost track of time this morning,” he said. Then he glanced at me and lifted up his helmet slightly, grinned. “In the best possible way, of course.”
I grinned right back at him and blushed at the same time. I knew exactly what he was referring to. “Should we even bother to go? It’s not like we’re going to be able to get seats at this point or anything.”
“Of course we’ll be able to get seats!” Eric said. “You have the highest VIP package which means there’s a seat waiting for you front and center.”
“I have a seat reserved? What about you?”
Only he was tapping something into his phone with one hand and the pulling me along with the other. I stepped out of the booth we were in and looked around. I really didn’t see how we were going to make it to the opening ceremony. The dealer hall was still packed, probably with people who couldn’t get to the keynote in time or who couldn’t afford the VIP seating but could afford to show up to the convention a day early.
“There’s no way we’re getting there in time,” I said.
Eric lifted his helmet one more time and winked at me. “Just wait.”
A beeping noise sounded off in the distance and a moment later that beeping noise became a golf cart working its way through the crowd. It had a yellow light flashing up above and it came to a halt right in front of us. Eric turned to me and I could feel the smile underneath his helmet, though he didn’t lift it now that there was a crowd of people watching us and probably wondering who the hell we were that this golf cart was picking us up.
For that matter I was wondering who the hell we were that he could summon a convention center golf cart like this. I was starting to suspect he worked for Elassa Corporation in some capacity or something like that.
I didn’t have much time to think about it though. We were whisked through the convention center and bypassed the long line of people that started outside the dealer hall and ran all the way to the massive room where they were holding the opening keynote. We pulled up to the door where a group of guards took a look at our VIP passes and we were escorted right up to the front. I was so caught up in how incredible it was getting the VIP treatment that I didn’t even have time to question how or why I was getting that treatment.
Eric hadn’t been kidding when he said my seat was front and center. I glanced at my watch. We had five minutes to go. Five minutes until I was finally going to get to see the infamous and reclusive Sean Taylor. And maybe meet him later if this VIP pass was worth anything.
“You okay here?” Eric asked.
“I’m fine, but why aren’t you having a seat?
Eric stood to his full height and looked out over the crowd. I noticed a couple of people taking pictures of him. His costume really was a damn impressive. He looked down at me and lifted up his helmet so I could see his eyes.
“I was thinking of having a little fun,” he said with a wink.
“A little fun?”
Only he did something that made me want to sit down in my chair and die. He moved over towards the stairs leading up to the stage. There were a couple of burly looking security guards wearing guard armor from one of the Elassa series, and they moved forward and put plastic spears in front of him as he moved towards the stairs. I sank down even further into my chair as a couple of people who’d seen me come here with him looked at me as though I was to blame for Eric suddenly acting like a complete spaz.
Why on earth was he trying to get up on that stage? I thought I was going to die from embarrassment.
“What’s your boyfriend up to?”
I looked up and saw Samantha taking a seat next to me and looking at Eric with a slightly bemused expression.
“What are you doing here?” I asked.
She held up her pass and it had the same VIP credentials I had. Of course we’d be sitting together. Now why wasn’t Eric over here sitting with us so we could get on with watching the author presentation and then go have some more fun? Maybe even the kind of fun we’d had before we came down to the convention hall.
There was a loud crash and a flash of light. I turned my attention away from Samantha and back over to where the two guards had fallen to the floor as giant sparks flew out from their chests with a loud bang. Eric threw his hands up in the air and shook them with a victorious shout and suddenly more people were looking. The room was quieting down. Several people who saw me come in with him were looking at me like I was just as crazy as a he was.
What the hell was he doing?
“He had pyrotechnics in his costume?” Samantha asked. “Surprised security let him get through with those.”
“Oh my God,” I said. “I’m so embarrassed.”
This was it. This was when the other shoe dropped. He really was too perfect. He was too good to be true. He was hot, literate, and apparently also absolutely batshit crazy. At any moment a
bunch of security guards were going to rush the stage. I saw them running towards him as he moved towards the podium.
What was he going to do? Make a speech through that ridiculous voice modulator? There was no way they were going to let him stay up there. I glanced towards the edges of the stage wondering if Sean Taylor was waiting back there somewhere but the only thing I saw there were more uniformed security guards dressed plastic armor. Several more of them rushed out onto the stage, only as soon as they got close to him he held his hands out in both directions and there were more fireworks. More sparks. The guards threw themselves back, rather dramatically considering they were just trying to get somebody off stage, and they laid there on the stage with smoke coming up from their chests.
“Let’s just go,” I whispered to Samantha.
“No way,” Samantha said with awe in her voice. “If your rich boyfriend is going to go off the reservation with the crazy then I want to see all of it!”
“He’s not my boyfriend!” I hissed.
And yet I couldn’t help but think about what we’d shared this afternoon. I couldn’t help but think about all the fun we had together in game. I was profoundly sad that it was coming to this. That he decided to have some sort of breakdown right in front of me.
He let out another triumphant roar as he went up to the podium. At this point everybody in the room was absolutely silent. Watching. Waiting. No doubt for someone from security to finally tackle him.
“I am the dark lord Orthaur, and I now control this convention!” he screamed into the microphone.
There was a beat. Absolute silence. And then suddenly everybody in the room was on their feet shouting, whooping, and cheering him on.
“Is he an actor hired by the company or something?”
“An actor that can afford flying us out and paying for a suite at the most expensive hotel in town?”
“Good point,” Samantha said.
“I can’t take any more of this. I’m going.”
“Wait,” Samantha said, she grabbed my arm and pulled me down into my chair. “It looks like it’s about to get really good!”
Some pretty blonde girl with a microphone clipped to her polo shirt was moving out onto the stage. She looked very official and not happy at all.
“Who are you? You can’t be on stage like this!” she said. Her voice boomed thanks to a mic attached to her shirt. She was waving a clipboard as though that was some sort of magical talisman that would get Eric to jump stage.
I almost didn’t want to look. If he used whatever pyrotechnics he’d used on those guards, I still wasn’t sure how he managed to pull that off, then it’d probably hurt the girl. She didn’t have any plastic armor to provide whatever meager protection plastic armor provided. Judging from the way some of those guards were still lying on the stage it didn’t provide much.
Eric turned to look at the girl and he hesitated for a moment. I could see him tensing in a way he hadn’t when there were security guards running at him. I looked back to the girl who still had that angry expression on her face, but it looked like there was something more to that anger than being annoyed at someone for rushing the stage. My eyes narrowed. What was going on there?
Then Eric reached out towards the girl and she stopped. Her hands moved up to her neck and she fell to her knees as though choking.
“I am of the dark lord Orthaur! Who dares challenge me?”
Samantha leaned in again. “Are you sure he’s not an actor? Because this definitely looks like some sort of bullshit publicity stunt.”
I shook my head and watched on in horror. I really wish he’d warned me before he dragged me to this opening ceremony. I would’ve known to stay the fuck in my hotel room after we had our fun. Hell, we might not have had our fun in the first place!
“You can’t do this,” the girl said, gasping as though she was actually being choked. I rolled my eyes. She was a really hamming it up. We’re talking positively Shatnerian levels of overacting. “Sean Taylor… Won’t… Let you…”
“Sean Taylor? Who is this Sean Taylor who would challenge me?” Eric bellowed, throwing his arms to the side. Weird. His voice was booming with that odd modulated sound even though he wasn’t actually in front of the microphone on the podium.
“He’s the creator! And he’s more powerful than you dark lord!”
“Is he really?”
This time the entire room started to shout. They were booing, shouting. Amazing how quickly that crowd turned on him.
Eric reached down and pulled off his helmet. He tossed it to the side and I winced as it landed on the stage with a clatter and a crack moved up along his viewing slit. That thing was expensive, and I hated to see a good costume being damaged like that even if he was acting like a first-rate asshole and embarrassing me!
“Oh,” he said. “Then I suppose we’d better get started!”
The entire room erupted in cheers. I looked around in confusion. What the hell was going on here? Talk about the world’s most fickle crowd. They loved him, they hated him, and then they loved him again.
The blonde girl with the clipboard stood up and brushed herself off and then turned to the crowd. But not before she spared a lingering glance for Eric. A lingering glance that showed a great deal of interest. Far more interest than I cared to see between a woman and Eric, even if he had just really embarrassed me.
She threw her hand out towards the crowd and her voice boomed through the room as she smiled for the first time, though it looked like a forced smile.
“Ladies and gentlemen,” she said, her voice echoing through the room. “The one, the only, the great Sean. Eric. Taylor!”
I turned to Samantha whose eyes were just as wide as mine. And suddenly I was wishing I hadn’t gotten distracted by that stupid video game all those times when I was about to look up pictures of Sean Taylor. Sean Eric Taylor. I looked up at the stage and he was beaming at the crowd, but he also took a moment to look down at me, smile, and wink.
What.
The.
Fuck.
17: Revelations
I sat in a daze as Conlan, Eric, Sean, whoever the hell he was started giving the opening keynote. He started by talking about the early days when he didn’t think anyone liked his books, and he looked pointedly at me when he started talking about dedicated fans getting him through those early days as he built the vast media empire he now presided over today.
I sat in stunned silence.
“Dude,” Samantha said as she leaned in closer to me. “Your rich boyfriend really is your rich fucking boyfriend. That’s Sean Taylor!”
“I thought you said you’d seen pictures of him before?” I asked.
“I’d seen pictures, but those were from years ago. He was skinny, kinda pimply, and had way longer hair back then. He didn’t look anything like stud muffin up there on stage right now. Apparently he decided to take some of that money he got from those books and invest in a personal trainer because damn!”
I shook my head. A personal trainer would explain why the king of the nerds looked so absolutely delicious. Though that wasn’t entirely a fair thought. You could be hot and be a nerd too.
Everything was starting to make sense. That was how he managed to get the Conlan name for his Elassa mail account. He was the owner of Elassa Corp. Of course he could have whatever email he wanted. He probably had that email since the service first started up!
That also explained why he was online in the middle of the day when most self-respecting people would be at their jobs. When most self-respecting students would be at class or, at the very least, hung over and avoiding class. It explained why he was such a good writer. He was the one who wrote the damn books in the first place. Of course he’d be good about writing role-playing scenarios for a game based on the books he wrote!
Something else hit me. He read my stuff. He liked what I wrote. Sean Taylor read my stuff and he liked what I wrote! I had to fight the urge to stand up and dance in front of this massive
crowd. Sean Taylor liked my stuff!
Then the worst-case scenario part of my mind started to take over. Did he really like my writing? Or was he just saying that because he was trying to get into my pants? Because if that was his game than it certainly worked! I’d certainly fallen for it hook, line, and sinker.
He was hot and he was fabulously wealthy. How could a guy like that possibly have any interest in me? I was a just a college girl in an MFA program surrounded by a bunch of people who didn’t like the genre fiction I wrote. How could I be anything other than a one night stand, or maybe a one weekend stand, to a man like that?
If anything finding out who he was had dented my confidence even more. That was how screwed up my brain was.
And yet every time he looked at me I felt warmth running through my body. I felt as though everything was going to be okay. He smiled at me and I had the feeling that all was right in the world. And he seemed to be smiling at me a lot.
My attention moved down the stage and I blinked. That girl in the polo was still standing at the edge of the stage. And she wasn’t looking at Conlan, Eric. Sean, whoever the hell he was. No, she was looking straight at me with pure hostility. I’d never met her but it was obvious that girl straight up hated me.
What the hell?
“What’s with the crazy girl staring daggers at you?” Samantha asked.
“I have no clue,” I said.
“I bet she has the hots for Taylor up there and you’re in the way,” she said. “The poor girl. She gets to be up there with stud muffin working the convention and then he shows up with you on his arm wearing that plastic bikini. There’s no competition!”
“Can you shut up for five seconds Samantha? I need to think.”
“You only need five seconds to think?”
“Listen to the speech,” I said with an eye roll.
Part of my brain was telling me that this was impossible. I had to be dreaming. There was no way the man up there, the man I’d been flirting with online for the past couple of weeks, the man who’d been so amazing in bed just a couple of hours ago, was actually the Sean Taylor. There was no way I’d caught the interest of a world-famous author, particularly one who looked like that!
Boy Meets Geek Page 14