Shit…this was getting worse and worse.

I straightened. “Close that goddamn thing or I’m going to put a Trojan virus on your computer!”

Sid gave me a pitying look as I turned and headed to my closet. “It’s a Trojan or a virus—not both.”

“Whatever. Now please tell me you have some ideas about how to get that thing off the Internet.”

“How on earth would I do that?”

I froze, my hand on my smartest business skirt and matching crop sweater. “You mean, you can’t?”

“April, the thing has gone viral. There are memes, gifs. It’s all over social media. Were you not listening? It’s everywhere. There’s no way I can get it off.”

I sank to my bed, still wrapped in my towel. My stomach took a nosedive toward my ankles. I rubbed my forehead, trying to stave off a stress headache. “Shit.”

Sid swiveled her desk chair around to face me. She was petite and cute as a mouse, with olive skin, dark hair and eyes like polished onyx framed by dark glasses that overpowered her face. She folded her arms across her modest chest and raised a thick, dark brow at me.

“You know, it really isn’t that bad. No one could possibly know it’s you. You’re dressed up as Princess Alloreah’la from Dragon Epoch—purple wig, pointy ears, thick glitter makeup on. I doubt even the guy you…um…you know…even knows who you are. And he has a helmet on, and you both have most of your clothes on—except for your butt. So the odds of people knowing who it is are slim.”

“Well…thank God for that. But still…”

With my leg, I scooted aside a stack of economic theory books—my latest passion—laid the outfit on my bed and went to my dresser. Doubtful my friends who knew about the cheesy tat were the type to follow the #ComicCon tag on social media. I may have been “bookish” and “boring,” but I wasn’t a video game geek. And I usually kept the damn tattoo covered up. I was biding my time until I got the courage to get the hideous thing lasered off.

Biggest mistake of my life…

Okay, maybe second biggest mistake of my life. I sighed.

“So…how long does it take stuff like this to blow over?” I asked, bending over to grab a fresh pair of panties and a bra. I held the panties up—dark blue lace—and decided against them, shoving them back into the drawer and pulling out a thong. This skirt showed every single panty line. So weird that my mind was grasping, beyond the panic, to find some sort of normalcy, nitpicking every item I chose to wear. But I knew I had to try to shove this cosplay humiliation behind me somehow and hope against hope that this would soon fade away.

Scarlett O’Hara always said, “Tomorrow is another day,” but for me, “tomorrow” was going to start in about thirty minutes. I had to get my shit together, or at least act like it was together. Being moved up to work with an officer of the company was a huge honor for an intern. I needed his recommendation to get into business school, and I wasn’t about to blow it. Not now. I’d worked too hard for too long.

“No. More. Alcohol. Ever,” I intoned to myself as I sat on my bed and pulled on my clothes.

Sid snorted from where she sat behind her computer. “I’ve heard that one before.”

I stuck my tongue out at her, though she couldn’t see because her back was to me.

“Who knows what STD you picked up on this escapade?”

I grimaced at her. “He had a condom on, idiot.”

“Oh, well then. I guess that makes it all okay.”

“Sid, please,” I begged, pulling on my boots.

She spun around again on her chair, hands on her hips and affecting that motherly tone that she liked to use. “April…walk me through this, please, because I’m really confused. Doing something like this is so not you. Did aliens abduct your brain? Because, ya know, Comic-Con would totally be the place for that.”

I blew out a breath and leaned back against the wall. “My mom called me while I was there.”

Her face fell. “Oh, criminy. And what did the Wicked Witch of the West Coast want?”

I clenched my jaw, fighting off the renewed feeling of hurt. “She was calling me from Las Vegas, actually. She got married. Again.”

Sid’s eyes widened. “Oh, holy poop. For the fourth time? You barely had a chance to meet the last husband before it was over…” Then she seemed to remember one key detail—thank God, because I had no desire to spell it out for her. “Oh no…please don’t tell me… she didn’t—”