Felix smiles, like he knows what I’m thinking. “I can turn the brochure around if you want. So that family isn’t silently judging us.”
I laugh, but it sounds nervous, and Felix wipes his hands on his jeans.
“Hey,” I say, still fiddling with the key card.
“Hey,” he says back. “Are you having second thoughts?”
I guess it’s obvious. Probably because I’m still standing by the door. “I’m having all the thoughts,” I admit. “You?”
He groans and covers his eyes. “Yeah.”
I’m not sure if his thoughts are the same as mine, but there’s something comforting to not being the only one conflicted about this. The aching parts of my body aren’t nearly as comforted, though. Because if he’s also conflicted, then it’s probably best, and most responsible, if this doesn’t happen.
I sigh and sit down at the edge of the bed, though I wish I could be much, much closer to him. I’m not sure if that’s what’s best for him, for me, for us.
How can I be thinking of an us already?
We smile weakly at each other. “Have you seen Jerry Maguire?” he asks.
That pretty much leads the list of conversation topics I wasn’t expecting. “Um, once. A long time ago.”
Felix sighs. “There’s something Cuba Gooding Junior’s character says to Jerry, and I can’t stop thinking about it.”
Now I’m really confused. “Show me the money?”
He laughs, and my heart thrills a bit, because god, he’s got a great laugh. He holds out an arm to me. “No. Not that. Hey, no one can see us in here. You want to come closer?”
Do I ever. I want to climb on top of him and muss his hair up even more. I want to feel his hands running up the back of my short skirt. I want him to kiss me and kiss me until I can’t remember my own name.
I settle for scooting in next to him so I’m lying up against his side, my head on his shoulder. I close my eyes, letting myself soak in the warmth of his body against mine. And more than the sexual desires—though there’s definitely that—I feel . . . content. Blissfully so.
“So the girl Jerry’s dating is a single mother, you know?” he says. “And the Cuba Gooding Junior character, I can’t remember his name, but his mom was a single mother, too.”
The contented feeling becomes a hard pit in my stomach so fast I’m not sure how I manage to take a breath.
So that’s what he’s conflicted about. Of course.
“Oh,” I say. “You don’t want to get mixed up with someone with a kid.”
He looks a little stunned. “No, that’s not—that’s not what I’m getting at. That’s not what he says.”
I pause. Maybe I jumped to that assumption too quickly. “Okay. What does he say?”
“He says you don’t shoplift the pooty from a single mother.”
I can’t help but laugh. “Shoplift the what? How do I not remember this?”
“The pooty,” he says, with that gorgeous grin of his. “And I do not know.”
I may not know what the hell a pooty is, but I can—kind of—see where he’s going with this now, and I’m relieved Felix isn’t averse to being with me because of Ty, who is, of course, a non-negotiable part of my life and always will be.
That relief is great enough that I giggle, putting my head back on his shoulder. “So is that what we’re doing? Shoplifting?”
He groans. “That’s how it feels. Tell me that’s stupid.”
“Mmm. I’m not sure that it is.” But stupid or not, I’ve never wanted to shoplift so badly in my life.
“I told you I’m not proud of my past, right?” he says.
I nod. He did, in vague terms, though I sure know what it’s like not to want to think about the details of past indiscretions.
“One of the things I’ve been working on,” he says, “is paying attention when my gut tells me something doesn’t feel right. Making sure I’m doing what I need to stay out of trouble, even if it interferes with what I want.”
“And this doesn’t feel right,” I say. I both agree and disagree with that, and apparently so does he, because he shakes his head.
“It does,” he says. “Too right to happen only once.”
What he’s saying is true, and I know it. I close my eyes.
“I think I knew that before you showed up,” he says. “I was lying here checking my phone waiting for the text that would say you’d changed your mind. Sometimes when I’m stressed, I have this habit of sitting still and not moving, because if I don’t move, I can’t make a mistake. But I think in this case, I could have picked a better location.”
Something about that stings, the way he’s describing me as a mistake he has the potential of making. And even though he just said this feels right—too right—I can’t help but wonder. “Do you want me to leave?”
He shakes his head. “I really don’t.”
I relax against him, under the warmth of his arm, even though I’m not sure what it is we’re doing here.
“How is it possible,” he says, rubbing his forehead, “that I’m lying here next to you, in a bed, in a secret hotel room in the middle of the afternoon, and I’m somehow suggesting we not have sex?”
I laugh. “I don’t know. You do seem torn up about it.”
“I really don’t know who I am right now.”
I put my arm around his chest, feeling the muscles through his t-shirt, and lean in close enough that my nose presses into his cheek. “You’re cute, whoever you are.”
I’m so intensely aware of how close his lips are to mine that I’m finding it hard to breathe. He pulls me in even closer, which doesn’t help my breathing any. It does, however, feel so good. My body fits perfectly tucked up against his like this.
I can only imagine how perfectly it fits with his in other ways.
His fingers trail along my bare arm, raising goosebumps along my skin. “This isn’t how I want it to go,” he says, and I know I’m not the only one imagining us fitting together with less clothes in the way.
“How do you want it to go?”
“In another situation, I would have asked you to dinner. And then maybe to coffee after. And then breakfast the next day. You wouldn’t have been able to get rid of me, I’d be so clingy.”
My heart flutters happily, thinking of Felix and me on long romantic dates, talking about anything and everything—like lunch at the sushi restaurant, only without the restraints of all the rules. “You do seem the high-maintenance type,” I say with a laugh. “But somehow, I think I wouldn’t mind.”
And I wouldn’t. Something about talking with him, being with him—I never want it to end. I think of how it was even talking with him on the phone to tell him about the audition, frantically trying to think of something to say to keep from hanging up. I wasn’t even aware before today of how much I needed someone to talk to, someone who cares about me for me, and not as part of a band, or as a member of their family who they depend on. Alec and I lost that—the easy way we used to talk—long before our relationship ended.
And even then, it was never like this.
“Maybe we’d sleep together,” he continues. “And maybe we wouldn’t yet. But I’d treat you with respect, and whenever that did happen, I’d sure as hell still be there in the morning.”
My throat goes dry and my heart pounds faster. He would be; I know that. He wouldn’t be like those other guys, the ones I let use me. The ones who only wanted me for sex, the ones who never saw me.
He would be there in the morning, and he would look at me like he’s looking at me now, like there’s no world outside of this room, outside of us.
And I know, sadly, what I need to do. Or not do, I suppose. “I have an answer to your question now. It would make things worse if we slept together.”
He covers his face with his hand. “This is the w
orst,” he groans.
I laugh, knowing all too well how he feels. “Tell me about it.” I move to sit up, but again his arm around me tightens.
“Do you need to go?” he asks.
I look back at him, surprised.
“You can if you want,” he says quickly. “But we’ve got a couple hours, right? You could stay and talk. Fair warning, though. I’ll probably kiss you.”
I at once feel flushed with desire and completely confused. “You want to kiss me, even if we’re not going to have sex.” I’m not sure what to do with this. It goes beyond my experience with guys—even the good ones, like Alec.
But Felix responds like the answer to this is obvious. “Yeah. What about you?”
I do. More than that, I just want to be with him longer, even if all we can do is hold each other and talk. I settle back in next to him, and it’s like my whole body relaxes—like it had tensed up in that brief moment we’d been apart, and I hadn’t even realized it until I was back in his arms.
He wants to kiss me, even if we aren’t going to have sex. The girl I was four years ago would have found this laughable, impossible even. Which may be why I feel the need to sort out what, exactly, we’re doing. “So you’ll kiss me today. And after this we’ll just be friends.”
It hurts to say that last part, but it’s what’s necessary. Isn’t it?
He shakes his head. “I can’t do that. I can’t pretend to be just your friend.”
My throat closes. “Are you going to leave the band?”
“No,” he says, and I let out a breath of relief. “But it’s something I’m working on—trying to be authentic. True to myself, I guess.” He pauses. “That probably sounds stupid.”
“No. You’re talking to a professional liar. I get it. It sucks to put on an act.” I didn’t think it would, or at least not so badly, when Alec and I agreed to keep doing this for the sake of our careers.
But even in the worst parts of my past, I was never much of a liar. Except, maybe, to myself.
Felix brushes the hair back from where it’s falling over my face, and I close my eyes against the touch of his fingers, soft and yet I can feel the callouses of years of cello playing, which is somehow crazy sexy. Or maybe just on him. “Exactly,” he says. “I can pretend for the world, but I can’t put on an act with you. I can keep the rules. We don’t have to date, and we don’t have to touch. But I also don’t want to pretend this is anything other than what it is.”
“And, what is that, exactly?”
He gapes a little, like it didn’t occur to him to define it. “I don’t know. If you have a clue, you’re welcome to fill me in.”
I press in tighter against him. “Whatever it is, I like it.”
There’s this moment where we’re silent, just breathing each other in. I can feel his heartbeat under the palm of my hand. I find myself wishing this was my life. Only this, and no rules about what we can and can’t do.
But this is just a perfect, stolen afternoon, and I need to know what follows. Partly because as amazing as it feels to be more to him than just a sexy encounter and a friendship after, I can’t put my finger on what more we could be. “So if we’re not together and we won’t touch, what’s the difference between that and being friends?”
His lips twist as he considers. “You have close guy friends, yeah?”
“Yeah. I was close to Mason.” A stab of hurt follows those words. I’d thought I was close to him. “And there’s Leo.”
“And you talk to Leo like this?”
I laugh. “Ha. No.”
“Well. There you go.”
I roll off him enough to prop myself up on my elbows. I should let it go, should just be satisfied that there’s this thing between us, and we both feel it, even if we can’t put a name to it. But part of me needs some kind of label, as if that makes it more likely to be real and still exist the moment I leave this hotel room. “I’m still not entirely sure what it is we’re doing here.”
Felix’s blue eyes study mine. “I can’t pretend to be your friend because I’m past there. It’s like, there’s friendship, and there’s sex, and then there’s like this third thing . . .” He cringes. “I can’t believe I’m about to say these words. I can assure you I have never uttered them in my entire life.”
My heartbeat picks up. Friendship. Sex. A third thing. “Go on.”
He bites his lip. “I guess it’s like, emotional . . . intimacy?” Then he closes his eyes. “Oh god, what is wrong with me?”
I laugh, because Felix said those words like they’re a foreign language, and also because it’s less scary than the word I was thinking.
I lie back down on his chest, my arms around his neck. His heart is racing, and mine’s keeping pace. “Emotional intimacy,” I say. “I like it. I could get behind that.”
He sighs. “So does that put us on the four year plan?”
Ugh, four years. But that he would even consider it . . . “I’m still not sure you actually remember I have a kid. And a past. And a hell of a lot of baggage.”
“I have baggage, too. I’m not ready to tell you all of it yet, but I will.”
This stings a bit more than is reasonable. I mean, I was open with him at the restaurant—far more so than I’ve ever been with someone I’ve known for so little time—but it’s not like I went into all the details of my past over sushi.
I wonder, though, if someday I could tell him everything.
I wonder if he would still feel the same about me, after knowing all the things I’ve done.
“It’s okay,” I say, because I believe him when he says he will tell me. Maybe I’m being stupid and naive, but I find I trust him. I trust he’s not playing with me or using me. I trust that this thing between us—this emotional intimacy—is as real for him as it is for me.
And then something occurs to me. “You know I’m still going to have to pretend to be with Alec, right?”
“I know. I get it.”
I’m not sure he does, not really. “That means we have to go out. Like scheduled appearances. Phil makes us appointments, gives us places to go. Like . . . on dates.”
“Yeah,” he says. “I get that you have to keep up appearances.”
But I’m realizing how unfair it is, if he has feelings for me, to have to see me with Alec. Being a couple with Alec, which isn’t the same thing as watching us at band practice. “And sometimes we have to like, kiss and stuff. Only in public, and it’s not like we full-on make out or anything.”
His arms wrap around me. “Jenna, I get it. I know.”
And even though everything in me is begging me not to say this, I do anyway. “So you should date other people.”
His hand runs through my hair, his fingers gently separating the strands. “We’re not in a committed relationship. We can’t be. So I’m absolutely allowed to date other people.”
I told him he should, but my heart feels like it’s splintering apart.
“And you’re going to want to,” I say quickly, as if saying it out loud will help. “Of course you are. Why wouldn’t you?”
His fingers graze the curve of my ear, then cup my chin. I meet his eyes.
“I don’t exactly want to spend my time leading girls on,” he say. “Unless you plan to hire me a fake girlfriend to throw off suspicion.”
But four years is a long time. And if my world can have changed so quickly, so thoroughly, in two days . . .
“You might find someone,” I say, the words barely more than a whisper.
His thumb caresses my cheek, and his lips quirking up into a smile. “Because in my experience, something like this is so easy to come by.”
His words from before echo in my head: I haven’t felt like this.
Neither have I, I want to say. But words fail me, because I can see the look in his eyes as he cradles my face in his
hands, and my breath catches and my blood rushes and then his lips are on mine.
And in the heat that consumes me, it’s like everything shifts—my life, the world, everything.
Or maybe I finally realize how much it already shifted, before I even knew it. Back when I first met eyes with a gorgeous guy playing his cello and sitting in the bright sun on Hollywood Boulevard.
It’s more than wanting him; it’s needing him. We’re kissing, and his hands are running over my back, my waist, down my thighs, and mine are doing the same to him, and we may be clothed now, but I can feel in a very definite way how much he also wants more than this, and I know it’s only a matter of time before we abandon our good sense.
I break off from the kiss and bury my face in his neck. I feel the fever-heat of his skin against my cheek and hear the hammering of his heart against my chest.
“Four years,” I say, my body aching. My heart pounding. “Are we really talking about that?”
He presses his forehead against mine. “I’m going to go out on a limb and say we probably won’t make it four years before we start breaking rules. But I do think we can make it more than four days. How about you?”
I can’t help but laugh. “I can’t believe we’re talking about this. This isn’t normal.”
“Not normal at all,” he says, his breathing still a little ragged. “I think that was the point I was making before.” But he’s smiling, and I’m smiling back, because while I’m scared, I’m also giddy and a dozen kinds of wound up right now.
“Ahhhh. What are we doing?”
He kisses my forehead, and it takes everything in me not to start making out with him again.
“Taking Alec up on his one-night offer,” he says, grinning against my skin. “At least somewhat.”
I groan. Alec would be disappointed in me that I’m not doing more than making out. But if kissing Felix feels like this, I can’t imagine how hard it would be to go back if we did more. “I think it’s having the opposite effect,” I say. “It’s more like free sample day at the grocery store.”
He smiles. “Ha. So we’re trying this out with the intention to buy.”
The intention to buy. For good. His smile slips after he says this, and I think I know why.
Everything We Are Page 7
