How You Get The Girl (Theme Song Book 2)

by Jessica Florence

  “Uh, who?” She looked confused.

  “They guy on the phone. Your man.” Maybe I was digging for information, something to give me a hint that she was seeing someone.

  “Oh.” She looked at me, still with a confused look on her face. But then she took a step towards me.

  “I don’t know. I just feel so stupid.” Now what the hell was she talking about?

  “I keep taking him back, even though he cheats on me. I just love him so much, but it still hurts.” She looked down, like my little tigress was about to cry. Hell no to that shit.

  “He’s a fucking dickwad who deserves his ass beaten.” Accent was gone, but she didn’t register it, obviously very upset. God, I can’t believe this. She was with someone who had her love, and he was cheating on her! I was so pissed right now. I would get his name from her tomorrow in the trailer, and then I would hunt his ass down. I knew ways to torture people, thanks to the horror movie I did a few years ago.

  “That’s very sweet. I just wish I could get him back. You know, make him hurt like he hurts me. Maybe he wouldn’t do it anymore. I should just cheat on him.”

  The end of the cigarette had burned and fell onto my boot, and I swear I heard it hit the leather. My mouth parted slightly, thinking about what she might be insinuating.

  “I know this is way out there,” she started to say,but then stopped.

  “No, I’m sorry. It’s too inappropriate.” She started to turn, but I wasn’t having that shit. Not now, no fucking way. I grabbed her arm and spun her back around, pulling her body close to mine. Away from the glass of the bar, no one could see that there was zero space between us.

  “Say it,”I whispered against her hair, feeling her body shiver in my arms. I felt a slight sting of her nails biting into my forearms. My fantasy was coming to fruition.

  “I just thought that maybe…” She looked up into my eyes, and I wished that she was really looking at me as Joel and not this hillbilly tech guy.

  “You want to make him hurt. You want him to think of you getting punished by my dick over and over. Screaming out my name. Say it,” I growled, feeling like I wanted to take her right there. She was pulling out the alpha male in me. I wanted to claim her against the wall so that shithead man of hers would know who she really belonged to.

  Her head leaned in closer, and then stopped just before my lips. I would let her take that final step.

  “I want you to…” She closed her eyes, and was almost there. Fuck, this was happening!

  “To…” she whispered and I felt her lips caress mine gently. Not really a kiss, but she was a centimeter away from it.

  “To show me how you got this ridiculous thing to stay on your face. I mean seriously, I think I will need to do all your disguises from now on if this is how you do it.”

  Uh, what?

  Her body pulled away from mine in a fit of laughter. What the fuck just happened?

  Alessandra was laughing hysterically in front of me. Like, full-on, stitch-in-her-stomach laughter. Unbelievable.

  “You knew it was me?” I felt played. Which was pretty hypocritical, since I was sort of playing her, too, but whatever. These are my feelings.

  “Really, Joel? I look at your face every day, up close and personal. You really think I wouldn’t recognize you?” Her laughter was calming down, but those feelings in my stomach hadn’t gone away. I schooled my face.

  “You could have been a pretty good actress. Although I knew that you’d figured it out. I just wanted to see if I could get you to kiss me. Since pretty boys aren’t your type, thought I’d try the cowboy.” Even though that was a complete lie, she bought it.

  “No thanks, Cowboy Casanova.” She smiled and walked back into the bar.

  Fuck, now I was never going to live down that name. But at least she didn’t see the real emotions that were stirring in my gut from our play.

  I walked back in with all the swagger I could muster up, feeling nothing like the man that smiled and joked with his coworkers. For the first time, I felt like I was in uncharted waters with Alessandra. I wasn’t giving up, but for the night I would let myself feel vulnerable to what this girl was doing to me. She had me up in knots, consuming all my thoughts, and feeding that desire to make her mine.

  Chapter Six

  Alessandra

  “All done.” I pulled back my cotton pad from Joel’s face and he immediately jumped up and went back to work on set without one word uttered to me.

  Whatever. I wasn’t too thrilled with him right now, either. He was screwing with me last night, so I screwed him back. His butt-hurt feelings didn’t make me feel any better, but seriously. He was all too eager to play along and get me into his bed.

  In a way, I know it was all a joke. And I’m not sure why I played along. But the whole day today, he had been putting on a front with me. He would smile, and look every bit Joel Kline on the outside, but I saw it in his eyes. He knew he shouldn’t have played with me. And he didn’t like it that I played back. The player got played, so to speak, and he didn’t like that it was his own fire that burned him.

  I watched him as he rested in a space ship whose course was set for Earth. Of course, it wouldn’t make it there, that would be too easy. But right now, he was talking to the reader who was slowly falling in love with him. You could hear the sadness in his voice. The loneliness.

  He was a good actor. I felt like he meant every word he said, even though it was scripted.

  When Leighton yelled cut, Joel just sat in the fake ship for a few minutes while everyone around went about their business. When his eyes finally travelled my way, I waved him over, and he nodded.

  As he jumped out of the ship and walked over to me, everything in my head started to weigh on me.

  “Hey, can we talk?” Even though I didn’t really do anything more wrong than he did, I was still his lead artist, and he could make my life miserable if he wanted to. Not that I thought he would, but the air between us needed to be cleared.

  “Sure.” He looked at me, and waited.

  “I think last night got carried away from both of us. I’m sorry for my end.” There.

  “I’m sorry, too. Who’s Jenson?” His voice held slight malice at the mention of Jenson’s name. Oh boy. Did he really think I was with a guy that cheated on me?

  “My thirteen-year-old son. He was at a friend’s house last night and wanted to know if we could go surfing this weekend.” I was nervous mentioning my son to him. When he took in my words, his expression was almost comical.

  “Your son?”

  “Yeah, my son, Jenson.”

  “I didn’t know you had a son; why haven’t you mentioned him?” He sounded hurt, but that was just too weird, so I ignored it.

  “Didn’t know we were friends like that. Last time I checked, you just wanted to get into my pants.” He rolled his eyes, and it was sort of a cute reaction. But it was Joel. He was cute no matter what he did.

  “Well, we are friends now. You wanna talk about shit, you can call me anytime.” Without asking, he reached into my pocket and grabbed my phone. I didn’t have any lock on it, so one swipe and he was typing away. I didn’t protest. I should have, but I didn’t. When he was obviously up to something other than just putting in his number, which should have only taken a few seconds, I tried to get it back from his greedy hands.

  “Okay, what are you doing now?” I lunged for the phone, and he held it above his head, still up to something.

  “Seriously, what are we, twelve? This is stuff my son would do.” He stuck his tongue out at me.

  “Real nice.”

  “There you go. Now you can call your new bestie anytime.” He smiled and sauntered off, looking pleased with himself.

  “You’re not my bestie!” I hissed at him and followed behind. He grabbed an orange from the food table and started peeling.

  “Can’t let me go, huh, Lips?” I huffed and walked away. Jesus, I swear he lived to screw with me in any way he could.

&nbs
p; The rest of the day went by quickly, and we actually were done pretty early. As soon as I got home, I gathered our surf gear together so when Jenson got home from school we could grab some waves before the sun set.

  It was all worth it to see the smile on his face when he saw I was ready with our boards, my wet suit on, and beach bag in my hand. He put his fist in the air in triumph and zipped off to his room to throw his suit on. Together we headed toward the beach.

  We were all tied up and ditched our bag in the sand, heading straight for the water. Surfing and his love of the water was something he got from me. No matter what we had been through, the water always took away the stress of life. We had gotten in a good half hour of shredding the waves before I heard Jenson yell out to me.

  “Got a man in a gray suit!”He started paddling towards the beach calmly, and every other surfer who heard him, did the same. Wanting to be with my baby and not risk fate more than I was, I paddled in as well. No reason to be out looking like a tasty turtle when there was a shark sighting.

  “You really saw one, kid?” a tanned surfer asked Jenson.

  “Yeah, looked like a fourteen-footer.” Jenson loved sharks. He wanted so badly for his birthday to go to the big aquarium in Monterey Bay and swim with the creatures. I still wasn’t sold on the idea.

  “Nice. Good call then, kid. And good job with the lingo. Didn’t freak the tourists out.” The surfer ruffled Jenson’s hair, and walked off. He tried to fix his messed-up black do, but failed. The salty sea water was acting like gel, keeping it in disarray.

  “You wanna just hang out?” I asked, trying to gauge what he wanted to do. I was kinda getting hungry, but if he wanted to hang out on the beach, I would be down for whatever he wanted.

  He looked around and shrugged.

  “Food sounds good.”

  “Sharky’s?” It was a nice little beach restaurant. It had a rack for our boards, and we could sit under little umbrellas to stay out of the sun.

  He mumbled a yes, but I understood it. Teenager speak was happening to him. One word answer here, another grunt there. Thankfully I was tuning in to it, and could interpret.

  Sharky’s was pretty busy, but we managed to snag a table, and the waitress took our order. We always got the same thing—he got a burger with ketchup, mustard,and pickles, with a side of fries. I ordered fish and chips. Something about being on the water always made me want a basket of fried goodness. Not sure why, it was just what I always craved.

  Our food came out pretty quickly, and Jenson dove in like an animal. I swore I raised him to not make such a mess, but he seemed to always prove me wrong.

  “Just when I didn’t think my day could get any better.” My whole body froze, hearing that voice. Oh dear God, please don’t let it be him.

  Chapter Seven

  Joel

  The look on Alessandra’s face was pure horror, an expression I found completely adorable. I just wanted to smush her cheeks with my hands and kiss her lips so hard.

  She looked at me and blinked, most likely hoping I would disappear. Hell to the no on that one, baby. Then her head whipped towards the teenage boy she was eating with.

  It had to be her son, and he was staring at me like I was his biggest hero. Honestly, both of their faces were priceless.

  “Care if I join you guys?” I started to pull out a chair when both of them started talking. Alessandra was saying ”Yes,” and her son saying, “Fuck no!” Alessandra’s head whipped back to her son and she swatted him on the arm in a very motherly way.

  “Mouth!”she barked, giving him an eye.

  “Seriously? I’m allowed right now to curse. Do you know who this is?” He gave her attitude right back. Yep, he was most definitely her son.

  “Thanks. You guys get some water time in this afternoon?” I plopped down in my seat and waited for our lucky server to come back our way.

  “Yeah, we did. It was sick! But then I saw the man in the gray suit, and we hightailed it out of there. It was like a fourteen-footer, dude.” The kid rambled on while his mom just looked uncomfortable as hell.

  “Nice. I once saw a twenty-footer by my house in La Jolla.” I grabbed Alessandra’s cup and took a sip, just for the reaction I would get from her. She didn’t disappoint—her face said there was going to be hell to pay for all of this.

  “No way!!” he said excitedly, then he schooled his face.

  “I mean, that’s pretty cool.” Heh.Trying to be all nonchalant about it, a true teenager. These two. I could be around them all day and never be bored.

  Another kid yelled out to Jenson, and Alessandra excused him to go say hello. The waitress came right before Alessandra had her chance to question me or give me some sort of attitude. Saved! She stared at me as I pretended not to know what I wanted, and wasted time asking the waitress about what she liked on the menu. If steam could come out of my girl’s ears, it would be.

  I ended up ordering a burger and fries, sending the starry-eyed waitress on her way to put in the order.

  “What the hell are you doing here? Are you stalking me now?” The words just flew out of her mouth, and with a tinge of that accent I found so attractive. She glanced at her son, who was pointing subtly at me,then her eyes came back to my face.

  “Yeah, it’s my new hobby. I follow you around the traffic of Los Angeles, hanging in the trees, waiting to catch a peek at your tits while you change. I pretty much live outside your window.” I smile the whole time I’m spinning my story, which she knew was all crap, too.

  “I honestly was just walking towards the surf when I saw you and had to come over. The water is my second home, and today was such a nice day. As you know, we don’t always get out before the sun sets.” It was as simple as that. No conspiracy here.

  Those walls of hers were up high, but I could see she was willing to put down a window.

  “Oh. We like the water, too.” I liked that, very much in fact.

  “You surf too?” If she said yes, I might have to ask her to marry me right now.

  “Yeah, it’s something Jenson and I like to do together.” My hand reached out for hers, and my mouth just opened.

  “That’s it, Alessandra, you are the woman for me. Marry me?” If I was being honest with myself, I would have to admit that if she said yes, I would probably go through with it. I wasn’t in love. But this was a woman I felt like I could be around for years upon years, and never get bored. She was so refreshing, and everything about her I have discovered I really liked. A girl who surfs? Dream come true.

  “Yeah,sure. You wouldn’t last five minutes with me as your wife.” She scoffed, and I felt my dick start to stir, thinking about the fun we would have living in the same house together. Then her son came back with his friend.

  “Hey. Um, can I get a picture?” asked Jenson’s friend, who was a little pudgier than Jenson but had this goofy grin on his face and twinkles in his brown eyes.

  “Sure thing.” I took a fun picture with the kid and soon my food arrived at the table.

  Jenson rejoined us, and we talked about surfing, and how he’s been dying to swim with the sharks up in Monterey Aquarium. He really enjoyed all things ocean. Every once in a while, during our little dinner, Alessandra would pipe up and tell a story of Jenson’s childhood years. I think it was just a mom thing, and of course Jenson would turn pink and try to shush her. He never once asked how I knew his mom, and she didn’t discuss it, either.

  When it was time to leave, we said our goodbyes in a civil manner. Which was not what I preferred. I would have rather pulled her into my arms, dipped her down, and kissed her hard, so she would think of our kiss during our separation. Instead there was a “thanks for hanging out with us” from the kid, a “bye” from her, and I said a “see you tomorrow.”

  They both hitched their boards under their arms, and headed towards the road. I wondered if they lived around here. It wasn’t the best of areas, but it wasn’t super shitty either.

  “Are you going to date Joel?” I heard
Jenson ask his mom while they walked off. She didn’t answer, and he gave her his opinion, which was pretty awesome.

  “You so should. Then we can go surfing together!” I had won the kid over, easy-peasy. Now his mom just needed to come on board, which seemed to be the hardest part. But slowly, I could break down her walls. It would work. It had to work.

  The sun was just about to hit the ocean, so there wasn’t much point of me diving in. Instead I took my sandals off and walked along the shore, aware that there were people taking pictures of me the whole way. I didn’t pay them any mind, but then it clicked in my head.

  Maybe that was something Alessandra had an issue with—the fame. She wouldn’t want to be in every magazine as my play toy, let alone her son getting caught up in the mix. Stuff like that could cause problems, that I knew from experience.

  But how was I going to keep that from happening? I was who I was. I enjoyed my life; I loved my job. It was my passion to act, bringing happiness to people for the cost of a movie ticket and maybe some popcorn.

  Figuring it was time to head back to my little cottage, I thought about an addition to my new game plan of winning Alessandra.

  Maybe her whole offer to help with my disguises could come into play. She can’t complain about being in the limelight with me if no one knows it’s me. Could be fun.

  So many thoughts were running through my head. I would make this work.

  After a dip in the pool, and I was all cleaned up, I relaxed on the couch and popped in a movie. I loved movies. I didn’t just enjoy making them, I truly loved watching them. I love watching the acting, and knowing what they went through to create that part. I love watching the story happen. Movies were something that made my mind go blank, and allowed me to be in the moment to enjoy them. Not many things had that effect on me. Before I knew it, I woke up with my alarm. It was time to make some magic happen. And by magic, I mean make Alessandra like me.