Page 86 of What's in a Kiss?

Michael Jinx turns around to glance at us, eyebrows raised.

“Not you,” Jake stammers apologetically at the actor. “I mean...”

“Actually,” I say to Michael Jinx. “Yes, you. This is Jake Glasswell and he has a question.” I motion to Jake, likeask him. I know it’s a mistake, but it’s too late.

Jake shakes his head, closes his eyes, and lets the moment awkwardly pass. The bartender hands Michael Jinx his drink, and he gives us a pitying look before disappearing into the crowd.

“What the hell was that?” Jake asks me.

“Jake—”

“I knew I shouldn’t have come,” he says as we make it to the front of the line.

“Cute pup!” the topless bow-tied bartender says to Gram Parsons. “What can I get for you—”

“Scotch. Neat. Double,” Jake says.

I motion the bartender for the same. Jake puts a twenty in the tip jar. We take our glasses as Aurora clinks a fork against her champagne flute.

“On this, my thirtieth trip around the sun,” she says, her voice cloyingly sweet, “I am so, so blessed to be surrounded by suchbreathtakingbeauties—”

Jake groans audibly, causing people around us to look at him. I pull him around the corner of the deck.

“You don’t want to be here,” I say.

“I want to be withyou,” he says. “But I’m starting to wonder if you want to be with me. In whatever state of non-success I’m in.”

“It’s just that I’ve seen... I know what you’re capable of—”

“You keep saying that, Olivia, and I truly have no idea what you’re talking about.”

“You said we know by now what to leave alone in our lives, but I disagree. You’re a star, Jake, you don’t know it, but—”

“Do you hear yourself?” he says.

“And I can’t leave my relationship with my mother alone—”

“Says who?” Jake demands.

“Says the little girl inside me who wants her mom back.” I swallow and meet Jake’s eyes. There’s a distance between us in this conversation that’s making my chest tense with anxiety.

“You’re the one who told me ten years ago,” he says, “that our love would generate its own world, a parallel universe. That we could leave the pain outside our doors, that we could build asanctuary just for us. I believed you, Olivia. And we did it. I don’t have to interact with my toxic parents and neither do you—”

“My mom isn’t—” I start to argue. But I’m out of my depth again. Jake knows more about the dark side of that relationship than I do, and suddenly I want to cry.

“I don’t think we should talk about this right now,” Jake says, his cheeks flushed.

“Hey now!” a female voice interrupts us and a hand squeezes my shoulder. “Had any hot dogs lately?”

I turn to see a blond middle-aged woman in a blue blazer with white trim and matching blue skirt. She’s holding a fruity cocktail with a little rubber apple sticking out, and I have no idea who she is.

“Actually,” I say, “I had three just the other day.”

“Three?” The woman throws back her head and laughs. “That’s my gal!”

She turns to Jake and extends her hand. “Amy Reisenbach.”

I inhale a quick sip of scotch. The president of CBS Entertainment has just introduced herself to Jake. Lady Fortune, be a mistress of the sea.