Page 28

Chapter 28

Jessie

“A delivery for Miss Welsh at the gate.”

The page came over my headset. Hardly anyone ever paged me.

“On my way,” I croaked, knowing time was shy before I was next needed on set.

Lead trudged through my veins, but I hurried so I wouldn’t miss my cue. I had to sub out a shirt with a comically-placed stain on it for that particular scene. It was around 2 p.m. and the lack of sleep from the storm was really catching up to me. A large cup of coffee waited for me at the entrance desk. A handwritten note on the side told me that was my delivery.

Here’s to sunnier skies today. See you tonight. -Jockey

I thanked the desk attendant and took my still surprisingly hot coffee. The sticker on the side said it was a hazelnut latte.

Did Mikey drive two hours round trip to bring me a coffee? It could have been a delivery service, but it looked like his handwriting. I’d slept so heavy once I was in his bed. I took a sip off the top of the latte as I hustled back to set, my breaths shallow.

Mikey was my fake boyfriend, but who would he have been faking for at work? The only person who knew about him was Kitty, and she knew we were faking.

For that matter, who were we faking for at all? I hadn’t seen Cole since the jealousy-inducing kiss, and Mikey’s mom was back home in Detroit.

And was it faking for him to hold me through the storm the night before?

After the stain scene wrapped, I sent Mikey a quick selfie of me sipping my drink with a thank you. Like the devil from a puff of smoke, Irina materialized.

“When you’re done posing for the camera with your coffee break, we’ve got a new scene to shoot,” she spat.

“The pieces are already prepped,” I said with a forced smile.

“I was unaware we were leaving for a coffee run,” she said, glaring at my cup.

“Actually, my boyfriend brought it,” I said, cocking my head to the side and turning for the wardrobe trailer.

She followed in step behind me. “It’s really unprofessional for an apprentice to be getting visits at work from her boyfriend.”

And it’s really unprofessional for you to not do your job , I almost shot back. My blood boiled, but then I remembered that I had an NHL player waiting at home to take me out to dinner. Did it matter that he wasn’t my real boyfriend?

Kind of. I oscillated between being nervous and feeling giddy on my whole long commute home. What was forty minutes at 5 a.m. was an hour and twenty minutes at 4 p.m. When I finally walked into the apartment, Mikey sat at the kitchen island, scrolling his phone. By that point, whatever stink he’d put in Cole’s apartment was most everywhere in Mikey’s. He had an ocean-themed candle lit and the windows open, but the faint seafood stench prevailed.

“Welcome home, Sweet Cheeks,” Mikey said, dropping his phone and looking up with a grin. He jumped up to greet me as I put my bag and keys behind the door. He chewed his lip with his hands in his jeans pockets, looking surprisingly shy as he waited for me to empty my hands. He had on a backward hat to go with his t-shirt and jeans, which pumped up his sex appeal. After the latte worked its way out of my system, I went right back to my exhausted state at work.

But being in Mikey’s presence again was like a shot of intravenous caffeine. He was happy to see me. We turned to face each other and he opened his arms for a hug. As his much less seafood and much more sea breeze scent enveloped me, I relaxed in his embrace, both of us swaying from side to side exaggeratedly. The urge to kiss him again kept going through me like tiny jolts of electricity, each little lightning bolt saying “DO IT.” But I couldn’t. I was too nervous. If we kissed alone, it was real. Did he want it to be real?

Still, I enjoyed it when he mumbled in my ear, “Missed you, roomie.”

I laughed and squeezed him a little tighter. It felt like in college when you’re randomly really touchy with the people who live in your dorm because you’re all just far from home and essentially lost souls looking for somewhere to land. “Thanks for my coffee, roomie.”

“No problem. Thought you might need it after last night.”

I blushed and pulled out of our hug. I hated to admit how vulnerable I’d been getting with him. I was eager to change the subject.

“Let me go change and we can go get tacos? You can tell me all about your trip.”

“Yeah, I’ll order our ride. Can you be ready in ten?”

I nodded and ducked in my room. Fuck, I really wasn’t expecting to be so thrilled with Mikey coming home. He was essentially waiting by the door for me, and the way he looked nervous made my stomach all first-date melty. I hadn’t felt this way since I met Cole, and even then, it was such a calm affair. There was a spark, we pursued it, and we stayed together.

But with Mikey, it wasn’t just sparks. It was a mouthful of Pop Rocks. And it scared the shit out of me. I had no business getting invested with anyone, much less with a womanizer like Mikey.

And yet there I was, carefully choosing my outfit to try and show off for him.

I put on a burnt orange tee that didn’t show too much cleavage (a hard feat with me) and tucked it into a short vintage corduroy green skirt, matching his laid-back vibe but letting him see a little more skin. I put a leather jacket on top for the evening’s chill, and I was pretty happy with my look.

Ben was, too, giving me a long look up and down with a simpy smile when I came back into the kitchen. “You dressed up,” he said.

“Ah, not too much. I wanted to look as cool as you,” I said, dismissing him.

As we headed out the door, he said, “You one-upped me, though.”

* * *

A few tacos each deep, Ben and I officially had a case of the giggles. We sat at the bar at his favorite taco joint, the same place we’d gone with his mom and Lori. We had two seats on the end where it was a little more private.

“Wait, but really, tell me what you did to make it smell so bad,” I pried, resting my hand on his knee to recover from my laughing fit. He traced circles into the back of my hand, a tiny movement that sent a shiver through me.

“If I tell you, you have to promise not to help him,” he said, looking down at his fingers’ workings, then back at my eyes. “I’m not sure I trust you not to tell him.”

“My lips are sealed,” I said, mimicking a zipper over my mouth. He squinted at me, seemingly determining if I was trustworthy. “Come onnnnn! I’ve had to smell it more days than you have.”

He waited for me to stop laughing, looking me dead in the eye. “Shrimp in the curtain rods.”

I almost pissed myself. “Mikey! He’ll never figure that out!” I started off on another laughing jag and he joined me. I snorted, making him laugh harder, throwing his head back and banging his hand on the bar. “He’ll have to move out!”

“Aw, shucks, that’s too bad,” he said, setting us both off again. Mikey’s dimples were endearing under normal circumstances, but they were deeply carved into his face when he laughed. We hadn’t stopped laughing in a while.

Those damn dimples made me daring.

“But if he moves, you won’t have to fake kiss me for him anymore.”

Mikey’s face went serious, like he was considering what to say. “We’re pretty good at faking, don’t you think?”

Our gazes locked, my heart pounding. Our laughter had firmly stopped. It took a lot of strength to stay looking at him, to not look away because I was scared. So much hung in the space between us. Did he want me the way I wanted him? “I don’t know. I think we could probably use more practice.”

The corner of Ben’s mouth quirked up as he moved closer to me. “Are you asking for more kisses, Jessalyn?”

“Is that a problem?”

He laughed a little, then put one hand on the outside of my thigh. “No, it’s not a problem.”

His other hand slid along my jaw, a delicate touch like he was handling a Faberge egg, coming to rest with his fingers in my hair and his thumb by my ear. His eyes bounced between mine and to my mouth, my hands coasting up his arms to rest on his biceps. The soft puff of his breath met my open lips, a lit match to my powder keg. The want, the need, the touches we’d exchanged that had brought us to this point came to a head as our lips magnetized, a connection that was finally just ours.

We were doing it. We were kissing for real. We were kissing for us. For everything we saw in one another. For all of our fears. For all of our hope.

My whole body was sparkling, a shimmery feeling grounded by a bass-like rumble: low, velvety, and earth-shaking. His lips were a little spicy from the hot salsa he’d slathered on his tacos, adding another sensation to the experience. Just like before, he worked in a tiny hint of tongue, just enough to make my thighs clench and have me craving more. We both kept trying to pull away, knowing that we weren’t being restaurant-appropriate, but struggling to stop.

We finally broke apart, smiling.

“That fake for you?”

I shook my head. “I wasn’t faking.”

His stare lingered on me a little longer and he turned to the counter. “I’m in so much trouble with you, Jessie.”

“Why?” I thought it was solved. Sealed with a kiss. No going back to platonic pretending.

He folded his arms on the bar and stared down at them, then turned his head toward me. “I like you, Jessie. A lot. But I don’t know how to do this. You talked about me going back to the type of women I used to date, but I don’t want to go back. I want you. And I don’t know if what you mean is that you want this, too. But if you want this, I don’t even know if I’m qualified. I’m twenty-eight and I’ve never had a real girlfriend. I want it all. But I don’t even know how to do it all. I only know how to fuck and leave, to the point that I think it’s all I’m good for. And so do you.”

I was taken aback. Like always, Mikey just blurted it all out there.

“Ben,” I said, struggling to find my words. “I don’t think that’s all you’re good for. You’re such an amazing person. I mean, yeah, you’re bossy with me sometimes, but it’s all because you care. And I’ve never had somebody care like you do.”

His brows knit as he considered my words. I took a deep breath, terrified of what I was about to spill out.

“If I’m honest with myself, I’ve wanted this for a while. But I’ve really been scared. I just got out of a relationship where I got treated like trash. Being around you has made me realize how much all that messed me up, made me think less of myself.”

“I know that,” Ben said. “And I don’t want to be your messy rebound that you leave for some better relationship guy. You could wreck me.”

“I don’t want that either,” I argued. “I want whatever this is to be real.”

He shook his head with a sad smile. “You want me to be your post-breakup good dick guy. But the good dick guy doesn’t get the girl. He just gets to be her best sex and show her that she wants more than good sex.”

“Mikey, that’s not true. You’re more than that to me. We haven’t done any of that stuff, and I still get excited when I think about you.”

He sighed, hanging his head over his forearms on the bar. “That came out shitty. I don’t think you’d mean to do it or anything. I just don’t know how to do relationships and you’re going to figure it out sooner or later anyway. We’re different kinds of people. I’m not a relationship guy.”

I thought about the throwaway comment he made about his dad being a cheater and knew this was coming not from a grown man, but a hurt little boy. I put my hand on his leg.

“Do you want a relationship with me?”

He nodded, not meeting my eyes. “Yeah.”

I grabbed his hand and squeezed. “I hear what you’re saying about the rebound, and I want to respect that. But there’s no magic bullet that makes you a relationship person or not. There’s just communication, being honest with each other. And you’re really good at that.”

He swallowed hard and glanced at me sidelong. I went on.

“I can’t make you trust me, or yourself. But I know you trust other people. Look at your team, your friends. Those are real relationships, too. Don’t count yourself out.”

His eyes traveled over my face, processing. Then his mouth went back to that smirk. “You should be a coach, Sweet Cheeks. You give one hell of a pep talk.”

My heart fluttered. “Does that mean I get the prize?”

He cocked an eyebrow. “Prize?”

“You. Us. We’ve both got reasons to not do this, but what if we just did it anyway?”

He chuckled and gestured to his body. “You think you can manage all this?”

I smirked at him. “If anyone can, it’s me.”

He rolled his lips between his teeth, considering. He reached in his back pocket, pulled a hundred-dollar bill from his wallet, and threw it down on the bar.

“You ready to go?” he asked, holding out his hand.

“Let’s go home,” I said, lacing my fingers through his as he led me out of the restaurant.