Page 53 of The Best Worst Thing
Pillow Talk
By midnight, Nicole and Logan were sitting on his kitchen counter in their underwear, legs tangled, eating frostbitten chocolate ice cream off the same spoon.
“So,” Logan said, “about the next thirty-six hours …”
“Let me guess. Constant banging, with short breaks to acquire falafel, check the AL West standings, and pass out on your couch?”
Logan snatched back the pint, then kissed her shoulder as his free hand tugged down the neck of a decade-old, perfectly soft T-shirt he’d tossed her way. “Stealing someone’s words is a crime, Nicole. Punishable by …”
“It’s sex, isn’t it?”
Logan, mouth still nuzzled into her neck, confirmed Nicole’s suspicion. She slid a hand up his leg.
“I know your pitch is Thursday,” she said, “so feel free to disappear. Val and I have to finalize our next episode, anyway.”
He smiled. “Anything new to report?”
Nicole shook her head. Response to the podcast over the past twenty-four hours had been mostly positive, but those first impressions didn’t mean much.
Data from their next few recordings, when the conversations truly began to broaden, would provide a little more insight, but it would take time—months, really—to see if they had something special on their hands.
“Honestly, I’m trying not to stress over the analytics yet. I just want it to be good. I just want people to hear it and feel something.”
Logan cocked his head. “Is this the same director of business affairs who demanded she personally triple-check the pricing tables on my decks because, and I quote, ‘everyone knows graphic designers can’t be trusted around an accounting comma’?”
She glared at him. He pulled her between his knees and told her how proud of herself she should be, how good he thought the interview was, and how sexy he found her vocal fry. She told him to go to hell, then stole back the spoon.
“Okay, but seriously,” he said, scooting closer.
“Thursday, I’ll be done in Malibu by one or two at the latest. And then I was thinking, maybe we could just …
keep doing this all weekend? It’s supposed to be superhot out.
We could just go to the beach, swim? Or we could leave town, if you wanted? Find somewhere with a pool, or—”
She kissed him.
“Here,” she said. “I like it here.”
“Yeah?” he said, looking around a bit. Empty walls, warping hardwood, a floor lamp that doubled as a coatrack. “If Quentin fires me, maybe I’ll just get an interior design certificate or something. Scale some of this genius, you know? Art is so important.”
Nicole rolled her eyes. “Quentin’s not going to fire you.”
“Oh no, he might. As soon as my flight landed this morning, he screamed at me for an hour from some boat off the South of France. Told me he’d been meditating on it, and that he didn’t really give a shit what I pitched anymore, because if I didn’t close the deal, I was going to be out of a job. So, yeah. That was fun.”
“Wait, that’s crazy—even for him. Has he gone completely nuts?”
“Uh, yes?”
They both chuckled. It wasn’t funny. But also, it kind of was.
“And you’re not freaking out?”
He shrugged between a couple of half-melted spoonfuls.
“I mean, I probably should be. But honestly, I’m not afraid to bet on myself.
Maybe that’s just me being an idiot. Or maybe I’m just numb to all the pressure by now.
But at this point, it’s kind of like you said.
All I can do is show up and try to make the people in that room feel something. ”
Nicole circled his kneecap. “You ever practice or anything? What you’re going to say?”
“Yeah, actually. The night before, I kind of obsess over every page in the deck, make sure everything’s perfect. Lock myself in my office or the business center of my hotel or wherever I am …”
Nicole nodded. That much, she remembered.
“Then,” he said, “I come home or go up to my room and I talk it through. I wander around and think about how I’ll connect the dots. I get comfortable with it. Turn the whole thing into one simple story, then try to tell it just right.”
“You done that yet?”
“I have not.”
She drew her knees to her chest. “Then pitch me.”
“No way,” he said, his cheeks—maybe for the second or third time ever—turning a little pink. Nicole, all of a sudden, wanted to kiss them. “That’s like showing you my first-grade yearbook! What if I had a bowl cut? That’s not for you to see!”
“Please?” She tugged his arm. “I want to hear you work your magic! And you know how much I love celebrity-owned tequilas that are three times as expensive as they should be. They have so much … heritage. They’re so … Canadian.”
“It’s a good product, I’ll have you know.”
“Then come on,” she said, bopping his forearm with the back of the spoon. “Pitch me. Prove to me, after all this time, your job’s real. Show me what else one-half of the winningest policy debate team Issaquah High School has ever seen can do with that mouth of his.”
His upper lip quirked. “Did you google me, Nicole? After I specifically asked you not to?”
Nicole shrugged. He shook his head. Both of them were beaming.
“Puh-lease?” she said.
“Fine,” he said. “I’ll do it. But when I’m done, you’re making me a grilled cheese. A giant one. And after that, I’m going to fuck you. Like, really fuck you. Probably on this very counter. And not particularly nicely either.”
She inhaled sharply, then kicked him off the counter. “Deal. Now come on, get to work. Sell me some booze.”
He laughed. And then he handed her what was left of their pint and pitched her. And then, because he was a man of his word, he did all the other things he’d promised too.
Plus a little extra, just because.