16. Holden
SIXTEEN
Holden
NEW YEAR’S NO-MORE-COCKBLOCKIN’ EVE
“To be clear,” I tell Piper, “I didn’t mean I’ll undress you. I meant I’ll unzip the back of this dress for you so you can put on something else. When I’m not looking. You do have other clothes to wear, yes?”
“Yes.”
“And this is the thing you messaged me about needing help with, yes? Getting out of this wedding dress?”
“Yes.”
I take a long, slow, appreciative sweep of this beautiful girl before placing my hands on her shoulders and turning her to face the other way. Her long dark hair is full and kind of wild, probably from all that twirling she was doing before I got here, and her cheeks are flushed. “You really do look stunning, Piper.”
She lowers her head, laughing quietly. “I’m so embarrassed. I honestly don’t even remember putting this dress on.”
“I’m sure it was calling out to you.” I gather up a fistful of her hair and pull it to one side, just like I pictured doing to her last night, but with much less fervor. She catches her breath, and I think she’s remembering the same thing as she reaches up to gather her hair over one shoulder, her fingers grazing mine. One side of her long, smooth neck is now exposed, and I can’t help but lean in to inhale her incredible scent. “Fucking hell, you smell so good.”
She bursts out laughing. “I know, right?”
I find the hidden zipper on this very delicate, very elegant dress and manage to grasp it between two fingers. “Seriously, what is that?”
“It’s my signature scent,” she says.
“Is it a secret formula or something?” I slowly, carefully pull down the zipper on the back of the wedding dress. “You won’t believe this, but I remember the back seat of the cab smelling like this when I found your journal.”
“Get out of here.”
“It’s true.”
“Well…I combine a few things.”
This zipper goes all the way down to her waist, and there is no bra between her neck and there. Just fair skin, and very little is visible to me, but I like what I see and I want to see more, as soon as possible. “Vanilla, caramel, musk? What else?”
“Essence of charm. Innocence. Just a hint of sex appeal.” She giggles nervously.
“I don’t know how to tell you this, but I think you may have overdone it with the sex appeal today.”
She snort-laughs. “It’s a recurring problem, actually. The other thing you’re smelling is Trouble with a capital T , so…”
“You aren’t kidding.”
“I really am.”
She’s still holding her hair to one side. Her other hand is on her hip. I’ve unzipped her as far as I can unzip her. And she’s joking around adorably, but her body is so tense. I place my hand over her hand on her hip and say, “You won’t believe this either, but I saw you outside a club on Sunset. Couple of weeks ago. You were getting into a car with some friends. Laughing. It was the same night I met Shay at that party, actually. I thought you were gorgeous. You were the most beautiful girl I saw that night.” She is silent and motionless, still holding her hair to one side and holding her breath. “And then I saw you in Times Square. At the Wishing Wall. Crazy, right?”
She lets go of her hair. Breathes. Slowly turns to face me. “The reason I forgot my journal in that cab three years ago was because my friends told me they saw you walking around. I ran out of the cab because I wanted to see you. I didn’t, though.”
I stare at her mouth. I want to kiss her again. “Crazy.”
She’s staring at my eyebrows. “Yeah.” Now she’s staring at my mouth.
“Okay. Well, I’ll let you go change into something a little more comfortable. Unless you actually do want me to undress you right now.”
She blushes profusely, looking away. “Well, I mean. Then what’ll you do for an encore?” she finally says, laughing nervously.
“Right. I’m gonna get some things out of my car.”
“Okay.”
Neither of us moves.
When she looks back up at me and her lips part and she tilts her chin up the tiniest bit, I take her face in my hands again and lean in as close as I can without actually kissing her, waiting to see what she’ll do next. What she does is, she wraps her arms around my neck and kisses me so frantically, sighing into my mouth, and it’s so hot. I take the lead, kissing her more deeply, exploring with my tongue. There’s a shift. Her sigh becomes a womanly moan, her feverish questions become an answer. Her hands slide down to my chest and then down and around to my ass. She squeals and then pushes me away and runs off into another room, shutting the door behind her. Leaving a scent trail.
Leaving me to adjust my pants and go outside where it’s cold. I need it to be cold. That girl has a lot of energy, and I am beyond intrigued. I don’t really know what to expect from her other than a lot of pleasant surprises, and I can’t remember the last time I met someone and felt like it was the beginning of something special. If I ever felt it before at all with anyone else, I was obviously wrong. Despite how strangely all of this started with Piper, it somehow feels right.
It’s snowing pretty heavily now. The snowflakes are huge and the sky is completely white and there’s about four inches of wet snow on the ground now. Uncle David’s place isn’t too far from here, but there’s no point in driving there. There’s no way Shay will make it to Big Bear. And I like this cabin. Or maybe I just like being in a room with Piper.
I can’t think of one other person I’d want to be stuck in a cabin with tonight. Maybe that’s nuts. Maybe it’s a leap of faith in her not being nuts. But maybe being nuts about a girl for once is exactly what I need.
I grab my duffel bag from the trunk of my rental car and a paper bag of takeout from the restaurant I was waiting at when she messaged me. The duffel bag contains, among other things, a bunch of belated Christmas presents for Piper. I’ve never really wanted to get Christmas presents for anyone except my family before. I really wanted to get something for Piper. So I ordered the cheesiest things I could think of with overnight delivery, and I can’t wait to see the look on her face when I show her.
She’s still in the other room when I’m unpacking things from my bag. I’ve taken off my jacket and my sweater because it’s warm in here. The tight shirt I’m wearing puts every muscle I’ve built for Zephyr’s character on display, and I have a feeling Piper’s going to like what she sees. From what I’ve read of her fanfic, though, she probably cares more about what my glutes look like in these pants. And I happen to know she won’t be disappointed.
When the bedroom door opens, out walks Piper in a button-down white blouse and plaid miniskirt with bare legs and thick socks that go over her knees. Very naughty schoolgirl. I like it. I like that she was going to wear that to meet Journal Guy. She is so not my usual type, but I think my new type is…her.
She locks eyes with me as she shuffles toward me. Her hip knocks against the side of an armchair in the center of the room, and it startles her. “Oh, sorry!” she says.
“Did you just apologize to a chair?”
She’s blushing and scrunching her face up, and it’s so cute. “Don’t make fun of me for being polite.”
“Are you from Canada?”
“No, but I get that a lot when I’ve been drinking. Usually I have the New York edge.”
“Tough guy, huh?”
“You don’t want to mess with me.”
“You have no idea how much I do,” I say under my breath. “I brought a few things for you,” I tell her. “Why don’t you have a seat in that chair you just assaulted.”
She smiles so brightly, tilting her head to one side, and I like that too. “You brought something for me?”
“I brought some things for you.”
She takes a seat in the armchair. “I feel bad—I didn’t bring you anything.”
“It’s fine. I’m obviously a much nicer person than you are.” First I hold out the beautiful soft leather journal to her. “It’s a journal,” I explain, as if I have to.
“Awww. Journal Guy. That is so sweet.” She runs her fingers over the leather, tests the stiffness of the cover, flips through the pages. “Dotted pages. My favorite.” She closes the notebook and holds it to her chest. “I love it. I can’t wait to write in it. Thank you.”
“You’re welcome.” Then I present her with a bouquet of newly sharpened pencils. They’re tied together with a red ribbon. “I sharpened them myself. Had to borrow a pencil sharpener from the hotel manager.”
“Oh my God,” she says gleefully. “You are so obsessed with You’ve Got Mail !”
“I watched it again with my sister, and I didn’t hate it.”
Then I give her a little model of the Empire State Building, for Sleepless in Seattle reasons. “I’m going to keep this on my desk,” she informs me. “As a symbol of the triumph of rom-coms over cynicism.”
And then I tell her, “I was going to get you a Joni Mitchell CD, but I realized you’d think I was cheating on you with my secretary and also I couldn’t get a CD delivered overnight. But I did get you this…” I open up the bag from the restaurant and place a clear take-out container on the coffee table. “It’s a pastrami sandwich. Like the one Meg Ryan had in When Harry Met Sally… .” Her doe eyes blink at me. “So you can have what she was having.”
She rubs her cherry-red lips together. “A really loud fake orgasm?”
“Oh, it won’t be fake,” I assure her.
She clears her throat. “That’s very generous of you.”
“I’m a giver.” It isn’t until I see Piper sitting there holding the journal and pencils and Empire State Building model that I realize how fucking insane it is that I watched a bunch of romantic comedies and then purchased gifts for her referencing those romantic comedies simply because she loves romantic comedies. That is not the kind of thing I usually do for the girls I want to have sex with. Especially when I haven’t technically met them yet.
“I can’t believe this is happening,” she says quietly to the floor. “But I also totally can.”
It feels so good to hear her say this, it’s not even insane. It’s just good. “Like a comforting surprise?”
“Exactly.” She stares up at me, and I watch the expressions on her face change as she comes to some kind of decision. “Exactly,” she says again.
I look down at the deli sandwich. “I don’t even know if you eat meat,” I mumble, running my fingers through my hair.
“I eat meat like nobody’s business,” she says suggestively. Then she widens her eyes and shakes her head. “I can’t believe I just said that.”
“Go on…”
She squeezes her eyes shut again. “No! It’s just the tipsiness. I’m not like this.”
“You aren’t?”
“I mean, I haven’t been with anyone else. I haven’t been like this with anyone else, I mean… And I haven’t been with anyone else before.”
And there it is.
“We can take it as slow as you want, Piper. We can do whatever you want.”
She shifts around in the chair, smirking. If we were texting right now, she’d throw a smiling-face-with-horns emoji at me. But there’s no app between us. There is nothing at all standing between us and no one else around us now. “The thing is,” she says hesitantly, “I want to do a lot of things…”
Happy New Year to me.
“Well, I literally have nothing else to do for the next couple of days, so why don’t you tell me what you have in mind.”
Now she’s giving me smiling-face-with-halo-emoji vibes.
Piper gets up, carefully places the gifts I just gave her on the coffee table, and comes over to where I’m standing. She holds her hands behind her back and crosses one leg in front of the other, twists her lips to one side. I get the feeling she’s about to say something awesome.
But my phone starts ringing.
My phone never rings when I’m not on set unless it’s business or an emergency.
“You should get that,” she says, suddenly looking concerned. “It might be Shay.”
I pull my phone out, and indeed, it is Shay Nicholls calling. I had almost forgotten about her. I put her on speakerphone so Piper can hear too, and I never take my eyes off her. “Hello?”
“Oh my God, are you in Big Bear already?”
Piper winces at the sound of Shay’s voice, and that tells me everything I need to know.
“Yeah, I’m at the cabin, actually.”
“Gahhh! That airline was such a cockblocker, but I’m at LAX now. I just have to get my bags and then I’m in my car and I’ll be there in, like, three and a half or four?—”
“You aren’t going to be able to drive here today,” I say, cutting her off. “It’s snowing pretty hard, and by the time you get to the mountains you won’t be able to drive on the roads without chains.”
A beat, and then she says, “Oh. Well…should we meet at your hotel, then?”
“I can’t leave here, so just Venmo me, and I’ll pay you the rental fee for this cabin, okay?”
She makes an overly dramatic, frustrated, spoiled Hollywood-actress sound. “Okay. Well, there should be champagne and charcuterie in the fridge if my PA did her job correctly.”
“She is doing everything right,” I say, staring at Piper.
“I’ll bring all of your stuff back to give to Lainey,” Piper says, leaning in closer to my phone. “Don’t worry about that.”
“Wait, what?” Shay’s voice sounds so shrill through the speakerphone. “Is that Piper? Why are you still there?! You get out of there, you cockblocking little?—”
I end the call before Shay finishes that sentence.
Piper covers her mouth, but I can see in her eyes that she’s smiling a little. “Oh no, she’s so mad.”
When I was driving up here this morning, Rita called to say that Alex Vega watched the screener of Riders of Storm and Fire and he even got to see an early cut of Winds of Change . He thinks I’m perfect for the lead in his movie and wants to meet with me as soon as possible in the new year. Not that I had any interest in Shay at all once I figured out it was Piper I’d been texting with in Backroom, but now I don’t need to have anything to do with her. Unless Piper keeps working for her, I guess. Which is unlikely.
I immediately get a text notification.
SHAY: OMG she hung up on me. Tell her to leave. Call the police if you have to.
ME: I’m the one who hung up on you. I will reimburse you for everything. HNY, Shay.
I silence my phone, put it back in my pocket, rest my hands on my hips, and look back at Piper. “You were saying?”