Chapter 18
“You’re seeing someone,” Lexi informs him over breakfast the day after Halloween.
“Good morning?” Nick counters, pouring himself a mug of coffee.
His sister ignores this. “I can tell. You look different. And you keep grinning whenever you look at your phone.”
He does his best to bite back a smile as he takes a seat across from her at the table. Goddammit.
Despite the late night, Nick forced himself to wake up early, swim some laps. He thought it might shake him out of the infatuated haze the party had dragged him into.
Evidently not.
“Who is it?” Lexi presses, passing him a plate of pancakes. Audrey’s off at a cooking class, which explains why these pancakes are less symmetrical than usual.
“You don’t know her. And we’re just friends.”
“That is not a just-friends kind of look.”
A sigh as he sinks his fork into a pancake. Maybe it would be a relief to confide in someone about it. His sister could tell him that he’s being a colossal idiot, therefore ridding him of the notion that he can have any kind of extracurricular relationship with Ramona.
“I’m not sure how to say this,” he begins. “But I’ve been sort of spending time with…Ramona Wilder?”
Lexi gives him such a blank look that at first he thinks she might not know who she is. “The singer in your class,” she says, a note of confusion in her voice.
“I know. It’s absurd, and it’s inappropriate, and it could get me into a lot of fucking trouble.” With a groan, he reaches for his coffee. The caffeine barely helps.
“She’s older than the rest of your students, though, right?”
“Twenty-six.” Now that he’s started talking about her, apparently he can’t stop. “She is twenty-six, and she has multiple Grammys, a luxury Range Rover, and a cat named Janet.”
A long pause, and then Lexi bursts out laughing.
“You really had me for a moment,” she says, giving his arm a push. When his expression doesn’t budge, her eyes widen behind her glasses. “Oh. Oh shit.”
“I…don’t know what we’re doing.” He’s not about to tell his sister they hooked up in his office, in part because it still feels only half-real.
Maybe he dreamed up the whole thing. “But I think I’ve been quite stupid about it.
And we’re not dating. We’re friends, which somehow sounds even more bizarre?
” He runs agonized hands down his face. “Jesus, I feel like a dirty old man.”
Every so often, this thought crosses his mind: that maybe after the quarter’s over, once there’s no longer that student-professor risk, he could ask her out on a real date.
But that doesn’t change the fact that she’s still twenty-six.
Still famous. What, would he take her to his local pizza place for a slice? Bowling?
Somehow he has a feeling Ramona Wilder might like bowling.
Maybe he needs her dating help after all, because he’s not sure how to navigate any of this. How to separate all these warring desires. Is this what a midlife crisis looks like? He hadn’t expected it would hit him this soon.
“Professionalism aside,” Lexi says, and when Nick lifts his eyebrows, she gives him a we’ll get to that look.
“Ten years isn’t that dramatic. Especially in LA.
She’s an adult. You’re an adult. And she’s arguably lived through more than most people her age.
If that’s your biggest concern, as opposed to how you actually feel about her… ”
How he actually feels about her. As if that isn’t the question he’s been trying to answer for weeks.
Lexi isn’t wrong that Ramona’s lived through more than most twentysomethings, so much of it still a mystery to him.
“You don’t think it’s insane that I’m hanging out with a celebrity.” Telling his sister comes with a massive exhale. He hadn’t expected she’d be so…understanding about it.
“Oh, I definitely do.” Lexi swipes an uneaten pancake off his plate and bites into it. “But people seem to make it work. Wasn’t Matt Damon’s wife working as a bartender when they met?”
Nick almost laughs at this. “Not the same thing. And I’m not looking to get married again—I mean, I don’t know if that’s something she even wants—we’re just friends,” he repeats, flustered.
He recalls what she said at the taco truck: that she wanted a family.
Then again, that could mean any number of things, and marriage obviously isn’t a requirement.
Worried that he’s digging himself into a hole, he changes the subject. “There’s no good segue for this,” he says. “But…I’m looking at a couple apartments tomorrow.”
Lexi seems to take it—jokingly—as a personal affront. “Noooooo,” she says dramatically. “Why would you move when you have access to sibling pep talks twenty-four/seven?”
Truthfully, he’s not sure if he’s ready. But part of him feels like he should be ready, that he ought to have his own space. Because as great as it’s been to be close to his sister and niece, he’d love to have room for all his records. A kitchen of his own.
A place to bring someone over, if he ever meets someone he feels comfortable doing that with.
When he imagines it, he tries really, really hard not to picture Ramona.
“I’m sure I’ll still be here through the end of the year. At least.”
“Ugh, fine. I respect your right to be a fully independent person or whatever.” She swipes around on her phone while he returns to his coffee, and something on the screen makes her nearly drop it. “Nick…I think you need to see this.”
When she passes him the phone, the pancakes feel like they might come right back up.
“I was just googling her,” Lexi says. “All I did was type in her name, and this article popped up.”
Ramona Wilder Goes Incognito at Clippers Game with Unidentified Male Friend, reads the headline, followed by a series of grainy photos of the two of them in their way-up-there seats.
They don’t look especially coupley, thank fuck, but there’s a closeness to their interactions as they cheer for the team.
An ease that he certainly didn’t feel that day, especially with how adorable she looked in all that Clippers gear.
The article was posted three days ago, and there’s an update at the top. The mystery man has been identified as Nick Navarro, a UCLA professor.
Shit.
He opens his work inbox, the one he mutes over the weekends and yet still religiously checks. Sure enough, right at the top is an email that makes his heart sink all the way to the floor.
Nick,
My apologies for emailing on a weekend, but this couldn’t wait. Please see me at your earliest convenience on Monday.
Dean Eckhart
—
“The light in this space is really special,” the real estate agent says cheerily, waving her arm with a flourish. “Would you look at that view?”
“Does it have pool access?” Ramona asks.
“For a separate amenities fee.”
The agent is a middle-aged woman named Angie who has no idea who Ramona is, which is great, and a skewed perception of what Nick can afford, which isn’t. They’ve seen two places so far, one in Palms and one in Mar Vista. This one, in Westwood, is nearly out of his price range.
Ramona turns on the sink in the kitchen, then does the same for the bathroom sink and shower. “Good water pressure,” she says. In jeans and a vintage Tom Petty T-shirt, she’s more casual than he’s ever seen her. Almost painfully soft.
He doesn’t want to notice any of his favorite details, not her freckles or her voice or the curve of her hips, but they’re undeniable as always, despite his lingering discomfort from the article. He should have canceled—that would have been the logical thing. The responsible thing.
But he can’t help it if he wanted just a little more time with her before the dean’s judgment tomorrow.
“How do you know what to look for?” Nick asks, unaware that this was one of Ramona’s skills.
“I went apartment-hunting for the first time when I was on Greta.” She straightens, dusts off the knees of her jeans.
“Lived in a place that was covering up a gas leak for the first six months and made it a point to become an expert on what to check so I wouldn’t have to do that again.
” Then she turns to Angie. “The floor plan is great. I love the way it all flows.”
Angie beams as though she’s personally responsible for it. “It really is the perfect place for a young couple,” she says, and instead of leaping to assure her that they are most certainly not together, Ramona leans in to purr directly into his ear.
“That’s what we were hoping,” she says, placing her hand on Nick’s chest. Her closeness hits him with her natural scent, as though she forgot to put on her usual perfume. Just shampoo and Ramona, reminding him that he’ll never be hers. “Isn’t that right, babe?”
And even if it hurts a little, picturing this alternate universe, damn it if she doesn’t make him want to play along.
“Right,” he says. “I love the, uh, crown molding.”
Ramona dashes off to peek at the primary bedroom. “Babe? Do you think this would be big enough for all our…toys?” She grins like she hasn’t dropped a lit match at his feet. Evil, evil girl.
Nick is definitely not thinking about what he did with her panties after the party, or what she might look like using any particular toys. If she’s going to torture him, he can torture her right back.
“You’re forgetting the swing, babe,” he says. “We’ll need a place to hang it.”
“Silly me!” Ramona slaps her forehead. “I just hope the walls aren’t too thin.”
Angie gives them a knowing wink. “Very thick soundproofed walls. So you two can have all the fun you want.”
He should be laughing at the agent’s amusement, but something strange has been stuck in his mind since the first apartment they saw.
Even though they’re not looking for a place together, part of him is desperate for her to like it.
A phone chimes, and Angie reaches into her purse. “Shoot, my son forgot his inhaler in the car. My house isn’t that far—you don’t mind, do you? I’ll be back in twenty minutes.”