Chapter 13 KELSEY’S TROUBLE WITH TINKLES
Chapter 13
K ELSEY ’ S T ROUBLE WITH T INKLES
When Zachery heads into the bathroom to change for the night, I wonder how this is going to work.
He has no idea how intimidating he is. If those Pitchfork men pegged me as Hollywood despite my efforts, they’ll spot Zach instantly. And that’s even if they don’t recognize him from his movies.
Those wild comedies were probably right up the alley of guys like Gaston.
Is this going to work?
I do like that he’s here. He’s someone I can bounce ideas off. He would have helped in the beaver situation. And I wouldn’t have been near as anxious heading into that bar to meet Grant.
Gaston wouldn’t have gotten his digs in.
Yes, everything about how tonight went would have been better with Zachery around.
The door to the bathroom sticks a little, and Zachery jostles it before it pops open.
He wears a luxury white undershirt (Derek Rose, $170) and gray shorts (Moncler, $600), and dang, even his sleepwear costs more than the contents of my overnight bag.
“I like your pillow barrier,” he says. “Sort of like the Walls of Jericho from It Happened One Night .”
“Exactly like that.” We keep bringing up love stories. It’s putting ideas in my head. But watching Zachery slide beneath the sheets on his side of this not-quite-queen-size bed is making my body tingle.
We’ve done a lot of things together. Movies. Dinners. Late-night talking.
But never with a bed in the room.
And now we’ll both be in it.
I put the pillow barrier up because of my nighttime habits. I’m a cuddler. And if there’s nothing separating us, I’ll be all up in his business by morning.
To be honest, I’m not sure the pillows will be enough.
I pad into the bathroom, acutely aware that Zach recently dried his hands on this towel. That the toothbrush inside some fancy blue-light case was in his mouth.
Wait, is that a sanitizing case?
I glance at what else is out. Caswell-Massey soap. Philip B. shampoo. Geez. That man is high maintenance.
But I like it. It means when I’m with him we have good service, excellent champagne, and the best of everything. And it’s not like he can’t adjust. He’s doing it right now.
I’m sure a hotel like this is utterly below his standards, but he won’t complain.
He’s amazing, actually.
And he came after me.
I wash all my makeup off and brush my teeth. I need to pee, but the walls are so thin, he’ll be able to hear.
I can’t handle it.
Can I hold it all night?
Did he pee? I didn’t hear it.
Maybe the walls are thicker than I think.
But when I start to pull down my shorts, I stop. I can’t risk it.
I step toward the door, but then my need to pee magnifies times ten.
Okay, fine.
This time, the panties hit the floor, but despite my bladder practically screaming, nothing comes out when I sit down.
Oh, geez. Come on.
I turn on the water full blast.
Nothing.
How can I make this quieter?
I string toilet paper across the lid so it will slow the flow and lower the splash sounds.
And finally, I go.
Ahhhh.
It works, the toilet paper tarp slowly disintegrating and plopping into the water.
Oh, no. That sound is worse!
He’s going to think I did number two!
I flush and wash my hands, wishing I had never agreed to let him stay. This is the worst!
I wait as long as possible, then wonder if he’ll think something is wrong with me, and open the door so fast I bang it on my toe.
Zach jumps to his feet. “You okay?”
I wave him off. “Just clumsy.”
He sits back down, and the combination of his closeness, the intimacy of sharing a room, his casual bed clothes, and a small knowing smile makes my heart do a strange little flip.
That’s weird. I haven’t had that happen since Joseph Keen smiled at me in ninth grade. Of course, I smiled back like a big fool before realizing the catch of North High was actually aiming his megawatt attention at the cheerleader behind me.
But this one is for me, and it’s a powerful look.
“Hey,” he says.
“Hey.”
Crawling into the bed next to him, even with the pillow wall, is way sexier than I expect. My heart hammers as I slide beneath the sheet. I’m wearing the gray sweater because otherwise, in this thin sleep shirt, my headlights are shining.
But it’s not lost on me that I’m beneath the same sheet that is covering him .
“Are you a cover stealer?” he asks.
“The worst.”
He clutches the sheets with both hands. “I’ll sleep with one eye open, then.”
“It won’t help. I’m a ninja when it comes to midnight bedding thievery.”
His laugh is low and rumbly and reverberates through my body. I feel it in my chest, my belly, my toes.
This is a lot.
“Good night, Zachery,” I say. I snuggle down on my side, facing our pillow wall. I can just see his face above it.
“Good night, Kelsey.” He reaches over to the lamp and flips it off.
For a few minutes, he stays on his phone, the light illuminating his face.
He’s beautiful. He has no bad side. His jaw is sharp, his dimple visible even when his face is at rest.
It’s shocking, really, that his career dwindled like it did. But it happens most of the time. A sustained lifelong place on the A-list is a real rarity, even though those graying actors with decades of movie credits are the most visible.
It’s easy to forget the leading players of ten years ago when they’ve fallen out of the limelight.
I’ve watched Zachery’s movies. He was miscast in all of them, a career doomed by a bad match of his strengths to the trajectory he found himself on.
It happens a lot. The only real way to combat getting pigeonholed early in your career is to diversify as soon as possible. But Hollywood, like a lot of industries, is comfortable with its known quantities.
If the directors you’ve worked with are comedic, the actors in your circle are comic, and the hits under your name all fall in the same category, that’s where you’ll keep getting work. Those will be the scripts that come your way. And it’s your name that will come to the casting directors’ minds when the same type of story needs a lineup.
It’s a self-perpetuating cycle.
And it was all wrong for Zachery. When the scripts got mediocre, and his talent wasn’t aligned with them, no movie magic was made. So he got dropped for the next pretty face.
His phone fades out as he sets it on the nightstand.
I listen to his breath, feeling every shift of his body on the stiff mattress.
The last thing that goes through my mind before I fall asleep is that I like sharing a bed with him.
Even if the Walls of Jericho come between us.