12
IMMEDIATELY, I REALIZE I’VE MADE A MISTAKE.
It’s too late. They’ve all seen me. And I’ve seen them.
A woman comes up to me, beaming. She has short blond hair immune to frizz, is wearing a nylon dress that can’t possibly be comfortable, and is towering over me in heels covered in crystals.
I’m wearing my beat-up running shoes, shorts I somehow still have from middle school, and a T-shirt that has been washed into sandpaper consistency and is currently rug burning my armpits. My face has a visible sheen from the sunscreen that wouldn’t blend in after ten minutes of trying. Not that the sunscreen was necessary, apparently.
We’re in an apartment. One of Parker’s friends has a basketball court in the middle of his apartment . I must have gone lovers to enemies with karma, because the walls of the court are glass, so the moment I see Parker and his friends, they see me too.
One starts laughing.
The woman is still smiling at me, though her eyes widen. Her pale cheeks go pink. “Oh! They—we don’t usually play. They’re pretty competitive . . . they’ve never asked us to . . .”
There’s a woman wearing jeans and a cropped T-shirt on the couch in front of us. She has dark skin and box braids and is wearing bright purple eyeshadow. “I would play if they let us.” She shrugs a shoulder. “They’re not that great anyway.”
Parker and his friends have left the basketball court. They’re walking toward me, and I’m contemplating taking a few steps back and flinging myself down the elevator shaft.
“Elle,” Parker says, and for some reason, just the sound of my name from his mouth makes a chill crawl up my spine. He looks happy to see me. And a little confused by my outfit. At least he’s not laughing at me, like the guy next to him with way too much gel in his hair. “Do you want to play?”
“She can’t play,” Over-Gel says before I can decline and pretend that I forgot that I need to be somewhere else entirely. Maybe another country. “The teams would be uneven.”
“Then maybe you can do everyone a favor and sit this one out, Charles,” the woman on the couch drawls, without even looking up from her phone.
There’s another woman seated on a kitchen barstool. She has black hair, light skin, and long legs. She looks like she walks down runways for a living, and hasn’t looked at any of us once.
“Funny, Taryn,” Charles says, then looks back at me. “Yeah, she can’t play.”
Parker doesn’t even acknowledge him. He just looks at me expectantly, waiting for my answer.
Charles has more acid in his expression now. He’s staring at my shoes as though I’ve sullied what I can only assume is his apartment. His lip curls in disgust.
“You know what?” I say, surprising myself and apparently also everyone around me. “I would love to play.”
“We’ll be uneven,” Charles repeats.
The woman on the couch—Taryn—hops up. “I’ll play,” she says. “Em, you have some shoes I can borrow, right?”
The woman on the stool nods in the direction of what must be her room.
The blond woman who greeted me looks excited. She races after Taryn, heels clanking.
Charles is seething. “They’re on your team,” he grumbles to Parker, before sulking back to the court.
“Elle,” Parker says when we’re alone, “we don’t have to play. We can leave.”
“No,” I say, eyes on Charles’s back as he walks into the glass enclosure. I meet Parker’s gaze. “I’m . . . weirdly good at basketball.”
Now he looks confused. He must be remembering when I told him I hadn’t exercised since tenth grade PE, which is true. “You . . . played in school?”
“Kind of. My mom had a bunch of jobs when I was in elementary and middle school, so she was always late picking me up. The teachers would put us in the gym to wait . . . and we would play. I got pretty good.”
That was about fifteen years ago, but Penelope and I volunteer at community centers with gyms, and every once in a while, we’ll play afterward. I’m still, weirdly, good.
Parker looks at me for a second too long, and I realize I let something about my mom slip out. And my childhood.
Taryn returns. She has her braids tied back out of her face and is wearing a pair of designer athletic shoes that look brand-new. “Ready?” she asks. She leans in close to me. “I’m terrible, by the way. I hope you’re not.”
I smile back at her. I wonder if it expresses any of the enormous gratitude I feel. She doesn’t even know me, and she stood up for me. “I’m not.”
“Then this is going to be very fun.”
Taryn was right. They really are bad. Especially Charles. Parker is, annoyingly, the best of the bunch, but even he misses a few baskets.
I don’t. Maybe it’s the sheer willpower to beat Charles that does it, but it’s like I’m twelve again, back in front of the hoop, weirdly just knowing I’m going to make the shot before I do.
Parker’s friends are better at defense, but Taryn’s more skilled than she let on. We form a sort of routine with our teammates, a rhythm. They pass it to me last, and I never miss.
Parker is beaming with pride when we win.
Charles is glaring at me. I give him my best smile and he sneers at me. “It’s a basketball game. It’s not that big of a deal. I don’t even play much.”
“You literally have a court in the middle of your apartment,” I say.
“I could probably fit your apartment inside of it,” he says back through his teeth.
Honestly, he’s right. My apartment in LA is not large by any stretch of the imagination.
“Careful, Charles,” Parker says. His tone is casual, but it has an edge. “You rent. I’ll buy this place straight out from under you.”
Charles goes quiet, but in his eyes there’s a simmering hatred. It doesn’t take a detective to realize he’s the one selling stories about his friend.
That’s why I loop my arms around Parker’s neck and say, “Let Charles keep his apartment. Most of his self-worth is clearly attached to it.”
Taryn laughs. I smile.
Parker goes rigid beneath me. At first, I think I might have taken it too far, blatantly insulting his friend, but he’s staring at my mouth, and I’m pretty sure he didn’t hear anything that just came out of it. I give him a look. If he doesn’t stop seeming so surprised or affected, everyone around us is going to know this is a sham. He swallows.
Finally, he says, “How thoughtful of you.”
Any additional retorts I had planned eddy out of my head when Parker’s hands slowly slide down my spine. I try to ignore the heat that races to meet every place he touches. I’m sweaty. We just played. That’s all this is.
His fingers curl around my waist, and I never really noticed how long they are until now. His thumbs strum down my stomach, making my skin prickle. Suddenly, my breathing hikes more than it ever did during the game.
One of his other friends clears his throat, and Parker steps away. I feel my face flush as I turn toward Taryn. We exchange numbers, and on my way out, I say bye to the blond woman (who I now know as Gwen) and Emily (who congratulates me, before calmly asking Charles if he’s going to let this loss ruin his day like last month).
Parker stares at me in the elevator. He’s standing as far away from me as possible. “That . . . was convincing,” he finally says.
“Good.” I lean against the opposite wall, fighting the red I can feel heating my cheeks. “If computers start writing screenplays, I’m glad I can add ‘amazing fake girlfriend’ to my résumé.”
He doesn’t look so amused. “Charles is an ass,” he says, his voice a shade darker than I’ve ever heard it.
“Yeah. He is.”
“I’m pretty sure he’s the one selling stories about me.”
I nod. “He is basically a cartoon villain with a really nice apartment and a girlfriend who only seems to semi-tolerate him.”
Parker makes a noise resembling a laugh, but he’s still frowning, like he can’t get over how Charles treated me. I’m glad he didn’t say anything else. I can handle myself.
“Why do you hang out with them?” I ask, wondering if I’m overstepping.
The doors to the elevator open, and he waits for me to walk through first, something I didn’t really realize I appreciated until he did it. “We all met in college,” he says.
“At Stanford?”
He nods. “My better friends are all still in the San Francisco area. These are just the ones who ended up in the city. Charles has always sucked, but the rest are good guys.” He shrugs a shoulder. “They knew me before I started my company.”
“So what?” I ask. “Anyone you meet after, you’ll always secretly suspect they just want to be your friend because of your success?”
“Probably.” He looks faintly amused. “Everyone except for you. You’re the only person I’ve ever met who would probably like me more without it.”
“No,” I say. “I don’t like you either way.”
He smiles. “Right. Stupid of me to forget.”
We’re in front of the building now. Parker’s SUV is waiting by the curb. He opens the door for me, but I shake my head. “I have a call with my agent. I’m going to take it while I walk home.”
Sarah’s been calling me every day for the last week. It’s only now that I’ve decided I have the mental strength to call her back and give her an update.
It’s only now that there is an actual update.
What I don’t say is that right now, distance would do me good. My skin is still heated where he touched me. My chest has started to do this strange little dip in his presence.
It’s unnerving. My treacherous body is forgetting who it’s feeling this way toward.
Parker nods and makes to get in the car, but I blurt out, “My next location.”
He looks over his shoulder. “You’re ready to go?”
I nod. I have my first act hammered out. The second act is where I’ve planned most of the locations to be used.
This is all professional. It’s practically a business agreement.
“Where is it?”
I tell him, and his eyes narrow just the slightest bit. It’s such a small motion, something I would never notice in anyone else’s face. But, I realize with a touch of unease, I’m starting to know him. “Is that a problem?”
He’s quick to shake his head. “When does it open?”
“Nine.” I looked up the hours the night before.
“Does that work for you?”
I shrug a shoulder. Normally, I would be having a very important meeting with my pillow, but runs with Parker before the sun gets too hot on weekdays and staking out the coffee shop for the pastry of my dreams on weekends have cleared those from my calendar. “Sure. See you then.”
I can feel his eyes on me as I turn off the side street, around the block, and out of the shade. Then I’m back on Fifth Avenue, walking with the crowds again, all of us toasting beneath the skyscrapers.