Chapter Eleven
DELILAH
“And…cut!”
I run my fingers through my hair as people on set start to move about after wrapping. I managed to keep focused during filming, but admittedly, only just. My mind wants to wander every time I let it off the leash for too long, and I suspect that it can all be traced back to a moment in my childhood bedroom that happened days ago now.
“You’ve got flour in your hair,” Ava says, sidling up next to me.
I pick at a stray tendril and see that, yes, she’s absolutely right. “Shit.”
“The cutest little pastry ghost,” she coos.
“Fuck off,” I mutter.
“Oh, someone’s cranky.” She tugs me to the sink, leaning against the counter as I wash my hands. “Tell Mama all about it.”
“There’s nothing to tell.”
“You’re a terrible liar. You’ve been spacey all day.” She waits until I’ve finished drying my hands, looping her arm through mine and leaning into me conspiratorially. “It doesn’t have anything to do with a certain hockey player, does it?”
I can feel my face pinch, which is more than enough for Ava to latch on to.
“Aha!” She nudges me in the side with her elbow. “Spill. I want details. The pictures floating around are very…compelling.”
“It’s nothing,” I say automatically, my stomach twisting with the words. “We’re just friends.”
“Did you even see that park photo? Man practically had stars in his eyes, and he was almost on his knees for you.”
“That was taken out of context,” I counter. “We were having a serious conversation.”
“You tell yourself whatever you have to, girlie,” she laughs. “I think there’s some fucking chemistry there.”
God, I wish that were true.
It’s so much harder than I thought it would be, playing this game. Every time that I see Ian, spend time with him, I’m reminded of all the reasons why I was so obsessed with him to begin with. There’s something so…comforting about him. Something solid and reliable that feels like stability and home and all sorts of other good things that turn me into a pile of goo whenever he’s nearby.
It doesn’t hurt that he’s fucking hot either.
“I actually think I might have been weird recently,” I admit, reaching the refreshments table and grabbing a water. “I’ve been too chickenshit to text him in the last couple of days.”
“Details,” Ava says with a snap of her fingers. “Right now.”
“Well…We all went to dinner at Aunt Bea’s this week, right?”
“Yeah, and?”
“It was going well. Felt just like old times, honestly. But then there was this moment in my bedroom—”
Ava gasps, clutching her chest dramatically, and I roll my eyes.
“—where we were grabbing a game for everyone to play, and we started kind of…reminiscing? I guess?”
“About?”
“Stupid things at first,” I tell her. “Old memories and shit. But then I somehow started on about my first kiss happening in that room, and I just…”
I frown, looking down at my feet as I try to pinpoint what I’d been feeling at that moment.
“I guess it was a lot, you know? Having him in my room like that. It was like the beginning of every fantasy I ever had about him when I was younger, and suddenly there he was, in the flesh. I may have hinted that I wished he’d been my first kiss.”
“Girl,” Ava practically squeals. “Yes. I love this. What did he say?”
“I’m not even entirely sure that he picked up on it,” I say dejectedly.
And why would he? I’ve always been so far outside his radar that I don’t even ping as a possibility.
But the way he touched me…
I can’t rationalize that part. Had it been a surprise? Had I made him uncomfortable? I want to tell myself that the look he’d given me was more than just catching him off guard, but I can’t be sure of that. Which is why my head continues to spin in circles.
“Oh, honey,” she says, her voice dripping with sympathy. “What did you do?”
“Played it off as a joke. I mean, what else could I do?”
“You could have just come out with it,” she suggests. “See what happens.”
“That would be a terrible idea.”
“Would it?”
“Wouldn’t it?”
Ava shrugs. “I mean, the worst thing that happens is he shows no interest, and you both move on and continue being friends, and you can once and for all put all of it behind you.”
“Yeah and be horribly rejected in the process.”
“But what if he didn’t?”
“There’s no way he wouldn’t.”
“But how do you know?”
“Because he’s always going to see me as the dumb kid he knew over a decade ago!”
Ava looks surprised by my sharp tone, and I am too.
“Sorry,” I say quickly, shaking my head. “I didn’t mean to get snippy.”
Ava raises her hands in acquiescence. “All I’m saying is that you’re not that kid he knew all those years ago. You’re a fully grown, hot-as-fuck woman who he’d be dumb as hell not to notice.”
“You’re not…not right,” I mumble.
“You’ve got tits I’d kill for and an ass that won’t quit, babe,” she says. “Plus, you’re, like, sunshine incarnate.”
“Should I be offended by that?”
“Only if you strive to be a cynical asshole like moi.”
“I don’t know…”
She pats my shoulder. “Just think it over. He might surprise you. What have you got to lose, really?”
My pride, I think bitterly. My dignity.
“I’ll think about it,” I tell her only halfheartedly.
“Good.” She flashes me a grin. “Now I can tell you that Gia wants to see you in her office.”
I groan. “Why didn’t you lead with that?”
“And send you up there looking like a kicked puppy? Had to sort out your shit first.”
“I don’t exactly feel ‘sorted.’?”
“Well, I’m a producer, not a therapist.”
“Junior producer.”
“A friend wouldn’t correct me.”
I feel a grin spreading on my own face now. “Yeah, well. You’re an asshole, remember?”
“Fair.” She gives me a shooing motion. “Run along.” She pauses midstep before frowning at me. “And there’s still flour in your hair, by the way.”
I glare up at my forehead.
Of course.
Gia, to my relief, looks ecstatic when I plop down into one of the chairs in her office.
“Have you seen the buzz around you and Ian?”
She turns the monitor to her desktop to point out an article I haven’t seen yet to prove her point, one that has a picture of Ian and me from the play day front and center—me leaning over the railing by the rink as he smiles down at me. Another flick of her fingers on the mouse pad reveals a shot where he leaned into my ear, and I would be willing to bet that if you zoomed in, you’d be able to see my goose bumps. It makes my chest feel gooey.
“Haven’t seen that one,” I tell her. “But I’ve definitely seen a few.”
“Everyone is head over heels at the idea of the two of you,” she says gleefully. “Also, it’s spilling over into coverage of the show. I’ve already seen two articles stemming from one of the two of you highlighting Whisk-y Business.”
“And the numbers? Have we seen any changes?”
“Slight uptick,” she tells me. “Not as much as I’d like, not yet, but it’s a good start.” She gives me an assuring look. “It’s only been a couple of weeks. At this rate, it’s going to go just like we want it to.”
“Let’s hope,” I say, still feeling a little bummed out at the idea of subjecting myself to more torture that is being close to Ian and knowing he’ll only ever see me as a friend.
“I was actually hoping we could get Ian on for another episode,” she says.
My eyebrows raise. “What?”
“It’s just that the first one did so well, and now with all the buzz around the two of you…Another episode is bound to do better, numbers-wise. We could even play up the ‘are they, aren’t they?’ more this go-round. A little more flirting, things like that.”
It’s a struggle, keeping my face passive and not letting it rumple into frustration like it wants to. “I don’t know if Ian will have time for another.”
“Oh, surely he will be up for it? The Druids are getting some good buzz from this too. Plus, I spoke with his PR manager just yesterday, and they’re seeing a large decline in negative posts about Ian and his past. That alone will be enough incentive for him to agree, I think.”
Fuck.
Part of me wants to refuse, even if just for my own sanity’s sake. Flirting with Ian on camera? Can I really survive that, knowing that it’s completely fake? But then again…How can I say no, knowing that this is helping him, that what we’re doing is making his life a little easier?
“I can ask him,” I say finally, my tone lacking even half of Gia’s enthusiasm.
“Perfect,” she answers brightly. “I was also hoping that the two of you could have some sort of outing soon.”
Now I know I’m making a face. “Outing?”
“Yes, I was talking to Ben, and after all the pics following the play day, we think it would be a good idea if the two of you were seen again in public. Maybe just the two of you this time? Could make for some good press, which would mean more buzz.”
“Like a date? Is that what you mean?”
“No, we can’t ask you to go on dates for the network,” Gia says with a nervous laugh, betraying that this is essentially what she’s doing. “Just that you…spend some time together in public. We just want the two of you to be seen, remember?”
“I remember,” I sigh. I consider it, coming up blank on what an “outing in public” with Ian would even look like. Are we supposed to go tandem biking in the fucking park or something? “Again, I’ll have to run it by Ian. I don’t want to agree to anything without talking to him first.”
“Of course, of course,” Gia says. “Talk it over with him tonight, if you can, and let me know tomorrow what the plan is so we can plant the appropriate leaks to the right people.”
I don’t even want clarification on everything she just said. I suspect I don’t want to know the inner workings of network gossip and how they keep it rolling.
“Sure,” I say instead. “I’ll do that.”
“Good. This is all going so great.”
I try to match her excited expression, but it probably comes out strained. I know that she’s right, that everything that’s happening is exactly what we were setting out to do, that it’s everything I agreed to, and I stand by my reasons for saying yes in the first place, I really do.
I just never imagined that it would be so damned hard.
I decide to visit Ian in person rather than talking over the phone about all this new nonsense the network has cooked up, so when he texts me that he’s home—I make my way over to Jack’s feeling more and more anxious the closer I get to their apartment. By the time I knock on the door, I’m practically sweating. Which I don’t do. I don’t fucking sweat over guys.
I’m giving myself a mental girlboss ass-kicking when the door swings open, and then I’m flummoxed by wet, red curls and stormy gray eyes and a dark navy T-shirt that is stretched tightly over a broad chest—the shoulders wet from his hair. He obviously just got out of the shower, which means my brain has effectively opened a window and let my entire ten-point speech on why we do not simp fly out on the breeze. It’s gone now. Out there in the wind. I don’t even have time to catch it since my eyes are gobbling up every bit of Ian they can reach.
“Hey,” he greets me in that warm, low way of his. “Come in.”
I step past him, swallowing around the lump in my throat and looking around the living room. “Where’s Jack?”
“Physical therapy,” Ian tells me, shutting the door behind us.
“Oh, duh.” I’m nodding aimlessly as I sink down onto the couch. “I forgot.”
Might have been nice to remember before you rode over here to be locked in this apartment alone with him.
Ian grabs a towel that had been slung haphazardly across the back of the couch, bringing it to his hair and rubbing it through the wet mass as he takes the end opposite me to sit.
“You said we needed to talk about something?”
“Right,” I say, clearing my throat. “I met with Gia today, and she wants us to do another episode with you on the show.”
His eyebrows raise. “Really?”
“Mhm. Apparently, now that we’re hot goss, she thinks a repeat will do even better numbers than last time.”
“Makes sense,” he says thoughtfully, his hand slowing against his hair as he frowns down at his lap like he’s thinking.
Which means that the bulge of his bicep is more prominent as he lazily works the towel against his hair, his skin wrapped in ink and still slightly damp in a way that makes me want to lick it.
“But only if you’re comfortable with it,” I add.
He shrugs one shoulder, giving up on the drying altogether as he drops the towel over the back of the couch again. “Guess it can’t hurt.” He smirks at me. “I told them as long as they don’t try to get me naked on camera or something, I’m down for whatever.”
Oh God. Do not think about him naked right now. He’s wet, for God’s sake. Do not think about him naked and wet.
I clench my jaw, nodding too quickly to be normal. “Awesome. I can let Gia know.”
“You came all the way over here to ask me that?”
His voice is teasing, and I feel my cheeks heat in response. “Oh, well, no. There was something else she suggested that I wasn’t sure about.”
“Oh?”
“The network feels that it might create more buzz for us to be…seen together again. Like the play day.”
“Do they have an event in mind?”
“They would rather we have an…outing…with just the two of us.”
He blinks at me for a second or two, and then, “Like a date?”
“They can’t call it a date,” I grouse, “but pretty much, yeah.”
His hand reaches to let his finger trace along his lower lip, and my eyes are glued to that action, and I’m talking super, not Elmer’s. It has me thinking about that stupid moment in my stupid bedroom where I said stupid things.
Which loosens my tongue to say even more stupid things.
“We’d probably have to be a little touchy-feely,” I say quietly.
His finger stills against his lip, and his eyes lock with mine. “Yeah?”
“To sell it, you know?”
He nods slowly, still touching that fucking lip. “Makes sense.”
“That’s not going to be weird for you, is it?”
His brow furrows a fraction. “I can handle it if you can.”
“Well, I can totally handle it,” I fire back, hearing the challenge in his tone.
“And what sort of touching did you have in mind?”
“I didn’t say I had anything particular in mind,” I answer thickly.
His finger makes another slow back-and-forth against the seam of his mouth, his eyes thoughtful as they move over my face. “Probably hand-holding, at the very least.”
“Probably,” I answer, my voice sounding wrong. “I could pull the old hand-in-your-back-pocket move.”
His brow arches. “People still do that?”
“Oh yeah. Loads.”
“Hm.” His eyes warm, and there’s the barest hint of his teeth against his lower lip now, and I feel the same strange current of electricity I’ve been telling myself I imagined in my bedroom the other night. The one that had me word-vomiting in abstract in the first place. “I can handle whatever you can, Lila.”
If I were standing, I think my knees might be wobbling right now. I don’t know what I’m doing, I don’t know what we’re doing, but I can’t seem to stop my brain from pouring words out of my mouth before I can stop them. Is this more of the silly game we’ve been playing? Or is it something else?
“Oh yeah? I’m pretty committed, you know. You don’t want to sign yourself over to an impromptu make-out session.”
Stop fucking talking, dumbass.
I’m holding my breath as Ian stares, his expression more locked up than Fort Knox. I’d give a whole tit just to know what he was thinking right now.
“I can handle,” he says slowly, carefully, “whatever you can, Lila.”
I feel my breath catch as my pulse triples, at least, my lips parting to say something, but what, I’m not sure. The air is thick and the room is too warm, or maybe that’s just me, and I know I need to say something, say anything, really, and I—
Ian and I both startle when the door swings open behind him, Jack grumbling under his breath as he tries to balance his keys in the lock while holding a plastic bag with his bad hand, which is sticking out of his sling.
“Dude, we gotta get one of those keyless locks, this one-handed shit is for the—”
Jack frowns when he spots the two of us. “Every time I walk into this room lately, you’ve got a woman on my couch.”
Something in my stomach sinks. “Oh, really?”
“Not at all what that sounds like, trust me,” Ian says firmly, holding my gaze as he does so.
The charged air fizzles out around us, and despite the expression Ian is wearing, one that asks me to trust him when he doesn’t owe me an explanation in the slightest to begin with, I feel heavy all of a sudden. Nauseous, even.
“I was just going over some stuff Gia suggested,” I say flatly, standing from the couch.
“Lila,” Ian says, following me.
I paste on a very wide, very fake smile. “I’ll text you later about those outing plans, yeah? We can brainstorm ideas.”
“Lila,” he says again, looking irritated.
Why does he look irritated? It’s none of my business who he has on his couch.
“You don’t want to stay?” Jack says. “I got stuff to make nachos.”
“I already ate,” I toss back, moving toward the front door. “I have stuff to do at home, anyway.”
“Suit yourself,” Jack says with a shrug, blissfully ignorant to the energy of the room he burst into as he holds the door open wide to let me pass through it. “They’re not yo nachos, anyway.”
“That was awful,” I groan, pulling him into a loose hug while I avoid his arm.
I purposely avoid looking at Ian.
“See you guys later.”
I can feel Ian’s eyes on me as the door closes, and I don’t take a full breath until I hear the lock click into place. I’ve barely made it to the elevator when my phone buzzes in my pocket, and I have a good idea already as to who’s texting me.
CUPCAKE: It’s not what it sounds like.
I stare at the text the entire ride down the elevator, only managing to tap out a reply when I’m pacing through the lobby of Jack’s building.
ME: Don’t even sweat it. None of my business anyway. I’ll check in tomorrow about outing ideas. Good night!
It’s not at all how I feel, but it’s not like I can demand he tell me what other women he’s had over—who they are, what they are to him, why they were there. It’s wholly not my business and definitely not my place.
And that, if I really take the time to analyze it, is exactly why I feel so shitty right now.