Chapter 7 #2
The liquid hit me full force. Cold, tasteless. It ran down my jaw, soaked my collar, dripped onto the bar counter. I didn’t flinch. I probably deserved that one. Not that I regretted it—anything to let her know I wasn’t interested.
Adrianna stood, grabbed her bag, and walked out without looking back.
I sat there, water dripping off my chin, and reached for a napkin.
A flash. Corner of the room—someone with a phone camera.
I was on my feet before the second flash, already calculating the headline. Christopher Vale, Water-Soaked in Miami Bar. Exactly the kind of photo that would end up on Paul Hargrove’s desk by morning.
But before I could cross the room, someone else got there first.
A woman moved from the bar’s interior, fast and focused. She reached the photographer’s table, pinned his wrist flat against the surface, and leaned down close.
“You’re going to delete that photo,” she said. Her voice was fierce and left zero room for negotiation. “Right now. Or I will make a scene loud enough to get you banned from every bar in this zip code. Your choice.”
The photographer deleted the photo.
The woman released his wrist, straightened, and turned.
Miley Torres. Her auburn hair pulled back in a ponytail.
Casual clothes, jeans and a jacket. She’d been here already.
Waiting for our meeting, probably. She looked at me across the lounge with those hazel eyes and her lips parted slightly when she took in the state of me, the water on my shirt, the dripping collar, the general indignity of it all.
“Are you okay?” she asked.
“I’m fine.”
“You don’t look fine. You look drunk and wet.”
I wiped my jaw with the back of my hand. “I’m not drunk.”
“You smell like alcohol. No one has ever admitted to being drunk.”
She was close now. Close enough that I could see the concern in her expression, genuine and unguarded. It made me want to do something I couldn’t identify. “Can you walk?”
“I can walk.”
“Where’s your driver?”
I shrugged, watching her. The way her lips shaped around the words when she asked if I was alright. The line of her neck when she swallowed, a nervous habit I’d noticed at the resort. She was close enough that I caught the scent again.
I blamed the bourbon. It had been a long time since I’d been this close to a woman who smelled this good and wasn’t trying to sell me something.
“You can’t drive like this,” she said.
I reached into my pocket and tossed her my keys. They sailed through the air and she caught them reflexively, then stared at them like I’d thrown her a live grenade.
“What am I supposed to do with these?”
“Drive.”
“Drive what?”
“The car. My car. It’s in the lot.”
“I’m not driving your car. I don’t even know what kind of car it is. What if it’s one of those fast-moving sports cars?”
“It’s a sports car.”
“That’s not helping!”
“My house isn’t far.” I was already moving toward the back exit, and I could feel her following because Miley Torres was apparently constitutionally incapable of not helping someone, even when that someone was making unreasonable demands while covered in sparkling water. “Twenty minutes. Maybe less.”
She stood in the parking lot holding my keys, looking at my car, looking at me and back at my car. I could see the argument forming behind her eyes.
“Fine,” she said. “But if I crash this car, that’s on you.”
I couldn't help chuckling at her innocent, nervous expression. “Noted.”
She got in the driver’s seat. I got in the back, leaning against the leather. I let out a breath and rubbed the back of my neck where the water had soaked through.
She adjusted the mirrors—then the seat—then the mirrors again. The GPS already showed the way home. She started the engine and sat there for a second, hands on the wheel, collecting herself.
“You should be grateful I’m not a kidnapper,” she muttered, pulling out of the lot.
“You’re too kind and too beautiful to be a kidnapper.”
I said it watching her through the rearview mirror. Our eyes met in the glass and held. Two seconds. Three. She looked away first, back to the road, and even in the dim light I could see the color rising in her cheeks.
“You don’t know if I’m kind,” she said. “But I am definitely beautiful. Thank you for noticing.”
I laughed. A real one, rough and surprised, pulled from somewhere that had been closed for a while. She glanced at the rearview again, looking surprised by the sound.
“Do you say that to every fan?” she asked.
“No. Just you.”
“Why me?”
“Because you’re my only beautiful fan.”
“You have millions of fans.”
“None of them drove me home covered in sparkling water. That makes you special.”
She shook her head but I could see her fighting a smile. The car moved through the Coral Gables streets, past the houses and the palm trees and the neighborhoods I’d spent my childhood trying to escape.
“Can you turn on the music?” I asked.
She pressed the button. The stereo came on, mid-track. An old jazz standard, Coltrane, something I kept in rotation because it was the only thing that quieted my brain after long days.
“Oh wow,” she said. “You still listen to this?”
I watched her through the mirror. “How do you know what I listen to?”
Her eyes met mine in the glass. Then her face burned red, the flush starting at her neck and climbing.
“You mentioned it in an interview once,” she said quietly. Then, even quieter, almost to herself, “Great. I sound like a weirdo. Again.”
She didn’t say another word for the rest of the drive.
I didn’t mind. I watched the city go by and listened to Coltrane and studied the back of her neck in the rearview mirror and thought about the fact that this woman had memorized details about me from interviews she’d watched years ago, and instead of finding that unsettling, I found it touching.
She pulled through the gate of my property and the security team was there in seconds, surrounding the car—eyes scanning, hands ready, doing what they were paid very well to do.
I got out and waved them down. They stepped back but stayed close, watching Miley with professional wariness.
She was standing by the driver’s door, keys in her hand, looking up at the house. She held the keys out to me.
“How long until you accept my job offer?” I asked.
She looked at me. “Can I start on Monday? I have somewhere to be this weekend,” she said.
I nodded. She started to pull out her phone, probably to call a taxi. I turned to my driver, Carlos, who was standing by the garage.
“Take her home.”
“I can get a cab,” she said.
“I wasn’t asking.” I caught her eye. “It’s late, and you just drove a stranger home from a bar. The least I can do is make sure you get back safely.”
She looked at me for a long moment. Then she nodded. “Okay. Thank you.”
She got into the back of the town car. The door closed. The car pulled down the driveway and through the gate and I watched it go, watched the taillights shrink and disappear around the corner.
“Interesting,” I said to nobody.
I turned toward the house, tossed my ruined shirt over a chair, and stood in the dark kitchen for a minute. The house was quiet. Just me and the silence and the lingering scent of her that I could still smell on my hands from where she’d helped me out of the lounge.
Here’s the thing about being an actor. You learn to watch. To study people. To notice the way they move and speak and breathe, the tells they don’t know they have, the moments where the mask slips and something real comes through.
Miley Torres had no mask. Every emotion she felt traveled across her face in real time, unfiltered, every flicker readable.
She blushed when I complimented her. She stammered when I got close.
She remembered details from interviews I’d forgotten giving and was embarrassed about it instead of leveraging it.
She was genuine enough to make me suspicious, because in my experience, genuine people were either naive or running a very long con.
But she’d also pinned a photographer’s wrist to a table without hesitation. She’d driven a stranger’s car through Miami at night without complaint. She’d carried an EpiPen in her bag and used it to save my life without thinking twice.
Naive people didn’t do that. Con artists didn’t carry EpiPens.
I poured a glass of water, drank it slowly.
Then I smiled.
She was definitely more interesting than I’d given her credit for.
I hadn’t been drunk tonight. Not even close. Two bourbons over two hours was nothing. I’d been perfectly lucid the entire time, from the moment Adrianna threw her drink to the moment Miley helped me into the car. But the woman who drove me home didn’t even listen to my explanation.
My phone buzzed on the counter. I glanced at it.
A message from Trisha.
TRISHA
Where the hell have you been? You’re going to be the death of me!