Chapter Fifteen
IT TAKES ME TWO DAYS to manufacture a reason for lesson two, and I'm not proud of a single step in the process.
"The director gave notes," I announce over breakfast, which is a sentence with the structural integrity of wet paper.
Maximo doesn't look up from his paper. "Did he?"
"He did. He said the kiss reads"—I consult a note that doesn't exist on a phone I'm holding upside down—"'tentative.' He wants it more convincing. Lived-in. So." I spread my hands, the picture of a serious artist making a serious request. "I need another lesson. For the work."
"For the work."
"I'm a professional."
He folds the paper. He looks at me for a long, level moment, and I can see him seeing straight through the whole flimsy production, all the way to the girl behind it, and I hold my breath and wait for the no I've earned.
"Come here, then," he tells me, and I'm not gonna lie—I nearly fall off the stool in my haste, and just like that, we're meeting in the middle of the kitchen, and this time there's no chin-turn, no arranging.
This time his hands find my waist and stay there, spanning it, drawing me in until there's nothing left to close, and he kisses me like the first lesson was the polite version and this is the truth of it.
It lasts. That's all I'll tell you and all I can stand to remember at once. It lasts, and his hands tighten at my waist like he's decided to stop pretending for the length of one kiss, and I forget the fake note and the real reason and my own address.
When he finally lifts his head, I'm holding onto his shirt with both fists and breathing like I ran here, my borrowed heart going so hard I can feel it in my teeth. Slow down, I don't tell it. For once I don't want it to.
"So," I manage, aiming for casual and coming in somewhere near unhinged. "Did I pass?"
"No." I blink. "No?"
"No." He unhooks my fists from his shirt, one finger at a time, and sets me back from him with the terrible gentleness of a man closing a door he wants to leave open. "You need a lot more practice."
And then he walks off to take a call that I'm fairly sure doesn't exist either.
That's twice now I've felt him decide to stop pretending, and twice I've watched him take it right back the second it's over, like wanting me is against some rule he wrote himself, like I'm forbidden and he keeps almost forgetting to mind.
But I stay right where he left me, wrecked and delighted and absolutely certain of one thing.
I'm going to need so, so many lessons.