Chapter 24
AJ
“Wait, so who’s coming to get you?”
The check was paid for, but the girls and I were still at the joyful birthday mess of a table, hoping to finish the ambitious amount of booze we’d ordered, but apparently, ordering that fourth pitcher was not in fact a good idea for six girls, especially since Emily stopped after her second drink, like the responsible human the rest of us were not.
Besides my sister, it was me, Georgia and three friends from high school—Chloe, Kate and Annie, who were all very curious about who was coming to give me a ride from brunch.
When I opted to keep mum by sipping on my sangria, the girls turned to Georgia.
“Her hot boss,” Georgia said.
“What?”
“Adam?”
They all knew his name—mostly because Georgia had to describe him in detail after seeing him for the first time four years ago—but none of them remembered his last name, and now it was a madhouse with me insisting “it’s not a big deal” while everyone ignored me to badger Georgia, because they knew she was more prone to spill any details.
“Wait, where is he taking you on a Sunday?”
“Is it for work? Georgia’s smiling like it’s not for work.”
“What’s his last name again? I need to Google him.”
My head was spinning. It was all chaotic to the point of being hilarious, but it was also completely anxiety-inducing, because the last thing I wanted was for my friends to get all excited over something I had no idea how to describe.
Adam and I were… something for sure. I knew we were more than a hook-up at this point, but I couldn’t put a label on it.
I was also still nervous about it—almost superstitious.
Like if I said any of my feelings or suspicions out loud, it would all get ruined the next day.
It was why I hadn’t even been telling Georgia the full story of anything this week.
She was getting more excited than I could handle anymore, so all I’d told her was that I’d gone to his house to help him meal prep last Sunday, that we’d had a good heart-to-heart, and that we’d fooled around a few more times this week. I admitted that things were fun.
But that was it.
“Damn, Em, why the face?” Chloe asked suddenly, making me blink across the table.
In the pure chaos of the past few minutes, I’d neglected to look in my sister’s direction, but now that I was, I could feel my mood dipping, because she was doing that thing where she just shook her head and sipped her drink.
“What?” I said.
“Nothing,” she replied.
And to my partial relief, she left it that.
But I knew what she was thinking. That I was now doing double duty as both assistant and Sunday afternoon booty call. In fairness, I did just get a vague, potentially brunch booze-fueled text to get picked up, and I didn’t know why, but it was probably for sex.
My cheeks burned for a moment, because as much as I knew this wasn’t a booty call, I knew how bad it looked right now. I also didn’t know for sure that Adam wasn’t drunk after a meal with his boys and looking to fuck me in his car.
But just as I started to indulge my dumber thoughts, Kate gasped.
“Oh. My. God. Is that him?”
I instinctively shook my head, ready to tell the girls to relax, that he wouldn’t be coming in.
But then I looked at where they were all staring and my heart skipped several beats, because there was Adam—wearing simple blue jeans and a white V-neck that made his shoulders and chest look so good that under the table, my toes were curling in my shoes.
He looked hotter than anyone in Hollywood with that pair of wayfarers on, but he took them off as soon as he saw that we’d spotted him.
And when his eyes found mine, he smiled.
“Wait. Stop. Are you kidding me? Stop.” Next to me, I could hear Georgia hissing her delighted disbelief under her breath, which became not-so-under-her-breath when she spotted the white paper bag in Adam’s hand. “Oh my God—did you bring me cupcakes?” she squealed.
That set off the next round of madness that had me laughing as my tipsy friends clamored over Adam, saying hello, introducing themselves, insisting he sit and offering drinks.
It gave me no time myself to react to the fact that he’d brought Georgia cupcakes, which was potentially the cutest thing I’d ever seen him do.
Oh my goodness.
What the hell is even happening?
As I asked myself the question, I snuck a glance across the table at Emily, who was staring openly stunned at Adam, not taking her eyes off of him, her gaze traveling all over—from his smiling face to his admittedly impossible-not-to-look-at torso to the box of cupcakes he set on the table as he actually obliged my friends’ aggressively insistent request that he sit and have a drink.
“Adam…” I said, only just managing to get a word in as Georgia scooted a seat down so Adam could sit between us.
“Hey,” he said to me with a grin before he had his attention pulled back away by Georgia and the girls.
But he kept a hand on my knee as my friends fired off a million questions about work and clients and if I was being a good assistant, if I was his best assistant ever—basically just embarrassing me to no end and making me desperately wish for a quiet moment to talk to Adam, because I was actually kind of stunned myself that he was here.
Thankfully, and a bit surprisingly, Emily read the anxious look on my face and after some looking around, managed to direct everyone’s drunk attention to a particularly cute dog across the street.
“Oh my God, he’s so smallll,” Chloe cooed, making me laugh before I turned to Adam.
“Hey. Everything okay?”
“Why wouldn’t it be?”
“Because you were out with your friends for less than an hour before asking what I was up to,” I said. He squinted at me for a second before she added, “I made the reservation Adam. I know.”
“Right,” he chuckled. “Well. They’re kind of loud and I wasn’t really in the mood for all that noise,” he said just as Georgia and Chloe started squealing, because puppy and owner were crossing the street to say hi.
“I think you might’ve come to the wrong place if you’re in the mood for quiet,” I said. He laughed.
“I’m in the mood for you, AJ,” he said unapologetically, making me swallow hard. “I don’t even remember what it’s like to not be thinking about you every five minutes.”
I was speechless for a second. It was just that he said it so unabashedly.
Like it never occurred to him that this would be an embarrassing admission for somebody else to make.
Namely me. I hated this particular fact about myself in the past couple weeks—so much so that I hadn’t even admitted it to myself.
But leave it to Adam to say it like it were any other sentence.
I was thankful to be sitting, because it kind of knocked me off my feet for a second.
“Same,” I finally said as quietly as possible, just in case Emily could hear.
But apparently it didn’t matter, because thirty minutes later, as we were all getting ready to leave, and as Adam was saying bye to my now-very attached friends, Emily pulled me aside.
“What. The fuck, AJ.”
“What?” I practically whined, stamping my foot playfully because I was in no mood for her lecturing. But that wasn’t what I got.
“There is a lot that you haven’t been telling me,” she said, looking me dead in the eye, like she could read the memories of the past few weeks flashing through my mind. I frowned at her, ready to ask her what she was getting at, but then she said it. “You realize he’s into you, right?”
“What?”
“Adam. He’s genuinely into you. Like, two notches from falling-in-love-with-you type into—”
“Whoa. Whoa, whoa, whoa. Chill,” I said, my stupefied seriousness followed immediately by a burst of incredulous laughter. “Emily. What’s going on? Is this you?” I teased. “What happened to my no-nonsense, tells-it-like-it-is sister?”
“She’s right here, bitch,” Emily snorted. “And she’s telling you like it is—as someone who has an even better perspective than you, because she was actually watching him when you were talking to Georgia and Chloe about the dog. And the way he looks at you… it’s something.”
My smile faltered and I could actually feel the laughter in my eyes fading away.
Because I thought I’d wanted Emily to ease up on me about Adam, but I was realizing now I couldn’t quite handle this total one-eighty.
“Look… I don’t know what this is, Emily,” I said carefully, suddenly forcing myself to get serious.
Practical. “And you were the one who pointed out how much this couldn’t work.
How he’s never been in a relationship,” I reasoned.
Emily shrugged just as Chloe called her to the car, but before she walked off, she left me with a piece of advice.
“Well, maybe you should ask him why.”