Chapter Three
I’m proud of myself. I make it a full three hours before I drag out my laptop and enter “James Neely” into the Google search bar.
When that produces unsettlingly thorough details about his age and height and acting pedigree but no recent articles, I sigh and type what I really wanted to search: “James Neely and Lily Newman-Smith.”
It’s a miracle I hadn’t seen any of these photos in real time, because they seem fairly plentiful as far as celebrity pap photos go.
There they are less than six months ago beneath a streetlamp outside a popular vegan restaurant in LA.
Lily Newman-Smith is wearing the perfect jeans, the perfect yellow top that even in the dim photo brings out the highlights in her hair.
James Neely is more in shadow, but it’s definitely him, leaning her against the lamppost with his head tilted downward and his lips tilted up.
In another photo, they’re both half submerged in the ocean.
Lily’s hair is wet and slicked back like a supermodel.
She’s the perfectly toasted marshmallow of humans, golden and wearing the reflection of the sun off the water like her very own photo filter.
They’re both laughing, and it’s more than a little disconcerting to see a man I shook hands with just this afternoon with a big Daily Mail stamp beneath his photo, but there he is.
James Freakin’ Neely, up to his knees in water and fame.
I’m about to click on an article titled “Breakup or Makeup? James Neely and Lily Newman-Smith Spotted in Santa Monica After Weeks in Hiding,” but I freeze when I hear the back door creak open and the muffled sound of Dad’s voice mingling with someone else’s.
Ugh. Not again.
I thought we agreed to end this charade last week, the one where Dad comes home with a ranch hand who just happened to not have dinner plans who looks at me with assessing eyes while Dad simultaneously enthuses about my attributes and the ranch hand’s prowess like some sort of discount Colorado country version of Emma Woodhouse.
I tolerated his antics for as long as I could but called it quits when Dad brought a twenty-four-year-old boy— Twenty. Four. —home last Wednesday and said he was, and I quote, “Full of potential.”
“I’m just worried about you, kid,” Dad said after getting over the evident shock that I was on to him. “You deserve to be happy, you know?”
“I know,” I said, “but let me do it on my own, please. And it’s creepy to bring your subordinates home as potential dates for your daughter. It’s a boomer move.”
He took great offense at that, but not enough, apparently, because here we are again.
I go over the same bullet points in my head, preparing myself to say them in front of whatever poor soul Dad dared bring home today: how I don’t need a man to be happy; how if I wanted to date, I would join one of the apps like everyone else; and also how I can’t marry a ranch hand because that would probably involve being around horses and—despite Dad’s lifelong career working with them—I am terrified of horses.
I’m considering just texting the presentation to Dad and saving myself the trouble of getting up from my comfy spot on the bed when the voices suddenly stop, the back door opens and closes again, and then there is a full beat of silence before the stairs begin to creak beneath the weight of Dad’s footsteps.
So not another forced gentleman caller for dinner, then. Maybe it was just one of the neighbors following him in to chat about the community garage sale next week that Dad swears we don’t need to partake in, but his attic of untouched boxes begs to differ.
My brain dulls from a loud buzz to its usual low, anxious hum. Crisis averted.
I breathe a sigh of relief and mentally pack away my censure, tossing my phone aside and turning back to my laptop to click on the link so it can take its sweet time loading while I wait for Dad.
Maybe I’ll offer to make that abomination he loves so well—he calls it a salad and I call it a casserole—as an unspoken apology for thinking he ignored our last conversation.
I sense rather than see him appear in the open doorway, my focus now trained on stopping my stupid computer from performing the software update I already told it an hour ago I wasn’t interested in installing.
“Long day?” I ask Dad. And then, not giving him time to answer, I add, “Just doing some research for that book-adjacent job I was telling you about. I got it, by the way. So I’ll be in and out once we start the gig.”
Great. Now my cursor is frozen. I click rapidly at the trackpad and ask Dad, “Did you want me to cook? I think I have everything to make taco salad.”
“Sounds good to me.”
My entire body seizes with alarm bells, the hum building in a steep crescendo to a shrill peak as Not Dad. Not Dad. Not Dad. repeats over and over in my head.
I jerk my head up to see, of all people, James Neely casually leaning against the open doorframe to my bedroom, watching me.
Always watching me.
I’ve read too many novels. Everyone treats reading fiction like this aspirational, beautiful thing, but what it really does is distort your reality.
Because when taken off guard like this with no warning that he would be here, my brain traces the silhouette of him leaning with a shoulder against the jamb, hair tousled, eyes piercing as ever, and immediately superimposes every swaggery romance hero in his place.
I can practically see the costumes flashing over him like a paper doll—Regency, Scottish, cozy fantasy, smutty fantasy—until the real world catches up with me and he’s James again with that godforsaken Henley and that godforsaken smirk.
“Sorry to startle you,” he says as my brain—like my computer—attempts to reboot. “Your father said he texted you I was coming up.” When I look at him incredulously, James straightens and holds up his hands in a defensive gesture. “He said you responded that it was okay.”
As if on cue, my phone pings beside me, but instead of checking it, I get up from my bed and go to the bedroom window to look down at the driveway, where Dad’s truck is idling.
I can see him—readers balanced on the edge of his nose—as he looks down at his phone.
Mine pings beside me again, and sure enough, there are Dad’s two most recent texts:
James from your new job is here. You didn’t tell me anyone was stopping by. Says he has something to give you. Want me to send him up?
And,
Forgot something at the ranch. Be back later. Might eat dinner with Punk. You kids have fun.
And there, sandwiched between the two, a blue text bubble that shows my sent text of,
Ok.
Which I absolutely did not type.
Or send.
“You’ve got to be kidding me,” I mutter.
James tilts his head. “Sorry?”
I hold up my phone to show him the messages, pointing at my “Ok.”
“I didn’t send that,” I tell him. “How could I have when I didn’t know Dad texted me to begin with?”
James straightens to stand perfectly centered in the doorway, not stepping so much as a toe into my room.
“Maybe you accidentally hit a couple of keys and autocorrect took care of the rest?” he suggests.
“Maybe,” I hedge, my brain still whirring. “But sending it, too? Doesn’t that seem too coincidental?”
Or magical, my traitorous brain whispers.
God, the books really have rotted my mind.
A quick scroll-up reveals the decidedly unmagical origins: The “Ok.” was in response to another text from Dad, one that hadn’t delivered because of crummy cell service, and it had, I guess, decided that now was the time to attempt to resend.
“Look,” James says, bringing his hands up again, “I just wanted to stop by and give you this.” He reaches into his back pocket and pulls out a business card.
“I was going to leave it in your mailbox, but your dad arrived at the same time I pulled up to the curb and so I felt I had to introduce myself to him and that’s when he texted you and now… ”
“And now you’re here,” I finish for him.
“It would appear so.”
He’s still standing there, waiting. Watching just like he did in the meeting. Too intensely. Too focused. Too much.
I blame the books for the shiver that goes up my spine, because of course he’s watching me. There’s nothing else to look at except…
Me and my laptop with the article about his breakup fully loaded on the screen. Curse whatever magic or slip of the thumb brought him up here.
I lean forward and slam the laptop shut. With him in my literal bedroom, I feel even more exposed than I did at the meeting this afternoon.
“You said you have something to give me?”
I walk around the bed toward him, hoping I sound cool and effortless and trying desperately to forget, too, that I’m in my “home clothes” of no bra and an ancient baggy shirt from some college blood drive paired with my ragged old Nike shorts with the lost drawstring.
Maybe the drawstring ran away and took my dignity with it, because my god will I ever meet this man and have the upper hand?
Or am I forever doomed to be in a shitty outfit or crying or both?
James extends his arm toward me and hands me the card, still not moving into the room.
“My lawyer,” he says. “Well—” He rubs the back of his neck like he’s embarrassed. “One of them. My favorite one, actually. Genie. You should have her look over your contract before you sign it. She can help you negotiate the salary, too. Probably bring it up by a few grand at least.”
The card stock is black and heavy with gold lettering and screams fancy. It screams expensive. Like, probably $1,000-an-hour expensive.
I come closer to James, try to hand the card back to him.
We’re too close again, close enough that the scene from this afternoon where he leaned over me and pushed hair off my face jettisons into my brain like a harpoon and I’m left helplessly wriggling trying to think of literally anything else other than how warm and snug it felt to be beneath him, how safe.
My desperation to forget comes out sideways as irritation.