Chapter Eleven #2
When the woman is done with her spiel, she gets off the chair and everyone returns to the conversations from before, but there’s a new energy in the room.
I can hear vague sounds coming from down the hall: applause, screams, the vibrating cacophony of a lot of bodies in a small space.
I look around, and just as my eyes pass over the corner where Alec had been, his scanning gaze catches mine.
I watch his mouth form a surprised There you are, and he immediately excuses himself to push through the room toward us. He’s wearing a slim-fitting black button-down shirt and dark jeans, but his best accessory is his face-splitting, eye-crinkling smile. My heart drops to my feet.
A few people notice us again, and my skin itches at their attention. I resist the urge to hide behind Eden. Alec comes up to us, shaking our hands—this, too, is very weird—and smiling warmly at us. “You two made it!”
Eden utters something high-pitched and unintelligible in response, and Alec whisks her away to introduce her to a few people nearby. Great. And now I’m alone.
But only a minute later, she is enthusiastically engaged in conversation with a hugely famous American actress, and I am watching Alec return to me, wearing a different smile now. One that feels like a private gift just for me.
I ignore the eyes on him as he approaches, wanting his expression and this secret between us to be the only thing I see and feel. He stops a foot away and, with his back to the room, has the luxury of giving my body a long, seductive once-over.
“Hey.”
I try to plaster a polite smile on my mouth. “Hi.”
“Why didn’t you text me that you were here?”
“You’re…” I flounder. “You’re in famous-person mode.”
He pulls his lower lip into his mouth and narrows his eyes, studying me. “You hate this, don’t you?”
“A normal amount.”
Alec laughs. “I wanted you here, but you look uncomfortable. It was selfish.”
I glance to the room behind him. “I’m okay, I promise. I just—” I look back at him and laugh. “You’ll get maybe one minute with me before you go.”
“I just like knowing you’re here,” he says. “Does that make sense?”
I nod. It does make sense. Everything about him just makes sense.
He looks like he wants to kiss me. His cheeks are flushed, eyes bright.
In my peripheral vision, I see the woman from the chair lead Trevor Noah out of the greenroom, and only seconds later, sound reaches us.
I can hear people screaming. Women screaming.
It sounds like a cloud of bees, a roaring swarm.
I don’t think I’m ready to be truly faced with the reality of his celebrity yet.
All of our moments up to now—except for the airport in LA—have been just us.
Him as a man, me as a woman. The two of us falling forward into something neither of us can really label.
I’m not a person who ever wanted something like this.
Being with a celebrity isn’t in my fantasy spank bank.
I want the Seattle hotel, the LA hotel. I want our beach day; I want last night, goofing off with Eden.
I want later, in my bed, with him telling me again how he needs to find a new word to describe my expression when he touches me.
I want to hear him say again that he’s desperate for me.
Alec captures my chin with his thumb and finger, redirecting my attention so that I meet his eyes. “Don’t.”
“How can I not?” I shake my head, laughing. “I knew, but I didn’t realize.”
“Look at my face.” He stares at me, and his focus is so intense that slowly, the sound of screaming ebbs away. The periphery turns milky white. “I need to ask you something important.”
I bite back a smile at his earnest sincerity. “Okay.”
“You don’t have to answer right now, but I probably won’t get another chance today.”
“Okay.”
He leans in, and his lips are so close I feel them moving against the shell of my ear.
“I think you should move into my suite for the remainder of my stay.” I feel a pop in my ears as my brain equilibrates.
Alec pulls back, wide-eyed, gauging my reaction before leaning back in, moving on.
“You can work from there. We won’t have to worry about press or moving back and forth. We can maximize the time we have left.”
“So that it can be even harder when you go?” I say unintentionally—the words just fly out of me, unattended.
Frowning, he looks back and forth between my eyes before dropping his focus to my lips. He licks his, like he’s thinking about how it would feel to press his mouth to mine, and instinctively, I lick mine, too.
“Well,” he says finally. “That’s why you don’t have to answer now. Just send me a text. If the answer is yes, I can give you a key.”
The cast is led out and the rest of us follow in a long, disorganized mob of hangers-on.
Eden and I have no instruction as to where to stand or what we’re expected to do, but once we emerge out to the event space, I forget to be at all concerned with that.
Because all I can focus on is the wall of sound, the sea of people.
The room is massive, filled with rows and rows and rows of seats, and there must be no fire marshal within shouting distance, because standing bodies line the side and back walls.
At the front of the room is a long table with chairs for each of the invited guests, with name placards crisply propped on the white tablecloth.
As the group files in and the West Midlands team find their seats, the room shakes with noise.
It takes Trevor a good minute to get everyone to settle down so that he can make introductions.
And after that, there is a short Q they are about previous seasons, or teaser tidbits for what’s coming up.
One or two are personal in nature, even though fans were requested not to ask those.
Is Ben dating that singer? He reminds the audience he’s married.
Are Alexander and Elodie together in real life?
They both give vaguely unconvincing answers, but I get it: the rumor keeps viewers locked in.
I focus less on listening to his answers than I do on noticing Alec’s easy manner in front of a crowd this size.
I would be a fidgety, stammering mess; even when he’s answering something that seems impossibly intimate, he seems to slow down, settle into his spine.
His deep, quiet voice takes on a sparkling, flirtatious edge.
He wants me to stay in his hotel room with him.
Would that be insane? I’m already hungry for every second I can get with him, but watching him like this makes me feel like a greedy monster, plotting how I can sneak behind the table and drag his chair behind the BBC-Netflix curtain to put my hands all over him.
Just as I have this thought, a voice rises up from beside me. “This trip is a novelty for him.”
I look over, surprised to find Yael standing not two feet away. “I’m sorry?”
“Alexander.” She lifts her chin, indicating the man himself now welcoming the first group of fans at the signing table.
“This trip isn’t how things usually are,” she says.
“The time he has with you?” She looks at me, brows raised as if I might not know what she means.
“He doesn’t generally have time for relationships. ”
I rarely go mentally blank, but right now I have no idea what I’m supposed to say to this. “I’m sure he’s really busy.”
“He is.” She pauses and then delivers her thesis: “I don’t want you to have expectations, Georgia.”
Still at a loss for words, I can only give her a little nod so that she knows I’ve heard her. Expectations? I don’t know what that means. He just invited me to stay in his hotel with him for the rest of his trip. Maybe her first conversation should be with him, not me.
Yael walks away, leaving me staring at Alec as he leans in to hear a teenage fan better.
He ducks down to her level, making eye contact.
I know exactly what she feels right now with those warm brown eyes fixed right on hers: that teenager feels like the only person in this entire room.
But for me, the room spins. Alec invited me here.
Asked me to stay with him in his suite, and his assistant is telling me I should leave him alone.
Of course I want to be near him, but I also want to do what’s best for him.
“Am I supposed to pretend I didn’t hear that?” Eden asks from my other side.
“No.”
She sucks in a breath through her teeth. “Ouch.”
“I don’t think I’ve done anything to indicate that I think this is going anywhere.”
“I think,” Eden says, “that she’s trying to tell you she’s worried Alexander Kim wants it to go somewhere.”
Digesting this, I watch him accept a handmade gift from a fan. A handler tries to take it, to put it in a box, but Alec shakes his head, wanting it with him on the table. “He asked me to come stay at the hotel with him.”
“Seriously?”
I nod.
“Are you going to?”
“I want to, but I think that’s the equivalent of sticking a hot skewer in my own heart in nine days.”
“God, you are dramatic.”
I look at her. “You’d do it?”
“You know the answer to that. But I’d probably also take the job of Alexander Kim Belt Polisher if it was offered.”
I chew my lip, staring at the view of his long neck as he leans over the table to shake the hand of a fan in a wheelchair. I can so easily imagine his sweet, attentive expression, the deep pull of his dimples when he smiles and thanks her for coming.
But also I can imagine the sound he’ll make when he kicks off his shoes later. When he falls into satisfied exhaustion onto the sofa in his suite. I can imagine how he would pull me onto his lap and unleash a happy little growl into my neck.
Maybe we’d order room service for dinner. He’d offer me a bite of his food, nodding happily when he sees I like it. He would ask what I want to watch on TV. He would distract me anyway, with his hands and mouth. We’d give up and make love instead.
My brain shorts out at the phrase. Make love.
That isn’t what we’re doing, but even if it were… I want it. Even for just a handful of days, I want it.
OK, I text him from the Batphone, and try to ignore the way my stomach tightens when I imagine Yael’s reaction to the rest of it. I’ll stay in your suite.