Chapter 7
I break away from Reed as the frantic voice slices through the night.
“Rikkiiiiii?”
Reed and I gaze at each other for one short, dazed moment, before I scramble into action. “Fuck!” My lady parts scream in protest as I spin toward the edge of the lake and hoist myself out of the pit.
Jesus Christ. You’re at a wedding! You haven’t even stalked his LinkedIn.
“Jordyn!” I yell, fumbling up the grass on a diagonal, stumbling to all fours three separate times as I race to the top.
“Rikki?” she screams again.
I crest the hill on my hands and knees and heave myself to my feet. My skirt has taken on five pounds of lake water. Jordyn is leaning over the balustrade with my shoes dangling from her hand, expression rapt with fear. I wave, flailing my arms like a castaway trying to flag down a helicopter.
She throws a hand over her chest. “Woman, I legit thought you had been murdered!”
“I’m so sorry! We fell into the lake!”
“We?”
Reed appears next to me and waves as well.
“Please bring your phone with you the next time you consensually disappear into the night with a random hot man!”
Reed and I take refuge under the stone balcony to change out of our wet clothes.
My top got ruined during the hellfire mud-wall kiss that’s still ricocheting through me.
My iguana’s gone. Flower crown is missing.
My torn skirt is in a heap on the grass.
I steal a peek at Reed. My eyes bounce from his muscular thighs to his fitted purple boxers.
He’s pulling on his yellow hoodie. I glance away.
Jordyn brought us our party favor sweatshirts.
She tossed them down, and I gave her the go-ahead to rejoin the party, promising to fill her in later.
Now I’m stuck in my freezing, mud-covered corset. I didn’t think this quick-change idea through before I suggested it. Corsets aren’t a quick-change attire. They are an intricate, slow-moving ordeal. Jordyn had to tie me into it earlier.
“Hey Reed,” I call out. “Can you help me with this corset? It’s like a whole thing.”
“Oh, sure . . . uh.”
I glance over my shoulder and find him looking at my ass and then up at the sky as he approaches. Then he looks back down at my ass.
“Reed, we almost died together via small grassy knoll, it’s okay—you have permission to look at my ass.”
He coughs. “Nice work. It’s really something.”
I snort as he runs his hands over my shoulders and down to the strings hanging along the back of the corset.
“So? Is it like unlacing a shoe?”
“Pretty much. Just untie the knot and work your way up, gradually loosening it all, and eventually I’ll be able to shimmy out of it.”
Reed begins to work out the knot, tugging and sliding the laces around. The moon is so bright that I hadn’t noticed before—the stars are out. It would have been a nice night to sit by a lake had we made it down without tumbling into oblivion.
“Do you collect things, Reed?” I ask the night air in front of me.
He laughs. “Where did that come from?”
“It’s one of my first-date questions.” If you collect something, you care about it an enormous amount, and caring about things enormous amounts is a green flag I look for in a partner.
And if they collect toenail clippings, dead animals, or packets of sugar, it’s nice to know that sort of thing up front so I can immediately run the other way.
“You have a collection of first-date questions?” I can hear the satisfied smile in his voice.
The side of my mouth kicks up. “You don’t?”
“I mean, yes, I do, but I haven’t ever discussed it out loud with another . . . person.”
“All right, Reed, what do you collect? Other than first-date questions.”
“Obviously books.” He tugs at a string and slides something free.
“I do this thing where anytime I go into a bookstore in a new place, or a new area, I scout out a book I want to read, and on the inside flap I write the date I bought it, where I got it, what I thought of the bookstore, and what was generally going on in my life that day. How I was feeling.” He pauses, tugging gently at a new spot.
“It’s transformed my bookshelf into a scrapbook of sorts, of different moments and places I’ve been throughout my life. ”
My lips smush together, emotion welling at the thought of this shelf. “That’s really beautiful.”
More gentle tugging. “I’ve got one,” he says after a moment. “What’s your most irrational, long-shot, endgame life goal that you tell yourself will never happen, but in your heart of hearts you’re still holding out hope for?”
“This is a first-date question?” I ask. “Or an SAT writing prompt?”
Laughter rumbles through him.
I exhale a slow breath, gathering my thoughts.
“I mean, I think one is to write a book with someone someday. The other more irrational one is, I guess, maybe to, like . . . have an afternoon talk show like Kelly Clarkson. I don’t know why, and I don’t have any, like, experience in that realm, and I’m pretty sure you have to be independently famous pre–talk show, but it would give me such a big platform to talk about relationships and books, and I love talking to different kinds of people and helping them share their stories. I love talking in general . . . yeah.”
“I love that,” he says, fingers moving at a glacial pace.
“I think those big random reach-for-the-stars dreams are so important. They keep us striving to learn and evolve and be curious about the world. You have to be a little deluded to push yourself. Can I ask, do you not want to write a book yourself, or does that just not feel grand enough for this particular list?”
I shrug. “I already spend so much time alone writing and planning for the weekly column, I think it’d be fun to try writing with a partner, less isolating.”
I’ve never articulated any of this out loud. I’m as surprised as anyone to hear these things coming out of my mouth. A talk show like Kelly Clarkson? No one’s ever asked me this question. “What are yours?” I ask back.
“The pie-in-the-sky goal has always been acting. Successfully, though. I’ve done some commercials and stuff over the years, but the dream is to be a part of the storytelling journey in that living, breathing way you only get when you’re fully inhabiting another person’s whole being.
I love living different lives through books, but living them, like actually slipping into the physicality of what makes a person, and bringing them to life, is magic for me. ”
I smile to myself. “You really undersold your passion out the gate by offhandedly calling yourself a theater kid.”
We reenter the ballroom in our matching yellow We Made It to Happily Ever After sweatshirts, clutching our wet clothes in bunched-up balls like children who shit their pants on the class trip.
Lucky for us, the dessert room seems to have recently opened up and is providing a very well-timed distraction. The majority of the guests miss our walk of shame in favor of the red fire-hazard room and its four-tier chocolate fountain.
The entire Aladdin table is MIA. Reed and I sheepishly take a seat for the first time since the Caesar salad. There’s a predelegated slice of wedding cake at each place setting. I grab a fork and dig into mine, mind whirring as “Can You Feel the Love Tonight” plays gently over the speakers.
The wedding is drawing to a close. I feel it like you feel a hardcover straining to shut as you desperately try to soak up every last word in the final ten pages.
Fifteen minutes ago I was about to have frantic sex in a golf course lake during my friend’s wedding.
What in the hell was that? Reed could have a million STIs.
He could be simultaneously dating five other women.
He could be an escaped convict who stole the real Reed’s identity, or a cult leader, or an . . . alien spy from a foreign planet.
“Rikki?” Reed says next to me. I swallow the cake in my mouth, swiveling in my seat to face him rather than the table.
Am I going to invite him back to my place after one date? I don’t do that.
Before sex, I’ve had borderline lecture-style discussions about getting checked for STIs with all of my partners. I haven’t done it with anyone until they’ve come back to me with a verified clean bill of health.
But also I have condoms at home.
Reed smiles. “What’s happening in there?” He’s been holding my eyes for a solid fifteen seconds of silence.
Or has he been silent? Did he say something?
I clear my throat. “Is this date thing we’re doing something you’d like to do again, or was this a you were here, I was here, carpe diem sort of thing? And I just decided that I’m not going to sleep with you tonight, no matter what the answer is, so don’t let that sway you.”
He drops his eyes, grinning. “I would love to do this again.”
“Yeah?”
“Maybe not this exact series of events, but yeah. I would very much like to see you again.”
A thrill crackles down my spine. We’re going to do this again. I found a handsome, smart, employed, thoughtful, funny, age-appropriate, probably not a felon, ambitious man in the wild, and we’re going to do this again?
Reed holds out his phone, mouth quirked in a bashful smile. “Speaking of which, can I get your number?”
I pluck the phone from his palm, tap my number in, and call myself before handing it back. As I do, he catches his lip with his teeth, a knowing glint in his eye.
“What?” I ask.
“I have to tell you something.”
I have to tell him something too. “Okay,” I say playfully.
“I saw you boarding my flight last night.”
I tilt my head. “What do you mean?”
“We were on the same flight,” Reed says. “Last night. You were on my flight. You were wearing a black Columbia sweatshirt and tan UGGs.”
I blink. I was wearing a Columbia sweatshirt and tan UGGs.
Reed’s seen my UGGs?
I squint at him, confusion fogging my thoughts. “Wha . . . You were on the red-eye out of LAX?”
“I was.”
“You flew in from LA?”
He nods. “Yeah.”
“We were on the same flight?” I repeat numbly.
Reed smiles. “Yeah, are you based out there? You have an LA number, and you flew here, but you work at The New York Minute. Trying to pinpoint your home base has been a roller coaster.”
“What?” I close my eyes. “You’re not based in Secaucus.”
“Are you . . .” He takes a breath. “Do you live in New York?”
Disappointment hits my windpipe like a boot to the neck. “You live in LA?”
He nods. “Moved out there with my brother five years ago.”
Of course he did.
“To follow your dream. To be an actor.”
He nods again, the light dimming in his eyes. “I take it you live here?”
I bob my head solemnly as the molten ball of relationship potential floating between us explodes in my face, splattering my skin like hot wax. Fucking hell.
“I live in Hoboken,” I say slowly. “My family’s in the Valley and Pasadena. I grew up in LA. Moved out here for college twelve years ago.” I stare out at the dance floor. “When do you fly back?”
He runs a hand down his face. “Tomorrow morning.”
We’re silent for a long, depressing moment.
“Well, actually I’m not sure anymore,” he mumbles absently. “They lost my luggage, and the airline hasn’t managed to track it down yet.”
My eyes dart back to his. “What?”
“What?” he repeats.
“I lost my luggage—I took the wrong one. I bought the most niche suitcase that’s ever lived so I would never have to question which bag was mine again, and my first time flying with it, I lost it.”
Reed’s brow furrows. “You don’t mean . . . the limited edition Sunrise Away bag?”
I frown, peering at him. “Why do you know about that bag?”
He arches a brow. “I have that bag.”
I level my gaze on him, annoyance pulsing through me. “Fuck off. You do not own a limited edition Sunrise Away bag.”
A smirk slowly finds its way back onto his face. “I do, and apparently you stole it.”