CHAPTER TEN
BENNET
I press the stop button on the elevator and stand in the sudden stillness and breathe.
I have a date downstairs. Jenn, who has done nothing wrong except live in my building and want something from me I don't know how to give. She is waiting in the lobby, and I am stopped between floors, talking myself down from something I can't name out loud.
Blaire had been crying.
That's what I saw the second the doors opened — before the robe, before the ruined makeup, before my brain engaged any kind of filter.
She'd been crying. Hard enough that it had dried into tracks down her face, and she hadn't noticed or hadn't cared, and she was walking to dinner alone in her pajamas with a blank look on her face.
My first instinct — and I mean the very first thing my hands wanted to do before my brain had any say in it — was to reach for her, ask her what happened.
Then the thoughts came in order, rapid, like a door slamming shut, one lock at a time.
Blaire doesn't know who I am.
Blaire Alexander ruined my life.
Blaire Monroe can kiss my ass.
And then I was angry at myself for the first instinct. Then I was angry with her for producing it. Then I was angry at her for just standing there with her eyeliner down her face, looking like a person I didn't want to feel anything about. Then, I opened my mouth and what came out was — that.
Get your shit together, Mrs. Monroe.
The name. I don't know why I keep doing that with her name. It comes out wrong every time, weighted, and I can't stop it.
Now I am stopped between floors in my own elevator feeling like I've kicked something that didn't deserve it.
Which she did. Deserve it. She absolutely deserves whatever version of difficult I decide to be.
I just — the crying.
I press the button. The elevator starts moving again.
Jenn looks up from her seat when the doors open and smiles. She looks beautiful and uncomplicated and like someone who has never once detonated anything in my life.
"Ready?" she asks.
"Yeah,"
I am not ready.
I follow her out the door, anyway.
I open the car door for her and she climbs in. The dress is — it's a lot of dress. Or not enough of one, depending on your perspective. Her ass is on full display as she scoots across the seat. The fabric leaving absolutely nothing to the imagination, and she’ll get no complaints out of me.
The list Blaire sent over had eight options — all public, all frequented by enough recognizable faces that the paparazzi treat the surrounding blocks like an office. Strategic visibility, which is the whole point of tonight. Well, not originally. Two birds, one stone, I guess.
Jenn is talking about something. The restaurant, I think. Or the neighborhood. I catch every third word because I am looking at her red dress under the interior car light and doing math I should not be doing.
"So, what's your underwear situation?"
Jenn stops talking.
Her eyes go wide. Her mouth opens.
I read the room. I adjust. "It's just — the dress is uh, very tight. And you bent over getting in, and there were no lines." I gesture vaguely at the relevant geography. "So, I wasn't sure if you were—"
I should stop talking.
"And your nipples are just — they're out there. Both of them. Which is fine, obviously. I'm just—" I gesture again, differently, which does not help. "I wear boxer briefs personally. I feel like it keeps everything where it's supposed to be. Contained. You know."
Jenn stares at me.
The driver clears his throat and rolls up the partition.
"I mean structurally," I continue, sadly. "From a structural standpoint."
The car is silent.
I look out the window at the passing street and make a decision that I am done talking for the foreseeable future and will simply sit here quietly and let the city go by until we arrive somewhere I can order a goddamn drink.
"Are you nervous?" Jenn asks.
I look at her.
She doesn’t seem offended. If she is, it doesn’t show.
"No," I say.
She raises an eyebrow.
"Yes," I say.
She looks at me for another moment, and then something in her expression relaxes, which allows my ass cheeks to finally unclench.
I'm hoping my fumbling idiocy is doing some work here — lowering whatever guard she's had up since yesterday morning in the gym, since you're of childbearing age, since whatever story about me she's been telling herself.
"Okay," she says simply.
"Okay?"
"Okay." She smooths her dress. Looks out her own window. "For what it's worth, I'm wearing a thong. Which is its own structural problem, but here we are."
She's almost smiling.
"Here we are," I say.
The car pulls up to the restaurant. The driver comes around.
I get out first, offering her my hand to exit on my side since hers faces the traffic.
She takes it, and when she steps out, there are already two photographers across the street.
I know because I've done this enough times that at least one of those shots is going to be usable.
I put my hand at the small of her back and walk her to the door.
This is the job, I tell myself. This is what the next few weeks will look like.
The door opens. The restaurant is buzzing and loud. The tables have a romantic vibe to them with dark burgundy colors and dim lighting.
Blaire will be pleased.
I have no idea why that's the thought I land on.
"This restaurant is beautiful." Jenn looks around once we're seated and our wine order has been taken. "Have you been here before?"
I shake my head. "Are you a natural redhead?"
She stares at me. "You do that a lot, you know."
"What?"
"Say whatever is in your brain. Like there's no filter between the two."
Yeah.
I am suddenly, acutely aware that I don't know how to do this. Not sure what clued me in. Could have been the gym. Could have been the car. Could be right now, sitting across from a genuinely attractive woman who has every reason to be here and zero reasons to stay if I keep performing like this.
"So," Jenn tilts her head with a slight smirk. "What made you finally ask me out? And I'm using that term very loosely."
The server returns with the wine. Fills both glasses.
I nod my thanks, wanting to take the man’s hand and kiss his ring for buying me a few extra seconds.
I take a sip of my wine, but Jenn is only looking at me like she knows I’m about to say some dumb shit and can’t wait to hear what it is.
I take a larger sip, then set my glass down.
"I need to prove to my sister that I'm not gay."
Jenn chokes on her own saliva.
I hand her a napkin. She waves it off, pressing the back of her hand to her mouth, eyes watering, and for a moment the table is just her trying not to die and me watching it happen.
"I'm sorry," I say.
She holds up a finger.
I give her a second.
She takes a sip of her water, dabs her mouth, then looks at me with an expression that is equal parts disbelief and what might generously be called amusement.
"Your sister," she repeats.
"She made an assessment. Based on available evidence. I disagreed."
"And your counter-argument is me."
"You were the most accessible option at the time."
Her mouth opens, and her eyes go wide.
"That came out wrong," I say.
"Did it?"
"You were the — I had limited options. Geographically. You live in the building."
"You are not making this better."
"I know." I pick up my wine. "I'm aware."
She looks at me for a long moment. The restaurant hums around us — conversation, silverware, a piano somewhere that I hadn’t noticed before. She has the look of a woman recalibrating her entire understanding of the last eight months.
"Are you gay?" she asks with genuine curiosity.
"No."
"Are you sure?"
"Increasingly certain."
"Because it would be fine—"
"Jenn. I'm not gay."
"Okay." She picks up her menu. Looks at it. Sets it back down. "You're just the most bizarre man I've ever met."
"That's probably accurate."
"And you asked me out to prove a point to your sister."
"Yes."
"Using those exact words. In the gym. This morning."
"I'd prefer not to revisit that."
She almost smiles.
"For what it's worth," she says, picking up her wine, "it's the most honest thing anyone's said to me on a first date in about three years. So. Points for that."
"I don't actually know anything about you," I say. "I realized that in the car."
"I know." She leans back in her chair. "So, ask me something."
I think about Blaire in the conference room. What does she like? What does she care about? Ask her something.
"What do you do?" I ask. "When you're not in the gym."
Jenn's smile settles into something genuine.
"I'm a pediatric nurse." She leans forward slightly. "But I'd like to go back to you. How many dates are we talking?"
"What do you mean?"
"To sufficiently prove to your sister that you're not gay. Are we talking two? Five? Do I need to clear my calendar?"
"I haven't thought that far ahead."
She looks at me like this is the least surprising thing I've said all evening, which is fair. "Okay. Different question." She picks up her wine. "Will there be kissing on this mission?"
"That's—" I pause. "Why?"
"Just trying to understand the scope of the project."
"Are you saying you want to kiss me, Jenn?"
She doesn't hesitate. "You have a kissable face. I wouldn't be opposed."
I find that I don't hate the thought.
"I should tell you something," I say.
"Another bombshell. Great."
"I'm going to be — not easy. To get to know." I turn the wine glass in my hand. "I have a PR consultant who is going to be managing my public image for the next two months, and part of that involves being seen. Publicly. Dating someone. Consistently."
Jenn is quiet for a moment. "Is that what this is?"
"No," I say it before I think about it. "This is the sister thing. Those are separate."
"So, I'm the sister thing."
"You were. I'm not sure what this is now."
She considers that. "Okay."
"Okay?"
"You're strange and you're honest about being strange, which is more than I can say for most men I've met in this city.
" She sets her glass down. "I'm not looking for anything serious either.
I work seventy-hour weeks and I have a cat that hates everyone except me.
" She shrugs. "But I'd like to have dinner with you again. Without the underwear inventory."
"That's a reasonable condition."
"And maybe the kissing. Eventually."
"Also reasonable." I pick up my wine. "You have pouty lips and good breath. I'm sure that would be relatively enjoyable."
She stares at me.
"Good god," she says with a shake of her head.
"Tell me about the cat," I say, moving us as quickly as possible from my last statement.
She laughs. "His name is Gerald, and he's mean as hell."
"Tell me everything."
***
"You did not." Jenn's laugh carries over the pier noise, over the ocean, over everything. "God, Bennet. You're such a bizarre person."
"That's fair."
We're walking the Santa Monica Pier with ice cream cones like two people who planned this, which we did not, which was Jenn's idea approximately forty minutes into dinner when she said I want to go somewhere and I said where and she said somewhere that isn't here and I paid the check.
"Okay, so let me get this straight." She licks her cone, unbothered by the crowd moving around us. "You're single. You look like — that." She gestures at me with her free hand. "You're a gazillionaire. And you have genuinely no idea how to seduce a woman."
"I have ideas."
"The childbearing age thing was an idea?"
"A poorly executed one."
"Talk about a unicorn." She shakes her head, still laughing, and something about the laugh — easy, unperformed, like she finds the whole situation genuinely funny rather than something to manage — makes me laugh too.
We finish our cones somewhere near the end of the pier.
The ocean is dark past the railing. The lights from the rides color everything amber and pink, and the whole thing is aggressively, almost satirically picturesque.
I am aware that I am having something resembling a good time, which was not in the forecast for today.
Maybe I'm broken in a different way than I thought.
Jenn glances over my shoulder and smirks.
"I guess we'll be kissing sooner rather than later after all."
Before I can process that sentence, she's up on her toes, hands sliding around the back of my neck into my hair, pulling me down toward her mouth.
"We've got a stalker," she murmurs, lips a breath from mine. "Play along, playboy."
Then she kisses me.
It's a good kiss. She isn't nervous about it, and I wish I could say the same. I put my hand at her waist and lean into it because that's the job, that's what this is. The photographer over my shoulder is going to get exactly what the narrative needs.
I close my eyes.
And the thing that moves through me is...quiet.
Like standing in a room where the lights are on and everything is in order and you're waiting for something to happen and it doesn't.
She's warm. She smells good. She is objectively kissing me well, and I am present for it, and I feel — fine. Just...fine.
I open my eyes when she pulls back.
She's reading my face. She does it quickly, efficiently, and whatever she finds there she stores away without comment.
"Well," she says. Straightening. Smoothing her dress.
"Well,"
Behind me, I hear the shutter sound — unmistakable, even at a distance. Got it. We got it. Bennet Sullivan and an unnamed redhead on the Santa Monica Pier, personal and unguarded and exactly what two months of headlines need to move away from fountain footage.
Blaire will be pleased.
There’s that thought again. Goddamnit.
Jenn loops her arm through mine, and we start walking back toward the entrance like two people who planned all of this from the beginning. She tips her head against my shoulder briefly, easy and without expectation.
"Friends?" she says.
I look down at her.
"Friends," I say.
She nods once, seemingly satisfied and we move on.
I wish it were that simple for the rest of it.