Chapter 28
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Seth
I BARELY RECOGNIZE MY own room the next morning.
It’s not that the things in it have changed. The sheets draped over me are the same. The light prodding at the blinds is the same light that wakes me most days. I know the pictures on the dresser even though it’s too dark for me to pick out the details.
But I’m different today. The man lying in this bed is not the man who rose from it yesterday.
I glance at the mop of brown hair splayed across my chest, lighter than the dark hair that grows there on its own. Jacob refused to let go of me all night, like he was afraid I’d float away if he released me. I can’t blame him, but I aim to start this day by proving to him that I won’t run from him anymore. Last night, I gave him everything, opened my chest so he could glimpse the heart beating within. Terrifying as it is, I’ve resolved to keep it open, to let him in, to do this differently than I’ve been doing it up until now.
After all, what do we have to lose?
Everyone knows. I confessed my feelings to him after the cameras caught him coming in here. I’m not his bodyguard anymore. So what the hell would keep me from having him?
I kiss the top of his head, and Jacob hums and snuggles in closer, as though he’s not draped over me. My arm is trapped under him, which allows me to rub circles along his back. He sighs softly awake, but doesn’t move from my embrace.
“Hey,” he says when he picks his head up.
First thing in the morning, and he’s wearing a dazzling smile. This man cannot be real, let alone lying in my bed, yet here he is. I tuck his hair behind his ear to ground myself with the tangibility of this impossible human.
“Let’s get breakfast,” he says.
Unsurprisingly, Jacob wakes up already going a hundred miles per hour.
“We can’t,” I say. “I’ll make us something here.”
“Why not?”
“I don’t know, maybe that huge mob of press outside my door?”
Jacob rolls his eyes. “We can bust through them.”
“You just want me to carry you again.”
His smile twists. “Maybe, but I also want to go have breakfast with you. There’s that really nice place over in Ballard.”
“It’s always packed. You do realize you’re famous, right? And I’m…”
“Don’t say it. You aren’t my bodyguard anymore. You made sure of that yourself. You’re my…”
He trails off, the word he almost said hanging between us. I hesitate before snatching it out of the air. Dare I call myself that? With him? It seems impossible, yet here Jacob is, perched on my chest and waiting for me to say it.
If last night taught me anything, it’s to stop holding back.
“Your boyfriend?” I say at last.
Joy blooms on his face, so bright it’s like the sun has pierced my blinds to find only him.
“Yes,” he says. “You are. You’re my boyfriend now. And boyfriends take boyfriends to breakfast.”
“Are you going to be this demanding the whole time?” I say, but I’m smiling.
“Only when I don’t get what I want.”
He hops out of bed, moving naked around my room without a drop of shame as he collects his clothes. The press is going to see him in what he wore yesterday, but it’s not like I can loan him anything. It would be huge on him.
The image of him in nothing but my shirt flashes through my mind, but I push it aside and focus on getting myself dressed. He borrows my toothbrush, and then we rejoin the world for the first time in … I don’t even know how long. Mason is in the living room with a bowl of cereal. He keep his gaze doggedly focused on the television, which makes me think he might have overheard some of our activities last night. Well, this isn’t going to get less awkward. All I can do is barrel through it.
“We’re going out for breakfast,” I say. “You hungry?”
He shakes his head. “They’re still out there,” he says with a nod at the door.
“Yeah, I kind of suspected.”
Jacob and I are nearly to the door when Mason finally gathers the courage to look at me. He gestures at us with his spoon.
“So is this, like, a thing now? Are you going to be in my house all the time?”
Jacob flashes a toothy grin at him. “Yes and yes!”
Mason shakes his head and mutters to himself. “How the fuck” is all I catch.
I’ll deal with my roommate’s shock over my superstar boyfriend some other time. Eventually, he’ll come to see that while Jacob is extraordinary, he’s also human. It’ll feel normal some day. Maybe even to me.
That’s a concern for later. For now, I need to get us through the solid block of paparazzi waiting outside my door.
I pull Jacob against my side, holding him tightly. Then I set my hand on the doorknob, but I can feel Jacob wiggling.
“You’re way too excited about this,” I grumble.
“Can I help it if I like it when you go all ‘protective knight’ mode?”
“Yes, you could.”
“Wrong! It’s my nature. No judgments. Now, get us to your steed, O’ Knight. The prince desires pancakes this morn.”
I open the door to cover for the way I want to laugh. Instantly, the cameras are flashing and people are shouting at us, but all I can hear is Jacob’s voice ringing with mirth in my head. I put my shoulder down and haul him along, forcing us through the throng and to my car. Maybe the paparazzi are getting bored. It’s a lot easier to get through them today than it was last night. Or maybe it simply feels easier because there’s less weight hanging off my back.
Either way, we make it to the car, and I pull away while they bang at the windows. I start driving, but not to Ballard.
“Hey, what gives?” Jacob says when he catches on.
“That place is too crowded. I know a better one.”
“But—”
“Even if you weren’t famous, there’s always an hour wait. I’m heading to a place I like. A quieter place. Just trust me.”
“Fine,” Jacob grumbles, and clasps my free hand in his while I drive.
We head north instead of south, away from the city instead of deeper into it. The buildings space out, though Seattle’s sprawl is plenty dense even at the outskirts.
I pull up outside a squat, brown-roofed place that looks like it could have just as easily become a McDonald’s. When I usher Jacob inside, we find kitschy little booths with tacky flower print designs, tiny tables decorated with nothing but a bottle of syrup, and big fake plants on every surface that can house them. The host does a double take, but keeps his cool as he leads us to a booth in the corner. He slides huge paper menus in front of us, the type of menus that double as place mats in a joint like this. I order coffee before he slips away.
“This place is amazing,” Jacob says as a waitress who doesn’t even look at us sets down two bitter black coffees.
“I was always partial to diners,” I say, “but they’re hard to find around here.”
“What should I get? There’s so much on this menu.”
I swap sides to sit next to Jacob instead of across from him. Our shoulders press together as we pore over the menu, me recommending several of the huge, greasy meals I’ve had after a night out — or during the morning after. It’s so intensely normal, so easy, so comfortable. If Jacob was anyone other than who he is, we would have been doing this kind of thing for months, but I savor an opportunity to experience it now. At last.
We end up ordering two different types of waffles and a massive omelet. I stay on Jacob’s side of the booth so we can share the heap of food that shows up. He drowns the waffles in syrup, insisting on filling every square individually, and I smother the omelet in ketchup, salt and pepper. For a while, we’re a normal couple having a nice morning together, a couple obviously smitten and doing all the stupid smitten shit everyone does. Feeding each other, laughing at nothing, sitting too close. We’re ordinary, and everything is the way it’s supposed to be.
But normal can’t last forever. Not when Jacob is involved.
I notice some of the servers whispering to each other first, then our waitress shyly asks for an autograph. That opens the floodgates to the others asking as well, and while Jacob doesn’t mind, I kind of do. We can’t even have one morning together without the rest of the world making it their business.
“I’m sorry,” he says when the wait staff backs off.
“It’s okay,” I say. “This is your life. It’s something I’m going to have to get used to.”
“It’s a lot better with you here,” he says.
The implication digs into my gut. I know Jacob wants me back on the band’s staff. I know he wants me running security. How could Emmett possibly approve that after all this, though? Surely he’s seen the press flurry.
“We’ll see” is all I say, and Jacob lets it drop.
We don’t get through breakfast before I have to be his bodyguard again, however. Official or not, it’s clear what my responsibilities are when I spot a paparazzo outside the diner.
“God, they never give up, do they?” Jacob says. “How do they even know?”
“Could be because of my car,” I say. “Could be the wait staff. Could be a lucky guess. It’s hard to disappear these days.”
Jacob doesn’t look pleased, and I’m not thrilled either, but this is his life. All we can do is manage it.
“It’ll be okay,” I say. “There’s only one, and I’m with you. They won’t get more than a couple photos.”
“And me with a food baby after that meal, ugh!” Jacob says. He sobers. “I’m glad you’re with me. Thank you for putting up with all this.”
He says it as though he’s reluctantly dragging me along, as though he’s not the most stunning human being I’ve ever met. I kiss him right there in the diner, not caring about the paparazzo in the window or the wait staff or anyone else on the fucking planet.
“Nowhere else I’d rather be,” I say.