I’msuchamoron.
I forgot my shoes and my hotel room key while begging Evan Michaels, the man I’ve sworn to loathe for eternity, for food in a disoriented state of hunger and nervousness for the forum that is tomorrow afternoon. In front of a thousand people. Answering questions that, during practice, we hadn’t been able to complete. I’ve studied the questions Melanie emailed to me repeatedly, but public speaking makes me think of senior year and my valedictory speech.
My valedictory speech where I passed out.
I also am tryingreallyhard to adhere to Melanie’s instructions. After the prickly plane ride, where I ended upwaking up on Evan’s shoulder, I felt some kind of awkward feeling kindle between us, like my slobber was made of sparks instead of saliva. Waking up on his shoulder made me feel like I could depend on someone. And then I rememberedwhoI was leaning on.
Melanie sent me a list of…helpful tips. I’m not sure they are tips, more like politely worded commands. One tip is using Evan’s business card for meals when I can. It'll help me from having to save receipts to submit for reimbursement when the book tour is over. Since this is a six-week business deal, they didn't issue me a card of my own, but after Melanie had seen how well things went when Evan and I were in the same room, I'm surprised she didn't change her mind and have the credit union express ship me one.
But she didn’t, so now, here I am.
A barefoot moron.
The man at the front desk was nice enough. I noticed Evan’s eyebrows arching when I revealed that my room number was four floors below him. I peeked into Evan’s room. It appeared larger than the apartment Mal and I share, and it doesn’t come with a side of moldy carpet we had to rip out or drafty windows that made our heating bill triple what it should be in the winter.
But that doesn’t mean my hotel room isn’t nice. It ismorethan nice. The bed feels like lying on cotton candy clouds—not the kind of clouds back in New York that you rarely saw, but the ones back in Oklahoma that shape-shift to your imagination’s sheer delight. The bathroom is clean and spacious, much larger than the minuscule closet in my apartment that somehow manages to feature a shower you can barely turn around in and a tiny sink that hovers over the toilet. You can wash your hands while relieving yourself at the same time. It’s multitasking at its finest.
Had I dreamed that I’d be given a penthouse room? Of course. If you aren’t dreaming big, why dream at all?
“How can a person make such a mess so quickly?” Evan remarks, walking around my room like it’s his and not mine.
I watch as he examines my already unzipped suitcases and how their contents are scattered all around my room as if I’ve been living here for a week. My eyes widen when I spy a bright pink bra haphazardly draped across the arm of a plush navy-blue chair in the corner of the room. I quickly walk toward it, stepping in front of the undergarment, hoping I’m discreetly hiding it.
I choose to ignore Evan’s insult at my messiness. I know he’s all sharp, clean edges. That wasn’t hard to figure out. He could moonlight as a J. Crew model. His collar is always perfect, hisfabrics always starched, and it’s as if he has rigorously trained his clothing to never bunch or scrunch in any unsightly fashion, no matter how he moves or that he had just sat on a plane for six hours.
It’s annoying.
But that’s also why the minute my hotel door closed behind me, I opened both my suitcases and tore through the contents of what I had poorly packed in a nervous rush to bring everything, and yet, nothing.
The beige dress made of a breezy chiffon that features adorable pink polka dots feels scratchy when it should feel soft, but it’s the only thing that didn’t make me groan when I picked it up. Everything else felt outdated, and that’s because most of it is. Except for what I’m currently wearing—one of my new dresses I splurged on, and I’m questioning my motives behind wearing it for dinner on night one.
Shouldn’t I save it for the stage when hundreds of piercing eyes will be set on me? Why did I choose to wear it when I went to get the company credit card from Evan?
But I don’t have much time to reflect on that. My stomach growls uncomfortably, as if my insides have grown teeth and they are starting to gnaw on me from the inside out.
I scan my room, trying to locate my trusty brown sandals. Somehow one has already slipped beneath the bed. I drop to my knees, swiftly pulling it out before slipping the comfortable shoes on my feet.
“Happy now?” I ask.
I can’t tell what Evan is thinking. His face is contradictory. He seems curious but disapproving, and I’m beginning to wonder if this is a classic Evan Michaels expression.
“No heels?” he questions.
What a strange thing to ask. Why would he care about my footwear?
“I know you’re not going to believe this, but I don’t prefer relationships that cause me to curse and question all my life choices, even relationships with my shoes. I’ve just obviously made an exception for you,” I say.
I put my hands on my hips, giving him a spiteful stare.
He raises an eyebrow at me. “You curse?”
“That’s what you got from that?” I sigh. “Sometimes, but only in my head. My momma always said if you couldn’t find the words to describe something and had to curse, you needed to expand your vocabulary.”
My mommahadalways said there was no reason for a Perry to spout off in an unsavory manner. If you couldn’t think of the right words to say, then there were no right words for that moment. I was always one to please my parents, or maybe I’d just been smart enough to watch my older sister be reprimanded so many times that I knew a curse word wasn’t worth having my freedom stripped away. I wasn’t perfect. I just knew how to get around the rules better than my sister did.
Evan shakes his head as if he’s trying to determine what kind of upbringing I had. “Oklahoma, right?”
I feel my eyebrows furrow. “Yes.”
