I tilted my head back and grinned. “Yeah. I figured that partout.”
“Okay, because I didn’t think I was being subtle, but you didn’t say anything so then I resigned myself to potentially dying in the friend zone of an unrequited crush.”
A gentle laugh rolled through Ethan’s body, then he bit down on his lower lip to keep himself from saying more. We were close enough now that I could see the fine lines of his cheekbones highlighted in the shimmer of the neon signs. I wanted to reach out with my free hand and trace the reflection on his skin. Instead, I reached down and took his other hand.
“You were not subtle.” I stepped an inch closer to him. “I just hadn’t figured out the perfect words to say that I felt the same. Maybe I still haven’t, but I really like you, Ethan Wyatt. You matter to me.”
For a moment, Ethan was still, and I started to wonder if I’d actually said anything out loud, or if this entire thing was a dream. Then a slow, quiet smile made its way across his face. Ethan glanced to the left and then the right as if he were waiting for someone to tell him this wasn’t real. When that person didn’t appear, he looked back at me.
“I thought you knew?” Ethan took a small step closer to me. We were close enough that I had to tilt my head back slightly to be able to see that smile. “You don’t need to be perfect with me. I want you exactly as you are, Jamie Webb.”
My heart was beating wildly. Ethan licked his lips, and my breathing became shallow as desire coursed through me. I leaned into him, closing the gap between us. Searching his eyes, I whispered, “So then, is there no perfect way to ask if I can kiss you?”
Ethan laughed quietly, then dipped his head so our lips were almost touching as he said, “That is the perfect way.”
His lips brushed mine. The kiss was shy at first, soft and gentle, like he was testing to see if I was really there. I untwined our fingers, sliding one of my hands up the plane of his chest,enjoying the feel of him, solid beneath my hand. My touch seemed to free something inside of him, and Ethan deepened the kiss, releasing my other hand and wrapping his arms around me, pulling me closer to him so our bodies were aligned.
My mind shut everything that wasn’t him out. The press of his hand on the small of my back. His hair between my fingers. The smell of him. His taste. Like mint and something untamed and sweet. Whatever it was, I wanted more of it.
Slowly, Ethan relaxed his hold on me, and I held on tighter to him, still dizzy from the kiss. “What…”
Ethan leaned his forehead against mine and whispered, “The lights are on.”
My mind cleared enough to realize that he was right: They had turned on the bright park floodlights again, taking the magic of the re-created neon with them. I sighed, letting my hand fall away from the back of his neck. “I’d rather stay here with you.”
“Kissing me is not location dependent. I’ll always be where you are.”
Day 5: Luck of the Draw
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
“Time to get up, kiddo.”BamBam shook me awake with entirely too much enthusiasm. “We got to move.”
“I…” I pushed up my bonnet, which had slipped down my forehead, and tried to get my bearings. What was she talking about, and why was she talking to me about it before dawn? I’d gotten back from my actual-real-not-a-sneaky date with Ethan a sliver before eleven, which meant that I was getting less than eight hours of sleep. Not that BamBam knew why I was so tired.
“Picking up the rental car in T-minus twenty minutes. BamBam is not sitting in Los Angeles traffic,” BamBam said, looming over me as vague bits and pieces of a college-tour plan came back to me.
“What…time—”
“Chop-chop.” BamBam clapped, the sound echoing against our sparse hotel walls. “LA waits for no one. Your USC campus tour starts at eleven a.m.”
That rattled my sleep-deprived brain into gear. The only reason my parents had let BamBam pull me out of school was because she had promised them a full day of college tours. It just so happened that the schools with the best business programs on the West Coast also happened to have good film programs. Sure, I’d be busy pretending I was interested in business all day, but at least I’d be seeing my potential future. As it stood, my plan was to get into one of these schools, then quietly change majors. Obviously, my parents much preferred SISU and were not exactly enthusiastic about paying out-of-state or private-school tuition, but I was counting on BamBam’s powers of persuasion to get me across that bridge when the time came.
“…not to mention UCLA at two p.m. I might have us drive around Pepperdine and Loyola if I can pull it off with the traffic. I told your parents we’d try. Let’s go!” BamBam barked at me, even though I was sitting up. Looking over at the clock on the bedside table, she said, “I’m calling the car now. If you aren’t out of those pajamas by the time it comes, then I guess that’s how you’ll be meeting your future classmates.”
With that, she picked up her phone, and I ran to the bathroom. I wasn’t sure that I’d ever gotten dressed that fast, but within fifteen minutes, I was in the cab while BamBam happily chatted with our driver about the best slice of German chocolate cake he had ever had. Of course, BamBam got the recipe.
I continued to slowly wake up my brain as BamBam schmoozed with the rental-car-counter person until she’dmanaged to get us an upgrade to a convertible, because as BamBam put it, we weren’t going to LA out of style.
Before the sun truly came up, we were fully on the road, nursing regular coffees because BamBam refused to wait around for them to make me my specialty drink. Instead, she told me to chuck an extra sugar in my coffee, before she pulled away from the curb going somewhere between 75 and 87 miles per hour, because, “Baby, the only people in LA going the speed limit are tourists.”
I considered arguing that we were, in fact, tourists, but she’d already put on her Donna Summer and was howling along way too loud for me to argue. So I prayed that Mom wasn’t awake and watching my phone hurtle toward Los Angeles at light speed.
Three hours and fifty minutes later, we were clearing the University of Southern California’s security gates. Turning toward me, BamBam said, “We need to hurry.”
“We’re over an hour early.”
“Not if you want to make an appointment with the film school admissions people, we aren’t.” A slow smile crept across BamBam’s face as she winked at me. “Surprise!”
