Here, he’s just a kind, happy, dependable, sexy man. While I’ve acknowledged that he comes with a public lifestyle, I’ve blocked those parts of him at a basic personality level.
Even when he showed up at Laney and Theo’s wedding, he wasn’t acelebrityto me. He was a normal man that I slept with once who abandoned me. It’s like, knowing the world knows who he is and him behaving like he knows that he’s world-famous are two different things.
But tonight?
Tonight I feel like I’m on the arm of the very most famous celebrity in the entire world, and I’m too small-town, too unworldly, too unsophisticated to be with him.
Even Begonia’s tight hug and warm, “Emma! I’m so glad you’re here,” isn’t enough to calm my nerves about the fact that I’m with a movie star and I’m about to meet his mother.
She and Jonas are the public faces of their family. His father occasionally does interviews about business topics, but for appearances, it’s Jonas and his mother.
And she’s Bash’s grandma.
“Maw-mawa!” Bash yells. He wriggles out of my arms and takes off as he spots the Shiloh Shepherd poking his head out of the living room.
Marshmallow barks once in greeting, then trots toward the kitchen, Bash trailing behind him.
“The doors are all lockedandMarshmallow-proofed,” Begonia says. “We put those flippy thingies at the top, too high for either of them to reach. They’re not getting out.”
“Thank you.”
“After the stories I’ve heard about how Hayes and Jonas both escaped their parents’ watchful eyes as children, I assume it’s likely in his nature to be part Houdini.”
Jonas hugs her too. “This is why you’re my favorite,” he murmurs.
“I know,” she replies, but it’s drowned out by a tornado of a woman pushing into the foyer too.
“And what am I, chopped liver?” Keisha Kourtney, the freakingpop star, says.
She’s about as tall as Sabrina, but where Sabrina has curves, Keisha is stick thin. Her brown skin is glowing, probably because her eyes can’t contain all of her mischief, and her short, straight hair is neon green.
The last picture I saw of her, it was maroon.
“Apologies for not warning you. She just arrived,” Hayes says as he, too, joins us in the foyer.
Also, he doesn’t look the least bit sorry.
Keisha gives Jonas the shortest hug in the history of human hugs, then attaches to me, her head resting between my boobs just like Sabrina’s does.
I have a literal pop star’s head between my boobs.
“Oh my god, you’reEmma. It is the pleasure of my life to meet you. I expect to see your little boy riding Marshmallow before you leave today, and if I don’t, I’m totally teaching him.” She pulls back, winks at me, and drops her voice to a whisper. “I’m on your side and I can hang out after Hayes and B leave. Aunt Giovanna doesn’t stand a chance.”
“I can hear you,” the matriarch of the Rutherford family says.
This foyer is getting entirely too crowded.
And I’m sweating.
My armpits are perspiring, and it will be approximately half a second before they sweat enough that the entire foyer can smell my armpit sweat.
This daydream that I can love my friend Jonas will come to an end as it’s determined that I’m not bright enough to use deodorant and therefore not refined enough to exist in the same world as these people.
Andrefinedis not a word I use lightly.
Or frequently.
Or possibly ever before in my life.
