Would it be awkward if I reached for my journal and started scribbling right now?
Probably.
Nearly definitely.
I like you too.
The words are on the tip of my tongue but I can’t say them.
If I say them, it’s real.
If it’s real, he might try to kiss me like he did under the mistletoe two nights ago.
I might like it.
And then he leaves for his next movie shoot and I leave for my tour and we go back to texting like nothing happened, or worse, we don’t text at all and I have to find another new place to live.
“I know.” His voice is raw and husky in a way I’ve never heard in any of his movies. “I’m well aware I’m too old for you. I’m well aware it’s probably awkward and weird for you to think about it. But I like you. I liked you when we were texting before we met in person. I like knowing you’re safe in my pool house when you’re in LA. I like sitting on my balcony listening to you write songs when I’m there too. I like when I get an excuse to come fix something. I just—like you. I keep trying not to, and I can’t help myself.”
My first boyfriend swore he’d rescue me and take me away from my shitty home, but when his mom heard, she made him break up with me.
The first boy I slept with ran for the hills when my period was late the next month. The first guy I moved in with was using me to get a job. I had a two-week thing with another guy whose biggest struggle in life was how he’d tell his parents he scratched up the BMW they gave him for his birthday. I called it off with him after he counted out to the penny how much I owed him for a dinner date he’d invited me to at a restaurant he knew I couldn’t afford.
There haven’t been a lot of people in my life who haven’t let me down.
Honestly, even trusting Waverly is scary sometimes. The only reason I agreed to meet her in the first place was the logic that she had nothing to gain from helping me or being my friend.I can’t make her richer. I can’t make her more famous. I’m blunt and sometimes crass and I don’t hold back.
And I’ve been around her enough now to recognize that she craves that in her life because she doesn’t get my level of real many other places.
Cash gets realness from his family. I met all of them—his family, the friends he’s tight with, the significant others who have joined their broader friend-family unit—at the party the other night.
I can’t make him richer.
I can’t make him more famous.
He has nothing to gain from liking me.
And he flat-out just said he shouldn’t because he’stoo old.
But if the biggest thing I have to lose is one more place to live, then screw it. I can almost afford to buy a house myself.
So justscrew it.
We’re going there. And we’re doing it now.
9
Cash
I shouldn’t have saidany of that.
Not a single word.
Hi, Aspen. We might have to cuddle naked and I will definitely get a boner when we do, so I’m warning you about something that might not actually happen if the power miraculously turns back on, or if the fire gives off enough heat for me to stay here on the couch.
Almost forty years on this earth and I am still an awkward dumbass when the cameras are off and I let myself be real.
She’s fully facing me now, and I don’t know what that look on her face means.
