Thessa sighed, long and suffering. “I’m going to find food. Actual food. Because one of us needs to maintain basic bodily functions while the other one has a mental breakdown over sticky notes.”
She left before I could argue.
I looked back at the book in my hands. At the words Riley had written, the worlds she’d created, the love stories she’d poured onto the page.
Thursday. I just had to make it until Thursday, when I could be normal, charming.
Not at all terrifying.Probably.
5
— • —
Riley
Thursday arrived, and I had spent the entire week not thinking about the weird hot Australian.
I was very successful at this. Extremely successful. I only thought about him maybe forty or fifty times per hour, but who was counting? I didn’t know what was wrong with me. It was just one guy, and I would never see him again. Why the hell was I so obsessed?
The book club was my sanctuary, the one thing in my life that felt entirely mine. Every Thursday at seven, a rotating cast of wine-drunk romance enthusiasts gathered at Vino Veritas, a wine bar downtown that I rented out for the evening. The owner, a middle-aged woman named Doris who had strong opinions about tannins and fictional men, gave me a discount in exchange for book recommendations. It was the perfect arrangement.
Tonight’s book was “His Darkest Obsession” by an indie author who clearly had some things to work through. It was about a morally gray billionaire who may or may not have murdered his business rival for looking at the heroine too long. Very on-brand for our group.
I arrived early to set up, arranging wine glasses on the reserved tables, setting out the snacks Jade had dropped off earlier, and making sure there were enough copies of the book for anyone who “forgot” to buy one. The wine selection tonight was a nice Malbec that Doris had recommended, along with a crisp white for the people who complained that red wine gave them headaches.
Sloane showed up next, sliding into her usual seat with the grace of a cat claiming its territory.
“You look tense,” she observed.
“I’m not.”
“You’ve rearranged those wine glasses three times.”
I looked down at the glasses. I had, in fact, rearranged them three times. They had been organized by height, then by color, then by some third criteria I couldn’t identify. Stem thickness, maybe. I was losing my mind.
“Okay, maybe I’m a little tense.”
“Is this about the Australian?”
“What? No. Why would it be about him?” I asked, completely lost.
Sloane just stared at me. She had this way of staring that made you feel like she could see directly into your soul and was deeply unimpressed by what she found there.
“It’s not about him,” I insisted. “I haven’t thought about him at all. I don’t even remember what he looks like. Tall? Maybe? Who can say.”
“You texted me a detailed description of his jawline last night.”
“That wasn’t me. I was being possessed by the ghost of an old lady and sent those messages for documentation purposes.”
“Please, bitch. You used the word ‘chiseled’ four times.”
I opened my mouth to argue, then closed it. I did do that. At two in the morning, unable to sleep, I’d sent Sloane an increasingly unhinged series of texts about the stranger’s face, his voice, the way he’d looked at me. I was afraid I would forget with time, so I’d used phrases like “storm cloud eyes” and “built like a Greek god who does CrossFit” and, yes, “chiseled” four times because apparently my vocabulary abandoned me along with my dignity.
“I was tired,” I muttered. “People say weird things when they’re tired. I don’t know what’s up with me, okay? Justpleasepretend that never happened.”
“I screenshot everything. It’s saved forever.”
Oh, gods. “I hate you.”
