The questions were coming in faster now; Jem felt like Amanda was testing him. Which—well, she was. “Not a romantic one.” He never really knew how to explain that. He was good-looking, he had a job, he was kind and compassionate.
Tori said that ever since Claudia left him for Germany, he was afraid of intimacy with romantic partners. Jem suspected she was right, and was annoyed about it.
“Have you ever been sexually or romantically involved with someone famous?”
Jem had to think about that one. “Like, famous now or famous when I was with them? And how famous? I dated someone who’s on the LPGA Tour.” Katie was in the top twenty female golfers in the world, but that didn’t exactly make her a household name.
“I’m just going to mark that down as a ‘no, don’t worry about it.’” Amanda shook her head. “Drug habits we should know about?”
“The school I work for tests for weed,” Jem said dryly. “So no.”
Why did he get the feeling that made her want to laugh? “Got it. Okay, so—no drugs. Any other extreme hobbies? Hang-gliding? BASE jumping?”
“I get enough bruises from kindergarteners.” It seemed like someone was running into him or accidentally kicking him or leaving something on the floor for him to trip on every other day. “I like to cook. I don’t golf too often because it’s expensive, but I joined a beach volleyball league last summer. And in college I was in a band, though that was mostly me and my friend Tori and our other friend Dave making up songs about how our students traumatized us. We were all education majors.”
This time she did laugh. “Really? Okay, hit me with a few bars.”
“Unaccompanied?” Jem said in mock horror. “Yeah, okay. Uh, ‘In John Massey School, in classroom 3B, there’s a terrible smell of the highest degree. It hangs on a hook at the back of the room: the malodorous, the putrid backpack of doom. No one dares touch it lest the stink touch them back: the slimy, the oozy, the evil backpack. But what they don’t know in classroom 3B is the horrible backpack once belonged to me. I thought I had lost it; I thought it was gone. But that wretched backpack was there all along. Just sitting, and waiting, fermenting its punch: the smell of the decaying fruit in my lunch. It’ll probably sit there ’til my senior prom. I’m not taking that home—just don’t tell my mom.’”
“Incredible. Maybe if this gig doesn’t work out for you, I can get you a record deal.”
He could tell she was joking, but she was still laughing too, so obviously she appreciated their lyrical genius. “Something tells me the sugar-baby thing would pay better.”
“So do you listen to the same kind of music you make?”
“Dave moved back East, so the band is no more. These days I mostly bring my guitar to class on Fridays because it’s an easy way to keep the kids’ attention when the weekend is coming. I listen to, like, folk and indie and some of the less intense country stuff, plus Taylor Swift because….” He shrugged. Who didn’t like Taylor Swift? “As far as I know, none of the artists I like have songs about the dangers of eating glue.”
“Obviously an untapped genre.”
Jem tapped the side of his nose. “Just make sure you cut me in if you sell the idea to one of your clients.”
“We’ll see.” She drummed her nails on the arm of her chair and then smiled. “Let me be straight with you. So tospeak.” Jem snorted. “You’re kind of perfect for this job. You’ve got the right credentials. You’re quick on your feet and you don’t take yourself too seriously, which are absolute musts because my client is going to put you through it.”
How bad could it be?Jem thought. He was used to riding herd on a flock of five-year-olds. “But?” he prompted.
“But,” Amanda went on, smiling, “you’re almosttooperfect. I don’t want him to put you in a box thinking he knows everything about you. So—do you think you can make him work for it? Don’t tell him too much about you. Keep him guessing. He’ll be easier to get along with in the beginning if he’s treating you like a puzzle, and that’ll give you time to find your feet.”
Hell yes. Jem found himself smiling back. “Yeah,” he said. “Yeah, I can do that.”
She held out her hand again. “Then welcome aboard, Jem Anderson. I’ll grab the NDA.”
Chapter Three
Blue River
The sharpbanging on his bedroom door might as well have split River’s skull open. Cringing, he pulled his pillow over his head and curled tighter into a ball under the blankets. His mouth tasted like something died in it. It might have been his self-respect.
Unfortunately, the knocking did not abate, even when he groaned pitifully.
“River! I swear to God, you better not be dead in there—”
Amanda, his manager, cut herself off. Then she sighed loud enough to be heard through the door. River cursed himself for not soundproofing his bedroom when he had the chance. “Okay, changed my mind. I’m coming in. You’d better not benaked,” she amended. “And if you are, then you better hope you’re dead, I don’t need to see that again.”
Which was justrude, River thought. He was very attractive. Lots of people would have paid money to see himnaked. Hell, lots of people paid good money to see him with his clotheson.
He could’ve sworn the room got louder just from Amanda breathing in it. “Jesus Christ,” she muttered. “What the fuck happened in here?”
It was a sad hallmark of River’s character that he couldn’t let that question go unremarked upon. He flung the covers back from his face. “You see, Amanda, when a man and another man are attracted to each other—”
