“So you’re happy?” Ryder asked, drumming his fingers on the chipping formica, one nail worrying at a deep scratch.
I couldn’t quite make out what Astrid was saying, but it at least sounded upbeat. Things were maybe working out after all, and it hadn’t been nearly as hard as either of us had thought. If all this was going to take was a few cute pictures, we could totally handle it.
I’d just finished that thought when Ryder went pale. Well, paler than usual. Under all the freckles he was nearly paper-white at the best of times. Now he wasactuallypaper-white.
“T-tonight?” he stuttered.
Tonight?
“I… well, the thing is, I’d have to ask, he’s got a life and a real job and… he… umm, yeah?” Ryder turned to look at me, a plea for forgiveness written in his eyes clear as a forty-foot billboard.
Just like he had earlier, I searched for his other hand under the table and found it gripping his jeans like they were the only thing stopping him from falling off a cliff. I couldn’t get my fingers in under it, so I covered it and squeezed to let him know that I was here, and things were okay.
Ryder took a deep breath and held his phone against his chest.
“Astrid wants to talk to you,” he said. “I can tell her you’ve gone to the restroom or something.”
“I heard that,” came through the phone, muffled by Ryder’s shirt.
I laughed, holding my free hand out for the phone. “What’s the worst that can happen?”
Ryder gave me anit’s your funerallook and passed the phone over.
How bad could his agent be?
“Hello?”
“Hello Ward,” Astrid said. “I need you and Ryder to get your adorable butts to LA tonight for Allison Ellis’ big thirtieth birthday party. You’ll do that for me, won’t you?”
“I’ll… do it for Ryder,” I said.
Astrid chuckled. “Oh I cannotwaitto meet you,” she said. “Get my number from Ryder and let me know if you ever feel like dipping your toes in a modelling career, okay? I’ve got friends who’d love to get their hands on a client like you.”
“Umm…”
“Tell Ryder your flight details are in his inbox. You about a thirty-two waist, sweetie?”
“Uh. I normally buy a thirty-four?”
“Noted,” Astrid said, the sound of a pen scribbling in the background. “See you tonight.”
* * *
Airports?Crowded, noisy, confusing, weird smells.
Flights? All of the above, but happening in an inexplicably airborne tin can hurtling through the stratosphere at five hundred miles per hour.
LA, though?
LA made me wish I was back on the plane.
It was crowded, it was noisy, Ryder had pulled me out of the road in a panic twice on the short walk between the place our cab could find to stop and his apartment building, and there was a tiny, fluffy dog barking at me out of a woman’s handbag as he greeted the doorman and tugged me inside and that wasn’t the weirdest thing I’d seen in the last three minutes.
The lobby was only slightly less harrowing than the city outside, but thankfully we got the elevator to ourselves.
Ryder had been right. I hated this.
But I wasn’t quitting on him. Not now, not when things were looking up.
