“Is everything okay?” I asked.
“Yeah. Everything’s fine, I think.”
I stood with absolutely zero grace and wrapped the sheet around my chest. “This was good,” I said, like I was giving him a quarterly review.
He nodded, abruptly awkward and very businesslike. “I really think that... this was the way to go. Now we can just concentrate.”
I fought with my sheet to make it look like anything other than sex-drenched hotel bedding. “Concentrate. Yes.”
“On the movie.”
I nodded. “Our jobs. The movie. The one without an ending. Concentrate.” Without thinking, I held two thumbs up, and the sheet fell, like a curtain on a stage, into a puddle at my feet.
He bit down on his lower lip and covered his eyes, but then uncovered them the moment he remembered he’d literally fucked me off this very bed just hours ago.
“We can’t let this make things weird,” I said as I gathered up the sheet.
“Why would it be weird?” he asked. “This is the opposite of weird.”
“The antithesis!” I called after him.
“The antonym!” he said as he closed the door. “See you tonight!”
It wouldn’t be weird.
Unless it was weird.
I spent the afternoon talking my moms off the your-daughter-isn’t-coming-home-for-Christmas ledge and trying to reach Sunny so I could spill my Nolan Shaw/Kowalczk–penis-shaped secret, but no answer.
So instead, I ate ramen and tried to memorize my lines for the rest of the week.
But the whole room smelled of him. The sheets. The bedspread. Hell, even the floor. Especially the floor.
I left for dinner too early, but I couldn’t stay in my room any longer. I turned the door hanger so thehousekeepingpleaseside faced out. The rhyme and reason of when and how rooms were cleaned at the inn was random at best, but if I returned to my room tonight and it still smelled like Nolan, I might have to change rooms.
When I walked into Kringle’s, the classy-ish Italian restaurant on the corner of Silver Bells Boulevard and Tinsel Lane, I spotted Angel and Luca sitting so close together at the bar they looked like they might melt into each other.
“Bee!” a voice called.
I turned to see Gretchen and Pearl at the head of a long banquet table covered in a white tablecloth and piled high with baskets of garlic bread.
“Over here!” Pearl called.
Luca glanced at me from over Angel’s shoulder and made a subtle shooing motion. I couldn’t tell if he was nudging me toward one-on-one time with my director and screenwriter or if he was trying to preserve alone time with Angel. Probably a little bit of both.
“We’re so glad you could join us tonight,” Gretchen said as I sat down under a web of twinkling lights.
“Why wouldn’t I?” I asked.
Pearl leaned forward. “Well, the Hope Channel schedule doesn’t really allow for many days off.”
“Which is why this is totally optional,” Gretchen added. “So please feel free to eat and run or drink and run or whatever.”
I shrugged. “I’ve been cooped up in my room all day, so I’ll take any good excuse to get out.”
“Told you so,” Pearl said in a singsong voice.
Gretchen rolled her eyes playfully. “I’ve been toying with the idea of hosting a Christmas dinner for the cast and crew, but I don’t want anyone to feel obligated to spend the day—”
