Like a lightening strike, my spiral comes on suddenly without warning. Our first kiss is another thing branded forever on me from last night.
“How am I going to get home?” My hands cover my face.
“I’ll take you home,” Holden says, as if it is the most obvious answer. Nothing feels obvious right now. Another flight to Los Angeles was probably going to be another few hundred dollars.
“I don’t even have clothes. Only a bra, underwear and a giant ball gown.”
“I’m sure the flight attendants won’t mind,” he teases. It dawns on me that all my stuff is in the guest room of the Whitmore estate. A place I am probably banned from until eternity.
I try to muster a smile as Holden drops a clear plastic bag he has been shielding from me in my lap.
“I bought you some clothes.”
The bag stays in my lap for a while. I’m still fixated on the paint chipping on the wall directly in front of me.
“I won’t be able to afford my rent.”
A twenty-seven-hundred-dollar apartment that is on the second floor ofWok’ & Roll, a rundown Chinese restaurant will not be understanding if I’m late one more time with my rent. My fifteen-minute car ride to the beach will be nonexistent. Charlotte Tate will have to go back to Newark, New Jersey.
“What have I done?” I say out loud.
The thought sends a chill up my spine. I don’t feel ready to leave Los Angeles. How can you spend years of your life working toward something, only for it to completely falter in one night?
Holden takes a large sigh and zips up his jacket. “Stay with me.”
“Well, gee, you think of everything…”
I finally undo the knot on the plastic bag to pull out a new long sundress, pink cheeky underwear, and a nude bra that is two sizes too small.
“I hope I picked okay?”
He jumps off the bed, wringing his hands together, watching me.
“What? No personal shopper?”
“Nope. I did it myself.”
It was the kind of response that reassured me of all the things I liked about him. In every interview and project he had been partof, I saw how likable he naturally was. It always amazed me that the media portrayed him so differently.
He laughed at the perfect time.
His eye contact made you feel like you were the only one in the room.
The details he noticed about a person.
I couldn’t even fault him for not noticing what size bra I wore.
Pulling the dress out of the bag, it reminds me of the one hanging in my closet. A blend of blue and white flowers in a jersey material. A hand-selected dress from Mr. All or Nothing.
“I think I own a similar dress.”
“You do.”
My face goes flush when he answers, displaying shades of red. Arching my eyebrows, I sit upright. “What?”
“You wore it the first day we met when you barely said a word to me.”
“I said... words.”
