I'd like to report that I played it cool.
I didn't play it cool. I am, at this very moment, mentally composing a text to a group chat I don't have.BREAKING: local girl kissed by the eighth wonder of the world. Film at eleven. Girl may not recover and refuses all treatment—
Then I remember his face when he pulled back.
Oh.
He regretted it. And there's the drop, right under all the fizz. He kissed me like I mattered, and then he looked at me like I was something he wasn't allowed to want, and pulled back so fast you'd think the wanting itself was the crime, and I have no idea which of those two men I'm supposed to believe, the one who leaned in or the one who ran.
But my mouth still knows his now. And it's decided, entirely without my permission, that it'd very much like to be taught again.
Chapter Fifteen
IT TAKES ME TWO DAYSto manufacture a reason for lesson two, and I'm not proud of a single step in the process.
"The director gave notes," I announce over breakfast, which is a sentence with the structural integrity of wet paper.
Maximo doesn't look up from his paper. "Did he?"
"He did. He said the kiss reads"—I consult a note that doesn't exist on a phone I'm holding upside down—"'tentative.' He wants it more convincing. Lived-in. So." I spread my hands, the picture of a serious artist making a serious request. "I need another lesson. For the work."
"For the work."
"I'm a professional."
He folds the paper. He looks at me for a long, level moment, and I can see him seeing straight through the whole flimsy production, all the way to the girl behind it, and I hold my breath and wait for thenoI've earned.
"Come here, then," he tells me, and I'm not gonna lie—I nearly fall off the stool in my haste, and just like that, we're meeting in the middle of the kitchen, and this time there's no chin-turn, no arranging. This time his hands find my waist and stay there, spanning it, drawing me in until there's nothing left to close, and he kisses me like the first lesson was the polite version and this is the truth of it.
It lasts. That's all I'll tell you and all I can stand to remember at once. It lasts, and his hands tighten at my waist like he's decided to stop pretending for the length of one kiss, and I forget the fake note and the real reason and my own address.
When he finally lifts his head, I'm holding onto his shirt with both fists and breathing like I ran here, my borrowed heart going so hard I can feel it in my teeth.Slow down,I don't tell it. For once I don't want it to.
"So," I manage, aiming for casual and coming in somewhere near unhinged. "Did I pass?"
"No." I blink. "No?"
"No." He unhooks my fists from his shirt, one finger at a time, and sets me back from him with the terrible gentleness of a man closing a door he wants to leave open. "You need a lot more practice."
And then he walks off to take a call that I'm fairly sure doesn't exist either.
That's twice now I've felt him decide to stop pretending, and twice I've watched him take it right back the second it's over, like wanting me is against some rule he wrote himself, like I'm forbidden and he keeps almost forgetting to mind. But I stay right where he left me, wrecked and delighted and absolutely certain of one thing.
I'm going to need so, so many lessons.
Chapter Sixteen
I GET CAST. NOT A CALLBACK, not a maybe. A real part in a real film, with a name and lines and my own chair with my own character taped to the back of it, and on the first day of the table read I discover that my scene partner is Ricco Enriquez.
Which would be excellent news, except that Ricco Enriquez remembers me.
"Callback girl." He drops into the seat beside mine, grinning like we share a secret. "You got it. I knew you would. I told my agent, watch that one."
"You didn't."
"I absolutely did. Ask her, she'll deny it, but I did." He leans in, easy and warm and entirely too handsome for a Tuesday. "So. That guy from the soundstage. The one who owns the sky. Tell me that's your brother and make my whole year."
"He is..." I hunt for the word and come up with none of the true ones. "Complicated."
