Page 40 of Most Eligible
He coughs lightly and runs a hand through his windblown hair. “I’ve slept with a lot of women Lainey doesn’t know about.”
I scowl at his blasé attitude, despite the jealousy that seems to be coiling in my stomach. “But only one who’s currently fighting for Roland’s heart. I think.”
“And you’d tell Lainey about us? You want her digging through your drawers?” He takes his eyes off the road for a fraction of a second and glances at me, eyes masked behind his shades.
“She wouldn’t find anything,” I say, though the thought makes my palms sweat. Any number of Gracie Hart articles are strewn across the internet, but nothing links them to me. “I passed all background checks before I got cast, so why would now be any different?”
“No felonies? Light theft? Illegal fish?”
I shrug. “I have a cat. No fish.”
“I don’t remember a cat.”
“I was between cats last year.”
“Between cats? So, you’ve had this one—
“Presley.”
The name seems to interrupt him and his mouth twitches like he might smile, but he schools his face back to neutral.
“You’ve had Presley for what? Less than a year?”
Hearing him say Presley’s name is another jolt to my system because of how normal, how domestic it sounds, like he could just as easily slot into all the other empty spaces in my life. Hearing it feels like a soft peck on the forehead when you’re still asleep or the warm smell of fresh coffee in the morning. Neither of which I got last year, but maybe… No. I shake myself. Just no.
Back in my apartment, he’d tripped over my vintage Victrola, cursing as he fell into the pile of laundry on my bed. A few pairs of underwear flopped onto his face, and I snatched them off, blushing crimson.
“There better be something good on that record player to make up for it breaking my toe,” he’d grumbled.
I remember lighting a candle on the other side of my tiny bedroom, realizing he wasn’t as adept at navigating my piles of stuff, and blowing it out so we wouldn’t light the building on fire. I pulled the record off the machine and handed it to him.
When he looked up at me, his face was incredulous. “TheTwilightsoundtrack? Seriously?”
I shrugged, challenging. He stood and perused my shelves of records. I watched his fingers flick between them, plucking one from its place. “Titanic?” The disappointment in his voice was enticing. I wanted to disappoint him again just to hear it afresh.
“I guess I’m a romantic. Or…” Or I liked to believe there was a world where love—where romance—could conquer all. Even if I didn’t live in it.
He scoffed, and there it was again, that teasing disappointment.
“What,” I challenged, “are you not?”
He ran a hand over his jaw. “When it comes to music…” Heflicked through a few more records. “This—this is taste. This is romance.” I came up behind him and watched him nod over my Tracy Chapman vinyl, then Billy Joel, Joan Baez, George Ezra, Paul Simon. His eyebrows knitted as he flipped to the next one on the shelf. Miley Cyrus.
“Are you a time traveler?”
I laughed into his back. “They’re all classics!”
“Classics?” he repeated.
“Yeah.” I arched an eyebrow, crossing my arms as he turned around. Despite the way we’d inhaled each other at the Pink Iguana, now it was the distance between us, not the proximity, that was making my heart sprint. “Like white bread or Jane Austen orWhen Harry Met Sallyor—”
“Johnny Cash,” he said, his voice so gravelly it could have paved a driveway.
“You would say Johnny Cash.”
His expression flickered at this, the first explicit sign that I knew who he was.
“Titanicis undoubtedly a classic,” I continued. “Just as much as Johnny Cash—”
