Page 61 of The Perfect Rom-Com

“It’s insanity. What about . . . oh, I don’t know . . . anything else?”

“Peanuts music is my muse. Charlie Brown is my muse.”

“Make something else your muse. Make me your muse.”

His cheeky comment jolts through me, though. I can practically hear my overcaffeinated heartbeat coming to a screeching halt as I look at him.

He’s so taken aback by whatever face I give him that he laughs and gives a careless wave. “Fine. Keep your music. Far be it from me to deny you women what you want.”

Ex . . . ex . . . excuse me? Has he always done this?

I down the contents of my mug and all but growl and stand. Well, stand and bounce a little from one foot to the other. I really need Amelia to get out of the bathroom. “Who wants another?” I start toward the coffee machine.

“Halt, Prancer,” he says, and before I know it, he’s snatched the mug right out of my hand.

“I need coffee.”

“Are you always this—”

“What?” I challenge.

“This growly in the morning? The real you. Bryony, the little angry prancing reindeer with a caffeination problem.”

He looks amused with me.

No, worse, he’s sitting back in his seat, looking up at me with his arms crossed around his very flattering chest, admiring me. Like I’m cute.

In my pajamas.

With my hair done up in a side bun that has more than a few hairs spiking out in all directions. (I can feel it. I cannot look because that requires a mirror, and the mirror is inside the bathroom Amelia refuses to open.)

Some people are actually cute when they wake up. My roommate in college, for one. Penny, who crept out of bed somewhere around four in the morning to freshen up whom I got a view of as she slipped off the bus, her bronze curls bouncing and gorgeously waving back at me, for another.

I am under no delusion being morning cute is any trait of mine.

No. I’m just a tired, angry, desperate-to-go-to-the-bathroom, very confused woman who is now having dreams about my coworker/boss/agent/undiscussed-and-never-stated-but-quietly-understood best friend. While trying to get my two-year long-distance boyfriend I’ve just woken up to agree to let me fly across the world on a whim to see him.

Honestly, it’s not that hard to say yes.

I wasn’t asleep.

Oh.

My brows furrow as I take in the text. My hopping side to side stops.

“What?” Jack says. “Lose your bid?”

“I . . . I don’t know.”

If he wasn’t asleep, if that wasn’t the reason he was so hesitant to get with it at this moment, to snatch up the phone and say, Why yes, absolutely, please, Bryony, come! Come at last! If that wasn’t the hiccup right now . . . if it wasn’t him jumping up, looking through his calendar trying to make sure we can get a trip finally tied up, then . . . then what was it?

What was the cause of his hesitation?

Who was the cause of his hesitation?

And then, just as I’m trying to get my thoughts to organize themselves nicely so I can properly address them, his second text comes through. We need to talk.

I feel Jack beside me at some point, the touch of his arm against mine as we stand in the little walkway of the little living room of the bus. He’s eavesdropping. Rather, eyedropping. Reading the message on my phone without care or hesitation. And I let him.