Page 71 of On the Plus Side
Only to find herself staring at Ravioli’s gaping mouth, his dog breath fanning her face. Before Everly could react, he eased forward and planted a giant, slobbering kiss across her cheeks.
She let out a shriek and accidentally slammed Logan’s head between her knees as her legs snapped together. Like someone had tossed a bucket of freezing water on her, all that heady lust and need was zapped away, leaving behind nothing but hot cheeks and a tangled dress and laughing.
So much laughing.
Logan sat back and swiped a hand over his face. He was staring daggers at Ravioli. “My dude,” he muttered. “What did I ever do to you?”
“Doggus interruptus,” Everly mumbled.
They both fell into another fit of laughter.
CHAPTER 22
After Ravioli had murdered the mood with his unwelcome participation, Logan and Everly had spent the rest of the evening finishing off the pizza and indulging in some Regency romance movies, which, it turned out, he was quite a fan of. He kept track of the characters’ names and complicated love triangles far better than Everly did.
When it got late, he’d offered to let her crash on his couch, or as he put it, “wherever she was comfortable,” but the show had paid for a rather swanky hotel room, and she’d felt too guilty not using it. Besides, after how quickly things had ignited between them, Everly could use a little alone time to simmer down. Otherwise her hormones would likely get the best of her.
He’d called a ride share, then joined her for the trip across town to make sure she got to the hotel okay. The whole time, he’d held her hand, his thumb painting the crest of her palm with soft strokes, back and forth, back and forth, until Everly’s nerves were buzzing like live wires. At her hotel room door, they’d kissed, long and slow and deep, her back flush against the wood, his broad frame curled around her. It haddemanded every ounce of Everly’s willpower not to pop the door open and tug Logan inside with her.
There’s time for all of this,she’d had to remind herself as they shared one last kiss before he disappeared down the hall. The filming might be creeping toward its final three weeks, but Everly and Logan were only at the beginning.
Now she stood bleary-eyed in the entrance to Goro’s tattoo studio, repeating those words once again. Though Logan was on the opposite side of the room, deep in discussion with second-cameraman Joe, Everly’s mind was preoccupied with the memory of Logan’s hands on her skin, his mouth finding all her sensitive spots.
How was she supposed to exist in the same space with him and have anything but impure thoughts after last night? The universe was a cruel mistress.
Turning away, she gave herself a mental realignment. She was here forher.Her first tattoo. A potential new career path.
Her lady bits would have to wait.
The walls of the room were lined with Goro’s art: oil paintings, watercolors, some pencil sketches and marker drawings, and, of course, photo after photo of his tattoos.
Because of the intricacy of the details, each piece looked different from every angle. What, from far away, might appear to be a flower petal glistening with water, up close had a smiling face embedded in it. A seemingly abstract design revealed words as you approached. Fan art unveiled more and more Easter eggs the longer you studied it.
There was so much precision. So much inventiveness. Tension tugged at Everly’s shoulders as she wandered among the framed images. She wanted to be this skilled. But she’d wasted so much time hiding herself and her art that she was worried it was too late. She hadn’t been producing anything but doodles. Hadn’t been putting herself out therefor feedback. Hadn’t been trying to grow ordoanything. She’d been coasting, treading water since college.
She pressed a palm to the wall and leaned closer to inspect a reproduction of Ghostface from theScreammovies. The sketches of her tattoo in her purse, the ones she’d lovingly pored over for the past two weeks, suddenly seemed like senseless scribbles. She no longer wanted to show them to Goro.
The thought left her chest tight, and she headed for the set of chairs by the door. As she passed Logan, their index fingers hooked around each other. It was only for a second, barely a whisper of contact, nothing anyone would have seen. Yet it felt like a reflex, some natural response to his presence. They’d been doing their best to keep a professional distance all morning, but every time they got near each other, their arms brushed or their hands caught. As if their bodies couldn’t help but keep tangling together.
“What are you feeling right now?” he asked.
“Overwhelmed.” Everly dragged a hand through her hair. She needed to say more. That was the only way to make the audience connect with her, to help them feel what she was feeling. If she could get them behind her, Sady wouldn’t need to force a love story into her episodes. Then Everly and Logan wouldn’t have to worry about hiding. They could justbe.
She cleared her throat. “His work is so… incredible. I know he’s been at it longer than I have, and that I have plenty of time to improve, but it feels like some people are born with this spark that you can’t practice into being. Some people just haveit.You know? Goro has it.” Her eyes traced over a thigh tattoo of an intricate garden that looked like something out ofAlice in Wonderland.“Maybe I don’t.” Those last words hurt leaving her mouth, jagged glass dragging across her tongue. She was too afraid they might be true.
“Youdo.” Logan’s mouth had pulled tight, but there was a softness in his eyes that now never faded around her. An affection he couldn’t grump away.
Everly glanced over her shoulder for Joe, to see if he was filming. This was exactly the kind of moment Sady would want to splash all over her episodes. Like when Logan had called Everly striking at Kisses and Hugs, when he’d helped her perform at the joust tournament: every sweet thing that left his mouth seemed to make it to air. It was harder to feel like those moments were Everly’s when they got shared with the whole world. She wanted a few to herself.
Thankfully, Joe was preoccupied with filling his water bottle and didn’t have his camera in his hand.
She smiled uncertainly at Logan. “We’ll see what the world-renowned artist has to say about that.”
Logan repositioned himself, so he wasn’t blocking the door to the rest of the studio. “You think he hasn’t already seen your work? Do you think I would ask my friend to do this, or that he would agree to help, if you didn’t have talent?”
Somehow, Everly hadn’t considered that Logan would give Goro a sample of her art. What did he show him? Why didn’t he consult her?
Her mind ran back through everything she’d posted on social media over the past few years, and she had to fight off a grimace. A lot of it was from late high school and early college, her many body-inclusive book covers and character designs. She’d drawn princesses with thick waists and thighs in formfitting gowns, women with small breasts in low-cut necklines, short girls in maxi dresses pooling around their feet, curvy figures in crop tops and boxy sheaths without any belts to define their waists or jackets to hide their fat. To Goro, they’d probably looked so amateur. So visionless.
