Page 61 of What's in a Kiss?

“Huh?”

“Ben’s inside with Mark.” He points at Grauman’s theater. “They missed the whole thing with the truck, but they’re saving our seats.”

“What seats?” I ask. Who are Ben and Mark?

“For the movie!” Jake laughs and pulls two tickets out of his pocket.

I hold his wrist to read the tickets. His skin is warm and I can feel his pulse, racing like mine.

Grauman’s Chinese Theatre. A revival of the Audrey Hepburn/Albert Finney classicTwo for the Road, which I love.

We were never going to a red-carpet premiere tonight.Because Jake isn’t famous. We were going to the movies with a couple of friends. We still are.

“We’ll have to scrap dinner until after,” Jake says, “but if we hurry, we can make the opening credits.”

Now I grin and wave the sack of tacos Fenny gave me, because sometimes the cosmos is kind. “I took care of dinner.”

Jake grins and puts an arm around me. Together we walk toward the theater.

“Is this a perfect night,” he says, “or what?”

Chapter Sixteen

I awake in the cocoon again. This time, I’m on my side, facing Jake, who’s still asleep. I take in his sculpted cheekbones, long eyelashes, and lips that could divest me of my secrets. Gazing at the muscles of his shoulder, I’m overcome with desire to reach out and touch him. I pin my hands under my back and let the sunrise sweep over his features.

It’s not like I didn’t know Jake was gorgeous before. But after last night, he looks different. I see the man behind the beauty, and he’s kind, with depths I hadn’t imagined.

What happened last night at the taco truck traffic jam was a shock to my whole system. The way Jake rose to the occasion, the way he helped all those people—who he simplywas—it unraveled the threads in my Coat of Many Reasons to Hate Glasswell. The one I’d worn for a decade. The one I thought I might feel naked without.

This morning I’m beginning to entertain the possibility that I’ve been wrong about everything. Even—and especially—high school. Jake hadn’t walked out of thatRomeo and Julietaudition ten years ago because he’d seenmeon the balcony. He’d walked out because he’d been scared to climb the trellis. I see now that he hadn’t wanted to play Romeo for the star power or the attention. He’d wanted to be the guy who got to kiss me.

And I shut him down.

In one reality, Jake took the hint and backed off, coming close to but not quite kissing me at prom.

In another reality... I leaned in, and here we are.

Some version of Jake knew we should bethisall along. But what can any of that teach me about how to get home?

That’s the question I must keep in mind. I lost sight of it last night. Though thankfully I kept my wits enough about me that I went home alone right after the movie, while Jake and his friends went out for drinks. I saw the two of us coming home together, tipsy and tumbling into our marital bed.

And we can’t do that.

Sex with Jake while I’m this mixed up would be a bad idea.

Is it an incrediblyhotbad idea? Sure. Do I wonder how deep-in-love Jake moves in this large, luxurious bed? I’m only human. Are his abs so tight that he possesses the ancient Trojan musculature known as the inguinal crease between his torso and his waist? Ding-ding-ding.

But the danger signs flashing all around me are too glaring to ignore. Letting Jakeinwould alter everything, in ways impossible to predict.

When I heard him come home around midnight, I pretended to be asleep. In truth, I’d been on my phone. I binged all three episodes of his podcast, which is calledClean Slate. In the show, his cohost, a psychologist, shares current research on emotionally intelligent masculinity, which Jake rounds out with personal accounts of his struggles with his own father, who helost touch with at eighteen. The episodes were gripping, and I heard the unspoken questions inside each of them—

Do I have the curse? Am I destined to repeat my dad’s mistakes?

I heard how he’s hurting and hopeful and vulnerable, just like everyone else in the world. I heard his gift for opening himself up for the greater good. He’s talented, even when he isn’t famous. But is he happy? Does he not sense all thegreatthings he’s missing in another realm?

After I listened to the podcast, I opened TikTok on a whim and started typing inHollywood and Highland—

Hollywood and Highland Taco-Debacoautocompleted, and I clicked.

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