Page 31 of Anyone But the Superstar
‘I would like as much as possible to keep my personal life private. And when I thought you might…’ I gesture wildly with my hand, unsure of how to phrase my concerns.
‘Make it publicly known that the world’s sexiest man suffers from erectile dysfunction?’ Anne blinks innocently, smiling at the supposedly helpful suggestion.
‘I don’t—’ I close my eyes and take a breath, deciding to fight that battle another day. ‘Yeah, sure. That.’
The corners of her blue eyes crinkle. ‘Honestly, I’d forgotten that I even took that picture.’ She grabs her phone and slides the screen open. ‘Here.’ She leans in, showing me the screen.
Opening her photos, she taps on one, enlarging the picture of me frozen in pain on the hotel-room floor. Immediately, a thousand memes run through my head all featuring my face contorted in surprised pain.
‘Damn.’ I lean back, the image almost too painful to look at. ‘You got me good.’
Catching each other’s eyes, we share a smile. This one genuine. And slightly heated.
‘Yeah, well.’ Anne breaks away with a roll of her eyes. ‘You were a dick.’ With one more tap, she deletes the photo.
Ifeellike a dick for having imagined the worst of her, especially with how quick she is to delete it. I’d blame Camilla Branson for warping my sense of judgement, but that would be a cop-out.
I let my own anxieties guide my actions instead of doing what I usually strive to do. What my mother always taught me –ser um cavalheiro. Be a gentleman.
Which is kind of hard to do at the moment as my dick, probably in an attempt to save face after being unjustly shamed, has mistaken our verbal sparring as foreplay and wants to tag in.
‘Okay.’ Anne sets her phone back on the counter. ‘Problem solved.’ She waves me toward the door, unaware of the other problem happening behind the thin fabric of my exercise shorts. ‘You can go now.’
I glance back at the door but don’t move, my mind working furiously to figure out how best to broach our new, and more complicated, problem.
‘Yo.’ Anne’s eyes narrow suspiciously. ‘Why aren’t you leaving?’
‘Well…’ Deciding it’s bestnotto tell the woman who thinks I have erectile dysfunction that the mostprominentreason for me being unable to leave is the cockstand I’m currently sporting behind my shorts, I inch closer to the island.
‘Felix?’
There’s a warning in her voice. One I’d really like to heed, but being without Jack, security or a mode of transportation, my smile stiffens as I brace for her reaction to the real reason why I’m standing before her. ‘So, the thing is…’
9
LIZ
‘Andthat’swhen you walked in on me and Mike Hunt.’
It’s a shame my brother isn’t here to witness the fruits of his pet-naming efforts in action.
As it is, I need to hunch over the cutting board to hide how much that sentence, spoken in all seriousness from a man who just related today’s absurd, snowball list of events that culminated with him screaming in the face of a hairless cat, amuses me.
Amuses meandconfuses me. First, what kind of five-star hotel has such weak security? I’ve stayed in enough to know that things like that don’t just happen. One or two fans, maybe. But a mob, lying in wait at the exact moment Felix went to the hotel gym? That smacks of outside interference.
Then there is the whole two-key situation. Maybe my New York City upbringing makes me more paranoid than most, but who gives away not one, but two sets of keys to their condo?
I’d call Em and ask if, one, I wasn’t afraid she’d ask me to leave to make way for the more important Hollywood star inneed of a crash pad, and two, I wasn’t so preoccupied with the true surprise of the day—Felix Jones is cooking dinner.
Granted, I’m positive he only started cooking to distract me from kicking him out of the condo thatIsquatted in first, but still, as someone who is very much kitchen-averse, I appreciate his effort.
Putting the lid on a pot, he turns to me, his palm resting on the counter, his forearm muscles tensing from his weight. ‘SinceIcan’t go to a hotel, what if I paid for you and the cat to stay in the best, most luxurious hotel around?’ Felix’s large, brown eyes probe mine, as if looking for a trace of sympathy he can cling to.
Steeling myself against his heavy charm, I focus on the one kitchen task he gave me and press down on the knife, pushing the blade into the parsley. ‘I mean—’ I push harder when my first attempt to fails to cut ‘—what kind of blockbuster movie star can’t book his own hotel room?’
‘It’s not aboutability, it’s about needing to maintain a low profile and…’ Felix trails off as I lean my weight into the next press, the parsley looking more bruised than chopped. ‘What are you doing?’
‘Cutting the parsley?’ Even I know to make that a question and not a statement.
