Page 65 of You and Me, For Real
“Are you regretting your decision yet?” she teases.
I smirk and bend toward her, a foot from her, and circle my face with my finger. “You see this face? This is my serious face. No regrets. They’ll be fine here. I can take care of them.” I stand and flick a hand toward the mess. “And clean up their messes, too. Or recruit Luke to do it.”
Her eyes are dancing with delight, and another cackle erupts from her mouth.
I return my attention to my phone, not trusting my face to not screamI’m falling for this girl.
“Now that you can stop worrying, tell me what you want to eat, or I’ll just have to surprise you.”
A playful smirk emerges on her face. “Surprise me.”
18
ASHTON
And surprise me he does.
Griffin orders just about everything on the menu from some local Chinese restaurant he claims is the best in town. He opens every container, creating a huge spread across his living room coffee table.
“I’m not sure you ordered enough.”
Without taking his eyes off the food, he replies, “Right? I’m starving.”
I laugh. There is no way this man eats this kind of food on the regular and stays as fit as he does forMalibu Shores.
“Griffin, I was kidding. There’s enough food here to feed a team of teenage basketball players.”
His head pops up.
“How can you eat all this and—” I gesture with my finger from his head to his torso —“look like that?”
He shovels a mound of noodles onto a plate. “Look like what?”
Is he serious right now?
He smirks, his dimple showing.
I narrow my eyes and stick out my tongue.
He chuckles, and I’m grateful he doesn’t make me spell out the fact that I noticed his well-sculpted build. Because boy, did I notice. The fitted Henley shirt he’s wearing hugs snugly in all the right places.
While I appreciate watching Griffin on screen, I definitely favor the real-life version more—along with the version of him and Scarlet I saw tonight. OnMalibu Shores, their chemistry is palpable; but tonight, they seemed…awkward. Disjointed. Not like a couple at all. Selfishly, their uncomfortable interaction made me do a backflip internally. If being plastered in the media for most of my teenage years taught me anything, it’s that you can’t believe everything you read in a tabloid. The truth comes out when the cameras are off.
He holds up an empty plate. “Do you like chicken or beef with your chow mein?”
“Chicken.”
“Eggroll?”
“I can make my own plate, you know. The coffee table isn’t that far away.” I wiggle from my propped-foot position to lean forward.
“Get back on that couch, woman.” He stands, towering over the food-laden coffee table.
My body recoils.
His expression softens. “Please.” He comes around the table and places the overloaded plate onto my lap. “You’re my patient tonight. Let me take care of you. Okay?”
The earnestness of his words takes my breath away. No one’s taken care of me since the short stint I stayed with Lynn. Even then, it was foreign. I’m so used to doing everything myself. I even learned how to cook alongside Cecily at the age of nine. Mom was always so self-absorbed, she rarely remembered to feed us. The one perk of her fame was hiring a personal chef sowe ate more nutritional meals that didn’t come from a bag or a box.
