Page 141 of Tangled Like Us
I rub my lips. Something strains my chest.This is a fake date,I remind myself. For the op. But what we’ve been talking about, it’s been real. I don’t want any of our interactions to be anything less than that. “Where were we?” I ask her and pick up the small plastic spoon.
“Veni qua,” she says into a bright smile, saying the Italian words I’d just taught her almost perfectly. It meanscome here.“I like that one. I think I’m going to use it for Licorice when I can’t find him.” She picks a cookie dough piece out of her yogurt. “I tried putting a collar on him. One with bells. It was a pitiful sight. He’s just not a collar kind of cat. Not like Carpenter who loves his bejeweled ones.”
I love when she talks about her cats. She can do it for hours, and there’s love and light in her entire being.
Out of my peripheral, I check the windows again but keep my eyes on Jane. “So Carpenter loves attention. Licorice hates it. Walrus is the rebel. Ophelia is the princess. Toodles is a sloth, and Lady Macbeth a wise, old owl. That about right?”
Her lips part, and she looks like I just agreed to eat her out at this table.
“Jane,” I say.
Flush rises up her neck. “You know my cats very well,” she says, recovering. “It’s very attractive. But you already know that I’m attracted to you. So that’s redundant. But important. An important redundancy.”
My eyes sweep her for a second. “I don’t think our attraction to each other has ever been a question, honey.”
She smiles. “True.”
“Gomesegiam’,” I say in Italian. “That meansHow do you say?”
“Gomesegiam’,” She repeats. “I like that one, too.” She’s liked every word I’ve said in Italian. I’m beginning to realize it’s not just the language. She likes me. There aren’t many people that get off on other people’s happiness. Other people’s interests. Jane is that rare kind of person.
“Ma che bell’,” I say another phrase. Our eyes latch for a hot second. “How beautiful.”
Her lips part.
My muscles strain underneath my shirt, and she doesn’t look away. It’s an intense moment of silence, just drinking each other in.
Then she crumples her napkin and puts it in her empty cup. “So I’ve decided,” she says softly, her eyes still on me. “That’s my favorite.”
“It’s a good one,” I agree and then look down to her cup. “Done?’
“Only if you are.”
“We can push out,” I say. “But the crowds are bad, so you’re going to stay behind me. I’ll have the temp bring up the rear.”
She cranes her neck to the window. Fans and paparazzi line the sidewalk, snapping photos of us through the windows. She’s blocked them from her mind thus far. It’s easy for her to just forget they’re there. Like background noise.
I can imagine that comes with twenty-three years of practice living in the spotlight.
Jane meets my gaze and secures her purse over her shoulder. “Let’s do this.”
Minutes later we’re outside the frozen yogurt shop. Swarmed.
“Jane! Jane! Look here!”
“Thatcher! Thatcher!”
Jane is fisting my shirt, her fingers tightened on the fabric. I have one arm wrapped behind me, hand on her hip and pressing her chest up against my back. My other hand shoves a cameraman in front.
Create a path.
Clear the way.
Objective: her Beetle.
Distance: one block.
Targets: every shitbag in my vision.
