Page 81 of When I'm With You
“We never talked about it…the fact that I’m kind of famous. It was easy to ignore while we were away, but we’re not away anymore. It’s not always the easiest life. I get stopped a lot and people take my picture and sometimes it ends up online or wherever. My fans are mostly awesome, and I’m used to it by now. But it just occurred to me that you maybe might not be so okay with being in the spotlight. Are you? Okay with it, I mean?”
I open my mouth to answer him, but he just plows on ahead.
“You don’t have to answer me right now, and maybe the middle of the airport isn’t the best place to have this conversation, but we haven’t even been back in Pittsburgh for ten minutes and I already got stopped and I’m thinking about it now, and I didn’t want to wait to ask you but now I’m thinking maybe I should have waited. Shit,” he mutters, face turning a little red.
Charmed by his uncharacteristic rambling but extremely in character concern for me and my feelings, I grab his face with both hands and kiss him. His other hand immediately moves tomy waist. He deepens the kiss, and I pour my whole self into it. It doesn’t matter that we’re standing in the middle of a crowded airport and he is one of the most recognizable faces in the city. Or that a picture of this kiss will probably land onInstagramfive minutes from now. This man is mine, and I don’t want him thinking for a second that I care about who knows it. My clients will just have to deal with it. Hell, it may even be good for business. When we break apart, Asher looks right and left, where there are at least four people gawking at the site of their beloved quarterback making out with a random girl in the middle of the airport, and then he turns back to me, a slow grin spreading across his face.
“So, I guess you’re okay with it?”
I huff out a laugh. “Yeah, Ash, I’m okay with it. This is your life. I love you means I love all of you, even the part that has strangers taking pictures of me in public places and not caring whether they get my good side. Will it take some getting used to? Probably. But I’ve always been good at figuring shit out.”
Asher kisses me again, hard and fast, and it has my entire body buzzing. “Baby, every side of you is your good side. I love you so damn much I think I need a new word for love. So, want to come to my house?” He tangles our fingers back together and looks at me with a hopeful smile.
I consider this. We never really talked about what happens now that we’re back. My mind flashes to my house. The one I spent months painstakingly decorating into what I thought the home of a successful lawyer should look like. After a week on the road and then a week in Asher’s warm and cozy family home, I suddenly realize I have no attachment to anything inside those walls. It may have only been a couple of weeks, but I think home might mean something different now.
“Sure, Hot Shot. Take me to your house.”
Asher
Julie cackles out a laugh when the car I hired to drive us from the airport back into the city pulls up in front of my house.
“What’s so funny?”
We climb out of the car, and she points to a house down the block. “I grew up right there.”
“No, you didn’t.”
“Swear to God.” She laughs again. “Looks like we can walk to dinner tonight.”
I look down the street and then back at her. “Wait, your parents still live there?”
“Sure do. They’ve lived there since before Ben and I were born. I hope they never sell it. I love that house. This whole street, actually. Come to think of it, this street kind of reminds me of your parents’ street in Boulder.”
I grab her hand and lavish kisses on it, delighted by her. “Juliette we are so meant to be. I bought this house with my signing bonus before my rookie season. I came to Pittsburgh for training camp that summer and stayed in one of the furnished apartments downtown the team owns. The apartment was white and impersonal, and I was missing my family so much and was totally overwhelmed by how fast my life had changed. One day, one of the veterans had a team dinner, and he lived in this neighborhood. After dinner, I couldn’t stand the idea of going back to that condo, so I started walking. These streets reminded me so much of home that for the first time since I moved, I wasn’t homesick. I ended up right here in front of thishouse and there was a for sale sign in the yard. I called the number and bought it the next day.”
I look up and down the street, steeped in memories of the me who was so lonely, walking around the neighborhood, wondering what I had just gotten myself into. “It was definitely too big for just me, but something about the house spoke to me. I loved it on sight. Aside from my parents’ house in Boulder, it’s my favorite place.”
Julie leans against me, and I wrap an arm around her, staring up at the house while the driver takes our bags out of the car.
“It’s really beautiful,” she says.
“Come on, I’ll show you inside.”
I guide Julie up the front steps and when I fit my key into the lock, the rightness of walking through my front door with her is undeniable. We are barely over the threshold, and I already know the house feels different with her in it. I would almost say the house was waiting for her to come home, if I was someone who believed in that sort of thing.
“Wow, Ash,” Julie says, turning slowly to take it all in. “It’s gorgeous.”
I look around, seeing it through her eyes. The wide foyer, the cozy living room with vaulted ceilings and built in bookshelves, and the dining room I made less formal with a long farmhouse table and an art deco light fixture.
“Whoever decorated for you is brilliant. I should have hired them instead of the painfully expensive company who made my whole house white and boring.”
“Charlie and my mom decorated it for me,” I say absently, focusing more on the other thing she said. “You don’t like your house?”
She pauses for a second before speaking. “I used to like it. Or at least, I thought I did. I was going for perfect, and I guessthat’s what I got. Except perfect means the furniture looks nice but is mostly uncomfortable, there’s no color except white and cream, and I can never relax there. I used to think that’s what I wanted but now…”
She trails off, and I feel like this is one of those enormous moments disguised as mundane, so I choose my words carefully.
“What do you think now?”
