Page 21 of How He Got the Girl
In the flesh.
Right in front of me.
She’s a vision in pink plucked straight out of my dreams.
I couldn’t hold back my smile if I tried. I found her. Ifinallyfound her after three years of searching.
“Obviously not very hard.” She snorts.
I press my lips into a firm line. If I’d known all I needed to do was show up at this coffee shop on a Saturday morning, I would’ve been here the week after I met her and saved myself a lot of trouble.
“You could’ve just called me. You know there are these devices calledphonesnow.” Mallory is as sassy as I remember, except her words feel more biting than playful.
“If I hadn’t dropped the napkin with your phone number on it into a puddle of muddy, snowy slush, I would have.”
She rolls her eyes. “Likely story. I’m sure it’s what you say to all the girls.”
“All the—” I cut my sentence off, shaking my head. “Can we please sit for a minute? I’ll explain everything. Then if you never want to see me again, I’ll leave you alone.”
Mallory eyes me up and down. Her gaze slowly drags along my frame like she’s trying to decide if I’m worthy of being in her presence. Honestly, I’m not even worthy to walk on the ground she walks on. But I’m trying to be. And I’d be a fool if I let her go now that I have an opportunity to explain what happened three years ago.
“Please,” I say before she can tell me no.
With a long, exaggerated sigh, Mallory says, “Fine. You have five minutes.”
That’s all I need. I gesture to a more secluded table in the back of the coffee shop, wanting to be as far away from prying eyes as possible. I already saw multiple people with their phones out. I send up a prayer that this interaction doesn’t go viral. That’s not the kind of publicity I need when I’m supposed to be maintaining the façade of dating my costar. But this is the life I signed up for when I chose to be an actor. Any of my public interactions are subject to scrutiny for the rest of my life.
I love my fans—it still feels wild to say I have fans. They call themselvesGriffies.
But the woman who captured my heart called me Griff.
I’m pretty sure my Granny is the one who started the Griffies with the ode to the nickname she’s called me my whole life. Even though I love them, it can be hard to feel like I’m living my life under a microscope. Especially in this moment where I want the world around us to fade away.
Mallory presses her lips into a thin line as she walks to the back of the shop. She takes her pink beanie off, revealing her wavy, light-brown hair that’s just as gorgeous as it was three years ago. I want to wrap my fingers around each strand and memorize their feel.
When I finally drag my eyes away from her hair, I find her glaring at me, arms crossed and lips pursed. “You havefour and a half minutes now, so you’d better make this quick.”
I sigh. “I know you have every reason to hate me. Heck, I would hate it if I went on as amazing a date as we had and never heard from that person again.” It’s hard not to hatemyselffor losing out on this amazing woman for three years. “But I promise you, it wasn’t intentional. After your friend and her brothers picked you up from the restaurant, I drove to my parents’ house. I grabbed the napkin with your phone number from my cupholder, but when I got out of the car, it fell number-side down into a slushy pile of snow. I tried to save it, but the numbers were too smeared.” It was truly a scene from a rom-com, except I didn’t end up with the girl.
Mallory doesn’t say anything, but her expression softens the slightest bit.
“When you didn’t hear from me, did you ever consider looking me up?” I ask.
Mallory crosses her arms. “I forgot that you existed.”
I press a hand to my chest, prone to dramatic flair. But I’d be lying if I said her words didn’t hurt. “Ouch, am I that forgettable?”
“Yes.” But the way her eyes move down to my lips before slowly dragging back to my eyes saysno. She takes a sip of her replacement drink before crossing her arms again.
“I tried to find you after my audition. But when all the information I had was your first name, your hometown, and the school you went to, it wasn’t much to go off of.”
She nods slowly. “You actually didn’t even have my first name.”
I raise an eyebrow. “You gave me a fake name?”
“Not exactly. Mallory is my middle name. It’s what I’ve gone by since I was a kid.”
It’s better than her giving me a fake name, but it explains why my team was unable to find her.
