Page 117 of Turnabout Is Fair Cosplay
“You mean it?”
I could do any number of things. So, naturally, I lean in and wrap my arms around his neck. The surf is loud, filling the room. If we were on the shore, conversations would need to be shouted, unless words were spoken directly onto skin. My lips graze Mike’s neck as I ask again. “Please.”
His hands trace a slow, gentle glide up the lengths of my arms.
“Read to me,” I say before pressing a kiss to Mike’s neck.
His hands have found the bare skin of my back. Warm, strong hands press me closer. “Anything you want.” His lips brush against my ear.
I pull away, my lips twist in a triumphant grin. “You mean I get to pick.” I jump off the couch and pull Mike with me down the hall to his bedroom.
So many books. Obviously, they are, like their owner, a curious eclectic jumble of hardbacks and paperbacks. Some of the shelves are arranged thoughtfully. Others have been stacked and piled hastily. I slide a finger down the length of them. “This is quite the collection.”
My hands are shaking. I don’t think they’ll stop until they’re on Mike again. In his hair, on his skin.
“They were my grandmother’s,” he says almost shyly.
“Your grandmother’s?” Air rushes out of my chest. “These were her books?”
“Yes,” Mike says, grabbing a volume. “She loved to read.” An almost imperceptible sigh escapes him. “I told you about how she walked me through that Poe short story, marking it up until it was so filled with notes you could barely read the text.”
The room goes hazy. I’m a deflated sad balloon, like all those yellow ones that littered the lawn after Eaton’s birthday party.
The notes I’ve been obsessing over, all of them, aren’t Mike’s. They are his grandmother’s.
Like so many women before, I fell hard for a fictional man. I imagined that those notes and scribbles across a collection of books that was as enviable as it was impressive was the work of Mike’s hand and intellect. His soul. But my crush and everything that came after was the product of Mike’s grandma and my overactive and lonely imagination.
“I’m such an idiot.”
Mike frowns. “Come again?”
Oh my gosh. I fell in love with Mike because I thought his grandma’s notes were sexy. “The time.” I grab the phone on his nightstand. “I just saw the time. I have to go. Dogs to walk.”
“But…”
“If you get the spare key, would you make a copy for me? Stick it under my bunny ear cactus?”
“Beatrice.”
“Thanks for letting me crash.” I grab my sneakers and sports bra and dart out the door.
Chapter 35
Somewhere between my mad dash out of Mike’s house and sprint to Avenida Cresta, I manage to put on my sneakers and sports bra.
“What happened?” Cheryl says when she and Mitzy and the new kitty, Sasha, open the front door. I launch into the story of how I lost my phone and keys and crashed at a friend’s house and didn’t have my alarm set because right now my phone is fish food. I leave out the part about how the man I’ve fallen hard for is nothing more than fiction.
Cheryl hands me Mitzy’s phone. “Make some calls. Go on.”
“But your yoga class and errands.”
“I hate Buti yoga. And the errands can wait. Holler if you need anything.”
Mitzy meows, and Sasha, who’s smaller, rises on her hind legs to bump her head affectionately to hers. “I mean, how could I possibly leave this?” Cheryl says. “Come on, girls. Let’s go lay out by the pool.”
I call Adam. No answer. I call Mom. No answer. I call Julie. It goes straight to voice mail. I’d call Portia, but she changed her number when she moved out to Boston, and I don’t have it memorized. So I call my dad’s office. Nadeen answers.
“Is George McKinney in?”
