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“—the kind where you can’t keep your hands off each other—” he throws in.
“—where it’s almost…electric,” I finish.
His face is flushed, his eyes bright, pupils big, and we grin at each other—because this is fun. We’re good together. It makes me wonder how it would be to act opposite him.
I mean, after all, that’s what this is. The two of us acting opposite each other in a movie about two people who meet, fall in love, get married, and then realize the error of their ways.
All in just a few months.
“And then I realized I didn’t want to go back to LA without you,” he says.
“Wait,” I say. “You mean you realized you didn’t want to go back to LA at all. You wanted to stay here with me.”
He raises his eyebrows. “Wouldn’t it make more sense for you to come back to LA and pick up your acting career? And then we live happily ever after?”
I shake my head. “There’s nothing to pick up. I hated LA. I hated television. I love small-town life and my theater company. That’s why we have to break up. We have irreconcilable difference. You want bright lights, big city, fame and fortune, and I want—” I gesture around us. “This. We try to make it work with long distance and commuting, but I have trust issues and you have?—”
“I have commitment issues,” he says wryly.
I nod.
He finishes off his scotch. “I guess we know how our breakup goes down.”
“I guess we do. Wow, though. Whiplash. From sexual ecstasy to an ugly breakup in under ten minutes.”
“Ecstasy, huh? That’s a lot for a guy to live up to.” His mouth quirks in a smile, but his gaze holds mine, curious and warm.
I bet you could do it, I want to say, but better judgment prevails—for the moment. Instead I reach for my wine glass and sip. Actually, gulp.
“Anything else we need to go over?” he asks.
“If we were friends in LA, we’d need to know some things about each other’s lives, right? Friends, family, major career issues. Maybe we each give each other a quick rundown, and then we fill in the details as needed?”
“Makes sense,” he says. “My quick and dirty is…four brothers, one sister. Parents divorced—Dad stayed in LA. Mom passed when I was sixteen. I felt like my mom and granddad hadn’t given my dad a fair shake and went to LA to live with him, to see if he’d take me under his wing in Hollywood. He did, and the rest is history.”
“Your dad’s what, a director…?”
“He was an actor, then an actor/director, then a director/producer. Now mostly an executive producer.”
I rack my brain for a guy named Hott of that description but can’t come up with one.
“Peter Hadley,” he says to my blank expression.
“Oh! I know who he is.”
“Most people do.”
“You don’t have his last name.”
“All the siblings took my mom and granddad’s last name.”
There’s got to be more to that story, but for now we’ve got to get the facts down. “I guess I should know your brothers’ first names, huh?”
He laughs. “Probably. Preston’s the oldest. He’s in finance. Married to a woman he met in college, Kali. Then me. Then Rhys—family law, basically divorce. Then Tuck—he was in personal security until recently, but—” He stops. “No one really knows what’s going on with Tuck. But it doesn’t seem like he’s working right now. And then there’s Quinn.”
“Right, Quinn.” I beam.
He scowls. “I’m the only brother you’re supposed to be into.”
