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“See? We have stuff in common,” I pointed out. “I thought Rachel should’ve chosen Joey, too. Ross always annoyed the fuck out of me.”
“You watched Friends?”
I shrugged. “The foster parents I was with from twelve on watched a lot of TV.”
I rarely spoke about my past, and when I did, I dodged, lied, or changed the subject entirely. Although what I’d just told Allie was innocuous, it was also real, which was more than anyone but James knew about me. I didn’t want to dwell too much on why that was, so I returned to the subject at hand.
“I think we’re going to do just fine,” I said confidently. “Throw caution to the wind, pack a bag, and come home with me.”
“What if we’re completely incompatible in areas where it really matters? What then?”
“Well—”
“Let me paint you a picture,” she interrupted. “You need to realize that I don’t spend my days in evening gowns and sky-high heels. Last night, I was dressed up for a special occasion. On a day-to-day basis, this is me,” she said, gesturing down to herself.
She’d changed into a pair of black leggings, a denim tunic, and a pair of white Chucks. Nothing about the way she looked made her any less appealing to me than she’d been the night before. In fact, with her face scrubbed of makeup and her long blond hair down, she looked sexy as fuck.
“That’s good to know since you look even more incredible to me now than you did last night.”
Allie huffed as if I’d just made a joke. Uncrossing her arms, she walked over to her closet, pushed one of the sliding doors open, and gestured to the contents.
“Like I said last night, I don’t hang my wardrobe by color.”
Her closet was packed tighter than a New York City subway car at rush hour, not that I cared. I also gave zero fucks about the fact that the desk in the corner of her room was stacked with notebooks while the bookshelf to the left of it was full of craft books on screenwriting. Her full-sized bed was unmade, and her laptop was tossed haphazardly in the middle with a well-worn thesaurus next to it. On the nightstand were four water bottles—all in various stages of consumption—a hairbrush, and a small plastic bowl full of hair elastics. I wasn’t bothered by any of it. In fact, I liked having that bird’s-eye view of her world.
Turning my focus back to her, I grinned. “I’m not breaking out in hives,” I teased.
She rolled her eyes. “I didn’t think you’d break out in hives,” she sighed. “I’m trying to show you that in real life, I’m not the girl you met last night. I spend a lot of time banging away on my keyboard working on my screenplays, and I’ve been known to dictate ideas and notes to my phone in the middle of dinner.”
“You absolutely are the girl I met last night. Stop acting like the fact that you’re not in a ball gown every day is an issue for me. I assure you it isn’t.”
“It’s not that—I just want you to see the real me so that you understand who you’re asking to come stay with you. I’m not Charles Manson, but I’m also not some demure little thing who will flit through your house sprinkling fairy dust and blowjobs in my wake.”
I bit back a grin. “If you’re trying to put me off, you’re failing. And if it puts your mind at ease, you should know that I already figured out the blowjob fairy doesn’t exist. She’s a myth, kind of like Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny.”
Allie bit back a laugh as she cocked her head and studied me for a few moments. “Can you explain why you think this is a good idea?”
Maybe not well, but I knew I had to try. “I liked going to sleep with you last night, and I thought this morning was pretty great, too. I want to get to know you better, and until you started tossing out potential issues, I thought you felt the same way.”
“I do,” she hastened to assure me. “I just worry that if I agree to go home with you, you’ll regret the decision within a few hours. We can still get to know each other while I stay with my parents, you know.”
“I know that,” I admitted. “But as I told you before, I want more of what we had last night and this morning. What’s happening between us is new for me, and I want to dig into it.”
“I’m leaving town for six weeks next Monday,” she blurted.
I winced as though she’d told me something bad. Just like my desire to have her come to stay with me, my reaction to her announcement made no goddamn sense.
