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“Hey, I see a bookstore. I’ll wait for you there.”
“Of course, bookworm. I’ll follow the sounds of rapture when I’m done,” she teases, and I laugh.
I’ve never met a bookstore I could resist. I’m smiling as I walk toward it.
And then, I see him. I stop dead in my tracks and mumble a distracted apology to the woman who yelped as she walked into me.
“Jerk,” she mutters without stopping.
I step out of the stream of people trying to get out of the airport and into the bookstore. I walk to the book and can only stare.
Fallen is scribbled in bright blue font across Graham’s bare, lickable chest. His eyes are defiant, his hair swept off his face, and long falls of silky gold hair hang over his shoulders.
“He’s yummy, right?”
I jump. “Ree! Shit, you scared me!”
“Clearly. I called your name twice.” She peers closely at the cover. “Oh my God, it’s that trainer on Instagram. What happened to him?”
My heart jumps, and I turn to look at her. “What do you mean? How would I know?”
“I mean, I don’t actually expect you to know,” she scoffs. “But, didn’t you follow him? His videos were so hot. Then they just disappeared.”
I’ve never spoken to her about Graham. I never knew how to explain who he was and how I felt about him. One day, I’d left it open on his feed when I went to the bathroom while we were studying. I came back to find her ogling him on my phone.
I told her I followed him for the workouts and she believed me. She started following him, too. When his IG feed disappeared early this year, I was relieved. It was my secret torment, lying awake at night watching his videos. I took his account disappearing as a sign.
This is the first picture I’ve seen of Graham since then.
She reaches around me and snags one of the books off the shelf. “I completely understand why. I’m buying it so I can look at that face whenever I want to.”
I blink at her.
“Do you even know what the book is about?” I ask her.
“Who cares?” She looks at me like I’m an idiot. “He’s hot. The book is fifteen bucks. I’m buying it.”
“I wouldn’t buy a book just for its cover.”
She stares at the cover and sighs.
“It’s not the same as watching him push his hair off his face when cooling down. Or how he bites that sexy bottom lip of his whenever he lifts something really heavy. When he does that, I want to take my panties off and fling them at the screen. But, it’ll do.” She chuckles and walks off toward the cash register.
Holding Graham in her hands, I almost call after her, tell her to give him back. I know how crazy that would look. Instead, I pull every single copy off the shelf. It takes three trips to the cash register, but I walk out of there with two shopping bags full of Graham’s bare chest. I don’t know what I’m going to do with them, but all I know is that I couldn’t leave them there.
“Uh, what’re you doing?”
“Oh, my aunt is in a book club. They love romance, so I thought I’d buy these and mail them.”
“That’s really nice. Big book club, huh?” She nods at the stack of books on the shelf.
“Yeah, huge,” I lie and pay for my books.
I don’t stop to think as I go through immigration, customs and then baggage claim. It’s not until I’m in the back of my cab, speeding down Grand Central Parkway to my new apartment on the Upper West Side that I let myself look at the copy of the book I snagged out of the bag before my driver threw them into the trunk.
And just like that. All my distance, all my hard work, all my healing was undone. I’d been lying to myself. I’m not over him. Not even close.
While Reena texts her mom and sisters, I open my phone’s browser to do something I’ve resisted doing for two years.
