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Oh good grief. She didn’t buy it at all.
Trying to push the interaction aside, I rush to my office, drop all my papers on my desk, grab my purse from my bottom desk drawer, and then hustle to the elevator, praying that I don’t run into anyone else.
Trent is waiting for me in the foyer, sunglasses resting in the neck of his T-shirt, a brown leather jacket fitted to his body like he should be on the cover of a men’s magazine. Women walk by, their eyes hungry as they drink him in, while he stands there oblivious as he looks down at his phone. The giant looming bodyguard behind him isn’t oblivious in the slightest. He gives the women a menacing glare that warns them not to even think about coming within two feet of Trent.
I wonder where his bodyguard was hiding while we were all in our meeting.
Before I have a chance to think any further on the logistics of Trent’s life and what it must be like to have someone following him at all times, he glances up, and a heat spreads through my body as his gaze connects with mine and his face lights up with the brightest, most genuine smile I think I’ve ever seen.
Once again, I find my own smile spreading across my face to match his. “Sorry for taking so long. I ran into Simone in the hall.”
“That’s okay. I don’t mind waiting. I just didn’t want to miss an opportunity to catch up some more. Have you tried that Thai place in the Promenade? It looks amazing.”
“It is amazing. Best Thai food in Southern California hands down.” My mouth waters just thinking about their chicken pad Thai.
Instead of walking the few blocks, Trent ushers me to a Range Rover with black tinted windows. His bodyguard opens the door for us and then sits in the passenger seat next to the driver.
“This is intense. Are you sure you don’t want to just order in and eat in my office? They’ll deliver it.”
He looks at me, confusion filling his handsome features before his gaze shoots to the front seat and then back to me as understanding dawns. “I guess this does seem pretty over the top just to go get lunch a couple of blocks away, but we’d be hounded if we tried to walk there. I figured this was the easiest way to get there without being followed.”
“Do you have to do this everywhere you go?”
He shrugs. “Pretty much.”
“Wow, I can’t imagine living like that.”
“Doesn’t Will have to deal with this when you guys go out?”
I shake my head. “Not really. Sometimes fans will recognize him and ask him for an autograph, but he’s never needed security detail or a fancy driver to go to lunch.”
“He’s a lucky guy,” he says, pursing his lips and looking down at his lap before glancing out the window at the people walking along the sidewalks.
I let the conversation drop because I feel like I just inadvertently touched a nerve. My own gaze looks out my window just as we take a turn.
“Uh, we should’ve stayed straight. The restaurant is up there on the right.”
Trent looks over at me. “They know. We’re going in the back to avoid too many people seeing me. With publicity ramped up for the tour, my face is plastered everywhere. Case in point,” he says, pointing to a poster displayed in the window of a music store across the street of the band and the dates for their latest tour. “When it gets like this, I usually try to go in the back whenever I eat out just to avoid as much chaos as possible.”
I glance back at him just as he looks ahead and see him with new eyes. He looks so much like the Trent I’ve known for so long, but I can’t imagine the burden of having to meticulously plan every action. He’s not that simple boy who grew up in a small town in Texas. Not anymore.
We pull up behind the restaurant, and his bodyguard guides us inside. A waitress is ready to direct us to a table tucked away in the back and with a privacy screen that mostly shields us from the other lunch patrons.
We place our order, and I decide to keep the conversation light, wanting to veer away from anything that might give him that melancholy look he got ever so briefly in the car. The conversation shifts effortlessly between my job, the band and their upcoming tour, Will’s career with the LA Wolves, and Will’s new dog, Rex, that I’m hopelessly in love with.
By the time lunch ends and we’re on our way back to my office, my heart feels light from laughing so much. It’s been so long since I was able to talk with someone of the opposite sex without any pressure of a date. We were able to just connect and catch up like two friends who forgot how easy it always was with us. There are no expectations except to listen to the other person. To really hear him and have him hear me in return.
It was the best friendly lunch I’ve had in a very long time.
He drops me off in front of the building, and I lift my hand in a wave as he drives away, my smile still glued to my face.
By the time I’ve made it back to my desk, I’m already hoping we can do that again before he leaves for tour.
7
The bright light of my eighty-six-inch TV flashes in front of me, while some meaningless infomercial plays on. The inky black of the night sky tells me I should be sleeping, but I’m too hyped up after our meeting at VibeTV today. There’s something about seeing Becka again that has my mind on overdrive, rethinking every interaction and the way she smiled. Seeing her eyes light up as we reminisced about old times. That craving in my soul that’s been growing for months was sated in her presence, and I’m dying to feel that peace again.
Taking a chance, I grab my cellphone off the dark oak nightstand beside me and quickly compose a text before I can overthink it further.
