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“Uh…just a little vacation.” I pull a bullshit reason out of the air. “Visiting some friends.”
“That sounds nice. I’m sure this city has kept you busy.”
Well, it allowed me to talk about my virginity with a douchebag TV host, so yeah, I guess it’s kept me busy…
“It is the city that never sleeps,” I respond, and he just takes my answer like I’m not completely avoiding his question.
This is nuts. Does he really not know?
I search his eyes for most likely a beat too long, and when a neutral smile crests his lips, I feel like I’ve just won the lottery.
This guy really only knows me from our childhood.
That’s it. Nothing else. Holy hell.
But now that I’m pretty damn certain that he doesn’t know anything about me—the celebrity, the notoriety, the money—I’m suddenly overtly and embarrassingly nervous.
Clammy hands. Sweaty skin above my lip. An inability to swallow.
I move my hands to my lap and clench them twice to try to get control of myself. It’s an old trick I developed years ago during uncomfortable interviews—and trust me, I’ve done plenty of them.
Interviewers usually get some kind of sick thrill out of asking women the most ridiculous questions on the planet, base case. Throw in my reputation—as a sexed-up, mythical, aging virgin—and they get downright bold. No one has ever outright asked me, point-blank, about my virginity and my plans to lose it like Niall did tonight, but I can’t say they haven’t come close.
Getting asked about my weight and undergarment preferences in front of my mom, dad, and a million other people has become the cost basis by which I measure how much I’m being demeaned. Anything less than that anymore and I don’t even muster up the bat of an eye.
Tonight, though, really made me feel like nothing more than an object intended for providing entertainment, my emotional well-being and privacy be damned.
“How…” I swallow around the flex of a conversational muscle that’s practically deteriorated. “How have you been?”
“Good. Really good, actually. I still live here, in New York…” He pauses and chuckles a little, swirling his glass the bartender left in a small circle on the bar in front of us. “This is where we moved when I left California. I work for a great company, have a great group of friends, and am really happy with my life.”
“Wow. How about the perfect wife and two point five kids?” I ask sarcastically. It’s a little rude, I know, but after the shitshow of a day I’ve had, I’m feeling a little jealous of his normalcy.
Thankfully, he laughs despite my audacity.
“No wife or kids.” I redden a little as he leans in slightly closer. “No girlfriend, date for hire, complicated sexual friendship, or clingy one-time hookups either.”
It seems as though he’s mistaken my insult for a fishing expedition. I smile candidly. “Good for you.”
He barks another laugh, and I can’t help but laser in on the twinkle in his eyes. It’s almost like green glitter. “Man, it’s good to see you. And I see you still have the same attitude as the last time I saw you.”
I pull my wet hair into a gather at the back of my neck to get it to stop sticking and then let it fall again. “I’m not sure it’s a compliment that I evidently still act like a five-year-old.”
“No, no, trust me, it is. You were always the best kind of ballbuster. Kind but firm.” He pushes a hand out in front of him in emphasis. “The rest of you seems to have grown up completely, though.”
“That I know,” I say with an involuntary roll of my eyes.
It’s not until his eyebrows pinch together that I realize how freaking awful and self-centered I must sound. It’s just that in this business, with the way things are, I, as an oversexualized female public figure, hear about my appearance at least fifty times a day—minimum. An appearance that’s crafted by upwards of ten professionals sometimes and often looks very little like the real me. So, it never even occurred to me that I took off all my makeup before I escaped from my dressing room on set, am wearing sweats, and that he might be paying me a genuine compliment.
I sit back in my seat and wince as I really start to feel awful.
“Wow, sorry. I realize now that must have sounded…” I wave a hand. “It’s complicated. But if you meant that as a compliment, I appreciate it.”
“Well, I didn’t mean it as an insult,” he says with a teasing smile, a subtle dimple settling into the apple of his scruff-roughened cheek.
Good God, the dimple. I’d completely forgotten about the damn dimple. My brother fucking hated that thing because all the ten-year-old little girls used to swoon for it.
Those little ponytail-wearers would shit themselves if they saw it now. Not to mention, the sexy, scruffy facial hair one hundred percent enhances it.
