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“Not without a protagonist, an antagonist, and plot points.”
“Show me how it works then. How did you come up with the idea forHaunted?”
My stomach spasms. I didn’t. Even after everything we’ve shared, I can’t set that last secret free. It’s gripped me so tight for so long, I think it may have stitched itself to my ribs.
“Jess?” He’s calm where I’m not.
“I can’t do this.” I shut my laptop.
He glides his palm down my leg like he has an internal timer prompting him put his hands on me at regular intervals.
Not that I mind. He settles me, and my anxiety’s running on hyper drive.
“Okay, relax. I got this.” He rolls off the mattress to move to the end of the bed, claps his hands together, faces away from me, and performs a series of comical moves to loosen up.
I fidget against the headboard at the shoulder roll that slides into an eighties break dance.
“Wait for it.” He lifts a finger, then spins around, converting his space into a stage with his ready-to-improv attitude. “Jess’s logline, take one.” His pitch dips low and runs smooth, like he’s doing a voice-over for a theatrical trailer. “After an alien invasion depletes earth’s supply of Spandex, an iron-abbed underwear model must hook up with aHello-Kittyobsessed author to save the world from lizard men wearing knock-off Calvin Klein’s.”
It’s hard not to burst out laughing. “I don’t write aliens. Or underwear.”
“Nice.” He winks at me. “Your characters go commando.”
Cue my blush. “Gross.”
“Personal preference.” His dimples flash.
I try not to think about Gabe’s personal preference—those boxers peeking out of his jeans on the cover he did for that magazine.
“Let’s try this again.” He stalks over and pulls me to sit on the edge of the mattress. He arranges his glasses on my face and my hair around my shoulders, steps back and admires his handiwork in uppity designer fashion, angling his head this way and that, framing his hands like a camera lens. “That’s kinda hot.”
“You’re blurry.” I push the glasses down my nose.
He pushes them back. “Work with me here, Escalator Girl.” His stance is Superman—hands on his hips, chin and pecs jutting out. But the I’ve-got-it-going-on glint is pure Jax.
“Jess’s logline, take two.” His voice even takes on Jax’s southern charm. “After a supernatural apocalypse, an unemployed wanna-be werewolf must team up with a sexy science student”—he taps my glasses—“to save the school from a horde of one-fanged vamps.”
“One-fanged?” I hide my cracking composure behind my hand.
“Like a Cyclops.” His grin is as outlandish as his loglines. “Only with teeth.”
I give up, peel away my hand, and laugh. “Werewolves are—”
“Overrated and overdone.” He quotes what I said at the panel, the same snotty way I said it at the panel. “Do you have to be so difficult?” He pins me with a mock glare.
My laugh dies. “Sorry about that.”
He slides the glasses to the top of my head. “Since you’re hot as hell, I forgive you.”
It’s not his words that make me shift on the bed. It’s the change in the air between us. It’s how I’ve somehow become his single point of focus.
“Jess’s logline, take three.” No trace of theatrical remains. No Superman. No mask. No Jax. It’s all Gabe behind those chocolate eyes. “When an arrogant actor is forced to man up and face things he never expected”—the emotion in his voice rumbles through me—“a beautiful brunette tumbles into his world and saves him with her haunted smile.” His eyes are deep, dark pools.
It hurts when he looks at me like that. Like he can see every one of my flaws... and he still likes me anyway.
“I’m not done.” He cups my cheek. “This guy she saved, he wants her to see the same thing he does when he looks at her, wants her to know that inside and out, she’s kick-ass amazing, because he’s desperate to save her too, only, he’s not sure how.”
With a few run-on sentences, Gabe’s dug up every emotion I’ve had in the last year. And several hundred more before that. “Don’t you know the girl has to save herself?”
