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I shake my head while maintaining a smile. What isn’t she understanding here? I really don’t want to have to go Fight Club to convince a stranger that we’re not together, but if we keep talking about it much longer and my chest gets any tighter, I just might have to.
“No, we’re not dating. Just professionally linked.” I shrug. “And friendly, I suppose. She’s a lot of fun.”
The woman nods a few more times and then walks away, but not without me hearing her talking under her breath as she does. “Man, I want friends who look at me like that.”
Friends who look at her like what? How am I looking at Brooke?
I turn back to the stage in the middle of the festival, where Brooke is sitting with the two hosts and gabbing back and forth about the Shadow Brothers and what inspired her to write them. I first heard this story in Chicago when they asked her about it, but I have to admit, it’s just as enthralling the second time.
“This is a little scary to admit so publicly, but the Shadow Brothers were my young imagination spicing up death. I’ve dealt with vasovagal syncope for my whole life, and while it’s not actually considered a life-threatening condition, for a young girl, it felt like one. When I wondered what an afterlife might look like—or what I wanted it to look like, rather—I always imagined a group of dreamy ghost men to protect and entertain me.”
It takes almost fifteen full seconds of listening to Brooke talk and getting lost in her words to realize what the producer was talking about. How am I looking at Brooke? I have no way to describe it other than loudly.
My face is like a fucking spotlight. I can feel it from the pressure in my cheeks to the strain at the corners of my eyes—I’m smiling like the Joker on uppers, and I’m doing it all while staring directly at a woman I’m in no way involved with.
Lord help me.
I spin away quickly like that’ll somehow change anything and scrub a hand over my face. Am I…am I developing a literal crush on Brooke Baker?
I know I’ve always thought she was cute and funny, and she’s obviously a brilliant writer, and my dick is kind of becoming obsessed with her lately, but that’s all just…just…
Goddamn. I’m totally fucking crushing on Brooke Baker!
And not the crush of an adult man with mature feelings and a plan of attack, but that of a high schooler—with hormones and impulsiveness and dick-ruled decisions taking an unjustified lead.
Holy shit, I’m so stupid!
This is the woman whose novel I’ve put my ass and career on the line for. This is the woman with whom maintaining a professional relationship is of paramount importance. This is the woman it would be monumentally stupid to get emotionally involved with because if something happened and we became unemotionally involved, it would ruin everything that I’ve ever worked toward in my whole thirty-three years.
But what if it worked out?
No. No. God, Chase, that is such stupid thinking that you cannot do. Lying to ourself about the gravity of the complications is only going to get our ass roasted like a rotisserie chicken at KFC. Do we understand us? DO WE?
Fuck. It’s never a good sign when you start arguing with yourself.
I turn back at the sound of Brooke’s full-blown cackle laugh, and I catch the line of her throat extending as she throws her head back. I swallow hard to distract myself from the fact that I can’t look away—that I am not looking away, despite a colossal amount of mental effort.
The male host reaches out to pat Brooke’s arm through his chuckle, and my vision tunnels on the contact. My veins heat and my skin tingles, and holy fucking hot wheels on a plastic track, I’m jealous. Just like I was in the car on the way to Chicago, just like I am whenever another man looks in Brooke’s general vicinity, I’m realizing.
Oh man, Chase. You’ve really done it now.
Benji shifts back and forth in front of the interview table, his keen canine eyes pointed directly at me. It seems unlikely that he’d be able to sense my heart rate from way the hell over there, but he’s sure acting like he can.
I turn and walk away, pulling my phone out of my pocket and putting it to my ear.
“Hello?” I say to the nonexistent caller. “Of course,” I say with a fake chuckle that embarrasses me to my very core. “I always have a minute for you.”
Oh my God. This really is a new low point. And frankly, a little unbecoming of how emotionally mature I consider myself to be.
I churn and burn with my legs, searching for a closet or a room or, I don’t know, a hole to crawl into so I can quit pretending to be on this fake phone call and do some deep-breathing exercises while I come to terms with my newfound discovery.
