by Dahlia Adler
Liam’s broad shoulders slumped, as if the weight of my apology had physically taken its toll. “You know nobody’s ever been a better fit for me, right? I wanted all the same things you did—”
“I know that now,” I said quickly. “I do, and I’m sorry I didn’t before. I was so afraid of…being rejected for being me, I guess, that I didn’t realize I was rejecting you for being you. You were just living such a different life from me, and it was getting harder and harder to trust that there was a place for myself in it.”
Liam smiled ruefully. “I didn’t exactly make it easy. I should’ve known better than to think you’d be cool with everything just because it was Van.” He reached out and rubbed away a tear, and I could feel my heart thumping with every moment his thumb lingered on my cheek longer than was strictly necessary. “I think I overestimated just how jaded you were.”
“No one’s immune to the sight of her boyfriend kissing someone else,” I said with a pathetic shrug. “Not even me.”
“I know. And what’s worse is that I really should’ve understood that when I realized how much I hated seeing that little weasel Nate touch you.”
I smiled, sniffling as the tears relaxed their descent. “So Vanessa was telling the truth; you actually were kinda jealous, huh?”
“Insanely,” he admitted with a laugh. Then his face grew serious. “Van mentioned that you and he went to prom—”
“It was awful,” I interrupted, desperate for him to know that there was nothing between me and Nate, that there never had been. “All I wanted was to be with you, and all he wanted was to mess with you. Don’t ask,” I said quickly. “Just trust me when I say Nate has never, ever been anything more to me than a friend, and now he’s not even that.”
Liam nodded slowly. “And you and Josh? Are you guys friends now or what?”
“Or what,” I said dryly. “But he did fly me here, which was somewhat sweet, even if he always seems to have ulterior motives.” I sniffled again. “What about, um… Are you and Van, uh…?” I couldn’t even bring myself to ask the question, but I needed to know the answer.
He snorted. “Of course not.”
It was amazing how much lighter I felt when he said that, but I also felt…guilty. What if he actually liked her—or they liked each other—and I was getting in their way? Considering how badly I’d treated them both, I certainly didn’t have the right.
“You can, you know,” I said softly, feeling my insides twist even as I said, “All I want is for you to do what makes you happy.”
He smiled and reached out, lightly brushing my tear-sticky face before tucking a strand of wild hair behind my ear. “You’re what makes me happy, Ally.”
“Then do me,” I said in a joking voice. Only I wasn’t—joking, that is. I knew exactly what I wanted to do with my night, and what I wanted to give Liam for his birthday. But I wouldn’t throw myself at him. Not again.
“Cute,” he replied, but the rasp in his voice as he responded suggested he wasn’t entirely sure I was joking either.
I didn’t respond. I couldn’t. One of two things was going to happen now. Either Liam was going to thank me for coming and say he should get back to the party, or he was going to—
His hands cupped my face and his lips pressed against mine before I could even complete my thought. Thank God. I responded immediately to his familiar touch, curling my arms around his neck and pulling him as close as humanly possible.
I have no idea how long we spent kissing in the hallway, but suddenly, the hotel room door was yanked open, and we jumped apart.
Of course. Josh.
“You’re welcome,” he said sweetly to Liam.
“Give me your key,” I ordered Josh before Liam could respond to him.
“What? Why?”
“Because I want to be sure you won’t storm in this time.” I held out my hand, enjoying the shocked looks on both guys’ faces as Josh handed it over.
“Bro, you’re gonna leave your own party?” Josh asked Liam.
“Blame it on your birthday present,” Liam answered with a grin as I pulled him down the hall.
26
I’D ALREADY BEEN AWAKE FOR an hour when Liam finally stirred, his arms tightening around my waist as he blinked into the sunshine and yawned.
“Good morning,” he murmured sleepily, kissing my bare shoulder. “Glad to see you’re still here. I was afraid I was just dreaming the world’s best birthday surprise.”
“Nope,” I informed him, lifting one of his hands and kissing it. “You’re stuck with me.” I wanted to turn and kiss him, but despite whatever personal strides I’d made, they did not include losing my self-consciousness about my morning breath.
“Mmm, sounds perfect.” He gave me a quick squeeze. “Best birthday ever.”
“It’s only just started,” I reminded him. “Your actual birthday is today. So how are you going to spend it?”
“With my girlfriend, I hope,” he said, yawning into the back of my head.
My heart gave a little jump at the word. It wasn’t that I didn’t want to be Liam’s girlfriend again, but though I knew now that his intentions were better and our relationship far stronger than I’d known, I still didn’t know how best to handle dating him. And did it even really make sense to start something with him going back to Cali and me moving to New York for good?
“Liam—”
“I actually have something I want to show you.” He slid his fingers up and down my side, my skin tingling everywhere he touched, and just as I closed my eyes to enjoy the sensation, I felt his mouth join in, his lips leaving featherlight kisses on the back of my neck.
“Not that I’m complaining, but I believe you showed me this last night.” I sucked in a breath through my teeth as he found a particularly sensitive spot. “I suppose I could be talked into another ‘showing’ though.”
He laughed, the low, sexy sound making my toes curl. “I’m actually being literal in this case,” he said. In one swift motion, he rolled me onto my back and straddled me. “But I’m glad to hear you’re so amenable.” He bent down to kiss me, morning breath and all.
Totally worth it.
Round two lacked the twinge of pain that had accompanied round one, which made me feel kind of like a seasoned professional. I told that to Liam, and he laughed.
“You’re officially a sexpert,” he said fondly, collapsing next to me and brushing my hair off my now-damp forehead.
I smiled, but the fact that I had something else on my mind must’ve been plainly visible on my face. “What’s wrong?” he asked. “It didn’t hurt again, did it?”
“It didn’t,” I assured him.
His face took on an even more worried look. “You’re not…sorry we—”
“No! Definitely not.” I planted a hard kiss on his mouth, as if it would render him incapable of even thinking of asking that question again. “Trust me. I’ve wanted this ever since…well, pretty much ever since that first time I offered it when I didn’t really want it.”
“That was an interesting day,” he said with a smile.
“There were a lot of interesting days, weren’t there?”
He groaned. “Don’t remind me.” He rolled over until he was looking me directly in the eye. “Is that what’s wrong? You’re afraid to get back into a relationship with me?”
“That’s part of it,” I admitted. “A big part.”
“It’ll be different now, you know.”
“How’s that?”
He reached out and tucked my hair behind my ear. “I think it’s time Vanessa and I ‘broke up,’ don’t you? Pull a ‘no comment’ on my love life, and you and I can finally go to the Getty, and the Tar Pits, and Mongolian barbecue joints? Or, more accurately, since you’ll be here—The Frick, the Bronx Zoo, and Ray’s?”
I bit my lip, unsure how to respond. I would love that, obviously, but I’d always said I would do what was best for him and Van, and I didn’t know if this was it.
“If yo
u’re thinking about my career, or Vanessa’s, just stop. Upfronts are over, Ally. The show is a go. We both tested well; they’re not gonna replace either of us at this point. We’ll both be fine. The show is airing in September, it’ll look like Vanessa and I had a good run but were better off as friends, and everyone will be happy. You’ll be far away from the paparazzi without me, and I’ll come here and visit as often as possible.” He cupped my cheek in his hand, gently caressing the skin with his thumb. “I know being in a fight with Vanessa is killing you, Ally, and I know it’s killing her, too. It’s not good for you two not to be speaking.”
For the third time in little more than twelve hours, I felt myself getting choked up. “We had a pact,” I admitted, shifting my gaze to his shoulder. I couldn’t quite bring my eyes to meet his for this, and I could feel a blush creeping into my cheeks. “We always said we’d tell the other one ASAP when we lost our virginity. We even have a code word we agreed to text if we couldn’t get away to make an actual phone call.”
“Ooh, how James Bond. What’s the word?”
“Like I would tell you. Anyway, not telling her feels so weird. Almost like it doesn’t really count.”
Liam raised an eyebrow.
“Well, of course it counts,” I said quickly. “You know what I mean.”
“I should hope it counts,” he said mock-huffily, but then he broke into a smile. “I get it. I do. And while I feel kind of strange advocating that you broadcast our sex life, I do think you two need to fix things.”
I couldn’t really argue with that, but before I attempted to do so, I had to know something. “Why wasn’t Van at your party last night?”
He shrugged. “I was keeping it small. Just close friends and people who were already in New York.”
“So you don’t consider Van to be a close friend of yours?”
Liam looked distinctly uncomfortable. “Don’t get me wrong,” he said, “she’s a really nice girl, and she’s great to work with, but I’m not really interested in making friends with the people I work with.”
“Why not? Your best friend—which I still don’t understand, by the way—worked with you once upon a time.”
“Josh is a special case,” said Liam. “I didn’t know anything about anything when I met him; I was just a scared kid trying to break into the business so my dad wouldn’t vanish and get me tossed into foster care. Most kids, even at that age, would totally have preyed on the fact that their competition was terrified, but Josh talked me through everything and calmed me down. I met him at a fucking audition, and he helped me get the part. Then, after we became friends, he invited me to sleep over at least once a week so I could get some space from my dad. Kinda hard not to stay best friends with a guy like that.”
“Wow, it’s weird to think of Josh being…nice.”
Liam laughed. “Hey, he brought you here, didn’t he?”
“He actually did more than that,” I said hesitantly. I wasn’t quite sure how to tell Liam I was working for Josh, especially considering how it came about.
Liam, however, saved me the trouble. “I know, Ally.”
I raised an eyebrow. “You know? Like, everything?”
He nodded.
I exhaled sharply. “Josh is such a dick.”
“Yeah, but also not.” He traced a line down the center of my body and I closed my eyes, remembering that night months ago when he first did that very same thing and marveling over the fact that it still gave me chills. “I asked him to take care of you and he did. He’s a good guy when he wants to be.”
I shook my head. “I should’ve known you were behind him hiring me,” I murmured.
“Oh, no, that was actually his idea, if you can believe it,” he said, kissing the top of my head. “Now go call Vanessa while I shower.” He slipped out of bed and padded over to the bathroom, leaving me alone with my phone and no excuses.
I took a deep breath and dialed her number. It went straight to voicemail; no surprise there. But I refused to give up. I tried her cell two more times, and when she didn’t pick up, I called her house. Her mom picked up after the second ring.
“Hi, Mrs. Park, it’s Ally.”
“Ally! We haven’t seen you in so long!”
“I’m sorry about that, Mrs. Park. I’ve been working. Gotta make money for college somehow!”
“You should try acting,” she suggested. “I can’t understand why they pay so much money, but they do.”
I winced, hoping Van wasn’t in the room listening.
Her parents never bothered to hide the fact that they thought acting required zero talent. “I’ll keep that in mind. Is Van there?”
She must have covered the receiver, because when she shrilly called Vanessa’s name and announced that I was on the phone, the sound came through muffled. I could just barely hear a response—obviously Van was home—and then Mrs. Park sighed and informed me that Vanessa couldn’t come to the phone right now.
Okay, fine, if that was how Van wanted to play it. “Would you mind just giving her a message for me, then? Can you just tell her I said ‘ukelele’? Yes, like the instrument.” I waited a minute, and then Mrs. Park came back.
“She says she’ll call you from her cell phone.”
“Thank you. I’ll see you soon, I’m sure.”
“I hope so, Ally.” We hung up, and my phone started to ring again ten seconds later.
“Is this for real or are you just trying to get me to talk to you?” she demanded as soon as I answered the phone.
“Do you seriously think I’d cry ‘ukelele’?” I demanded, genuinely offended. “I’m happy to send you picture messages of the condom wrappers, if you’d like.”
“That won’t be necessary, thanks.” She paused. “So, who was it?”
“Van! Do you really think I’d lose my virginity to some random guy? It was Liam! Of course it was Liam.”
She was silent again, and I was afraid that somehow that was the wrong answer. But then, in a voice tinged with a cross between anticipation and impatience, she said, “So, are you gonna tell me how it was or what?”
I laughed as relief flowed over me. “It was really, really good,” I told her. “It hurt a tiny bit, but not as much as I thought it would.” I dropped my voice. “He is so good at…um, tuning the ukulele, it’s not normal. And don’t even get me started on how good he is at playing it.”
“Alexandra Mabel Duncan, you are quite the scandalous woman! And why are you whispering? Is he there now?”
“He’s in the shower,” I confessed.
“The plot thickens! So are you in New York or is he here?”
“I’m in New York.” I filled her in on my new job as Josh’s assistant, and allowed her a minute of fake retching noises in response before we shifted the conversation back to me and Liam.
“Does this mean you guys are back together?”
“It seems that way, although now of course we have the whole distance issue to deal with.”
“So you’re definitely going to Columbia, then?”
“Of course I’m going to Columbia,” I said, even though the idea gave me butterflies, and not the good kind. “When was I ever not going to Columbia?”
“I don’t know. I kinda thought that between everything with your dad and things working out with Liam, you might stay.”
“Ah, but I haven’t told you the best news of all yet.” I filled her in on my dad’s miraculous development, and from there we moved on to talking about how things were with her parents, which transitioned into talking about how work on her movie was going, and then before I knew it, Liam was standing in front of me, wearing nothing but a towel, looking utterly amused and mind-blowingly hot, drops of water dripping from dark hair onto his broad, tanned shoulders.
I lifted my shoulders in a “Yeah, yeah, girls can chat on the phone forever” shrug, but I couldn’t help the smile that spread across my face at the sight of him. It felt like everything was finally falling into place…and then it hit me that
I was about to leave it all. The smile drooped, and I turned away from Liam.
“Hey, Van—”
“He’s out of the shower?”
“Yeah, and we were, um, talking about spending his birthday together. Like, out, maybe.”
“Sounds like fun. Enjoy, and wish him a happy birthday for me.”
“No, Van, like out out, like where people can see us—”
“I got it, A. Like I said, enjoy. We’ll figure the rest out later, okay?”
“Okay.” I paused as I turned to ask Liam if he could give me another minute, but he’d already disappeared back into the bathroom to give us our privacy. “Listen, Van, before I go, I just wanna say, I really am sorry. For everything. I should’ve told you immediately when Liam and I got together, I should’ve been honest about how much I hated the whole publicity stunt the second I realized I couldn’t handle it, and I definitely should’ve taken your advice and stayed away from Nate.”
“Eh, let’s just say this was definitely not all your fault. Calling you jealous of me and Liam was a really cheap shot, and I’m sorry I said it. I know you’re not.”
“I don’t know, I guess I sort of was, or maybe am. I don’t know. Not of your relationship or that you’re famous or anything,” I added, “but I guess about the fact that you guys…make sense.”
Van bit out a laugh. “It takes more than a shared profession to make a couple make sense, A. If I’m being perfectly honest, I’m the one who was jealous. Doing the whole fake thing with Liam, especially in front of you, just reminded me how single I am. And at the party, you guys were just being so cute and couple-y and happy, and I think it put me over the edge. I’m sorry I kissed him in front of Holly. That was a stupid and bitchy thing to do. Frankly, I’m glad it’s all over. Forgive me?”
“Please, like there’s really a question of that.”