“Do you like the color? It’s Perseus’s, for the film.”
“I like yours better, but I can deal. It feels the same.” She grinned devilishly, then rolled on top of him, straddling his hips. “So how long do we have?” As she spoke, she slowly ran her finger down his well-developed chest in a zigzag pattern.
Will shuddered under her touch. “My flight leaves at ten fifteen tomorrow morning. What do you want to do until then?” he asked, raising one eyebrow questioningly.
“I have some ideas,” she admitted as she pinned his shoulders with her hands and started to kiss his neck. She continued to kiss him while her hands moved to unbutton his shirt.
He squished his eyes together and cringed, taking in a deep breath and holding it. She kept kissing him, pretending not to notice his reaction, until he forced his way out from under her and pinned her to the bed.
“You know how ticklish I am, and yet, you use it as a tool to take advantage of me.”
She looked up at him with a Cheshire cat smile, and he leaned down to kiss her.
They spent the next two hours getting reacquainted in Sarah’s bedroom. It was dinnertime before they came out for some air.
“Let’s take a walk.”
“You’re breaking up with me for good, aren’t you?” Sarah said jokingly.
“No. After what we just did? What kind of douche lord do you think I am?” He looked at her with mock contempt. “I just want to walk as much as I can before I’m stuck on a plane.”
“I was just kidding, Will.”
“I know. Actually, this break thing isn’t working for me, and I was wondering if you would visit me on set in Greece. You could come with me tomorrow. We’d have the whole flight together. The Greek islands are gorgeous, and I know I could squeeze in some time for you if you come. I don’t want you to miss class or anything, but I want to see you.”
“I’d love to—I want to—but I don’t even have a passport,” she lamented.
“You don’t have a passport? I thought everyone had a passport.”
“Well, I don’t. I never needed one before.”
“So I’m really not going to see you until Christmas.” Disappointment filled his voice.
“Don’t you get any time off for Thanksgiving?”
“It’s only a holiday here in the States. I’m going to be in New Zealand. We’re filming there after Greece, and when we’re on break, I’m booked for a photo shoot. I won’t have time to come home before filming starts again.”
“Are you kidding? You need a better agent, Will!”
“No, Isaac is the best. It wasn’t a problem when he set it up six months ago.”
“I’m going to miss you,” she declared.
“Sarah, you’ll wait for me, right?”
“I don’t know. Do I have a choice?” She skimmed her fingers through the hair on the back of his neck and smiled brightly at him. She thought he was joking, but his expression remained serious.
“You won’t get bored and find another guy?”
“Where is this coming from? Do you doubt my love?” She looked at him with a knot turning in her stomach.
“Well, it’s stupid, I’m sure.”
“Come on, just tell me what’s on your mind,” she said. She laid her head against his shoulder as they walked. It felt so good just to touch him, and she didn’t want anything to come between them.
He sighed. “I saw a picture on the Net a couple of weeks ago—of you and a guy. He had his arm around you and was leaning in inches from your face. You were laughing, and you looked pretty comfortable together. I didn’t recognize him. It looked like it was at a bar,” he finally admitted.
Oh crap. “Me? Are you sure it wasn’t old or Photoshopped?”
“You were wearing my shirt.”
“Oh yeah, I’m going to wear your shirt on a date with another guy. Really?” She knew instantly what day she had worn his shirt, and she knew who the guy was.
He stopped walking and turned to her. “I didn’t say you were on a date. I trust you.” His eyes scoured hers as if searching for the truth.
“Trust? We’re on a break.” He was the one who’d initiated the break. He didn’t have the right to be jealous. It was his idea. Unless…
She glanced at his expression, and what little resolve she had vanished.
He stared at her in disbelief. “I thought you understood that it wasn’t that kind of break. Did you go out with other guys?”
She scrunched her face nervously. This was exactly the reaction she’d hoped he would have, but now she felt ashamed. She never should have listened to her friends.
“The girls told me that’s what a break meant. You date other people while you’re apart. They convinced me that was why you wanted a break—to alleviate your guilt.”
His face wrinkled like he couldn’t believe what she was saying. “You dated other guys?”
“No, not really. The picture must have been from the state fair. Remember, I told you about those guys and how flirty they were at the beer tent. This one guy kept asking me out, and Megan threatened to give him my number because of our break.”
“You didn’t mention that he asked you out.”
“When was I supposed to mention that? We had so little time to talk. It wasn’t a priority.”
“So what the hell does ‘not really’ mean? You went out with him, didn’t you?” he questioned, frustration and anguish building in his voice.
“He and his friends joined us at an outdoor concert at the U. Jeff and all the girls were there. It was just a group thing.”
“Yeah, like our first date.” His voice dripped with disappointment. “Did you kiss him?”
“No,” she exhaled too quickly.
He looked at her skeptically. She wanted him to say something so she would know what he was thinking. But he held silent, as if waiting for her to continue. She knew she couldn’t keep anything from him.
“He tried kissing me, but I started crying,” she admitted, cringing at the truth. “I couldn’t stop crying. He must have thought I was crazy. I just wanted you to be there with me, and it wasn’t you. I wanted you to be kissing me. I love you, and I want to be with you, not anyone else.”
In that moment with the other guy, Sarah realized that she would never again be able to kiss any man other than Will. She couldn’t tell him that, though. She didn’t know what Will was thinking. What if this was a deal breaker? What if he didn’t want her anymore? She felt nauseated that she had let herself get into that situation, and she was afraid that Will would never forgive her. Tears filled her eyes. She looked down, unable to face him.
“No more break, Sarah,” he proclaimed sternly, cupping his hands on her face and turning it to his. “It was just semantics. What more do I have to do to show you how much you mean to me?” He bent down to kiss her, wrapping his arms around her waist. They stood on the sidewalk kissing fervently for several minutes, until a passing car honked at them, pulling them back to the real world.
“So, which one of your friends posted the picture?” asked Will.
“No way. They’d never do that to me. It wasn’t any of them,” she said with conviction.
He smirked, cocking his head.
“No, it wasn’t one of them!”
Giving up with a sigh, Will asked, “Is there anywhere around here to eat?”
“Out?” she asked with surprise, as they had never done anything out in public before—at least on purpose.
“Yeah. Can’t we eat out?”
“Well, no one is going to recognize you here on the street unless they get close, but if we go to a restaurant, that’ll be different. It won’t help me convince people we broke up.”
“Just tell them you had a relapse, like an addiction. Come on, I’m hungry,” he pleaded as he looked at her with big blue puppy dog eyes.
She gave in to his begging charm. “You are an addiction.” Shaking her head, she grinned and added, “There’s a Chinese place not far from here
. We can walk.”
“Lead the way,” he said. He turned his baseball cap around and pulled the bill down over his face. He reached for Sarah’s hand and intertwined his fingers with hers. She smiled up at him, and they set out for the restaurant.
They walked on the old buckling cement sidewalk along the treelined streets. The weather was a perfect seventy-four degrees, and the trees were just starting to change colors. Small patches of vibrant orange, yellow, and red leaves danced among the green ones in the breeze above their heads. Will and Sarah enjoyed the ten-block walk to the small Chinese restaurant. Positioned in Dinkytown, a commercial area of Minneapolis, the restaurant mostly served the University of Minnesota students. It was off the main strip, and Sarah knew it would be less crowded than some of the bigger places to eat.
The food was served family style, so they shared an order of spicy General Tso’s chicken with vegetable lo mein, and they drank hot green tea that came to the table in a small black ceramic teapot. Sarah giggled at Will’s rendition of an old English lady drinking tea with her pinkie finger sticking out. Although the handleless cups clearly were not English, Sarah thought his accent was spot on.
They enjoyed most of their meal before anyone in the restaurant, other than the waitress, had the courage to approach their table. They noticed the gawks and pointing, but no one had the nerve to disturb their meal right away. Slowly, groups of two and three fans at a time approached the table. Sarah was infinitely patient as she watched Will sign autographs and pose for pictures with half of the patrons of the small restaurant. It was such a foreign experience for her that she marveled at how comfortable he looked conversing with these complete strangers.
When a young teen in that awkward stage dragged her twentysomething brother with her to the table, Will turned on the charm. He leaned in close to the girl. Taking her cell phone from her and handing it to Sarah, he said, “See my girlfriend over there?” He looked over at Sarah with a raised eyebrow and placed his arm around the girl’s shoulder. “If she didn’t get so jealous and I weren’t so in love with her, I would definitely tell you how gorgeous I think you are.”
The girl’s smile brightened, showing a mouthful of braces, and Sarah snapped the picture.
Her brother spoke up. “We hate to bother you, but she’s been driving my parents crazy since she spotted you.”
He motioned toward a middle-aged couple sitting about four tables away, and the couple waved. As Sarah handed the phone back to the girl, she glanced up at the blond guy speaking. She recognized him. He was in her social psychology class. She had spoken to him just yesterday, but couldn’t remember his name.
“Hi, Sarah,” the blond guy greeted.
“Hi.” Sarah smiled back, and Will reached across the table, covering Sarah’s hand with his.
“I guess I’ll see you in class on Tuesday,” the blond added as he and his sister walked back to their table—the teen still smiling from ear to ear as she gaped at her phone.
“Who was that?” Will asked with a half joking, half serious expression as he picked up a piece of broccoli with his chopsticks and stuffed it into his mouth.
“You can’t be jealous. I don’t even know his name. He’s in one of my classes. Besides, what kind of sick human being are you? What was she—twelve or thirteen? You’d go to jail.”
“Now she’ll have something to tell her friends. I was going for sweet and irresistible. Did it come off as perverted?”
“It was sweet,” Sarah confessed. She especially liked the part where he admitted being in love with her.
Ghosting a smile and downing the last of the tea in his cup, he glanced over at the teen typing on her phone, probably tweeting the picture, and then scanned the restaurant. Seeing a large number of cell phones in use, they knew they would soon be swamped, so he and Sarah quickly finished up their meal and left before more fans could arrive. They walked back to the house without anyone following them that they could see.
While they walked, Sarah asked, “Aren’t you worried what the executives at the studio will say about us being in the press again?”
He rolled his eyes. “Screw ’em. Filming starts in a couple of days, and I’ve been stunt training for weeks. I doubt that they’ll replace me. It is a sequel, and I was the lead in the first film—the fans demand continuity. Besides, I’m not doing anything that any other twenty-three-year-old male isn’t doing—or wanting to do.” He raised his eyebrows and looked playfully at her.
They made it back to the house and spent some time talking to Sarah’s housemates before disappearing into Sarah’s room.
The next day, when Sarah dropped off Will at the airport, the emptiness left by his absence filled the car. It drained her of all feeling, leaving her raw and numb. She didn’t know how she would make it until December not touching the stubble that lined his jaw by the end of the day, not feeling the warmth of his hand as it intertwined with hers, not staring into his big blue eyes. Sarah didn’t know how she would make it so long, but it was out of her control, and there was nothing she could do to change it. If they were meant to be together, it would all turn out fine.
That afternoon, Sarah’s roommates teased her that she’d had a booty call from Will before he left for filming overseas. Sarah knew it wasn’t like that. It was more than a booty call. Somehow, Sarah and Will’s relationship had progressed with this visit. They had gone out in public together, and he had held her hand walking down the street. He had told a total stranger that she was his girlfriend. It seemed more like they had a normal relationship, and Will wasn’t as tense about people finding out that they were together. The break was over. It was definitely over.
He’d given her a different T-shirt from his vintage collection and taken his Rebel T-shirt to wear on the plane ride. Even though the shirt was clean, he said it still smelled like her, and he wanted to have her scent fill his head on the flight. It made her smile just thinking about it.
Over the next couple of weeks, the Internet was flooded with rumors about another sighting of Jonathan and the Birthday Girl. There were pictures of her and Will at the restaurant, including one of their backsides as they walked down the sidewalk. Fans had overwhelmed the Chinese restaurant shortly after they left, and there was a big write-up about it in the University Press. The gossip columns were full of speculation, and some of the pictures had even made the cover of the supermarket tabloid magazines.
It didn’t take long for the rumors to blow over, though, with Will out of the country and sightings of him with his Demigod costar in Greece. Sarah still had people asking about her involvement with Will; even total strangers pestered her. She mostly reacted by joking about it. She rarely gave a real answer to the inquiries, except to her real friends.
A month passed and then another. Sarah and Will spoke as often as filming and school would allow, but it wasn’t the same as being face-to-face. Christmas was approaching, and they were both looking forward to finally spending some time together. Sarah would have almost a month off for winter break, while Will had only a few weeks off before he was expected to resume filming again back in Los Angeles. They weren’t going to waste a single minute of their time off.
“So what do you think?” Will asked his assistant.
“I’ve seen it before. It’s perfect. She’ll love anything you give her, Jon. Stop sweating the small stuff.”
“Small stuff? Way to calm my nerves. Thanks.” He set Sarah’s gift on the bed next to the suitcase he was packing for his ski trip. “Everything is set for the trip, right?”
“The condo is just sitting there waiting for you.” Leslie handed him the envelope with his boarding pass and itinerary. “I could come with you, if you want. There are four bedrooms, and with only Sarah’s brother and his girlfriend joining you, I’m pretty sure only two of them will be used.”
“That’s all I need, your sarcastic butt following me around. The last three months of tripping over each other not enough for you?”
She laughed.<
br />
“You haven’t seen your family since before filming started. Enjoy the holidays with them while you can. Sarah and I will be just fine without you.” He cocked his head and asked her again. “Everything’s set, right?”
She knew what he meant. Why was she avoiding his question?
“Yes. It’s all on the itinerary. I talked to the guy yesterday. It will go perfectly, and you can thank me when you get back.” She smiled and flipped her blonde hair back as she strode out of his bedroom.
Will grabbed a stack of vintage T-shirts from his closet and set them on the bed. He had just emptied his suitcase this morning, and now he was reloading it. Luckily, he had enough clothes that he didn’t need to worry about doing laundry. He returned to his closet and found two thick sweaters and added them to his suitcase.
Leslie’s head popped back through the doorway. “You’re not bringing your snowboard?”
“No. Sarah only skis. I won’t need it. I’ve got my skis.”
“You’re going to Vail, and you’re not even going to board? Maybe you could teach her? You should bring it.”
He looked at Leslie, shaking his head. “I haven’t seen her since September. It will be a miracle if we hit the slopes more than a couple of times.”
“I’m going to pack it, just in case.” Leslie smiled annoyingly back at him as she plopped down on the bed and cracked open one of the two water bottles in her hands.
“I’m not bringing it.” He scowled. He really needed to get away and spend some quiet time with Sarah—alone.
“You’re cranky today. Too much to drink last night?” She handed him the bottle she had just opened.
He took the bottle and guzzled it until it was empty. The cold water soothed his dry throat. He was definitely off today. Last night’s drinking had dehydrated him.
“Thanks. You should have come with us. It was guys’ night, but you could have come.”
“Why, so your buddies could hit on me all night? And you know Liam would just blab all the details to my ex. No, thank you.”
Between the Raindrops Page 17