“I—I can’t kiss you. Not until the work is done. And then…I’d very much like to kiss you.”
Asher’s eyes went wide against my words. My manager’s advice was echoing in the back of my head, reminding me not to touch Asher before the work was done. He didn’t flinch or pull back, because neither did I. We were frozen, just inches from each other, his eyes blazed on mine—a fire growing between us.
“One of us should move our lips here,” he whispered, the heat of his mouth floating on my lips.
I couldn’t move as his eyes scanned mine.
“Do you need it to be me?” he finally asked.
“I—I really do…” I said, achingly, desperate to just fill the gap between our mouths.
He leaned back and exhaled, adjusting his jeans and taking a long sip of water. He turned back to me, seeing that I was still frozen in place.
“Do you want to hear the song? I worked on ‘See You if I Get There’ this afternoon, and it’s almost done,” I found myself saying.
“Right now?”
“Tonight? Later? My friend, Summer, grabbed my guitar from my apartment, so I need to go back to her place to retrieve it, but…”
He shot me a warm smile.
“Mags, I’m not going to be that guy.”
“What guy?”
“I don’t want you to feel like I’m taking advantage of you, in any way, ever.”
We had always played on an even field in our relationship. But Asher and I were in two different galaxies now—he had an Oscar, and I didn’t have health insurance. When I was with him all those years ago, all he ever did was lift me up, cheer me on, and want me to succeed. This time didn’t appear to be any different. I wasn’t a woman feeling pressured by a big movie star who could make or break her career. I was a woman openly flirting with her big movie star ex-boyfriend who could make or break her career.
“I want to play you the song. Nothing more.”
I want to play you the song and run my nails along your naked spine.
“I—I’m trying to figure out how to say this without sounding like a complete asshole,” he said, holding my eyes. He leaned forward, speaking lowly so only I could hear, with his arm brushing against mine. “I don’t know how I will be able to go home with you and pull back from your lips if you don’t pull back first.”
I circled the rim of my wineglass with my hand, watching his chest rise and fall under his T-shirt. I moved my hand to the stem of the glass, gripping hard to keep from reaching out and tugging him toward me.
“Are we really this bad at self-control?” I asked, my voice cracking.
“To be fair, we never had to practice self-control,” he said.
“That’s…kind of true,” I said.
I took a sip of my wine to hide my reddening face as he raised his brows.
“Kind of?”
“I actually—” I closed my mouth.
Asher leaned in farther, eyes wide, a smile on his face.
“You what?”
“Last day of camp, our second year. After color war, I really wanted to—you know.”
He shook his head in a laugh. “Why didn’t you say something?”
“Because I knew you weren’t ready to have sex yet.”
He smirked into his drink. “Oh, I was ready.”
“Shut up,” I said, shocked as I swatted his arm. I shook my head at his wide smile. “You know what though, I’m glad we didn’t that night.”
“I think we got a lot of things right,” he said, with eyes cautiously scanning mine. I nodded, my chest pounding as he shifted in his seat, sitting up taller. “Look, Mags, I don’t want you to regret anything here. And the only regret I would have would be any you might carry.”
I stared at him harder, trying to see the shoreline past Asher’s eyes, which seemed to carry the tide. I wanted to lose myself in him, but instead, I scooted back into the booth.
“It’s strange…” I breathed, shaking my head.
“What is?”
My eyes floated over his face, wowed by the way the amber light cast a glow over the curve of his top lip.
“You became the kind of man I knew you’d become,” I said.
He tilted his head.
“Is that a compliment?”
“Asher, it’s the best compliment I’ve ever given anyone.”
He held my eyes for a long moment, then looked down at the table with a big grin. No part of keeping my mouth from meeting his was a safe bet. At the same time, sharing a room with Asher wrapped my heart in something it hadn’t felt in years: a safety net.
26
ALMOST SIXTEEN
I LOOKED AROUND, MY BIG eyes taking in the most immaculate living room I’d ever seen. It smelled as clean as it looked, like Windex and ocean air. Everything inside the Reyes mid-century-modern ranch house in San Diego was stark white and glass—spotless—with the only brush of color coming from the outside—the ocean’s horizon meeting the La Jolla shore through floor-to-ceiling windows. Even Asher’s long-haired dachshund, sniffing my shoes, smelled brand-new.
“You’ve been in this home since you were seven?”
Asher rolled my suitcase past the living room with one hand, leading me down a narrow hallway. He glanced back to see my scrunched-up face.
“Yeah…why?”
Asher had moved to California from the Philippines when he was seven, and it was as if every object had been unboxed, set in its proper place, and never touched again. Everything in his house was just waiting to be worn well—it was unsettling.
“It just looks…very new,” I said, with eyes on a blank white wall—where a lone, tiny hole sat at eye level.
A nail used to live there, probably holding something rich with color. Maybe art. Maybe a family photo.
“My mom likes things a certain way,” Asher noted.
“Was she always like that?”
He stopped in front of a closed door at the end of the hallway, silently shaking his head.
“Oh,” I said quietly.
I guess surrounding herself with emotionless objects was an easier way to live after heartbreak. I didn’t know tragedy, but I surmised I’d be the type of person to make a shrine out of the memories, to wear a dead person’s clothes, to hold on to their presence long after they were gone. I was one extreme, and this was another. I wasn’t sure if either approach was healthy.
Asher opened his bedroom door, and my shoulders dropped. I exhaled, beaming, loving it instantly, just like I had loved him instantly. I walked inside, my hands and eyes running over the worn spines of novels on the bookshelf, a collection of shells and geodes, framed classic movie posters on the wall—Casablanca, The Graduate. The room smelled like Asher: musk and citrus—woods and wildflowers.
“I can’t believe I’m in your bedroom,” I said, standing in the center of the room, giddy. My eyes met his—then floated to the queen-sized bed behind his body.