“For starters, your imagination.”
I clear my throat, realizing I almost dropped the ball on flirting with Ryan Pierce. He just gave me another chance, and I’m not about to mess this one up.
“No hands, you say?” I try to be all calm and seductive, but I’m not convinced it’s working. “Well, I can’t reach you from all the way over there.”
“We can fix that.” He stands and gestures to the open space on my side of the booth. “May I?”
“I suppose I can make room.” I scooch over the smallest bit. “Take a seat.”
He sits, the scent of him enough to send my stomach into a rush of nerves. Those brown eyes melt mine as he leans close. “Go on, you can reach me now.”
The drop of foam is all but gone by now since he ran his tongue over his lips. Even so, I think he might still want me to kiss him—but this isn’t right; we agreed to be friends. Not go on dates.
“Let me give you a hint.” Ryan leans toward me, his mouth balanced a hair’s breadth from mine.
I find myself drawn toward him, tilting, my lips falling toward his, until—
“More coffee?” the waitress asks loudly.
Ryan, to his credit, doesn’t look at all embarrassed. On the other hand, I look like a red hot chili pepper.
“I think I’m good.” I push my mug forward and turn to Ryan. “I should head home, now, anyway. You said you have an early morning.”
“I don’t have an early morning,” Ryan says, pulling his credit card out of his wallet and handing it to the waitress. “I just wanted some time alone with you instead of being crammed like sardines into a bar and going hoarse trying to talk over the music.”
“Well, I do have class tomorrow,” I tell him, trying not to show my surprise. “And I’m fine to drive now, really. I should be going.”
“Thanks, Dianne,” Ryan says pointedly to the waitress, who is standing there listening to us with unabashed curiosity. “That’ll be all.”
“Sorry,” I say once she’s gone. “I don’t think she likes me much.”
“She’s just not used to seeing me here with anyone else. Whenever I’m staying with Lawrence—my brother—I make it a point to come here. Besides my brother and Lilia, I don’t know many people, so I tend to come here alone.”
“Oh, I’m sorry.”
“No, I like it. Sometimes I need to get out of the house—it’s not my house, and it’s exhausting always being a guest. Sometimes it’s a relief to just sit in the corner. Nobody recognizes me here. It was actually Dianne who gave me her copy of Harry Potter when she heard I hadn’t yet read it.”
My heart both warms and constricts at the thought of Ryan sitting here alone, in the corner, with nothing but a book for company. For some reason, the image carries both a sadness and a peacefulness with it.
“Ready?”
While I lose myself in a daydream, Ryan signs the check, leaves a twenty on the table, and stands. “I can bring you home.”
“Your home is fine,” I say. Then I quickly clarify, “I mean, to my car, which is at your home—or your brother’s home, whatever. You know what I mean.”
“There’s an extra guest bed if you’d like to stay.” That arm of his sneaks around my waist and he toys with the end of my shirt. “You’re welcome to crash.”
His hand, which is moving closer and closer toward my girl parts, is sending contradictory signals from what his mouth is telling me. His mouth is saying I can crash at his place as one of the guys while his hand is pretty damn close to getting in my pants. My stomach lights on fire, and I realize that if he tiptoed those fingers a few inches farther down, I wouldn’t mind all that much.
Then Dianne, the waitress, gives me a scathing look as we leave the restaurant, and I’m brought back to reality. I’m Andi Peretti, struggling comic and delivery girl, and he’s…well, he’s Ryan.
“I’m fine to drive,” I tell him. “Thank you for the offer, though.”
Ryan pauses right outside the diner, holding the door open for me. “I know you’re fine to drive.” He winks then pulls me close, his arm low on my hip. “But that wasn’t the question.”
There are those damn mixed signals again. If he doesn’t stop, I might just stay over…in his bed…without pants.
CHAPTER 16
Andi
“Were you born funny?” Ryan asks as we near his house. “Or is it something you’ve practiced?”
“Funny?” I smile. We’ve spent most of the ride home chatting about the comedy industry. Whether Ryan is actually curious or just trying to make small talk, I can’t quite tell. “Being funny is way harder than it looks.”
“I’ll bet.”
“I’ve written thousands of words, practiced hundreds of hours of standup, all to whittle my routine down to a ten minute punch that will hopefully make one person laugh.”
“I’d love to see your bit.”
I shake my head. “I’m too self-conscious.”
“You just said you’ve practiced for hundreds of hours.”
“That doesn’t mean it gets any easier.”
“Sort of like hockey, then.”
“What do you mean?” I frown. “Don’t you just use that little stick thingy to shoot the little black thingy toward the goal?”
“You think hockey is hitting a little black thing with a stick.” He laughs, a sound that warms my heart. “I think being a comedian is saying funny things and making people laugh.”
“Point taken,” I say, a smile curving up my lips.
“I’ve practiced for hundreds of hours, skated for decades, dribbled, shot pucks, studied strategy—all of it, for most of my life, and it all comes down to a few minutes, most of the time. Either I choke on the winning goal or I nail it; there’s not much of an in between.”
“Huh.” I sit, still pondering his words. “I’ve never thought of it like that before, but standup is the same. At the end of the day, when I get in front of the crowd, I either nail it or I bomb completely, all in a few minutes, despite the millions of words I’ve written to get there.”
“It looks easy to everyone else, until they go to try it.”
“Exactly!”
I’d never bonded over my passion with anyone except Lisa. It is so hard for my accounting friends or my business-oriented dad to understand it at all. The hours of preparation, the work that may never amount to anything, the pressure of those moments when it’s finally time to perform, the sheer adrenaline of knowing I killed it onstage.
Ryan understands completely. I can feel it, both in his words and in the way he talks about hockey. We might be from different worlds, but we speak the same language.
It’s then that Ryan parks his brother’s BMW behind my car. I notice he leaves plenty of space. I also notice my bumper sitting on the sidewalk. It’s cute; he’s put a little blanket over it, almost as if to keep the thing warm.
“Oh,” I say. “I’m really sorry about that.”
“It’s our new art installation,” he says. “I like it.”
“I bet your brother doesn’t.”
“I’ve convinced him to leave it for a while, until we can get you sorted—hopefully with a new car.”