After I Was His Read online

  In fact, I don’t want to be best friends with him.

  But a conversation or two that wasn’t so strained would be nice.

  Wes cocks his head to the side. “You want me to watch a movie with you?”

  “I got you a beer.” I hold it up. “And I’ve furnished myself with my favorite Friday night beverage. I thought we could watch a movie together, if you didn’t have any other plans.”

  He runs a hand through his hair. “Uh...” I must look like a hopeful puppy dog, because he relents. “Sure. Let me change out of these clothes.”

  “Change for as long as you want,” I say, and realize a beat too late that it sounds like I’m coming on to him. Who knows? Maybe I am.

  He gives me a look that’s half-grin, half what are you saying, and retreats to the bedroom. I hear the door close and he emerges a few minutes later wearing black sweatpants and a heather gray t-shirt that looks so soft I want to bury my face in it.

  “Thanks for the beer.” He picks it up off the coffee table and I take a sip of wine. He cracks it open as I move to the other side of the couch. We both sit down on opposite ends.

  I gather the remote. Screen on. Netflix on. “I thought we could watch this.” It’s a comedy from earlier in the year, something about three guys and a bachelor party that goes awry. It should be a decent middle ground, if Wes is the kind of person who likes to laugh once in a while. I’m not sure if he is, but I know he won’t put up with a romcom, and I’m not in the mood to watch people be slaughtered for two hours.

  “I heard about this,” he says, voice even, and takes a sip of his beer. “Supposed to be funny.”

  “I’ll take that as a yes.”

  It is funny. Not howl-with-laughter funny, but I laugh twice in the first thirty minutes and even hear the low rumble of Wes’s chuckle at some of the shenanigans. The guys at the bachelor party end up at a resort in Mexico, nobody remembering how, and that’s when the movie changes. There’s a beautiful girl at the resort—isn’t there always?—and all three men drool over her. The hot one gets the first chance at her, one night in the pool, her wearing an itty-bitty bikini and him wearing swim trunks that leave too much to the imagination. He says something, she says something, and then they’re lip-locked in the middle of the pool.

  And I’m here with Wes, watching. They’re really going at it on the screen. I’m not embarrassed about sexuality, or a hot kiss, but heat rises to my cheeks nonetheless. Wes is silent on the other end of the couch. No. I’m not doing silence.

  “Wow. He must have his tongue all the way down her throat.”

  “I haven’t found another place yet,” he answers, eyes glued to the screen.

  “You are really good at changing the subject.”

  He glances over at me, honey-streaked eyes searching. Is he afraid I’ll kick him out onto the street right now? “I wanted to let you know.”

  “So it’s going to be more than a month?” That’s what he’s saying, but I want confirmation.

  He nods crisply and turns his attention back toward the TV. “I’ll stay out of your way.”

  “Yes. We’ll both stay out of each other’s way.” Out of the corner of my eye, I can see him looking at me. “What?”

  “You’re a puzzle, Whitney.”

  “No, I’m not. I’m completely upfront about everything.”

  He laughs, a genuine sound, and the tenor of his voice sends pleasure buzzing down to the base of my spine. “Why’d you invite me to watch a movie if avoiding each other is working for you?”

  Now I must be red. “I don’t know. Maybe I only said that out of habit. I don’t necessarily want to be in your way, either. You have a right to your own life, like I have a right to mine, but I was hoping that we wouldn’t have to work quite so hard not to see each other, since we’re living in the same apartment, and—”

  “Whit.”

  The name on his lips sounds so familiar, so natural. “Yeah?”

  “I get it.” He clears his throat. “I wouldn’t mind a casual conversation after work most days either.”

  He doesn’t say anything more after that.

  The texts start coming in on my phone when the movie is almost done, and I’m half-relieved to see that it’s my friend Alyssa. She wants me to meet her at Vino. I don’t want to turn her down.

  I want to stay here and get to know more about Wes. I want to sit here with him and watch another movie, and then another, both of us looking forward, because I think that might be the only way he’ll talk to me.

  Plus, the gray t-shirt is doing a number on my lady bits. When the credits roll, I look down to discover that I’ve got my legs crossed tightly enough to suffocate a man. If I keep them clenched together, I definitely won’t leap over to the other side of the couch and straddle Wes. That would be Wedding Search Two.

  Not going to happen.

  I get up and stretch my arms over my head, feeling his eyes on me. “That was funny.”

  “It was.” He stands up too, wandering over to the kitchen.

  “Some friends asked me to go out,” I say to his back. “So I’ll see you later.”

  “I won’t wait up,” he says, and laughs at his own joke.

  “Smartass.” It’s a step down from asshole. His shoulders are still shaking with laughter when I go past the kitchen to my bedroom.

  It takes five minutes to go from movie-night-in to wine-night-out, and when I get back to the living room, Wes is settled in on the couch, flipping through Netflix with another beer in his hand. It would be so easy to sit down next to him, to watch whatever he’s watching.

  But I don’t do it.

  Wes and I aren’t going to be like that. Cordial friends, maybe. Roommates. Nothing more.

  My phone buzzes with another text.

  Alyssa: You on your way?

  Whitney: Coming now!

  “Bye,” I call over my shoulder as I head out the door.

  “Bye,” Wes says, and something in his voice makes me hesitate. Is he going to say more?

  I wait five seconds, then slam the door jauntily behind me and make my way to Vino.

  10

  Wes

  I was right.

  Living with Whitney is excruciating.

  It was bad enough trying to avoid her. Mornings were easy enough during the week. I left early, when she was still in the shower. Evenings, I stayed late.

  The less I saw her, the better. The less I saw her, the less I had to see those little flashes of openness in her face. The less I had to picture those lips on mine. The less I had to work at pushing her away. She’s one of those women who’s so damn enthusiastic about everything, so confident, that you can’t get them to leave you alone. Give them an inch, and they’ll take a mile. Whitney can’t come that close.

  She can’t find out what it’s really like inside my head.

  I thought I could handle watching a movie with her. I thought it would be easy as hell to sit there on the couch with a cold beer in hand, staring at some raunchy comedy.

  I was wrong.

  I could hardly follow the plot of the damn thing, if there was a plot, because all I could think about was her. We were only separated by a few feet. I could have reached out and touched her. I could have done more than that. If she hadn’t gone out with her girlfriends...

  I run a hand over my face and let out a long breath. It’s time to work.

  I can’t sit here focusing on Whitney. Running all the new things I’ve learned about her through my mind. She works for an insurance agency, but she wants to be an actress. It partially explains her sharp wit, the way she always rolls with the punches. It doesn’t explain why I find this so fucking sexy.

  “Something on your mind, Sullivan?”

  I spin around in my chair and face Greg, who is paused in the aisle outside my cubicle, brows knitted together with what looks like concern.

  Whitney. Whitney is on my mind. Her relentless energy. The way words pour out of her, faster and faster, when she gets going. The way her mouth feels on mine. This ridiculous desire I have to know what makes her this way, to know what she’s hiding.

  People are always hiding something.

  Greg takes my too-long pause as an invitation. “Troubles on the home front?”

  I smile in spite of myself. “You mean, with my roommate?”

  He waggles his eyebrows. “Yes. Your roommate. Is she giving you trouble?”

  Yes. In all sorts of ways. Namely that every time I look at her, I have the strangest urge to draw her into a battle that we’ll start with words and end with bodies colliding in the private space we’re going to be sharing for at least the next six weeks.

  “Nah. She’s fine. Just making sure I’ve got everything lined up for this client.” It’s half a lie. I was doing that before one of the women in the office walked by wearing a pink t-shirt that reminded me of a dress Whitney has.

  “You need some help?”

  I hate asking for help. I hate admitting I need it. But more than that, I hate talking about Whitney. It seems gross, a violation somehow. “If you’d take a look—” I swivel back around to my computer screen and lift one of the papers from my desk. “Right here.”

  Greg is a helper, and he dives right in. I do my best to act like I’m paying attention.

  The air in the city smells like sunshine, if you can ignore the general scent of piss and garbage that runs underneath everything. I do my best to focus on the fresh air on the walk home. I try out some bullshit technique that some roving therapist gave me after the incident in the Humvee. Being aware of my surroundings, but without focusing on the negative details.

  Sunshine it is.

  I wish I didn’t have this fucking headache.

  My head throbs lightly with every step, and eve
n though it’s sunny, even though it’s warm without being oppressive, I can feel my mood plummeting. Outside, by the traffic, it’s too unpredictable. I want to wrap my hands around all the cars and shove them into order, silence the cab drivers shouting at each other.

  On the last corner before the apartment, some asshole runs a red light and almost gets nailed, the brakes screeching. They’re shitty brakes and the metal-on-metal scream makes my heart beat faster, adrenaline running its fingers up the length of my spine.

  The pressure in my temples intensifies.

  What the fuck is wrong with me? A car braking, narrowly missing another car, and a man shouting at the top of his lungs, his speech laced with a foreign accent, and I’m breaking out into a sweat that’s hardly appropriate for a gentle spring day in Manhattan.

  I clench my fist around the handle of my bag and watch the walk signal across the street. Living here, like this, was supposed to make this better.

  It’s getting worse every day.

  I’ve almost got it under control by the time I step into the apartment. All the lights are off and it’s blessedly dark. With the locks shut behind me, the pounding pressure in my chest eases a little bit.

  I put my bag on the table and take a breath.

  Whitney is silhouetted against the big window behind the television, mouthing words that I assume are written on the paper she’s clutching with both hands. She must have another audition. When she’s not running out for wine with her friends, or inviting me to casual movie nights where we sit on the couch and try not to stray into uncomfortable territory, she’s practicing for auditions.

  She makes a hideous face, teeth bared, mouth stretched open.

  I can’t help myself. “You’ll never get the part with that face.”

  Whitney glances over, her face neutral, not at all surprised to see me. “It was good enough for you to kiss,” she says dismissively, then goes right back into the hideous expression. “So I’d shut my mouth, if I were you.”

  “Maybe you should shut it for me.” Oh, my God. It’s like the headache has dissolved the filter that normally keep idiocy like this from coming out of my mouth.

  Whitney looks across at me, eyebrows raised. “Yes, because that worked out so well for me before.”

  “Didn’t it? I went to the wedding.”

  She scrunches up her face into a smile. “And thank goodness, because you were a joy and a delight to all involved.”

  “Please. You liked it.”

  “Are you talking about the part at the reception where you were an ass to me?” Whitney’s tone is still light, but there’s a seriousness to her words that takes me aback. “I wouldn’t say that I liked it. I liked that you decided to be there for Summer.” She looks back down at the paper. I’d bet anything she’s pretending to read it. “As for the rest...” Whitney shrugs.

  “Are you serious?” I laugh out loud, bewildered, and suddenly I don’t care about boundaries. I don’t care about pushing her away. No, I want to draw her in closer. I want to know what’s really going on in that head of hers. Hot and cold. Sarcastic and vulnerable. Which one is the real Whitney? “I saw how you looked at me the day I moved in.”

  “You were mistaken,” she says primly. “I was hot for that rent money.” Whitney moves into the living room, her face shadowed. She’s like a magnet. I step out of the entryway, stand at the edge of the couch.

  “You’re a liar.”

  “You wouldn’t know.”

  Whitney’s facing off with me, arms crossed, paper crumpled in her hand. A slow smile spreads across her face. “What is this, Wes? What kind of day has it been?”

  “What kind of day?”

  “Yeah.” She shifts her weight from one foot to the other, and the movement of her hips is so distracting it’s hard to haul my eyes away from the curve of her waist and back up to her eyes. “What kind of day would make you come home like this? Such aggressive jokes.”

  Whitney grins at me, and I have no idea what the hell is going on, but I know what I want it to be.

  “Such aggressive lying,” I counter. “I saw how you looked at me that first day I moved here, and I saw how you looked at me when we were watching that stupid movie.”

  “That movie was funny.”

  She steps toward me and I take a breath. The air in here is light and clean, like she’s opened a window, and on top of it is the scent of her, fresh and bright and utterly intoxicating.

  “If you know I’m lying, then prove it.” Whitney lifts her chin. I could reach out and take it in my hand right now. “One kiss. Right now.”

  We’re way over the line. Way.

  “I don’t fuck around with roommates.”

  She takes another step closer. “I’m not fucking around.”

  We are inches apart.

  “That’s not true, and you know it.”

  Whitney cocks her head to the side, her dark eyes endless in the cool light of the living room. “I don’t have anything to prove.” She raises one shoulder an inch, then lowers it.

  Every inch of me wants to close that infuriating distance between us and take her, right here on the floor. There’s nothing stopping us. She’s not about to walk down the aisle in professional makeup and a bridesmaid’s dress that has to be spotless. The door is locked. The only thing I’d be crossing is the line we drew in the sand.

  “Good,” I tell her. “I’m late to meet someone anyway.”

  11

  Whitney

  Absolutely none of my attention should be on Wes Sullivan.

  Almost all of it is.

  It’s stupid. It’s really fucking stupid, because I have a life to lead. A wonderful, glorious life, full of auditions that will almost certainly lead to me getting rejected and sales calls that, thirty percent of the time, result in no benefit for either party involved.

  I have no idea what happened yesterday. It was Thursday. We’ve lived together for two Thursdays, and at first, when he turned his back on me and walked out, I thought he was lying about meeting with someone.

  Once my heart stopped pounding, I smoothed out the audition script and forced myself to think clearly. He left last Tuesday after work too, for about an hour and a half. Never said where he was going. He doesn’t have to say where he’s going, obviously, but clearly, he has some kind of standing obligation.

  I turn it over in my mind while I walk down to Vino, the noontime sun warm on my shoulders. It’s warm enough to get away with a light jacket or a sweater. I love the sun.

  But I hate this time of year. The way the light angles down onto the sidewalks, sweet and fresh, makes my heart ache. It weighs heavy inside my chest.

  As much as I don’t want to spend time praising Eva Lipton for her success as a writer when I, Whitney Coalport, haven’t so much as landed a callback this month, it’ll be a good distraction.

  Hopefully.

  I stop outside Vino and put a smile on that doesn’t match how heavy and down I feel, then pull open the door and rush inside. Fake it ‘til you make it. That’s acting. That’s life.

  When Eva and I were in high school together, she was as dramatic as I was, only about books. She was obsessed with books. She couldn’t get enough of them. She made friends with the school librarian the instant she stepped foot in the high school. Eva had an enormous mane of curly red hair, braces, and freckles for days.

  I almost don’t recognize her when she stands up from the table she’s snagged at Vino, beaming at me.

  “Oh, my God,” she says, her voice a lower, more mature version of the chipmunk-like chatter she used to spout all day long about what she was reading. I didn’t mind it back then because I talked just as much about what we were doing in theater. Theater made my soul sing. Thankfully, most of the tapes I had from our old shows are long gone, because the actual singing could reasonably be described as atrocious. “Whitney! I can’t believe it. You’re so glamorous.”

  Eva holds her arms out for a hug, and as I go in for it, I look her up and down as surreptitiously as possible. She’s taller than I remembered, about my height, and all the baby fat that clung to her face as a teenager is gone. She’s tamed her frizzy red curls into a magnificent auburn waterfall spilling over her shoulders, the pieces at her face held back with an elegant clip. We hug, and it’s warm and natural, and then I push her back so I can look at her again.