I feel like a life-sized dress-up doll as I model my outfit. This is due to me forcing my best friend and roommate, Lana, to help me choose the perfect ensemble for tonight.
Her perfectly shaped brows knit together as she looks me over from head to toe.
“For sure, this is it,” she tells me. “Give me a twirl, girl.”
I laugh and then do three pirouettes, leftover moves from the dozen years I spent in ballet class.
“Brava,” Lana laughs as she claps. “The deal is sealed. That’s the outfit, for sure.”
“It’s not too slutty?”
Lana rolls her expressive brown eyes. “You’re wearing leggings, ankle boots and an off the shoulder top. I can’t see your tits and your ass is covered. It’s at least two steps above hooker on the corner,” she assures me.
Since I’ve gone through no fewer than a dozen outfit changes, I’m relieved we finally agree on the same one.
“Good, good,” I laugh. “I don’t want to send the wrong message or anything.”
“Hot damn, darlin’,” she drawls with a fake southern twang. “This outfit definitely says you want Cole to pluck your strings before making you the meat in a sandwich. That’s the message you want to send, right?”
I make an inelegant noise. “You jerk,” I grumble jokingly.
“I’m kidding, of course. You look fabulous and in no way resemble a lady of the evening,” she assures me.
My nerves about this night are making me nuts. Turning around, I look back over my shoulder at my outfit.
“Are we one hundred percent positive this outfit doesn’t make my ass look fat?”
“You’re a crazy person,” she huffs. “We just agreed this was it and now you’re second-guessing again. You look hot. Deal with it. We both know that ass is like a beacon to men who like women who aren’t sticks.”
“Jerkface,” I screech, “did you just call me fat?”
“Yep. You heard it here first” she says dramatically. “No, bitch! I didn’t call you fat. You know you’re sexy. If you’d stop this whole being a heterosexual thing, I’d be all over your ass.”
I can’t contain the giggle snort that comes out. “Could you imagine? We’d be the worst couple in the history of couples.”
“It’s true,” she agrees. “You’d try to get me to watch those godawful fifties shows you’re addicted to and I’d be leaving clothes and shit all over your room. Plus, your crazy ass would want to cuddle.” Lifting her hand, she pretends to stick her finger down her throat and then acts out a gagging motion. “That alone would give me hives. We’d probably kill each other within thirty days.”
Looking at her propped next to the mountain of clothes on my bed, I nod. The mess drives me nuts, as does tardiness. Lana is perpetually late and is also a total slob. We’re yin to each other’s yang.
“Probably more like three days,” I say dryly. “Your need to leave a breadcrumb trail of clothing behind you is a deal breaker for sure.”
Flipping her blonde hair dramatically, she sighs. “Makes my room feel homier,” she retorts.
After rolling my eyes at her, I start transferring discarded wardrobe choices back into my closet. Once everything is back where it belongs, I plop down on my now clean bed, next to Lana, and drop a kiss on her cheek.
“Thanks for putting up with me. I know you hate all this fashion craziness.”
“Yeah, yeah,” she chuckles. “I like to humor you every once in a while cause I know life’s tough when your best friend is a fashion hating lesbian.”
I jokingly elbow her side. “You don’t hate fashion. You’re just faithfully devoted to the color black and your shit kicking boots.”
“Could be worse,” she agrees. “I could still be stuck in my flannel phase.”
I shudder dramatically. “The lumberjack lesbian thing was a fashion low point.”
“Almost as bad as your white-pink lipstick and too tight jean phase,” she quips.
The shudder I let out at her words is real. I’m just thankful she didn’t mention—
“Plus,” she continues. “You were Oompa Loompa orange. It was a mess, girl.”
I groan and smack my forehead.
“What’re the rules about bringing up my former orange status?”
Lana rolls her eyes. “Never, ever bring it up.”
“You just broke the rules,” I point out.
“Yeah, but you’re not thinking about your double team… erm, I mean date, now are you?”
It’s not the funniest thing she’s ever said but I’m so keyed up, it strikes me as hilarious. Clutching my stomach, I howl with laughter.
“It’s…not…a date,” I argue through my laughter.
She gives me a look like I’ve just attempted to sell her something stupid. “We’ll see,” she retorts dryly.
Worried I may have smudged my makeup while laughing, I get up and hurry over to my mirror. Relieved to find no damage done, I grab my lip gloss for one more application. The sound of the doorbell stops me dead in my tracks. Swallowing nervously, I spin and face Lana.
“He’s here,” I whisper.
“Oh my God,” she whispers back dramatically as she stands up. “Is that what the ding dong sound meant? Here this whole time I thought it meant it was time to eat a donut. No wonder my ass is getting so fat. Fuck my life.”
I shake my head and call her a nut job as she wanders off to let Cole in. Not wanting to leave him waiting, I quickly apply the lip gloss before hauling it out to the living room.
I step out of the hallway as Lana opens the door. When she lets Cole into the apartment, I drink in the way his eyes flash when he looks me over. I know my face is flushed when he looks up and meets my gaze, but I can’t find it in me to care.
“Hi.”
“Hey,” he responds huskily.
We stare at each other silently until Lana clears her throat and I remember that Cole and I aren’t alone in the world.
“Oh, wow,” I squeak nervously. “Sorry! This is my roommate, Lana. Lana, this is Cole. My…um…boss?”
He gives me a funny look before he turns his attention to Lana.
“I’m not her boss,” he says as he holds out his hand to shake hers. “But it’s nice to meet you.”
“Nice to meet you, Mr. Rock ‘n’ Roll,” she answers as she shakes his hand. “Where are you taking her and what time will you have her home? Tell me everything, because I need final approval. If I don’t like it, she’s not leaving with you.”
I’m used to Lana’s sense of humor, so I’m in no way surprised. Cole’s eyes widen a fraction as he stares at her.
“Uh,” he says uncertainly. “Dinner—”
“Where?”
“A new restaurant not too far from the stadium.”
“Huh,” she says slowly. “Does this restaurant serve sandwiches?”
Poor Cole is completely out of his element. Lana is acting like a nut, and I can tell he’s not sure whether she’s insane or just an asshole.
“It’s a sushi restaurant.”
“Don’t you prefer sandwiches?” she asks.
He looks over at me like he wants me to save him.
“I like all kinds of food,” he answers.
“What’s your favorite kind of meat to put between two buns?” she questions. “Something hot and juicy, or—”
I barely refrain from killing her on the spot.
“She’s just messing with you,” I say as I jump forward and grab Cole’s arm.
His relief is palpable.
“Phew,” he laughs. “I was really hoping.”
I’m yanking him toward the door in hopes that we can get out before Lana says anything else inappropriate. I know better than to put it past her.
“It was nice to meet you,” Cole says as I fling the door open and push him out into the hallway.
“He’s lying,” I call over my shoulder. “You’re an insane person and you scared him,” I laugh.
Cole snickers, his face lighting up as he smiles at me.
“You might want to have her back by midnight,” Lana calls out after us. “Otherwise, she turns into a pumpkin! Trust me, orange is really not a good look for her.”
My revenge is already being plotted as I hurry us toward the elevator.
“I’m so sorry about her—”
He waves his free hand dismissively. “Nah, she seems fun,” he assures me.
I chuckle as I let go of his arm and press the call button for the elevator.
“She’s the wackiest person I know,” I explain, “but also the most loyal.”
Cole smiles at me as he nods his head. “Wacky isn’t bad. My whole family falls under that umbrella and I love them.”
“Lana keeps me on my toes,” I admit.
“Listen,” he says, “I just got a text from Ian. He’s doing an interview for USA Today about his Robert Monroe books and it’s running long. He can’t make dinner, so we’ll pick him up after.”
Oh wow. This feels… kind of like a date. Maybe. Or, maybe I’m reading too much into it.
“We could’ve skipped dinner entirely,” I say nervously. “I hope you didn’t feel like you had to—”
“I wanted to,” he says firmly. “We’re going to have a great time.”
When the elevator dings its arrival and the doors slide open, Cole places his hand lightly against my back to guide me in. I’m thoroughly enjoying how polite he is. I hadn’t expected it, but it’s more than welcome. As we enter, I’m hit in the face with a wave of heavy perfume. I spring forward to keep the door from shutting but just miss it. I grimace and make sure to keep my mouth closed as I try not to gasp for air. I’ve learned the hard way that breathing through my mouth is worse where this perfume is concerned.
“Holy shit,” Cole coughs. “That smell! I just rode the elevator and it was fine. What the fuck?”
It’s cute the way his eyes are watering as he fans the air in front of his face, and I can’t contain my giggle.
“My neighbor Brenda,” I explain. “Lana and I are ninety percent sure she showers in this stuff.”
He coughs again and shakes his head. “It’s a biohazard,” he croaks.
“Brenda is our buildings crazy cat lady. Only instead of cats, she has an apartment full of Backstreet Boys memorabilia.”
His eyes widen. “How old is she?”
“Thirty-two,” I laugh. “But she’s never ever giving up on her dream to marry Kevin Richardson.”
“No one who can smell is ever marrying her,” he rasps.
“You’d be surprised,” I answer. “She’s really pretty. She gets mad dates, and a lot of return action on those dates, too. I don’t even know how considering her apartment walls are quite literally covered floor to ceiling in posters.”
When the elevator stops in the lobby, he springs out of it, anxious to get away from the smell. I stay back, opening the emergency panel and pulling out a bottle of Febreze.
“We keep this here to combat the stench,” I tell him as I shake the bottle. “I could’ve saved us that horrible ride if I hadn’t let the elevator doors shut behind us. The key is to spray and have them open for about thirty seconds.”
Throwing back his head, Cole booms out a laugh. “You keep a bottle of Febreze handy?”
“We sure do,” I laugh. “The whole building is in on it, too. Whenever the bottle gets low, one of us replaces it. It’s the only way to survive.”
After giving a nice liberal spray, I put the bottle back where it belongs before stepping off the elevator and allowing the doors to close behind me. Reaching out to me, Cole takes my elbow and guides me out of the building.
“This brings back a really funny memory,” he laughs.
“Yeah?”
“When we were teenagers and we bought a moving van to make money and have a way to take our gear to shows, the thing smelled like a garbage dump. We tried everything—scrubbed the walls with bleach, power-washed the entire thing at least five times, sprayed cologne all the fuck over it—and nothing helped.”
“What did you do?”
“Gram had us spread about a dozen boxes of baking soda and a few cans of coffee on the floor. We shut the doors and came back two days later—the smell was gone.”
He comes to a stop at the curb next to a shiny black Tesla and opens the door, waiting until I’m buckled in to close it and walk around to his side. As soon as he’s in the car, I notice just how close we are. I can smell his cologne, something with a hint of musk that makes me want to rub up against him like a feline in heat.
I watch his hands in fascination as he does something on the enormous dash display, stifling a nervous giggle when I remember his hands were once insured for a million dollars each through Lloyd’s of London. I bet he can do a lot of great non-guitar related things with his fingers.
I’m fascinated by the tattoos on his arm. They’re just so… hot. Licking my lower lip, I look up at him from beneath my lashes, only to find he’s watching me. The smile he gives me makes my pulse race, and I’m too locked into him to look away.
“You still good with sushi?” he asks.
I nod, unable to get a word out. Licking my lower lip again, I continue looking him over. The man is sex personified. I’m still unsure how I never noticed this before. I turn my attention to an obscure point on the windshield so he doesn’t catch me staring at him like a lovesick weirdo.
“The restaurant isn’t too far from here,” he tells me as he puts the car into gear. “GPS says the trip should only take about twenty minutes.”
Cole’s Tesla is the first I’ve ever been in and I’m endlessly fascinated by how silent it is. He answers the myriad of questions I throw his way about the car during the drive. He also offers to let me drive it any time. It feels like only five minutes have passed when he pulls into the parking lot of a small sushi restaurant. Since we need to be to the Staples Center by eight, we’re having an early dinner. This means the lot is pretty much a ghost town, which is probably a good thing as far as Cole being recognized.
The hostess seats us in the back of the room next to a massive fish tank. It’s easily thirty feet long, so it takes up almost the entire width of the wall. My eyes widen when I realize the theme of said tank is Harry Potter.
“Dumbledore, Snape and Hermione,” I squeak excitedly. “It’s so freaking cool. Hogwarts looks amazing. Don’t even get me started on the Quidditch area! Harry and his Nimbus look so real!”
Cole’s laugh draws my attention back to him. I forget about the fish tank when I find him watching me intently.
“Potter fan, eh?”
I nod emphatically. “So much yes. I know people rave about the books, and they’re phenomenal, but that’s not what makes me a Potterhead. For me, it’s all about the movies. They’re cinematic masterpieces. The scores, the angles, the costuming, it’s all epic. If I had wanted to work in film as opposed to documentaries, I would’ve wanted to go in that direction. You’ve seen them, right?”
“Yep,” he says with a grin. “Tyson is a mega Rowling fan. Like, stalker status. Discovered the books while he was in rehab and has never looked back. He says being so enthralled in that fictional world helped him deal with his shit. We throw Harry Potter themed birthday parties for him. Somewhere along the way, I became a fan, too. Like you, I love the movies. Watch ‘em all the time.”
We stop talking for a few minutes when our waitress arrives. After a quick discussion about what her recommendations are, we wind up going with the chef’s pick. It’s basically an enormous amount of sushi that will allow us to try a sampling of todays best pieces. Since we may have a drink or two at the concert, we both order a green tea drink blend. After the waitress walks away, Cole turns his attention back to me.
“Tell me more about you,” he instructs.
“I feel like you already know a lot,” I laugh. “I’m pretty boring.”
“You’re the furthest thing from boring,” he says. “But since you can’t think of anything off the top of your head I’ll give you an easy question to answer. What was your favorite show as a kid?”
“Mr. Ed,” I answer with no hesitation. “Bewitched and I Dream of Jeannie weren’t far behind.”
He raises his brows in question. “You’re awful young to have pulled those out as favorites.”
“My parents weren’t big on TV. We got the bare minimum of channels, so I mostly avoided it entirely. But every weekend, I would stay up and watch Nick at Nite. They used to run all the classics, and I got addicted. How about you?” I counter. “What was your show of choice?”
He gives me a funny look before sighing. “You have to promise you won’t ever breathe a word of this to anyone.”
Crossing my heart, I lean forward. “Spill it, Hayes.”
“The Golden Girls.”
A second passes while I wait for him to tell me he’s kidding. Realizing he’s serious, I let out a bark of shocked laughter. “Shut. Up!”
“It was a really good show,” he says defensively.
The only way he could have shocked me more was if he’d announced a love of Dancing With The Stars. The Golden Girls just seems completely oppositional to anything he would be interested in. This just goes to show you can’t judge a book by its cover.
“How the heck did you end up watching a show about older women?”
Before he has time to answer, I let out a squeak. “Oh my God, I bet you had a crush on one of them, too! It was Blanche, wasn’t it? Please tell me your bedroom walls weren’t covered in posters of Rue McClanahan.”
He waves his hands as he shakes his head. “No, no, no,” he laughs. “That’s a really disturbing visual, by the way. I assure you, I wasn’t crushing on them. Gram and my mom loved the show. Somehow Flynn and I ended up watching it with them. The writing was really good and the acting was great.”
“You’re telling me Flynn got sucked in, too?”
He snorts and shakes his head. “The girls were way to highbrow for him. Flynn watched, but his favorite show was Clarissa Explains it All. He wanted to ride the Melissa Joan Hart express so bad. In comparison, The Golden Girls is like National Geographic.”
“That’s hardly an apt comparison since they’re both comedies. At least his show was sort of age-appropriate,” I tease.
“But stupid,” he counters. “The Golden Girls is consistently picked as one of the top one hundred shows of all times. You won’t see Clarissa on that list, ever.”
When I question whether The Golden Girls ever wound up on such a list, Cole whips out his iPhone and does a search. He lets out a triumphant sound and holds his phone up.
“Right here it says top sixty in TV Guide and Top one hundred in The Writers Guild of America. I rest my case.”
Taking a sip of my green tea, I chuckle. “I guess I’ll have to pay attention the next time I see it on. I can sing every word of the theme song for some reason, but I’ve never seen an episode.”
“Oh, we’re fixing that,” he laughs. “I’m going to get you hooked on the show, just you wait. You need to start coming over so we can binge watch.”
His words make me happy, and I grin at him. I love the idea of us spending more time together. My smile grows bigger when our waitress comes to the table with a massive tiered assortment of sushi. Cole and I dig in, sampling the plentiful and super fresh meal.
“This is the best,” I enthuse after swallowing a particularly tasty piece. “It’s unbelievably good.”
He holds out a piece of a roll with his chopsticks. “Wait ‘til you taste this one.”
Leaning forward, I open my mouth and let him feed me. The incredibly fresh smoked salmon all but melts in my mouth.
“Mm,” I moan after I finish swallowing. “This chef knows how to make great sushi.”
The look on Cole’s face is sinful, and I feel my nipples tighten.
“Somehow it’s made even better watching you eat it,” he murmurs.
I open my mouth to say something, but nothing comes out. Cole grins at me devilishly, and I feel my face heating up. What I wouldn’t give to have his hands on me. Before I can formulate some kind of a response to what he said, the waitress is back to refill our drinks.
I don’t know if I’m relieved or disappointed to have been interrupted.
Dinner with Cole was great, and I have to admit, I wasn’t even a little upset that Ian wasn’t able to join us. Selfishly, I liked having Cole all to myself. Ian’s house isn’t too far from the restaurant, so we get there pretty quickly.
Before Cole has the car parked, Ian comes striding down the driveway toward us. Opening the rear door, he climbs into the backseat. I turn and look over my shoulder at him and almost let out a sigh. He really is something to look at. Ian’s eyes flash when our gazes meet, and I can’t help myself from appreciating how sexy he is.
“Hey,” I say as I give him a big smile.
He grins back. “Hey.”
As I turn back around, I find Cole staring at me intently. I know I’m blushing as I smile at him. He inclines his head toward Ian but keeps his eyes on me.
“Ian.”
Ian clears his throat. “Cole.”
Cole’s eyes leave my face as he looks to Ian. “You ready for this?”
When a second or so passes without an answer, I turn to look at Ian myself. He and Cole are in some kind of a stare-down, and Ian’s cheeks are flushed.
“Yes, I’m ready for the show,” he responds.
Cole lets out a hmm as he turns away and puts the car in gear. I’m fairly certain he wasn’t asking about the concert.