Wicked Heart (Starcrossed #3)(63)
When I can breathe without it burning, I sit up and look around the park. It’s a beautiful day in New York, and people are taking advantage of the mild weather. I watch as the usual cavalcade passes: tourists clicking photos, joggers and cyclists, dog walkers, stroller-pushing parents. Oh, and the lovers. Let’s not forget them. They’re everywhere, and when you’re single, they seem to triple in number, just to piss you off and make you feel extra alone. They stroll by, smugly hand in hand, or with their arms around each other as they chat and laugh, all the while taunting you with their loving glances and easy touches.
I stare at one particular couple who sits on a nearby bench. As the girl tells a story, the boy strokes her face, her neck, her back. He looks at her like she’s the sun in his universe, and it’s obvious he’s just waiting for her to stop so he can kiss her. The girl looks at him the same way. Her eyes roam over his face as she speaks, and sure enough, when the story’s done, she winds her hands into his hair and pulls him to her. They kiss slowly. Deeply. Oblivious to everything but each other, as if they had all day to kiss like that.
Assholes.
I want that. That open, easy love. I want a man who isn’t already engaged to look at me the way Liam does.
A sharp pang intensifies inside me and I look away.
Sexual frustration is one thing. Relationship frustration is another. Both together make people like me do stupid, desperate things. Things they end up regretting.
To demonstrate my point, I climb to my feet and start to jog again. One foot in front of the other. Over and over again. Until I’m incapable of thinking about anything but my own harsh breathing.
Oh, unholy demons of pain, why? Why do you hate me so?
I hiss as I attempt to grab the stack of company notices that has just slipped out of my hands and fallen to the floor. They scatter everywhere, and I sigh in frustration. There’s no way I can pick them up. Thanks to my overexertions yesterday, I’m unable to bend my legs without squealing. Even sitting on the subway this morning wasn’t an option.
I wonder if Marco would object to me standing for today’s rehearsal. Maybe not, but he would object to me not handing out this important information about costume fittings and tech rehearsals.
Dammit.
Resigning myself to the inevitable, I walk over to the mess of paper and nudge them together with my foot. When I think I have most of them close enough to pick up in one go, I move my legs apart like a giraffe at a watering hole and bend down to try to reach them.
“Come on, arms. Be longer. Just for a few seconds. I swear, I’ll never make you do push-ups again if you make this happen.”
I grit my teeth as I stretch my fingers out and bend a little farther. Oh, God. The agony.
“Liss?” I hear footsteps stop behind me, and I lower my head. Of course Liam would walk in while I was in this position. “Is this some new form of workplace yoga? Or are you dropping the hint that you’d like me to do something very unprofessional with your ass? Because, honestly, the signals you’re sending right now are kind of confusing.”
I can hear the smile in his voice, and it makes me bristle. After awkwardly pulling myself upright, I turn to him. “Can you please stop smirking and pick these up for me?”
“I’d rather not. Watching you attempt it again seems like much more fun.”
I scowl. “I have no idea what I used to see in you. Funny how you go off people.”
He chuckles as he walks over, and in one fell swoop grabs all the papers, shuffles them together, and hands them to me. “Care to tell me why you’re moving like Frankenstein’s monster? It’s not still your hip.”
“No. I made a stupid mistake yesterday and now I’m paying for it.”
“What was the mistake?”
“Jogging.”
He genuinely looks shocked. “But your aversion to exercise—”
“Is well-founded. Clearly, I’m allergic to it.” I move stiffly to the desk and shove the papers into a folder.
“You didn’t stretch afterward, did you?”
“Josh told me to stretch before, not after. Some best friend he is.”
“You have to do it before and after. You could have come to me if you wanted advice. I’m kind of an expert on exercise, you know.”
“Really? I had no idea. You’re such an unfit schlub.” I take in his ridiculous physique. “I don’t know how you cope with that grossness. Thank God I don’t have all those weird bulges.”
He gives me a long, slow assessment, up and down my body. “No. You don’t need bulges when you have those killer curves.” As soon as he says it, he drops his head. Like he knows this sort of flirty banter is exactly what we should be avoiding. “I’d offer to train you, but I guess that’s not something we could do, right?”
“Nope. Besides, my jogging style can be defined as ‘a lumbering seizure.’ Don’t really need you laughing your ass off at me.”
He frowns. “Elissa, you’d be in workout gear. Believe me, I wouldn’t be able to laugh if I tried.”
A shiver runs through me, and I curse it. I’m trying to suppress these types of reactions, but it’s tough when he insists on being so damn sexy. I move away from him and open my laptop. “Uh, anyway, why are you here so early?”
He looks over his shoulder. Angel appears at the far end of the hallway, talking to a good-looking man with dark hair. “Angel and I have an interview this morning. Just for something different.”