Funny You Should Ask(11)

There was a slight curve to his lips, just the hint of a smile, as if he was enjoying this. Enjoying my completely incompetent attempt to interview him. Because so far, I hadn’t asked him a single damn question.

This tactic might have worked on Jennifer Evans, but it certainly wasn’t working now.

My ship was sinking and I needed to do something to right it. And quick.

The puppy shifted beneath the table, letting out the kind of sigh that was usually reserved for those contemplating the meaning of life. It was exactly the kind of sigh I had sitting at the back of my throat.

“What’s her name?” I asked.

Gabe looked down and a full smile bloomed.

“Haven’t decided yet,” he said. “I’m going to wait for it to come to me.”

“She looks like a teddy bear,” I said.

“She does.” He glanced up at me. “Were you the kind of kid who had a teddy bear?”

I blushed for no reason.

“Maybe,” I said.

He leaned back. “I knew it,” he said. “What was your teddy bear’s name?”

“Teddy,” I said.

He raised an eyebrow.

“I wasn’t a creative child,” I said.

“I don’t believe that.”

There was that sparkly, hot, live-wire feeling again.

“Were you the kind of kid who had a teddy bear?” I asked.

It was the first decent question I’d asked, and technically it was one I’d stolen from him. Unfortunately, before Gabe could answer, Madison returned with our drinks.

He waited as I took a sip of my beer.

“So?” he asked. “Did I get it right?”

I wasn’t a big fan of beer, but I did love a good sour. And he had gotten me a really, really good sour.

“I think this is my new favorite beer,” I told him honestly.

He beamed and my heart thumped out of rhythm.

“Cheers,” he said, lifting his glass and clinking it against mine.

Then I watched as he drained almost a third of it in one gulp.

“Thirsty?” I asked.

It sounded a lot more accusatory than I meant it.

“Answering questions is thirsty work,” he said.

Touché.

Gabe Parker might have been a hick, but he was a hick with a finely honed sense of irony.

“Why did you audition for Angels in America?” I asked.

This time Gabe was the one who blinked.

A-ha, I thought triumphantly. A question. A good question.

“Because it was a class requirement,” he said. “I’d taken theatre because I thought it would be an easy A. I didn’t realize that part of the deal was auditioning for the winter performance.”

I deflated.

It was almost exactly the same thing he’d said in the Vanity Fair interview he’d done after Tommy Jacks.

“You must have been surprised to get the lead.”

“Yep,” he said.

He drank his beer.

I wanted to bang my head on the table. He knew why I was here—why we were doing this interview. This article was meant to help fix the public perception around him being chosen for Bond. It was supposed to help him.

“Did it bother you?” I asked. “The material?”

“No,” he said.

“Did it bother your family?”

“No,” he said.

“They didn’t care that you were kissing a man onstage?”

“My sister thought it was hilarious,” Gabe said. “But only because I’m her baby brother. She thinks everything I do is hilarious. Usually unintentionally.”

“You and your sister are close.”

Gabe downed the rest of his beer, and signaled for another.

My pen froze above my notebook. Two beers?

Gabe was a big guy and two beers was nothing to some, but I started to feel nervous. For him. It was ridiculous, of course. It wasn’t my job to protect him from himself. He was an adult. He knew his limits. Besides, if he ended up drinking enough to make him more talkative, all the better for me.

Right?

“She’s my best friend,” Gabe said. “We’re only a year apart, so we’re basically like twins.”

It was—almost verbatim—what he’d said in an interview with Entertainment Weekly. And The Hollywood Reporter.

“And you have a niece?” I asked, even though I already knew the answer.

“She’s three,” Gabe said. “And she’s the love—”

“—of your life,” I finished for him before I could think any better of it.

He’d said that in the Vanity Fair article too.

“You’ve done your research,” Gabe said.

It wasn’t a compliment.

“It’s my job,” I countered.

I knew I wasn’t doing great with the questions, but he was an actor. I didn’t expect him to spill anything surprising or shocking, but I had expected him to say something.

But it was quiet on the other side of the table. For a moment.

“I did my research too,” he said. “Both of your parents are teachers. You have a younger brother and a younger sister. They all live locally. You usually have Shabbat dinner with them. You went to Sarah Lawrence for undergrad, Iowa for grad school. You met your boyfriend there. In the campus bookstore.”