Funny You Should Ask(84)

I can’t help pushing back on that a little. She didn’t think writing about going to a premiere with a movie star and then passing out at his house the following night wouldn’t be exactly the kind of story our celebrity-hungry culture would jump all over?

“I didn’t,” she insists. “Sure, there are times when you think that something might break through, but you just never know.”

I ask if she’ll ever write a follow-up.

“When it comes to interviews like that, I’m at the disposal of the interviewee,” she says. “I don’t seek out subjects.”

It’s clear that she doesn’t want to talk about Gabe Parker, but I can’t resist asking the question that everyone has been asking since the article came out.

“Nothing happened,” she says with a smile. “Don’t I wish, though?”





Chapter

27


Teddy leaps out of the truck when we arrive, sniffing around the back of the building until she finds a place on the snow to squat and pee. I’m wearing my coat, but Gabe’s is draped over his arm. He doesn’t seem to notice the cold.

It’s only seven, but dark as midnight. It gets dark early in Montana, so I’ve been told.

Still, I can see the mountains—white-tipped and rolling—like a frothy wave in the distance.

When Gabe puts his hand on the small of my back, I lean into it.

“Okay?” he asks.

“Okay.”

Once inside we knock the snow off our boots, and Gabe cleans out the frozen globs that have formed between Teddy’s toes.

I hold my coat against my chest as Gabe starts a fire. I’m still standing in the entryway when he finishes. He comes over, takes my coat, and hangs it up.

“Chani,” he says.

“I’m fine,” I say, because I don’t know what else to say.

“We don’t have to…” he says.

“I…”

The room warms. Gabe puts his hands on my arms, his thumbs stroking my biceps as if I’m a scared animal he’s trying to soothe.

It’s not entirely incorrect.

“I’m not in any rush,” he says.

He’s not talking about tonight. He is, but also, he isn’t.

I push back. Move away. A few inches.

That tight, scared, panicky feeling presses against my ribs. My confidence falters.

“The last time we did this…” I gesture between us.

“Yeah,” he says. “About that.”

There’s something in his voice that makes me stop. He sounds embarrassed, and I don’t know why.

“About what?”

“About what happened between us on the couch,” he says. “I’m sorry.”

“Sorry?”

We’re getting into weirdly intimate territory. We’ve talked around that weekend but we’ve never talked about what actually happened. Or didn’t happen.

“I shouldn’t have…” He rubs his hand across the back of his neck. “It’s just, I felt like such an idiot.”

Apparently, the call wasn’t the only thing we still needed to discuss, only this time I’m the one in the dark.

“Why?”

“Because,” he says as if I know what he’s talking about.

“Because what?”

Then, to my complete astonishment, I watch as a flush spreads across his cheekbones.

“You know,” he says.

“I don’t,” I say.

He looks up at the ceiling. For a moment, the only sound is the crackling fire, the room nice and warm and cozy.

“That night,” he said. “When we were…when things got…”

I’m staring at him, and he’s staring at the beams overhead.

“We were kissing and you were, you know, underneath me, and it was really hot, and then…” He trails off. “You know.”

I don’t. I don’t know. It’s clear that whatever memory I have of that night is not the same one he has.

He glances down, catches the expression on my face.

“Come on,” he says. “Are you really going to make me say it out loud?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I say.

“You don’t know that I got so turned on that I came before we could go any further?” he asks.

My mouth falls open. It is quite literally the last thing I expected him to say.

“You what?”

He throws his head into his hands. The fire pops.

“Oh god,” he says. “Oh my god.”

My eyes are practically bug-shaped.

“Oh my god,” I say.

“Jesus Christ,” he mumbles into his fingers. “I thought you knew.”

“I didn’t,” I say. “I thought…when I told you to stop…I thought you were annoyed but okay about it.”

“I was annoyed,” he says. “At myself. For being too drunk and out of control. For acting like a horny teenage boy. For getting off and then not getting you off.”

Suddenly our awkward interaction after the fact takes on a whole different meaning.

“You wanted to—?”

“Very much,” he says.