My So-Called Sex Life (How to Date, #1)(32)

I’m so thankful for her.

“Jackie, you go on the side. We’re bookends. They’re the books,” Alecia chides.

Nooooo! Don’t put us next to each other!

“Right, right,” Jackie says, scurrying over, then gently nudging Axel so he’s closer to me.

He wraps an arm around me.

Oh god.

His hand on my shoulder feels good.

So good that I steal a glance out of the corner of my eye. That zing wiggles down my chest. I’m dying to turn my face toward his neck and catch the fading scent of the forest at night.

Alecia snaps a selfie, then shows it to us.

As I stare at it, I privately whimper.

There it is in Technicolor.

Me, with flutters in my stomach.

Yup. My sister cursed me. The diagnosis is official—I’ve got all the symptoms of a romance heroine.





15





TAKE THE PILL


Hazel

Six more nights. I only have to make it through six more nights with this…infection. It’ll pass. It always does.

I’ll take antibiotics in the form of this group of super readers surrounding us.

They’re the cure.

That afternoon, as Axel takes the dozen VIP readers on a tour of five key locations from his books in the center of the city, I make it my mission to own the sidekick role like no one ever has.

I’m the tour guide wing woman, hanging by the back of the group as Axel tells a middle-aged couple with matching Nikons slung around their necks, and some college girls by the front, about the scene in A Lovely Alibi where the hero sneaks into the Pantheon at night to solve a riddle that’ll help him retrieve a lost artifact.

As Axel then guides the group past the famous landmark, I make small talk with Jackie and Alecia. “How did you two meet?” I ask.

“In an online fan group,” Jackie says.

“Then we became book besties,” Alecia adds.

And after five years of recommending books as a team, they finally met when they landed in Rome yesterday.

“That’s so great that this trip brought you together,” I say.

“Book friends are the best friends,” Jackie says.

Alecia slings an arm around her buddy. “Love you, hon.”

It’s heartwarming to see, and it’s good medicine. I’m far away from Axel and fighting off the fever of desire with chitchat. If I can just keep this up, I will survive. The early days of illness are always the hardest.

We visit a few more sites, then finish at the Trevi Fountain. Axel walks them through the climactic scene. “And here is where Jett leapt into the water, jumping over the crowds of tourists.” He gives a sheepish shrug, acknowledging the fiction physics as he adds, “As one does.”

Like he knows you sometimes have to go all Jason Bourne with a thriller hero no matter how unlikely leaping over heads is.

I smile back, feeling a little dopey, a little woozy. I understand him so well. I get him. I truly do.

Stop!

That’s just the infection talking.

I force myself to think about the stone in the fountain, the coins on the floor of it, the water. Anything external instead of these internal hummingbirds.

The reader questions begin, and the Nikon Man shoots up a hand. “But you can’t actually go in the fountain,” he points out.

“That’s true, Steven,” Axel says, and that’s familiar, the way he uses people’s names once he learns them. Because of his first signing, when he forgot the bookstore owner’s name and felt foolish. Now, he repeats names as he speaks to people, to remember them better.

“So how do you deal with that? When Jett jumped in the fountain. Because it’s against the rules,” Steven adds.

Axel nods like he’s considering this quandary for the first time. “Sometimes you have to break the rules,” he says.

His eyes roam the crowd and find mine like he’s searching for a kindred spirit. Or maybe he just needs a little help. He doesn’t always love being the center of attention.

“Catching the hacker was worth the risk,” I add from the back.

“Hmm,” the man says doubtfully and scratches his jaw. “I guess I just wonder why he didn’t go to jail.”

Axel shudders. “Jett would have hated jail.”

Steven the Nikon Man is relentless. “But…why didn’t he take off his boots before he ran through the fountain? He wouldn’t have tripped if he’d just used some common sense. This happens in so many thrillers.”

One of the college gals near me rolls her eyes. “It’s called a trope,” the redhead mutters. “Like how all billionaires magically have huge cocks.”

Jackie and Alecia crack up.

I laugh too.

I don’t look at Axel. I can’t risk another fluttery feeling.



By the time I get back to my room after the tour, I have twenty minutes before I have to check out of the hotel and head to the train station. Rushing around, I gather my things, but I barely unpacked since I was here only one night. Once I zip up my suitcase, I FaceTime my sister for some emergency girl talk.

Veronica answers right away. She’s on the balcony of her Greenwich Village apartment, and I spot her big Siamese walking behind her, sniffing the potted plants as she waters them. “Ciao,” she says as she tips her watering can.