My So-Called Sex Life (How to Date, #1)(65)

I blow on it, wishing there were a way for Axel and me.

“What did you wish for?” he asks.

I already know it won’t come true, but I still don’t reveal my wishes. “I can’t tell you, but I can tell you what my fountain wish was.”

“Yeah? Does that mean it came true? It was my iron dick, right?” He’s trying to make me laugh, to keep the moment light, but I can tell he wants more from my wish.

I play with the neck of his shirt. “I wished to have a good trip, and I did. What about you? What was yours?”

He shakes his head. “It hasn’t come true, but I’m close. So damn close.”

“Tell me then?”

He just shrugs, noncommittal, and I hope to learn his wish someday. I hope, too, that it comes to pass.

Then he kisses me, and I taste both wistfulness and joy.





33





NO MORE WORDS


Hazel

Dinner is finished. Drinks are flowing. The train rumbles across the rolling hills of Germany as we travel deeper into the night on our way to Denmark. I finish the last of my chardonnay, but it’s my only glass this evening.

I don’t want to be tipsy or drunk on my final night on the train. I do want to be alone with Axel, but I also feel a little guilty for ditching our guests.

So we stay a little longer at the table in the dining car—now the liquor car.

The conversation with the group bends like the tracks, and eventually it turns once more to us.

“Have you thought about Noah and Lacey?” Jackie asks, bolder than she’s been before, determined.

I put on my best polite, happy face—this is a secret we need to keep. “We’ll see who catches Lacey’s eye.”

“When do you start writing?” Steven asks.

“After we return to New York,” Axel answers, and that makes me happy and sad at the same time.

“Are you looking forward to working together again?” Jackie asks, but before we can answer, she tilts her face. “You know, I don’t think I know this. How did you two even meet in the first place?”

It’s been so long. Axel’s been a part of my life since I became the person I always wanted to be.

Alecia jumps in with her own answer: “I bet you have a meet-cute like in a romance novel.”

I glance at Axel with a smirk. “Too bad we didn’t meet in an elevator,” I joke.

“That got stuck,” he adds.

“And then there would have been a power outage,” I say.

“And I’d have had to single-handedly climb out the top of the elevator shaft to save the building.”

Nice finish, I mouth, then I start a new made-up meet-cute. “Or at an ice-skating rink, where you bumped into me skating.”

“Naturally, you were wearing a cute hat,” he says in a too-charming tone.

“You caught me before I fell,” I say the same way.

“But then you sliced my shin open with the blade,” he says, his voice growing darker, matching the shift in our fable.

“You stifled a groan, but when you spotted a man with dead eyes in the back of the rink slinking off, you quickly scooped me up and got me out of harm’s way.”

He shakes his head, sighing all over-the-top. “Too bad we didn’t meet in an art gallery when you were trying to steal a painting that I was trying to retrieve.”

My eyes brighten. My whole soul does too. “And then we spent the entire four hundred pages in a cat-and-mouse game, falling for each other but working toward opposing goals.”

Wow, that hits close to reality.

Too close?

I don’t even know anymore, but soon, it’s like no one else is here as we write our mash-up meet-cutes, marrying our two genres and making up a whole new starting point for us.

After a final scenario involving a picnic then a chase on a motorcycle, Jackie claps, and Maria bows, and Steven lifts a glass.

“But what’s the real story?” Uma the Redheaded College Girl asks pointedly.

The truth? It’s simple and not exciting.

“We met in a coffee shop,” I admit. “I was there with TJ, writing with him, but when he stepped out to take a call, I looked around and saw Axel a few tables over, tapping away on his laptop. His leather jacket was on the back of the seat, he ran a hand through his hair, and he concentrated so fiercely on the screen that I knew. I just knew. Still, I asked him if he was a writer and said I was one too.”

“What did you think when she talked to you?” Alecia asks.

“I thought…what a nosy writer,” he deadpans.

I slug his shoulder.

He straightens. “Fine, fine. I thought…” His mouth is soft, his eyes warm, as he finishes, “she was interesting.”

Uma snorts. “Bullshit. You had a crush on her.”

For a second, Axel goes still next to me. Uncomfortably still.

She can’t be right? Axel didn’t have a crush on me then, nor has he ever. He set me up with Max, for all intents and purposes. He was only ever attracted to me. That’s not the same as a crush. Not the same. Not at all.

But the car remains silent. The only sound is the chug of the train, the rattle of the wheels.

“Of course he didn’t,” I say lightly. Someone has to break the heavy silence. “We became friends then.”