I don’t have to turn around. There’s no rule that says I must. I could stand here all day with my back to Kai, pretending like I didn’t just unleash a torrent of insults on his character. In fact, if I stand here long enough, something might happen to get me out of this nightmare. Maybe a tornado will appear out of the clear blue sky and we’ll all have to run for our lives. Maybe Nick will propose to Margo from Guest Relations and everyone will pity me. Maybe the aquamarine yoga pants lady will swoop in and poison me with a hibiscus-flavored skinny tea.
“So, Cast Away,” Nadeem says loudly, gripping Elle’s hand like he’s holding on for dear life. “Great movie, huh?”
I pray for the Forresters’ yard to open and swallow me whole.
“Remember the scene where the volleyball falls off the raft and floats away forever?” Nadeem continues in a heroic effort to fill the silence. “Soul crushing.”
No one responds except for the bee buzzing around Sam, oblivious to the disaster unfolding in its midst.
“Wil-son!” Nadeem mimics in his best Tom Hanks impression, glancing from Elle to Sam to me in desperation. “Wilson, I’m sor—”
“I haven’t seen Cast Away,” a baritone voice behind me interrupts. “But I do like Tom Hanks.”
Cringing, I glance toward the sky in hopes that my longed-for tornado might appear, but only a bluebird flies overhead.
“Don’t forget about You’ve Got Mail,” Nadeem adds, and I take a deep breath before he can compare life to a box of chocolates in a terrible Southern drawl.
I’m an adult. I’m a professional. And there’s no tornado coming to save me.
My cheeks blazing with embarrassment, I force myself to turn around slowly, like a spinning ballerina on a winding-down music box. Maybe if I move at a glacial pace, Kai will be gone by the time I finish.
He’s not. Instead, he stands before me with his arms folded across his chest, wearing a scowl so deep that Severus Snape would look downright gleeful in comparison. And instead of Thursday’s untamed beard, Kai’s now clean-shaven, with just the hint of a five o’clock shadow darkening his jawline.
“Hello,” I say, the word coming out half-choked. “I . . . um . . .”
He stays quiet, studying me as I scramble for a way to extract my foot from my mouth. Finally, once I’ve uttered three more “ums” and a last-ditch “so . . . ,” his gaze flickers to my name tag.
“Lacy, is it?” he asks with disgust, his nose scrunched up as if my name were Vomit or Aboveground Swimming Pool.
Damn that tiny tag. “It’s Lucy, actually.”
He gives me a brief nod, his stern expression unchanged. “Lucy . . .”
Ricardo, I imagine myself lying. Lawless. Lucy In-the-Sky-with-Diamonds. If he doesn’t know my last name, he can’t run straight to HR to file a complaint.
Sam nudges me with her elbow.
“Rourke,” I say finally. “Lucy Rourke.” It’s not like he won’t find out anyway.
“Well, Lucy Rourke,” Kai says, his voice thick with abhorrence, “I bet you’re wondering just how long I’ve been standing here.”
He crosses his arms tighter over his chest, and I concentrate hard on not looking at the biceps muscles peeking out from underneath his gray T-shirt. The possibility that he heard every awful comment I made makes me want to barricade myself in a Porta-Potty. Just how long has he been standing there? Did he hear me reenact our conversation from Thursday, when I impersonated him in a cartoonishly thick South African accent? Did he watch me hoist Majesty on the Mountain over my head like it was the Stanley Cup and I was a championship hockey player?
Dear God, did he hear me wishing that he’d landed in the Amur tiger exhibit?
“Rosha the tiger is actually a very even-tempered girl,” I say quickly, just in case. “For, you know, a tiger.”
Kai raises his eyebrows. “I bet she is.”
“I’d like to say,” I announce, hugging Dr. Kimber’s book to my chest so tightly that my boobs would cry out in protest if they could, “that I’m . . .”
Sorry, barks the voice of reason in my head. Tell him you’re sorry! Apologize before he tells Phil that you’re not allowed within a hundred yards of him! Plead for forgiveness lest he sic his three million TikTok followers on you!
While Kai was rude to me on Thursday—and worse, he was wrong—I did go fully balls-to-the-wall on my tirade of criticism. Calling him an asshole based on a single interaction was probably overkill, and it was a low blow to make fun of his beard. Besides, if Kai rats me out to Phil, I can kiss my chances of a promotion farewell. And from the way he’s glaring at me like he’s a raging elephant and I’m the evil hyena that slaughtered his whole family, I’ll be lucky if I still have a job by the end of the picnic.
But try as I might, I can’t finish my apology. As Kai’s dismissive treatment of me after the Critter Chat replays itself on a loop in my head, the words vanish from my tongue.
“I’m . . . surprised to see you here,” I finish lamely.
His scowl deepens. “Clearly.”
Before I melt into a puddle under the scorching hatred of his gaze, Sam extends her hand toward Kai.
“Hi, Mr. Bridges. I’m Samira Rahimi, assistant director of communications.” She gives him her best please-forgive-my-insane-friend, she-knows-not-what-she-does smile. “Lucy’s right about one thing: your presence today is a wonderful surprise! We’re honored to have you.”
Kai somehow restrains himself from pointing out what’s glaringly obvious: that I’ve given zero impression of his presence being anything resembling wonderful.
“Pleased to meet you, Ms. Rahimi,” Kai says, shaking her hand. “You helped write the zoo’s proposal, correct? I remember your name from the submission.”
Sam, who’s usually so unflappable that I once watched her yawn on Cedar Point’s Top Thrill Dragster while Elle and I screamed our lungs out, nods in surprise. “I did. I’m shocked that you remember.”
“I reviewed every proposal myself. Your team’s was exceptional.”
An infinitesimal fraction of my hostility dissolves at Kai’s kind words to Sam. She spent months designing a proposal that would convince Kai’s production company to pick Columbus for its first zoo-centric season, and I remember a grueling three-week stretch when her meals consisted solely of triple-shot coffee and microwaved Lean Cuisines in the break room.
“We’re thrilled about the show,” Elle says, getting in on the help-Kai-forget-that-Lucy’s-a-monster action. “I’m Elle, an activities director at the zoo. And when I say thrilled, I mean that we’re, like, over the moon.” She blushes as Kai shakes her hand. “By the way, how’s the puppy you rescued from that sinkhole? What was her name—Peaches? Paisley?”
“Penny,” Kai answers. “Because she was a good luck charm.” For the first time, the hint of a smile crosses his face, and it’s like watching Mia’s massive Saint Bernard transform into a kitten.
Nadeem, observing the fawning expression on his wife’s face with a look of mild horror, points across the lawn. “Mr. Bridges, have you checked out the dessert tent? You don’t want to miss out on Jeni’s ice cream. It’s a Columbus specialty.”
I remind myself to hug Nadeem later. Unlike Elle and Sam, who are studying Kai like he’s a man-sized scoop of Jeni’s Buttercream Birthday Cake ice cream, he understands that we need to get Kai as far away as possible—before I say anything else to implode my career, and before Elle tosses aside her marital vows and rides off into the sunset with Kai and a gaggle of puppies.
Kai shrugs. “Line’s a little long.”
From the corner of my eye, I spot Mrs. Forrester, a silver-haired woman in a scalloped pink pantsuit, strolling past the catering tent with Shira Woodrow, the zoo’s CEO. Full-fledged panic rushes through me as they walk toward us, and I’m desperate to distract Kai from noticing Shira and telling her about my furious rant.
Flustered, I point toward the dessert tent with the sweeping arm arc of an overcaffeinated air traffic controller. “I’m sure you could cut the line. Because you’re, well, you know.” I gesture toward Kai in the same royal wave motion that Julie Andrews teaches a young Anne Hathaway in The Princess Diaries, and Sam whimpers beside me.
The shadow of a grin that crossed his features disappears, replaced by the hateful glower of someone who just learned that his favorite hair gel brand went bankrupt.
“Why could I cut?” Kai asks, sneering. “Because I’m a C-list celebrity? A stone-cold fox? I suppose I could ride on my mother’s coattails to the front of the line, but that’s not really my style.”
Shame crawls up my skin when I realize that Kai heard every one of the vicious insults I rattled off to my friends, and I contemplate sprinting into the path of an approaching man on stilts, who’s wearing a sleeveless giraffe costume and just might be able to squash me. Surely it’s only a matter of seconds before Kai runs to Phil or Shira to tattle on me. I picture the giraffe on stilts dragging me out of the picnic while Margo from Guest Relations records the scene for Snapchat. I’m sure the clip will make its way to the six o’clock news: Deranged zookeeper harasses beloved TV personality, the ticker will read, underneath a video of me furiously trying to escape the giraffe’s clutches.
I’m in deep shit.
“About calling you a C-list celebrity and all that other stuff,” I say, my pitch reaching a Minnie Mouse level of squeakiness, “I’m really sorry.”
Kai’s glare doesn’t waver. If anything, the angry smolder he’s giving me only intensifies, and it’s so disarming that I wonder if he practices it in the mirror before bed every night.
“If you really think about it,” I continue, the deepening lines of his scowl sending me to the verge of a panic attack, “celebrity is just a matter of perspective. Like, there are only a few people who are A-list without question. Oprah, for example. Beyoncé. Taylor Swift. But after that, it gets a little murky.”
I realize I’m rambling like I do whenever I’m nervous. Elle lets out a less than subtle cough to warn me to slow my roll, but she has no chance of stopping me now; I’m a cheetah chasing a lure at sixty miles per hour. I’m a horned lizard spraying blood at my predator. I’m Linda Blair from The Exorcist spewing nonsense instead of vomit.
“Take Chris Pratt,” I continue as Elle coughs again, this time so loudly that Nadeem checks to see if she’s choking. “Is he A-list? You might say yes, considering the success of the Guardians of the Galaxy franchise and his marriage to Katherine Schwarzenegger, but the little old lady down the street might confuse him with Pine or Hemsworth or one of the hotter Chrises. So she’d say he’s B-list. And that little old lady probably isn’t familiar with someone like Big Ed from 90 Day Fiancé, and neither is your average neighborhood mom, so that puts Big Ed somewhere between D and F. But if you’re, like, an avid reality TV fan, then you might consider him more of a D+ star, which is way lower than the Kardashians but higher than, say, the crazy alkaline diet family on Seeking Sister Wife . . .” I trail off, realizing I have literally no clue what just came out of my mouth.
“I’m going to be honest,” Kai says, blinking at me like I just shined a laser beam into his eyes. “I have no idea what you just said.”
Maybe getting dragged out of here by the giraffe stilt guy wouldn’t be the worst thing.
“What I was trying to say is,” I continue, “I’m really sorry for what I said. I shouldn’t have called you names or compared you to Tom Hanks.”
Even if you humiliated me in front of Phil, I add silently. And even though everything I said was true.
Kai raises his notched eyebrow. “A homeless Tom Hanks, you mean.”
“To be precise, Tom Hanks wasn’t technically homeless in Cast Away. He took shelter inside a cave.” I try to give him a conciliatory, please-don’t-get-me-fired smile, but it’s like grinning into the face of an unnervingly handsome piranha.
“I stand corrected,” he says, his tone holding the same quiet anger that Nona’s does when it’s her cheat food day and I’ve eaten all the Bagel Bites. “You said I looked like a cave-dwelling Tom Hanks.”
The growing urge to dive headfirst into the children’s bounce house and let a storm of toddlers trample me to death threatens to overwhelm me. “In all fairness, you have shaved your beard since Thursday. So that observation no longer applies.”
Kai clenches his jaw so tight that he’s probably about to strain at least six different ligaments. “What about your observation that I’m nothing more than an overhyped, overpaid, egotistical moron? Does that still apply, Lucy?”
His words hit me like bullets, assassinating any chance I have of not getting a formal written report—or God forbid, a pink slip—added to my employee file. Beads of sweat trickle down my hairline, and my stomach now lives somewhere around my ankles.
“I . . . um . . .”
“You report to Phil Sanders, correct?” Kai asks.
I flinch. Once he tells Phil what I said, it’s game over. It won’t matter that I’ve dedicated my life to my job, because it’s Kai, not me, who has the potential to earn the zoo a boatload of dollars. After all, he has his very own TV series and a yearly Earth Day special on Animal Planet, and I’ve got a knack for giving directions to the shitter.
“Yes,” I admit, my voice just above a whisper. “But please—”
“Great,” Kai says in a tone that is not great at all. “Take care, Lucy.”
He nods to my friends before turning away, and I’m tempted to fling Dr. Kimber’s book at the back of his head to make him stop.
“By the way,” Kai says after a beat, turning back to glance at Elle. “Penny’s doing great. She was adopted by a family in Corpus Christi, and she’s learning to be a reading therapy dog for kids. She might be missing a leg, but she’s got plenty of spirit.”
He grins, and it’s like watching a Crayola-bright sunrise after spending decades in darkness. The tight lines of his jaw relax, transforming his face from that of Snape’s enraged younger brother into the open, easy look of a man who holds doors open for old ladies and doesn’t blare his horn when someone cuts him off in traffic. For a fraction of a second, I’m jealous of Penny and her three-legged ability to soften his heart.
But as Elle practically convulses with delight, Kai’s gaze shifts back toward me, his sunrise smile replaced by that old familiar scowl. Forget my brief, imaginary glimpse into a lighter side of Kai; he probably mows through school zones in a Maserati and only helps old ladies when there’s a camera crew to witness it.
He should be honored to be compared to Tom Hanks. But before I can tell him that—or more accurately, before I can beg for his forgiveness so that he doesn’t rat me out—the singer of the cover band pauses his rendition of “Sweet Home Alabama” mid lyric.
“Sorry for the interruption, everybody,” the tattooed singer announces, raising his hands for pardon. “But I’ve just learned that we have a celebrity guest!”
My throat tightens as a murmur of excitement spreads through the crowd. Cornhole players and dads chasing toddlers glance around the lawn, searching for a retired OSU football coach or the cherished local meteorologist who lets his Pomeranian chill under the green screen during broadcasts.
But while everyone else peers around for the mystery celebrity, Kai’s gaze stays on mine. We’re like gun-slinging, Wild West cowboys staring each other down before a duel, except one of us has appeared on Anderson Cooper 360° and the other might be unemployed come Monday morning.
“It’s Kai Bridges, host of On the Wild Side!” the singer declares with such jubilance that you’d think Kai just gifted everyone a baby bottlenose dolphin.
The hate-fueled fire in Kai’s eyes dwindles, and for an instant his shoulders slump in what looks like exhaustion. But then, quick as the switch of a light, the scowl plastered onto his face morphs into a megawatt smile so warm and effervescent that it would make even his toughest critic go weak in the knees.
I make a mental note to strengthen my knees.
We don’t get many celebrities in Columbus—our biggest homegrown star is the rapper Lil’ Bow Wow, who skipped town long before he dropped the Lil’ from his name—so I’m not surprised when people react as though Dwayne the Rock Johnson showed up. The crowd whoops and hollers, and I spot Phil’s daughter Maya jumping up and down with excitement, going so absolutely apeshit that she drops her candy apple on the ground.
“Move, Edgar!” an elderly woman near the photo booth cries, jostling her cane-bearing husband out of the way to get a better glance at Kai. “I want a selfie!”
“What do you say to coming up here and welcoming everybody to Picnic for Paws?” the singer asks, motioning for Kai to come onstage.
Grinning, Kai shakes his head in fake hesitation, as if he’s not loving the attention. As if he’s not soaking up the roaring applause of the crowd like a sandgrouse soaks up water in the desert.
“Kai! Kai! Kai!” the crowd chants.
Stop applauding that self-satisfied jerkface! I want to scream. But the chant only heightens in volume, and I half expect a flock of Sperry-wearing dads to hoist Kai in the air and carry him to the stage.
Before I can alert the crowd to Kai’s poor manners, he turns away from his doting disciples and strides toward me. His movements are lightning quick, like a lion springing into action to chase down his prey, and before I can think to sneeze on him and pass it off as an accident, I’m inhaling the heady scent of campfire and Old Spice.
Huh. I’d pegged him for an Axe-body-spray kinda guy.
He’s close enough that I could smack him upside the head with Dr. Kimber’s book, and I might seriously consider that option if there weren’t several hundred people here to witness the crime. But my murderous instincts must flash across my face, because Kai reaches forward and takes my copy of Majesty on the Mountain right out of my clenched hand.
“Hey!” I protest, but before I can threaten to tell People magazine about his thieving ways, he’s holding the book just out of reach.
“Mind if I borrow this?” he asks, ignoring my attempts to grab it back. “By the way,” he says, tilting his head toward me so I’m close enough to spot the tones of cognac and flecks of forest green in his eyes. “I know I’m no Beyoncé, or—what did you call him? Large Ed—but my fans sure seem to like me.”
He smirks as the chant of “Kai! Kai! Kai!” rings in my ears, and the lazy smugness of his face makes me long for the moments when he glared at me like I was a discount bottle of drugstore shampoo.
“Cheers, Lucy,” he adds as he heads toward the stage. “Maybe I’ll see you around.”
“It’s Big Ed!” I yell after him, not sure if he hears me over the cries of his worshiping stans. “And get Beyoncé’s name out of your mouth!”
But instead of listening, Kai struts toward the stage.
“He stole my book!” I lament to my friends, gritting my teeth as I spot Phil punching the air with the excitement of a rave goer who’s high on life and Molly. “And did you hear the last thing he said—maybe I’ll see you around? As in, maybe he won’t? As in, he’s going to tell Phil what I said and get me fired?”
But my friends don’t hear me, because the crowd’s volume swells as Kai takes the stage. A heavy dread settles in my stomach as the singer hands him the microphone, sending Phil and every Lululemon-sporting mom around into an even bigger frenzy. The admission makes me want to throw up, but Kai was right: he hasn’t uttered a single word yet, and the crowd already loves him.
My heart falls into my stomach, where it joins my nerves in a churning, simmering mess. Because it doesn’t really matter why Kai’s accent mysteriously comes and goes, or whether he’s actually an overpaid moron. It doesn’t even matter that we both know I’m right about Dr. Kimber’s nickname, or that he stole the book that proves it.
All that matters is that it’s him, not me, who’s running this show. Literally. And that makes one thing clear: I am totally, royally, wildly screwed.