Finley
This morning, I was at a swim meet, swatting flies and piling greasy sunblock onto my face. Now, I’m at this way too fancy party, way too nervous to talk to anyone, and wearing a way too tight dress. (Summer is a whole size smaller than me.) Eddie, on the other hand, is completely unaffected. He also looks much more comfortable wearing a close-fitting black blazer with slim, pinstriped slacks. A waiter passes us with a tray of champagne glasses. Eddie snatches one and then looks at me. I shake my head. “This has to be the fanciest place to throw a party in the entire city.”
He eyes the glass, apparently decides he doesn’t want it, and sets it down on a nearby table. “The Guggenheim has a really nice event room.”
I lift an eyebrow. “Oh yeah? Mr. NYC Party Expert. You should start a blog.”
Two actors from CSI: NY breeze past us, a small crew trailing behind them. I squeeze Eddie’s arm and whisper, “Oh my God, that’s—”
“The cop with the dead father and the scientist guy who only goes out at night,” Eddie finishes. “We should go say hi.”
I grip his arm tighter, holding him in place. I shake my head. Eddie shrugs and stops a waiter with a tray of some kind of shrimp. He asks the guy all about the food and then offers me one. I shake my head again.
“Do you want anything else to drink?” Eddie asks me after the waiter has left us.
His behavior has been suspiciously date-like tonight. I almost call him out on it, but I’m too tongue-tied.
“I think we stayed long enough, don’t you?”
“Seriously?” Eddie looks me over and then laughs. “All the work it took to get here, and you want to leave after fifteen minutes? I don’t even think the host is here yet.”
“Alexander Wang?” I glance around the big, beautiful, intimidating room. “Not like I was planning on talking to him.”
Eddie couldn’t care less how long we stay. He’s trying for my benefit. This was a bad idea from the start. Networking won’t change the fact that I’m not anywhere near cool enough for these people and their jobs. Eddie nudges me in the shoulder and nods toward a girl clear on the other side of the room. Summer. “So she did score an invite?”
“Her mom,” I explain, gesturing to the very put-together woman beside her. “She never would have loaned me this dress if I got to go and she didn’t.”
Summer surprises me by giving me a tiny wave. I figured she’d avoid any contact with me, considering how low on the model chain I am. She’s super uptight when it comes to any networking-type events. Like she even needs to network. Everyone knows her already. A guy I recognize from a big billboard in Brooklyn walks past us; his name’s Sean or Steven. He’s currently linking arms with a woman who is high up in the Gucci world. The guy waves to Eddie, but he just stares at him in return, his body tense. Finally, he gives a small nod.
“What?” I ask.
Eddie watches the guy’s retreating form and then looks back at me. “I had to check that dude for a pulse the other day. He’d been passed out on my floor for a good twelve hours.”
Jesus. I don’t envy his living situation one bit. “Okay, now I’m definitely ready to go.”
“Follow me,” Eddie says, taking my hand and steering us through the party people.
I’m expecting him to move toward the exit, but instead, we end up on the outside of the room. It’s lined with floor-to-ceiling windows, showing off an amazing panoramic view of lower Manhattan and the Hudson. Eddie turns me by the shoulders until I’m facing the windows. I lean against a small counter made to hold drinks and look outward at the river.
“Not bad, huh?” Eddie says.
His hands land on my shoulders. He slides his fingertips down my arms and then steps closer to me until his front brushes my back.
I try to resist relaxing into him—touching has been minimal for us since our almost-kiss last night—but fail miserably. I lean my head back against his shoulder and close my eyes for a second. “I could be watching you cannonball into the pool naked right now.”
“True.”
Warm lips graze my shoulder and then drift to the crook of my neck. I close my eyes again and sigh. We are definitely entering date territory. “How are you so calm right now? Is it all your upscale party experience?”
“You’re right. I’ve done stuff like this a lot. Too much. Though never with cool celebrities. Usually people well known only to avid readers of the Wall Street Journal and Forbes. With those parties, the goal was not to have any personality.”
“And here?” I ask.
“Here, the goal is to have fun and maybe even be the most fun person. I have trouble with that now. Having fun.” He slides his hands down my arms again and laces our fingers together. “But I think I’m getting somewhere right now.”
“Where?” I laugh. “First base?”
He moves my hair off to one side, allowing him to touch his mouth to more of my bare skin. “Second base if I’m lucky.”
“In this dress? Not a chance you’ll manage getting a fingertip underneath it.”
In response to that, Eddie slips a finger under the shoulder strap and slides it over a couple inches. His lips head right for the newly exposed skin. Heat builds all over me, and I’m suddenly appreciative of my short, lightweight dress compared to Eddie’s long sleeves.
I close my eyes again, and the sights and sounds of the party vanish. “What if I like this too much to wait for the next time it accidentally happens?”
The words are out of my mouth before I can stop them.
“You mean the party?” Eddie asks. “I knew you’d warm up to it.”
“Not the party.” I slide my hand into his famously unruly hair and gaze out at the lit-up sky. “I mean you. Being in my personal space.”
“I love your personal space,” Eddie says.
The room pops into view again. “Maybe you’re not doing enough to turn me off. I mean, do you have to be so nice and able to tell my brothers apart?”
The more I work to not compare Eddie to Jason, the more I do just that. It’s not really fair to give Eddie points just because he’s good with my little brothers. But it’s not like I can help what makes me into him.
And I am. Into him.
“I didn’t mean to,” Eddie says. “I even told myself last night, ‘don’t look them directly in the eyes, or you might risk learning their names.’”
I laugh again. The butterflies are flapping in my stomach—I can’t seem to make them go away when Eddie is around. “Maybe we’re having a summer fling. That’s a thing, right?”
“Sure.” Eddie plants several more kisses on my neck and shoulder, and soon, I’m dizzy from them. “Is that your way of saying that I don’t have to ‘accidentally’ run into you? I can ask you out?”
Is this what I want? It doesn’t even matter anymore, because I’m not capable of walking away.
“That’s my way of saying that I know you’re temporary, making secret plans to be far away from here in the near future, and that I’m setting myself up for…well, for that.” I exhale and close my eyes again. “And yes, you can ask me out. And yes, I’ll say yes.”
Eddie is silent behind me. Eventually, he tightens his arms around me and then presses a kiss to my temple. “I’m not going anywhere right now, okay?”
“Okay,” I agree.
“Eddie!” a guy calls from several feet away. “You made it!”
I look over my shoulder and see Toby Rhinehart—Hollywood’s hottest actor, the face of Alexander Wang’s new fragrance, the star of many movie nights with Elana—walking this way.