After the first outfit is such a success, I send him back to find me more things I wouldn’t have chosen for myself. And he appoints himself Guy Who Gets the Right Size. Even when it means having to ask the saleswomen for help.
Needless to say, the saleswomen love helping Easton. The ones who haven’t already clocked us together flirt shamelessly with him, and one gives him her phone number.
“Jesus, Easton!” I whisper when he shows me. “You can’t help yourself!”
“I didn’t do anything,” he whispers back.
“Nooo,” I say. “You didn’t give her the thousand-watt smile and the green-eyed gaze of seduction, and you didn’t ask her name and you didn’t thank her like she’d just gone down on you in a—”
I’d been about to say dressing room but that feels a little close to home for some reason, so I cut myself off.
Still, Easton’s eyes widen.
“You, Hanna Hott,” he says. “How have I known you for basically thirty years and you are just now revealing the extent of your depravity?”
“It took me this long to reach this fever pitch of sexual deprivation,” I inform him.
A strange expression crosses Easton’s face.
“You still have one more to try on,” he says, voice rough again, and slides the curtain shut between us.
When I’m done trying things on, I make Easton help me narrow down my choices, then load up my credit card.
“Burritos?” I ask, heading toward the food court without waiting for an answer.
“Hell yes,” he says.
“You didn’t even work up the appetite.”
He narrows his eyes at me. “I carried clothes back and forth for you. You just stood there looking superhot.”
That expression, “superhot,” was originally my own, but it still catches me off guard in Easton’s mouth. I feel like I’ve been dipped in molten chocolate, but I pretend to be normal-Hanna and raise my eyebrows at him.
“What?” He sounds extremely grumpy about it, which I totally understand. If our situations were reversed and I had to pay him a compliment, even one that was just a repeat of what he’d already said, I would also begrudge it. “You said it. And it’s, objectively, true.”
This doesn’t help with the molten chocolate problem, and I scan his face for signs that he’s messing with me, but he just rolls his eyes.
“Right,” I say.
We order our burritos and scarf them at a table in the food court, surrounded by my shopping bags and a large number of middle-aged women.
“Are we done?” Easton asks, after we throw away our wrappers.
“No.”
“I think we’re done.”
“We’re not.”
“You can’t carry more clothes,” he says.
That’s demonstrably not true, but I don’t argue with him. I just start walking.
He heaves an enormous sigh but follows me.
I stop outside J.J. Brewer, which sells clothes that look like they were stolen straight from Easton’s closet. “Your turn.”
“My turn for what?”
“To try something on.”
He side-eyes me.
“Come on.”
“To review: I hate shopping.”
“For someone who hates shopping, you sure did seem to be enjoying yourself.”
He screws up his face, but follows me in.
I succeed in convincing him to try on a few things—a pair of dark jeans, a t-shirt that’s almost the same color as his eyes, a silver-y button-down.
He comes out of the dressing room to show me.
“What’s it like?” I ask him.
“What?” he asks, looking down at himself.
“Being disgustingly good-looking? Having women write their phone numbers on your arm? Getting laid on the regular?”
“I take it that means the clothes look okay,” he says dryly.
“They don’t suck,” I say.
This is a ridiculous understatement. The jeans look like they were stitched from a model of his body. The t-shirt hugs his pecs and cuffs his biceps. His hair is a little rumpled from the undressing and dressing, which gives him that bed-head charm that I know—from a lifetime of watching from the sidelines—no woman can resist.
“You probably have a six-pack under there, too,” I say, disgusted. And yet, not actually disgusted. Quite the opposite. I have to admit, getting Easton to try on clothes is a purely selfish act. It’s like having my very own Extremely Sexy Paper Doll.
After he checks out, as we’re walking back to the car, I ask him a question I’ve been meaning to throw at him ever since I overheard him and Bear in the conference room.
“Hey, Easton?”
“Yeah?”
“Why do you want to leave Wilder and work for Bear? You have employment for life, great co-workers, the dream gig.”
His stride hitches, like I’ve caught him way off guard. I guess we don’t have a lot of real conversations, so I get that.
For a moment, I think he’s not planning to answer, but then he takes a breath.
“You know how many times I’ve mentioned to Gabe that I know we can get more mileage out of our social media? So, what does he do? Instead of letting me take it and run with it, he and Lucy hire Bear Warden. We could have been Bear Warden if he’d taken me seriously.”
“Maybe he didn’t realize you wanted to take it on. I feel like every time it’s come up, you’ve had a lot on your plate already.”
He shakes his head. “It just doesn’t even cross his mind that I can do it. You know how it is, being the youngest.”
He stops then and looks at me. “Maybe it’s different because you’re the girl. And because your brothers aren’t all still here.”
I take the small hit in my breastbone like a champ. I know he didn’t say it to be hurtful; no one knows how much it wounds that my brothers left me behind, and if I have my way, no one ever will.
Easton hitches a shoulder. “But for me, I’ve been trying to carve out something that feels like mine, really mine, the way the others have. Seeing Kane figure it out last year, I don’t know—it just kind of lit a fire for me. I don’t want to just accept Gabe’s version of me anymore. I want to work with someone who will take me seriously.”
Most of the time, when Easton talks, it’s teasing, and most of the time I’m hunting for the perfect comeback, but this feels different. I haven’t really ever heard Easton talk about himself, and it’s moving. I know he and I are both the youngest, and of course I know all the ways that’s hard—but I guess I never thought much about how it was hard, specifically, for Easton.
It’s funny that he’s such a jokester at the same time he longs to be taken seriously. I wonder why he does that, jokes around so much.
Maybe it’s the only role his family has ever really given him.
I realize that at some point we stopped walking and are just standing at the edge of the parking lot. Easton’s watching my face, like he’s gauging whether I’m about to start making fun of him.
On any other day, I would, for sure, but he’s just done something nice for me, and I don’t feel like it right now.
“And Bear does? Take you seriously?” I ask, instead.
“So far, yes. He’s been looking at my reels and YouTube videos, telling me what works and what doesn’t, giving me advice, helping me with stuff I’m interested in.”
“Huh,” I say.
“Huh what?” he says.
“I guess—it’s not so different from my reasons for liking Bear.”
“You like that he takes you seriously?” Easton asks.
I don’t want to go into it right now, the maybe-it-wouldn’t-suck-to-be-treated-like-a-princess thing. I just shrug.
Easton looks like he wants to say something, but he doesn’t. He just says, “Huh.”
And we start walking again.