I wasn’t shit, but it is fun to pretend to be that girl again.
“Somehow, that doesn’t surprise me,” he says.
“Why don’t you taste this for me?” I ask, running my finger through the marinara sauce I’d made earlier, holding it up to him.
His gaze angles down at me, and then he dips his head, taking his time licking and sucking my finger. I smile. “Well?”
“That’s actually,” he says, covering his mouth as he laughs, “really amazing.”
“Told you,” I answer. And without my even needing to prompt it, he says, “I think I might know one other thing you’re good at.” Then he dips his head again and kisses me, like he could barely have waited another moment. I return it with glee, lifting up on my toes, making a shot of it for the other girls.
“I especially like you in that shirt,” Marcus whispers into my ear, his voice so breathy, I shiver.
“All right, all, we need to get these pizzas in the oven in ten minutes to stay on schedule. Wrap it up!” the line producer calls. Marcus meets my eyes guiltily.
“I guess I should let you get back to that,” he continues in a low voice. He’s always speaking quietly, intimately, to me, a secret just for the two of us.
“I’ll see you later,” I tell him with a kiss on the nose. (When this airs, I look like such an insane bitch with Marcus wrapped around my finger at this point, it barely musters notice that anything I do can ever be considered cute.)
It’s hours later, pizzas are cooked and not eaten (I win the tasting contest but it never airs because no one gives a shit), and we are all zipped up into our cocktail wear now. We are filming in a Cuban-themed bar connected to another top-dollar hotel in River North, another swanky neighborhood just north of the Loop with renovated warehouses and themed drinking establishments galore. The bar has kitschy little armchairs in outrageous colors and bright wallpaper in each of the connecting rooms.
“You’re going to go second,” Charlotte tells me. She and Henry are standing, talking to me in a corner of the bar. The bar is typically extraordinarily dark, Henry tells me, but the production team has lit it up brighter than the sun tonight.
“Second?” I ask. “Why?”
Henry locks eyes with me and smirks, raising his eyebrows. I hate when he does that. “Because we have your back,” he tells me. “And we wanted to get you the alone time you so craved.”
“Henry’s idea,” Charlotte confirms. “So you two play nice today.”
Henry is looking so goddamn pleased with the whole thing, and I hate it deep down into my very bones. I’m saving his ass with our connection, and he’s exploiting me. I have to do something to take back control of the situation.
“Get me a whiskey,” I tell Henry, straight-faced, hoping to knock the knowing smile off his face.
“Fuck off,” he says with a laugh. “Have one of the assistants get you a drink.”
“Get her a drink, Henry,” Charlotte says without humor, and he gets up without another word, rolling his eyes as he goes.
“Okay, listen,” Charlotte says, leaning as far forward to me as her stomach will allow, “don’t feel rushed tonight, okay? We’ve set aside time for you and Marcus specifically so just take advantage of it.”
“Seriously?” I ask, used to time with Marcus being deliberately withheld.
“Yeah,” she says, “and relax.” She leans back, pointing as Henry brings my drink over to me. Our hands do not accidentally brush as he hands it over to me, nor do we make uncomfortably long eye contact. The fact that we haven’t is then all I can think about.
Even with the pep talk, it’s still an hour before I get to see Marcus. There’s an easy-to-spot twinkle in his eye as he makes his way over to me and reaches his hand down to mine.
“May I?” he asks, and I take his hand easily, pulling it into my side as we walk away from the group.
“I have something special planned for you tonight,” he says as the two of us make our way into the hotel lobby. “Just this way, right, Elodie?”
Elodie, who has basically appeared from thin air, says, “Yeah, we have a room for you two on the second floor.”
I turn to look at her, shocked. “A room?” Then I look up at Marcus, his gaze slightly trepidatious. I smile.
“Is there a hot tub?”
Elodie answers, “This is the 1. Of course there’s a hot tub.”
We take an elevator up to a suite, where a wall of windows gives us a breathtaking view overlooking the river, with the city lights glinting in the background. The floors are polished wood, the furniture leather. Nothing like the spackled paint holding the mansion together; this was real opulence.
The camera crew is already set up in the room, filming as Marcus and I take in the view, his arms wrapped around me, chin perched on my shoulder. I look back over at him. “Just for me?” I ask him, both of us in on the joke.
He spins me around, hand going to my cheek. “I asked if it could be you,” he says, and the fairy tale gets to me just then, the romance, all of it. I kiss him, and the lights twinkle in the background.
Elodie had asked me to pack a bathing suit a few days ago for safekeeping; now, one of the assistants hands it to me and I change into it. It’s simple and effective, a hot pink bikini, the bottoms especially high cut to leave little to the imagination. Marcus can’t help but grin as he sees it, and we get into the marble hot tub in the bathroom, clinking our champagne glasses together.
The romance is officially gone with the boom mic and camera and Janelle standing over the two of us like the Grim Reaper. Marcus puts his arm around my shoulder, skin-on-skin contact making my toes curl. He plays with the frizzy hair at the base of my neck that won’t stay up in the ponytail I pulled the rest of it into.
“What are you thinking about?” he asks me.
I look up into his face, his green eyes and chiseled jaw. “Time,” I say. “The way they’re teaching us to covet it. To steal it.” I shrug. “You?”
He chuckles. “Would you believe I was thinking the exact same thing?”
I grin smugly, my face inches from his. “No.”
“Good,” he says, “because I wasn’t.”
Then he closes the distance between us, his mouth on mine, confident, wanting. He shifts, turns his body more fully toward me, setting down his glass of champagne and then taking mine out of my hand to set it down, too. His hands go to my hips, lifting me in the water. I gasp in surprise as he pulls me around toward him, my legs straddling his lap, forgetting about the cameras, something else ignited as our bodies are pressed together. I lose myself in it, closing my eyes, forgetting everyone else is there.
