“I get that a lot,” she says, rolling her eyes. “I look like that actress from Grey’s Anatomy, Camilla Luddington.” The girl smirks. “If I had a dollar for every time someone asked for my autograph…”
“Never heard of her.”
Her hand hooks onto her hip. “I could tell from across the room that you were going to be intense, but I didn’t think you’d be a straight up asshole.”
“Sorry?”
“Are you apologizing or asking a question?”
“See that guy over there? The one in the blue t-shirt and backwards baseball cap?” I point across the bar to one of my teammates. “His name is River. He’ll fuck anything that walks. Go to him.”
“Screw you.” She shoots me a death stare and struts back to her friends. I feel them shooting daggers my way, but I don’t give a fuck.
I don’t give a fuck about anything these days.
Anything except Ayla.
Forty
Ayla
* * *
This is a bad idea.
I should not be doing this.
Where’s Bostyn when I need her? She’d be yanking the phone from my hand and talking some sense into me.
I lift my phone to my ear. It’s ringing.
Any second now, I’m going to get Rhett’s voicemail, and I don’t even know what I’m going to say or if I’m going to say anything, but I just want to hear the sound of his voice.
“Hello?”
Oh, god. He answered.
My heart pulses in my ears and my hands clam up. “Rhett. Hi.”
He exhales, and not in a good way.
“Why are you calling?” he asks, though I think the most important question here is why did he answer.
“Um,” I say, trying to buy some time to think of a better answer than the truth. Sometimes I drink and I call up old boyfriends. It’s something I’ve always done and it’s juvenile, but it happens. Half the time I don’t remember the conversation the next day, I only happen across my call log and see that I spoke with one of them at one in the morning for forty-two minutes and thirty-three seconds.
“What do you want, Ayla?” he asks.
I sit up straight. My body is Jell-O. I’d ask myself how I got here, but the empty, miniature bottles of vodka sitting on top of the mini bar seem to be a good indication.
“I wanted to talk about that weekend,” I say.
It’s been three weeks now, and there hasn’t been a single night when I haven’t replayed every last minute of that experience in my mind before drifting to sleep. I’ve determined I must have masochistic tendencies.
“No thanks,” he says.
“Are you going to hate me forever?”
He’s silent on the other end, and in his silence I find my answer.
“I don’t hate you, Ayla,” he sighs.
“Then why can’t we—”
“—because we can’t. We’ll ruin each other. And you won’t survive me a second time; not like this.”
“How do you know?”
“Because I just know. You’re fire. I’m gasoline. We’ll burn this to the ground before it even has a chance.”
“So you’ve thought about it,” I say.
“Thought about what?”
“Giving this another chance.”
“It’s not going to happen, Ayla. I can promise you that,” he says, his voice stern and certain.
“Then why did you answer your phone?” I ask.
He hesitates.
“Rhett,” I say his name, desperate for his answer.
I hear him exhale.
And then the call ends.
Forty-One
Rhett
* * *
I’ve never put much credence in things like fate or destiny, but when I saw the chalkboard sign outside a bookstore in Seattle this morning, I had to take a second.
* * *
TONIGHT ONLY!! NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLING AUTHOR AYLA CALDWELL 7-9PM!!
* * *
So here I am, in the backroom of a bookstore amongst a standing room only crowd, waiting for Ayla to take the podium up front. The room is alive with energy and the readers around me, ninety-eight percent women, are chatting up a storm, all of them clutching hardcover books with Ayla’s name printed across the front.
Someone’s passing around a shoebox, notepad, and pencil, and people are scribbling down questions for Ayla to answer. The woman running the show says she can’t guarantee Ayla will have time to get to all of them, but she’ll answer as many as she can.
The box almost skips me, but I reach out for it. The woman handing it off apologizes, saying she assumed I was here against my will with my girlfriend.
I tear a piece of paper from the notepad, jot down my question, fold it in half and drop it in the shoebox.
Five minutes later the lights dim, and the lady in charge ushers Ayla to the front of the room. The dull roar of women’s voices ceases to exist. They’re all in awe, eyes glued as she takes the podium. A select few, who probably stood in line since this morning, have seats up front, but I’m in the back of the room along the wall, generously obscured by several dozen fangirling women. There’s no way Ayla can see me.
“Hi, everyone,” Ayla says, offering a nervous titter. Her cheeks are slightly flushed. She hates public speaking, I can tell. “Thanks for coming tonight.”
“Ayla, we love you!” a woman shouts beside me. Another one beside her whistles between two fingers. Ayla shields her eyes and stares toward the back of the room.
Jesus, ladies, shut the hell up.
I don’t want her to see me.
I don’t want her to know I’m here. Not yet.
She begins with a reading from her book, Hard Hearted. I’m not sure what the book is about, some love story. I don’t pay attention to the words; only her. The women applaud when she’s finished with the passage, and she gives a little backstory on how the book came to be, how many rejections she received, and how she refused to give up because she had so much faith in this story and wanted to share it with the world.
The lady in charge hands her the shoebox, whispering something in her ear before returning to her seat.
“You guys want me to answer your questions?” Ayla asks with a smile.
She’s met with a collective, resounding, “Yes!”
“Okay, I’m just going to draw a few random ones,” she says. “So I’m really sorry if your question isn’t drawn tonight.” Ayla digs her hand into the box, mixing up the little scraps of paper before retrieving one. “Okay. Was Hard Hearted based on anyone you know in real life?” She places the paper aside. “Hm. Not ... directly? Maybe a culmination of several people? I just wanted to write a book about someone who was hard to love, but who wanted to be loved more than anything in the world. I feel like I’ve come across a lot of those types in my life, so writing about James felt like second nature almost, like we were old friends. And maybe bits and pieces of Stassi are based on me, but it isn’t direct or intentional. It just sort of happens when you write. You can’t help but put yourself in the character’s shoes, and sometimes they think and say and do the things you would think and say and do in their situation.”