I also know what she’s made sure not to bring up since the night it happened in my room a few months after my last surgery when I was hopped up on painkillers.
Our kiss.
A kiss that I know for a fact was her first.
“If you honestly think that I don’t know you then you’re not as smart as I thought you were.” Her eyes narrow at my brass statement. “Now climb on my back. I’m hungry and know a place we’ll both enjoy.”
She stares silently between me and the area I’m egging her to climb onto.
“Do you need to go home and change, or do you think that the material painted on your skin will expand if you fill your stomach with more than a few leaves of lettuce?”
She scoffs. “My dress isn’t that tight. And I eat more than lettuce.”
I grin, patting my back again. “Good. I recall your love for loaded nachos at Perkin’s Place over on 5th. We can have the same competition we did when we were younger.”
“Daire—”
Sighing, I decide not to let this drag out any longer. Without a second thought, I haul her over my shoulder like I threatened to do and start walking into the crisp air, ignoring the people chuckling as they pass us on the half-empty sidewalk.
Her hands whack into my back but compared to the men I’m used to taking hits from, it’s nothing more than a love tap. “Put. Me. Down!”
I tighten my hold, the muscles in my arms flexing as I haul her up, making her grunt from the sudden movement. “You had a chance to do this the easy way,” I remind her. “So, I don’t want to hear it.”
She grumbles something unladylike that has me grinning.
I squeeze her thighs. “Don’t forget to smile, babe. There’s going to be more than one camera pointed at us during the two-block walk to the diner.”
I hear her groan.
Which makes me grin wider.
Chapter 3
Adelaide
* * *
I was eleven when I first met Daire. Six years separate he and Noah, and the age difference is obvious in their looks now more than ever.
Whereas Noah still has a babyface, Daire is all man. Matured features, sharp jawline, piercing eyes, and a slightly crooked nose from the time it got broke during a hockey game in his early college hockey days.
The first time I ever went over to the condo Noah’s parents still live in over on the Upper East Side of Manhattan, I’d been enamored by the 6’3” man who seemed larger than life. Confidence encased his brawny frame everywhere he went and no matter who he talked to. I’d looked up to Noah for the same kind of confidence but quickly learned it was a family trait.
Dairen never treated me like the annoying little girl I was, even with seven years between us. Not even when he caught me blatantly staring a time or two. Or five or ten. He would always smile at me and strike up conversation whenever he was around visiting his family during his breaks from Union College. He’d ask how school was, what roles I was trying out for in school plays, and if I was auditioning for anything like Noah had been.
I think it was the first time he made me feel better after being discouraged during a failed audition where I was told I didn’t have the right “look” that made me realize how big my crush on him was. Even though his mother swatted him for it, he’d said, “Fuck them and their opinions, little Peters.”
It wasn’t the only time he encouraged me to brush off their comments either. That’s definitely when I knew how screwed I was.
Because he didn’t see me as the ugly duckling everybody else did. I wasn’t the semi-pretty girl that ‘90s makeover movies were based on. I was just me, and he liked me just fine for it.
“Let me guess,” he says, shoving another nacho into his mouth and tipping his chin toward the phone screen I’m staring at. “Lover Boy hasn’t texted back.”
My grip tightens on the cell. Lover Boy. It’s been a while since I’d heard that from him. He started calling Noah that after I became his co-star, and it was scripted that we’d be dating in the third season of the show. Then it became…more than that. Complicated. “I don’t see how that’s any of your business.”
Snorting in amusement, he sits back in the black upholstered bench seat. “That’s where you’re wrong. I picked you up and have been driving you around like a chauffeur.”
My eyes catch his. “Well considering I tried telling you that I’d hail a taxi instead of you driving me around, I don’t really see why you’re complaining.”
Something passes over those brown eyes making him reach below the table and clear his throat. “You’re even hotter when you’re angry, princess. Have I ever told you that?”
What the what?
“Uh…” No. He’s definitely never told me that before. I would have locked it away in the back of my memory for…well, forever.
The crush is still strong.
“You know I hate it when you call me that,” is what I decide to come back with, picking up one of the nachos covered in meat, cheese, sour cream, and chives.
I also hate when he calls Noah ‘Lover Boy’ because it draws a very distinctive line between us where I wish it didn’t. If Jill knew where I was—who I was with—she’d tell me to get my butt into a cab and go home. She’d lecture me on public perception and remind me what I could lose by a scandal forming during a pivotal point in my career.
You see, the world sort of thinks I’m actually dating Noah Scott. Apparently, our long-time friendship and chemistry on the show resonated with the millions of viewers that watched it every week. So much so that we were being shipped internationally as the ‘it’ couple. It started with trending posts on social media, which turned into photos of us together both on and off the set being shared hundreds of thousands of times, to speculation in every tabloid magazine about how close we really are in everyday life.
When old school photos surfaced of the two of us, it became a fairytale love story of friends-to-lovers that involved a Cinderella type—aka me—and Prince Charming, which was none other than Noah himself.
We were basically forced to play out the whole boyfriend-girlfriend thing off screen, too, which wasn’t hard. We already spent a lot of time together. Sometimes, I even wondered if dating him would be that different than what we already did. Just with more kissing…and stuff.
And we have done couple-like things beyond the basic dinners and movies. We’ve kissed. Touched. Light petting when we were both lonely and bored. Sometimes it’d go a little farther, but never too far because I always stopped it.
The man watching me stare at the food we decided to split also thinks we’re an item because neither Noah nor I have made a point to deny it. His parents have always assumed we’d wind up together anyway, but I know my best friend.
He likes girls who aren’t, well, me.
Prettier.
Taller.
Blonder.
Considering I dyed my natural blonde locks the fiery red and orange it is now, which gave my agent and manager a coronary, I’m even less of his type.
But did I want to be?
I sigh internally.
Before I can say anything, a little girl comes over to our booth holding another woman’s hand who I assume is her mom.