“Completely,” he says.
Helen grins like a cat as she points from Jude to me. “So, you two found each other.” She sounds as pleased as a cat too.
Jude swings his gaze my way, looking at me with a whole new kind of smile. It’s dirty like he’s still thinking of me in that towel. But it’s also . . . private. Like he knows on some intrinsic level that I told Helen about him that first day because he enthralled me.
If he only knew I was so enthralled, a spark is sliding down my back from his smile. Yeah, it’s devastating, all right.
“We did find each other,” Jude says.
“I had a feeling you two lovebirds would,” she says, singsong.
“It’s not like that,” I put in quickly, needing to dispel that for my own sanity. Hell, for my hold on reality.
“Yeah, it’s not like that at all,” he echoes, quickly too.
“Why not?” she asks in disbelief.
Jude drapes an arm around her, then sighs heavily. “We live together. TJ’s my roomie,” he says, and that warning is for her, maybe, and possibly for me, but mostly I can tell it’s for him.
He’s underlining the roomie rules we need to follow.
Rules I will follow because I care deeply about his dreams.
Helen sighs, aggrieved. “I can’t listen to such rubbish.”
Jude kisses her cheek. “Gotta go, love. Doesn’t TJ look smashing in his new shirt?”
“He’s the scrummiest,” she says.
“I know,” Jude says with a note of pride.
We leave, and once we’re out on the street, I’m a little lost as to what’s next. I want to hug him. I want to congratulate him. But I also don’t want to fuck things up. Awkwardly, I offer a hand for him to shake.
He scoffs. “You want to shake my hand?”
“I’m congratulating you. I’m really fucking excited for you,” I explain.
“Then congratulate me properly.”
With a blow job, I say to myself. “With a hug?” I ask out loud.
“A hug and a beer and a dinner so fucking filling that it will take sex off my mind,” he says.
Cracking up, I step in for a hug. It’s thoroughly bro-dude style. A clap on the back. A pat on the shoulder. I do not linger.
I hope it takes sex off both our minds.
“Tell me everything about the gig,” I say when I let go.
We walk, and he launches into the details. The shoot starts next week. The show is running on a streaming service that’s gaining some traction. The actress is great. The director is too. “I’ll be busy every day for a couple of weeks. And every night at the bookshop. And the pay is seriously not bad. Also, they said our chemistry was electric.”
“Good,” I say, and I don’t push the topic. I don’t ask if it’s because he was thinking of me. I don’t have to ask because I know.
And knowing does something to my heart that I haven’t felt before. Not like this. Not this intensely. Or this deeply.
And definitely never this dangerously.
“So, this is a big break for you?” I ask, keeping the conversation only on work.
“It could be. I mean, it’s not like I was cast in an American TV show or a BBC one. Or on the West End or in a Hollywood film.”
I stop, put a hand on his arm. “Don’t put it down. Don’t compare it. It’s amazing in and of itself. This is a big deal, Jude.”
He smiles, his shoulders relaxing. “I’m really, really happy.”
“I can tell.”
“TJ?”
“Yes?”
“This is all I’ve ever wanted.” We stop at the corner near Waterloo Bridge, waiting at the traffic light. “When I was six, I fell off the swing at a local park. Knocked out my two front teeth,” he says, flashing a smile like he’s showing me the missing teeth. His are perfectly straight.
“That doesn’t sound like fun,” I say.
“It took a while for my adult teeth to come in. But at that point, it was hard for me to say S properly. I had to see a speech therapist to learn to pronounce it properly,” he tells me. “Her name was Alice, and she had three orange cats who roamed all over her house on the outskirts of London. She had me do monologues and recite poetry to work on my speech. And it was like . . . magic. I knew then that I wanted to perform.”
Chills rush down my arms. His passion is infectious. “It’s kind of amazing when something clicks, right?”
“It unlocked me,” he says, and we cross the street. “And I felt alive and excited. I could see my future. I could feel it so deeply. I wanted this job so badly. Sometimes when I’m out with my friends, I don’t always let on how much I crave the work. I try to act cool and casual. I even did that with my own brother the other day when we were having tea. But I’m not cool and casual about it. Not one bit. I just can’t be.”
“I understand completely,” I say, and when we reach the entrance to The Vaults, I stop. “Jude?”
“Yes?”
Here goes. This feels like stripping naked, like showing him the most vulnerable parts of me. My hopes and dreams. But it also feels right to tell Jude before my brother, before work friends, before my friends back home. “I’m writing a novel.”
His smile is like the sun rising in the morning. It’s slow and unstoppable, and when it coasts across his gorgeous face, it lights up the entire sky. “Is that so?”
“What you just said, that unlocking—that’s how I felt when I came to London when I was thirteen. When I went to the bookshop, that was my light bulb. When I knew what I wanted to do, that’s why I visited all these places in London. For my novel,” I say, and wow, that was hard.
But so necessary.
For a few seconds, Jude’s lips twitch like he’s trying to rein in an emotion that borders on laughter. But it’s not a chuckle he’s holding in. It’s more like a look of utter delight.
Like he’s even happier than he was when he got the part. “Let’s visit all the places.”
I revise my estimate to completely, utterly, absolutely infatuated.
18
This Will Solve Everything!
TJ’s Travel Journal
London, Day Fifteen
* * *
Dear Digital Travel Journal,
* * *
It’s official. It only took two weeks for me to fall in love with London, from the sights to the rain to the music.
Don’t get me started on the men, though. That situation is not what I expected. There has been no non-stop fiesta of dick.
Cue the sad wiener trombone.
But hey, I blame my roommate for that.
Jude takes up all the space in my mind. He makes everyone else look like a carbon copy of an already faded, old-timey, black and white photograph.
After the last week of getting to know him, I’m no longer convinced I can handle fifty more weeks of living together with, let’s face it, my dream guy. He’s the swooniest man I’ve ever known, and my entire body vibrates just being near him. He’s wickedly charming and ridiculously beautiful, and I am so far gone.