But Adam wasn’t with Maya, a small voice inside me chirped cheerfully. He just pretended to be. He wanted to be with you.
“I’m sorry,” I said from the other side of the door. “Okay? There, you have it. A real apology. With the S word and everything. I’m sorry for ten years ago, and for six days ago. I’m sorry I couldn’t articulate my feelings well. I’m sorry I didn’t have the guts to go for it with you. I’m sorry I let you go,” I finished softly.
“I’m sorry for being a dumbass at eighteen.” Adam sighed in response. I smiled to myself. I didn’t know why, but I was pretty sure he was smiling on the other side of that door, too. “That I went about it the wrong way. That I waited for you to take the first step just because I thought it’d make my life ten times easier.”
“Were you really that scared of Val?” I chuckled.
“He chased me with a billiard stick when I asked him, hypothetically, how he would react if I asked you out six months prior to Maya-gate,” Adam deadpanned. I burst out laughing, something warm spreading in my chest. He’d wanted to go for it. He’d wanted to ask me out.
“Guess you got the answer to your question.”
“And then some.”
“I was prepared to go against Val about it…kind of,” I admitted. “I really liked you. Trouble was, I thought you liked everyone else.”
“I never liked anyone else.” His voice was a low growl. A promise. “Not like this. Maybe not at all. So…” His voice took a mischievous edge. “You wanted me, huh?”
“That’s the understatement of the century. My phone was a shrine full of screenshots of your pictures.”
He laughed. “Same. I even looked for you on social media over the years. Your presence is surprisingly underwhelming.”
“Yes.” I smiled. “I’m private, like that.”
“Me too,” he deadpanned. He was one of the most famous people in the world. Another giggle burst out of me. And just like that, we acted like the past decade hadn’t happened. Like the night in my room hadn’t, either. It was just us. Making each other laugh and roll our eyes.
I had to pull away. To give both of us time to digest everything. I needed a minute to savor this thing. To take a breath before things snowballed into a territory I’d never been in.
“All right. It’s the middle of the night and I need to go through twenty pages before I send this episode that I’m writing. I’ll let you rest.” I got up reluctantly, getting ready to walk back to my room.
“Oh, and Nik?” Adam added, making me stop in his hall.
“Yeah?”
“I’m not the same wishy-washy eighteen-year-old. Now that you’re here and I know the truth, know how you feel…all bets are off.”
No one had ever accused me of being overly sophisticated, so there was little point in trying to adapt cultivated tactics to make Adam Mackay notice I was no longer sixteen.
The way I saw it, we were both single (I knew he was single, because I’d spent the entire night cyber-stalking him, something I’d refrained from doing for a decade, and yes, I would like the Nobel Prize for my notable self-restraint to be mailed to my current address, please). We both liked each other and shared the same hobbies and love for movies. We made each other laugh, and if we were half as good between the sheets as we’d been at rolling on the carpet doing our so-called freestyle wrestling, fireworks would explode every time we touched each other.
Now we’d officially graduated from clearing the air to The Seduction Game.
The morning after Adam’s confession about faking it with Maya, I strolled out of my room in a small yellow bikini, carrying my laptop – No big deal, scriptwriters kill off and resurrect characters in soap operas in their bikinis all the time, right?—and headed straight to Adam’s balcony.
He had a kidney-shaped pool, bracketed by palm trees for privacy. The Hollywood Hills view made me feel like I lived in a fairytale. I settled on one of the sunbeds, ignoring the fact that I couldn’t read anything on my laptop with the sun pounding on the screen, and waited for Adam to wake up.
He dragged himself out of his room an hour later, carrying two cups of coffee. He came to the balcony shirtless, his six-pack on full display. His arms were the width of my thighs and corded with muscles. I wanted to climb him like one of the palm trees.
He sat beside me, placing one of the coffee cups on the table between us. I murmured my thank you as he squinted at the pool. I still couldn’t believe he had a freaking private pool in his condo. I mean, he resided in the penthouse, but still.
“Slept well?” I purred.
“Sure. How’s my guest room treating you?”
“It’s really nice. Thank you.”
There was a pause. The awkwardness lingered in the air. At least it was nervous awkwardness, and not the-only-reason-I’m-not-chasing-you-with-a-steak-knife-is-the-law awkward.
“You don’t need a bikini to seduce me. Fucking breathing does the trick. Always did.” He still looked at the pool.
Good thing, as my face turned bright red. “I’m not trying to seduce you.”
“Oh, yeah? Then your scriptwriting skills need some fine-tuning.”
“What makes you say that?”
“Well, for one thing, your laptop is turned off.”
Shit. I slammed my laptop shut, but this time around, didn’t let my pride and embarrassment get the better of me.
“Well. This is embarrassing. Then again, I’m a little rusty in the seduction department.”
“When in doubt, just take your clothes off?”
I laughed. “That’s no way to talk to your best friend’s annoying baby sister. I swear, that’s how I thought you looked at me all those years.”
“I did,” he deadpanned.
I cocked my head,
