“Shit. She must have taken it by accident.”
“Who?”
“Uh—no one. Just—”
Walls slapped the table, then pointed right at Sam’s chest. “I knew you went home with that chick last night!”
“What chick? I don’t know what you’re talking about?”
“Uh, the thick girl with the braids, all up like this,” Walls said, gesturing above his head in a swirling motion. “Sparkly jumpsuit thing. I saw you watch her Milly Rock back from the bathroom.”
“Oh, her! It wasn’t like that.”
“What was it like?”
“Listen. She’s an old friend. We just wanted to catch up and it was loud in there. Couldn’t hear my own damn thoughts.”
“Old friend, huh? From Charming.”
“Yeah, sure. That sounds about right.”
“You’re a dog, man. I hope you wrapped it up.”
“I did. She came prepared.” Sam’s dates for the evening had been his elderly grandmother and his bi-flexible cousin. The last thing that had been on his mind was whether he would end the night with someone in his bed. Lesson learned. Always come prepared, no matter what.
“But for real, who was she?” Walls said as he walked toward the bed. He looked at the sheets for a moment, then headed for the love seat on the other side of the room. “I saw her talking to Kata for a sec, but the rest of the night she was crushing it on the dance floor. Big girl had moves,” he laughed. He wasn’t lying either. His mystery woman had some serious moves and some serious curves. Sam almost got hard thinking about it. Instead he cringed.
“I didn’t get her name.”
“Man, what?!”
“Yeah, yeah, I know.” It wasn’t like Sam to pull off the anonymous run-in. He was in his prime, but he’d always been a relationship guy. He wasn’t ashamed of that fact. He was also fiercely private. He never stopped Walls from doing his thing, but his buddy knew when he joked about going out and using the Pleasant name to pick up girls, Sam wasn’t really into it. He wasn’t shy like Jesse, and he wasn’t the former lady killer his brother Zach pretended not to be before he finally got back with his childhood sweetheart. He fell somewhere in the middle. He needed to get to know someone, establish a little something before he fell into bed with her. Also, falling into bed with random people in his line of work wasn’t the best idea.
The way he’d broken his own rules and on such a public and important night was just proof of how off he’d been. But the more he thought about it he couldn’t bring himself to regret it. He’d do his night with Cha-Cha all over again if he could just find her.
“You see who she came with?” he asked Walls. It wasn’t a subtle question.
“No. I mostly saw her on the dance floor, then in the corner with you. But forget about her,” Walls said. Sam knew that tone. Walls was scheming.
“Just say it.”
“I’m just saying. There are plenty of other fish in the sea. And your DMs.”
“Nah, I told you—”
“I know what you told me and I know you don’t roll with randoms, but that was before you won an Oscar. You have some A-list talent hitting you up.”
“Don’t talk like that,” Sam said, frowning. Not that it made him special or unique, but Sam’s grandmother raised him to treat women a certain way and calling them names like talent didn’t sit right with him. They were human beings with feelings and they deserved to be respected. Even if they had slid into his DMs looking to hook up.
“My bad. A few nice young ladies have made inquiries as to your relationship status,” Walls said. “Think of it like this. You’ve been fucking sulking since you ended things with Natalie. Maybe now—”
“The fuck I have!”
“Oh, I’m sorry. You poured yourself back into your work. My bad, my bad.”
“That’s right.” Okay, there had been sulking. He’d also met his ex Natalie Burke on the set of Inferno. Sam had hoped that over time things would progress, but after only two months she’d told her parents she was basically ready to get engaged, and Sam knew he had to end things. It wasn’t that commitment wasn’t on the table. He was pretty damn committed. It was the way she’d said it, over Christmas dinner, in front of most of her family, all while giving Sam this look like he had between then and New Year’s to get his ass to Jared or he would be in big trouble. They hadn’t even talked about marriage or what they wanted from a life together in the long term. So he’d ended it. Still it had taken him a while to get over her.
But no one else needed to know that.
“What’s your point and don’t be a pig about it.”
“I was just saying, since you’re in the big leagues now, and you clearly miss having a girlfriend, you should know that some interesting people have popped up in your DMs in the last twenty-four hours.”
Sam rolled his eyes and flopped back onto the bed. He caught the faint hint of Cha-Cha’s perfume as the sheets bounced around him. The way his stomach tightened made him think he should at least entertain Walls’s stupid suggestion. “Like who?”
“Gemma Lopez for one.”
“Try again.”
“What?!” Walls laughed.
“She’s like twelve.”
“She’s twenty-one.”
“No. What else you got?”
“Dru Anastasia.”
Sam sat up. “Hmmm.”
“See?”
“But nah,” Sam said, flopping back down again.
“What’s wrong with her? She’s fine as hell. And she’s working working. Andromeda just got renewed. I love that show.”
“I do too, but nah. She seems intense.” Sam had only run into the young starlet once, but he remembered a brief interaction between her and her mom. It wasn’t cute.
“Tanica Parry.”
Sam had to pause there. “What she say?” Tanica Parry was a gorgeous action star on the rise. She was in the running for a Charlie’s
