Was it kismet that he adored this line too?
A sign, maybe?
She ran her index finger over the line, letting the memories of this afternoon flash past. Reeve and his kiss. Reeve and the way he caught her on the steps. Reeve and his words “I’m always happy to catch you.” Then, there was the picture he sent her after they’d said goodbye. She placed the book on the couch and reached for her phone on the coffee table, scrolling back to his text. He’d taken a picture of the steps leading into the library, the exact spot where he’d kissed her in such a way it seemed as if time had stopped and that the world had begun spinning around them. The moment she came undone for him.
There was only one word with the photo. One word and one punctuation mark: Encore?
She ran her fingertip lazily across that message, as if the word itself made her feel all these tingles, even though it was the memory of Reeve’s lips.
Encore. He was asking for an encore. Not of what she’d done to him in the stacks, though she was sure he wouldn’t mind another one of those, thank you very much.
But an encore of a show-stopping kiss.
She didn’t answer his question. She wouldn’t admit how very much she wanted another one. But she did allow herself a reply: “I am reading your favorite book right now.” She let her finger hover over the send button. If she sent this, she was choosing to engage. She was pressing beyond the physical and acting on the emotional. She would be getting to know him in a deeper way. She hit send.
Moments later a reply arrived. “Tell me one of your favorite lines…”
She flipped through the book, easily finding another one. “You won’t like it, because it’s about her.”
“Try me,” he wrote back.
Sutton tapped out another quote, one that tugged at her heart. “There must have been moments even that afternoon when Daisy tumbled short of his dreams--not through her own fault but because of the colossal vitality of his illusion. It had gone beyond her, beyond everything. He had thrown himself into it with a creative passion.”
She took a sip of her wine, and soon Reeve’s name reappeared, but it wasn’t a text. He was calling. Sutton froze. Should she answer it? He knew she was around. Would he think she was ignoring him if she didn’t pick up? But she couldn’t fake her way out of this one.
“Hello there,” she said in her best sparkly voice. She was never aware of her own British accent, but she’d been told occasionally that it made her sound both smart and aloof. Those were traits that might serve her well right now.
“I love that line too.”
“Oh you do?”
“Yes. I think it’s about the ways we have these ideals of different things and people. Don’t you? I mean, why do you love the line?”
She loved it because it was passionate, because it was big, because it was epic. But she wasn’t prepared to say that, so she turned the question around. “Do you, Reeve? Have ideals about things and people?”
He paused before answering, and she wondered where he was. She heard music in the background, but the kind from a stereo or iPod, not a club. He must be at home. “Yeah. Of course. I mean, I’m sure I have this ideal about acting and theater and the craft, right? I kind of have to.”
“Why? Why do you have to?”
“I just think you can’t do this as a career if there’s anything else you remotely can see yourself doing.”
She nodded. “I believe that. I believe that about any type of art. Writer, painter, actor. It has to be the only thing for you.”
“Right. And it’s like that quote. It goes beyond her, beyond everything. It becomes everything.”
Everything. She let that word resonate in the air around her. Actors loved acting first, best and only. If she let her heart too far out of her chest then she’d have no one but herself to blame. Reeve might sound alluringly interested in this lovely getting-to-know-you phase right now, but that’s because he was throwing himself into this role—the role of the boyfriend—in the only way he knew how. Wholeheartedly, and with a creative passion.
They were just that. A creation.
It wasn’t kismet. It wasn’t a sign.
This was yet another scene in the script of their relationship. And that was totally fine, right? She didn’t really feel anything for him. It’s not as if she was longing for this thing to extend beyond a week anyway. At least, that’s what she told herself.
She yawned, big and long and exaggerated. He might have been able to tell it was a fake yawn. But she needed an out, and it was the best she could do. “I’m sleepy. I better go. I’ll see you tomorrow for a dress rehearsal, so to speak.”
“See you tomorrow, Sutton,” he said, then paused. “I can’t wait.”
She hung up, took a long swallow of wine, placed the drained glass on her coffee table, then made room for her main man, who curled up by her knees. She closed the novel and reached for her files, reminding herself that actors were part of her job, not part of her heart.
Even though she couldn’t wait to see him either.
Chapter Eight
The dinner was tomorrow. There was one more night of this pretend relationship, and Reeve wanted to have all his lines down cold. He didn’t want there to be any f**k-ups. But then, with what she’d done to him in the library and what he’d done to her in the theater, he couldn’t imagine anyone would think they weren’t a real couple. Fact was, they had chemistry in spades. There was something combustible between the two of them. It was as if he’d been given the keys to her body, and the same for her with him. The next day as he walked to her apartment on the Upper East Side, he was still thinking about the way they connected—but not just physically, because he liked talking to her too.
More than he’d expected.
Matter of fact, he’d never thought he’d be so into this arrangement. That he’d want more.
He rang the buzzer.
“Be right down,” she said, and he waited on the steps of her brownstone.
He looked up and down her street. It was one of those quiet blocks in the seventies, not far from the park. There were trees and pretty stoops, and brick buildings and lots of families pushing strollers or holding hands with young children. It was a far cry from where he lived down in the East Village in a tiny shoebox of an apartment that he’d snagged on a sublease when an actor buddy got a touring role in the German production of Book of Mormon.
But Sutton did well for herself, so it was no surprise she could handle a block like this. He leaned against the stone railing that led to her building, watching the street. A few fallen leaves blew past him, courtesy of the crisp autumn that had landed in Manhattan. He wore jeans, combat boots, and a tee-shirt—this one with the words Unplug Electric Vampires in a cool white typewriter font. He had on his scratched-up leather jacket, and his jawline was speckled with a bit of stubble. He ran a hand through his hair, and turned when he heard Sutton say, “Hey you.”