Scandalized

She sucks in a breath through her teeth. “Ouch.”

“I don’t think I’ve done anything to indicate that I think this is going anywhere.”

“I think,” Eden says, “that she’s trying to tell you she’s worried Alexander Kim wants it to go somewhere.”

Digesting this, I watch him accept a handmade gift from a fan. A handler tries to take it, to put it in a box, but Alec shakes his head, wanting it with him on the table. “He asked me to come stay at the hotel with him.”

“Seriously?”

I nod.

“Are you going to?”

“I want to, but I think that’s the equivalent of sticking a hot skewer in my own heart in nine days.”

“God, you are dramatic.”

I look at her. “You’d do it?”

“You know the answer to that. But I’d probably also take the job of Alexander Kim Belt Polisher if it was offered.”

I chew my lip, staring at the view of his long neck as he leans over the table to shake the hand of a fan in a wheelchair. I can so easily imagine his sweet, attentive expression, the deep pull of his dimples when he smiles and thanks her for coming.

But also I can imagine the sound he’ll make when he kicks off his shoes later. When he falls into satisfied exhaustion onto the sofa in his suite. I can imagine how he would pull me onto his lap and unleash a happy little growl into my neck.

Maybe we’d order room service for dinner. He’d offer me a bite of his food, nodding happily when he sees I like it. He would ask what I want to watch on TV. He would distract me anyway, with his hands and mouth. We’d give up and make love instead.

My brain shorts out at the phrase. Make love.

That isn’t what we’re doing, but even if it were… I want it. Even for just a handful of days, I want it.

OK, I text him from the Batphone, and try to ignore the way my stomach tightens when I imagine Yael’s reaction to the rest of it. I’ll stay in your suite.

Twelve

I knew it was coming today, but when Billy texts me at three thirty that my story is going up online in advance of the print edition in the morning, I am consumed with the jittery nausea I’ve only felt a handful of times before. I’m in an Uber, headed to the Waldorf Astoria in Beverly Hills, with a key to room 1001 burning like a lit match in my pocket, and my first big story at the LA Times is going live in a half hour.

Alec will probably be at the signing for at least two more hours. I couldn’t follow all of the specifics—blue, green, and red wristbands, VIP fan packages—but when they took a break while switching wristband groups, he found me, pressed a key into my palm, and told me to head over whenever I wanted and he would meet me here later. For a handful of seconds, I thought about telling him that Yael wouldn’t be thrilled, that in Yael-speak she’d asked me to chill the fuck out, and that essentially moving in together is the opposite of chill. But he’s known her for nearly fifteen years. Without question, he’d already have to know where Yael landed with all of this.

The entire walk through the gleaming hotel lobby to the elevator, I expect to be stopped and asked if I need directions or help. I grew up in Santa Monica; I went to school with the children of celebrities. I don’t feel out of place in the fancier LA spaces, but I was also raised by parents who help me when needed but don’t support me anymore. I carry myself, and that means I support myself in LA each month on what many people in this hotel are paying for a weekend getaway in California. My suitcase is probably worth less than a box of the straws they use in the bar, and I’m still wearing what I had on for the signing. After a sweaty, muggy day, the straps of my black tank top are—predictably—much less robust than the straps of my bra and seem to take turns sliding off my shoulders.

But stepping into the air-conditioned calm of Alec’s suite feels like stepping out of the LA I’ve known my whole life. I mean, at no point in my adult existence would I ever experience a hotel this way unless I was here for an interview. A villa suite, it said on the gold-plated placard outside the door. A hallway leads to a wide circular living room with seafoam-green furniture, gold and white accent pillows, and lamps and a coffee table that probably each cost more than my monthly rent. A dining room is separated from the space by an open bookshelf dotted with tasteful curios: a black-and-white Art Deco vase, a brushed-brass statue of a horse, art books, framed black-and-white prints.

Dragging my hand along the dining table, I take in the Asian-inspired sideboard, the delicate gold prints on the walls, the plush white chairs—six of them, like we might host a dinner party. The windows span the back wall of the dining room and living room, curving along the path of the building and revealing an unreal view of the enormous terrace and the Hollywood Hills beyond. This is the view people imagine when they think of Los Angeles. Not the traffic-clogged, billboard-dense stretches of Sepulveda north of LAX or the wire tangle of freeways smack in the middle of the city but this: wide-open sky, lush green hills, palm trees lining wide streets.

I pull out my phone, texting Eden. Having a Pretty Woman moment.

Be more specific, she answers. Were you shunned from stores or are you in a bubble bath?

Neither. But this suite is unreal.

It had better be.

I grin down at her Alexander Kim adoration and drop my phone in my purse, leaving it slung over a dining room chair as I explore the rest of the suite.

I’ve had this man inside me, have kissed nearly every inch of his body, and yet I still break out into a cold sweat when I see the enormous, neatly made four-poster bed stacked with plush white pillows. It’s such a picturesque bedroom it’s almost absurd, and all I can think about is how it’s a bed for honeymooners. For consummating something, and we’re going to sleep here. Out of four nights, we’ve already spent two together, and now this is our bed. I think about my bed at home—a comparatively tiny full-size mattress; it wasn’t nearly long enough for him, but it didn’t matter. I know now that if Alec could have his way, he would curl up, be my big spoon all night. Better yet, he would sleep on top of me.

Just as I walk into the bathroom and catch sight of the truly mammoth tub overlooking the Hills, my phone starts to explode with texts, with emails. For a few minutes I’d forgotten that this room wasn’t the only way my life was changing today.