Meet Cute, Elise Faber [audio ebook reader .TXT] 📗

pair of my boxer briefs, and it was sexier than any bikini I’d ever seen.

Her head was tipped up to the sky again, though it wasn’t bright and filled with clouds. It was clear, the temperature cool, and a multitude of stars twinkled overhead.

“Oof, that’s a heavy list,” I admitted.

Her gaze came to mine, amusement in the hazel depths. “I didn’t mean it to be.”

“I took any and every role I could when I was surviving on ramen noodles,” I said, my lips curving. “And there were some bad ones.”

“Including your role as the quintessential bad boy on the soap Into Dreams?”

I chuckled. “Including that one.”

“Okay,” she said, “so, which role since you’ve hit it big do you regret?”

“Antonio.”

Shock across her face, and I understood why. It was the first big film I’d shot, the one that had sent me into the world of celebrity. I’d had my pick of roles after that had come out, and I’d even gotten several awards shows honors.

“Why?” she asked, shifting on the built-in seat, and I noticed that the water was getting a little too close for comfort to her injury.

Sidling so that I was right next to her, I scooped her legs into my lap, propping her up so that her stitches were well out of the splash zone. “Because I was too new and insecure to do what I should have done with the role.” I smoothed her hair back. “Antonio was a great character. He was strong and sensitive. He was critically flawed but managed to overcome his own bullshit in a way that wasn’t contrite. If I’d known then what I do now about acting”—I shook my head—“I think it could have been so much better.”

“Probably.”

I blinked. “Ouch.”

She smiled. “I didn’t mean it like that.”

“How did you mean it then?”

“Just that it’s easy to look back and focus on all the ways we weren’t perfect.”

I continued stroking my fingers through her hair. “And what do you focus on that wasn’t perfect?” I asked. “Because you seem pretty damned incredible to me.”

She turned, glancing up at me, her lips so damned tempting that I had to taste her again—long and slow, with coaxing probes of my tongue. She tasted of the ice cream we’d had after dinner, chocolate and caramel with a dash of raspberry. It was from a local shop that made all their varieties in house, and it was absolutely delicious.

Doubly so when I got to taste it off her tongue.

“You’re good at flattery,” she murmured.

“Except, it’s not flattery, Tammy, the savior of the dude in distress.”

Her lips curved. “Dude in distress?”

I shrugged. “Is there a better damsel equivalent for men?”

She paused, tilted her head from side to side before resting it on my shoulder. “I suppose not. Yet another sexist form of the English language.”

“How so?”

“There’s no male word for whore, for bitch, for others,” she said, lifting her glass of wine to her lips, “that I’m too blissfully relaxed to come up with at the moment. Damsel is another.”

“Well, we should own it,” I said, moving back to her hair, running my fingers through it again. “I’ll gladly be the damsel in distress.”

Tammy laughed before taking another sip. “So, damsel in distress, any other roles you don’t like?”

“Nice try,” I said, wanting to take advantage of her lounging against me all relaxed to find out more about her, about those scars and why she carried that heavy burden. I knew the outcome had become very much like mine—feeling empty and unfulfilled and yet with too much history of being hurt to easily put that aside—but I didn’t know the why of it.

And with her on her second glass of wine, the tendrils of steam drifting off the surface of the water to gather on our skin, it seemed like as good a time as any.

“What do you mean?”

“I mean,” I said. “You haven’t told me about the things you look back on and regret.”

“I’m regretting having this entire conversation,” she muttered.

“We don’t have to have it,” I told her. “Let’s talk more about the Milk Caper.”

Relief in her eyes, though it was trailed almost instantly by determination. “No,” she said. “That’s not what I want to do. I just . . . my mom died when I was six. My dad fell apart. Hell, my family fell apart. We were three separate beings in a house, then two after my brother moved out. By the time I left for college, I don’t think I spoke to my dad more than once a week, my brother even less.” She sighed. “Though not for a lack of my trying. I wanted to—no, I was absolutely desperate for someone to connect with me, to come to my school plays or soccer practice, to take pictures of me before I left for a dance.”

She went quiet for a long moment, and I struggled to find the patience to let her finish her story on her own terms.

“That’s when I started finding all of those things I wanted in other people. Sad, huh?” she said, straightening, draping her arms back over the edge again. “My boyfriend at the time, his mom was the one to take the pictures. I played soccer for myself, for my team, no fans in the stands. I never got flowers after a play. Silly small stuff, you know?”

“Not silly.”

A nod, her not contradicting me as she went on. “But it was also more than that. No home-cooked meals, no family time. When I was old enough, my dad gave me allowance to buy my own food, just like he did for my brother. We each had our shelves in the fridge, a cabinet with our purchases. We were like roommates.” Tammy sighed. “It was hard after my mom died, having that change. But later, I adjusted, and . . . I just forgot, you know? And then I’d go to a friend’s house and see how different it was—”

“And you’d remember all over again?”

“Yeah.”

“Anyway, by the