Total pages in book: 28
Estimated words: 25974 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 130(@200wpm)___ 104(@250wpm)___ 87(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 25974 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 130(@200wpm)___ 104(@250wpm)___ 87(@300wpm)
The two guys from the crew who shared the apartment with Kota nodded their agreement. They were all easygoing guys, and I enjoyed hanging out with them. Once I agreed, ordering another drink was all too easy. Before I knew it, I was in a conversation I hadn’t expected.
“What’s it like to kiss Dawson Priest?”
At first, I didn’t answer because the question was clearly not aimed at me. But I couldn’t help thinking about it. His lips were firm and full, and his jaw was just the right amount of bristly…
“Jem, dude. Lars asked you what it’s like to kiss Dawson. Lucky bastard is what I say. Those lips? How can it be anything other than incredible? He’s the world’s hottest man.”
“Me?” I asked, stupidly pointing to myself. I wouldn’t know what it was like to kiss Dawson. How would I?
Oh, wait.
“You mean the stage kiss.”
They laughed. “Sure, babe,” Kota said. “The stage kiss.”
“Why are you laughing?”
Two of the guys exchanged a knowing glance. “Let’s just say you’re both really good actors.”
“Hot,” another guy coughed into his fist.
“So hot,” another one sighed.
“It’s just…” I thought about the right words to describe it. “It’s just whatever, you know?”
They all stared at me. “Try again,” Kota said.
“He’s an asshole,” I blurted. “So it’s nothing special.”
The lie sat heavy on my tongue. It was something special, but I didn’t want it to be. I didn’t want to admire the way he made every night a new experience, always keeping me on my toes. Or the look he sometimes got in his eye right before his lips met mine that said, “Trust me, this is going to be amazing,” like we were true partners up there.
I really didn’t want to think about the way my stomach swooped when his arm wrapped around me or how it was sometimes a struggle to let him go when the scene ended.
“Mm,” Lars said, studying me. “Fine. Be that way. Someone said you have a girlfriend anyway.”
“Me?” I squeaked. “I’m gay.”
Kota giggled, which meant he’d had one too many drinks. “He lives with his sister. The hot chick with the short curly hair? That’s not his girlfriend, dude.”
Lars mouthed the word “Oh.”
Another guy leaned forward. His name was Chris, and he was a sewing genius in the wardrobe department. “There’s no way you don’t have an opinion about kissing Dawson fucking Priest every night if you’re gay. The man is hot as hell.”
I bit my lip. I didn’t know how to explain that the kiss onstage wasn’t actually Dawson kissing Jem; it was Lucky kissing Trigger. I wasn’t sure I really understood the difference myself, but there was one.
Fortunately, Chris continued before I had to speak. “Also? Insider info from the wardrobe department… he’s a tight fit in the trouser department if you get my gist.”
“I’d like to get that gist,” someone muttered. “In my gist hole.”
We’d all really had too many drinks. “I think I should head home.”
Kota grabbed my arm and used it to haul himself up. “Okay, but you’re coming home with us.”
One night crashing at their place led to two, which led to me moving in with Kota, Lars, and Chris the following week. The short commute from the Chelsea apartment was heaven compared to the train ride in from New Jersey, and it would allow me to get a part-time job in the city on my off days. I usually walked to work and then took the subway home at night or split a car with the guys. Living in the city was one of my dreams come true thanks to being cast in Not My Alfred, and when I finally got my financial feet under me, I would enjoy taking time to go to the parks, museums, and restaurants that made the city such a great place to people watch.
I loved the energy of the city, and I’d always imagined what it would be like to live in the middle of it. Now, here I was, and I’d do anything to keep living my dream.
Even if it meant getting a tiny taste of something impossible every night in the form of a ten-second kiss with the world’s hottest but most infuriating man.
2
DAWSON
I loved him. And I got to kiss him every single night.
While Jem Sinclair clearly hated me, and actors like me, it didn’t stop me from wanting him with every cell of my being.
“Sit still,” Letty hissed. “You’re the worst, and it’s always on Fridays. Why you gotta be a pain in my ass on Fridays, huh?”
I bit my tongue and tried to hold still while she used a kohl pencil to darken my eyebrows.
I hated Fridays. Fridays started a sixty-hour weekend in which we did five shows. Friday afternoon was our version of the worst kind of Monday morning. Long hours, hard work, the dehydrating physicality of this particular show under the hot lights.