Anyone But the Superstar (Anyone But You #3)

Chapter 12

12

LIZ

‘Dinner is fucked.’

My hand pauses over my sketch as I turn to my disgruntled, movie-star roommate in the kitchen. Something I’ve been actively trying not to do since I sat on the couch and began drawing Mike Hunt.

Two days ago, after Felix saved Mike and me from the melting walk back to the condo, and I threw myself at him in an impromptu hug – making a sandwich out of poor Mike – I retreated to my room, thinking that space would be the best thing for my hero roommate. My plan was to hole up in my room and lose my thoughts in art.

Specifically, my superfluous, roommate-centric thoughts.

And yet.

My thoughts proved themselves dirty when, startled out of a mental art fog by Felix knocking on my door to tell me dinner was ready, I found myself further shocked by what I’d drawn.

Felix.

Naked, except for a blue, ruffled apron.

My sudden inspiration is frustrating on multiple levels. I haven’t felt moved to draw from my imagination since leaving New York. I’m rarely not drawing, something that used to vex my father a great deal, but it was always from pictures, arranged still lifes or land and urban scapes.

When I was younger, after I had my after-school snack, I’d hole up in my bedroom, sitting on the window seat, and sketch out fantasy worlds. The people walking outside through Central Park would transform into characters, making my sketch pad an impromptu picture-book telling fantastical stories. Happy stories.

It’s been a long time since I’ve been able to do that.

So, while it’s a relief to know that my ability to create from my imagination hasn’t left me for good, my current muse is wrecking hell on my common sense.

As in, it’s common sense not to get worked up over your celebrity roommate/co-worker. Especially as I have other things to focus on beside his bulging biceps. Like a half-sister to introduce myself to.

A forlorn sigh escapes as I glance from sketch book to real-life model. I never would have thought I’d be grateful for erectile dysfunction, and yet here I am, disappointed but thankful I can’t act on my inconvenient imaginations even if I wanted to.

The sad victim of ED throws his hands in the air like a forlorn housewife. ‘The avocados are hard.’ His face is the definition of toddler-tantrum over poor produce selection.

It takes all I have not to laugh.

Hair on end, Felix moves around the small kitchen, his movements unnecessarily aggressive.

Almost without thinking, I flip the page on my sketch book, my hands making quick movements across the paper?—

His hands as he grabs an apple.

His shoulders as he rips a banana from the bunch .

His expression as he tosses them in a paper bag along with the offending avocados.

The line of his spine as he stands, hands on hips, staring daggers at the counter.

‘Meow.’ Mike, probably perturbed at having his modeling ignored, splays his legs out – his favorite way to warm his nether regions in sunlight.

My hand, interrupted by Mike’s whine, flexes around the graphite, eager to keep moving. So much for thinking I’d be too conscious of Felix to draw him if we were in the same room together.

That real Felix would be safer than my imaginative one.

Because if I’m honest with myself, which I haven’t been very often in the last year, my opinion of the real Felix Jones has altered significantly ever since I saw him scream like a peacock in the face of Mike Hunt.

And his attitude, after realizing I wasn’t out to sell nude photos of him, has been… charming.

I close my eyes, cutting off the view of my inappropriate muse, the last two days playing out in my head.

He’s cooked for me. He’s walked me to work. And then arrived like a knight in shining armor riding in a black SUV, saving Mike and me from potential sunstroke.

My anger and pride have mellowed. Mellowed enough that I can now look back on our unfortunate night together and see Felix’s reaction to my wanting medical attention for what it really was – panic.

On top of which, he never asked for an apology for my own act of panic that night. That of kneeing him in his Hollywood jewels.

All this adds up to a possibility that’s hard to swallow, especially as, if true, it isn’t going to help me with my new erotic artistic imaginings.

Felix Jones might be a nice guy.

‘How can we have avocado cilantro dressing without ripe avocados?’ the newly anointed nice guy murmurs to himself while loading the sink with small dishes, knives and utensils. ‘This is why grocery delivery services can’t be trusted. You need to feel the avocados.’ He picks up the cantaloupe that was delivered yesterday off the island counter. ‘ Smell the melons.’

At that, I finally lose hold of my laughter.

Startled, he looks up, his annoyed expression melting to amusement when he realizes what he said. ‘What?’ He shrugs, smile still in place. ‘I like ripe melons.’

I make a show of rolling my eyes before closing my sketch book. ‘You might not be ready to play Casanova, but I think you’re a cinch if Hollywood ever makes a Gordon Ramsay biopic.’

He snorts. ‘Yeah, you’ve mentioned my less than stellar pick-up game before.’

Our eyes meet and a rush of heat hits as I remember the night we met. And not just the pre-face-numbing bedroom part. The conversation. The shared laughter. The chemistry between us when I thought he was just a regular cowboy.

Regular cowboy.

As my idea takes hold, I toss my sketch pad aside and stand, clapping my hands for attention. ‘You want ripe melons?’

I roll my eyes again when Felix’s drop to my chest.

Mike licks himself.

Disregarding the two perverted males in my life, and the secret satisfaction they bring, I pull my phone out from my pocket and open the navigation app. ‘Then ripe melons you shall have.’

‘Jack is going to kill me.’

I lift the cowboy hat off the nearby mannequin and place it on Felix’s head. ‘Isn’t he already going to kill you for renting a car?’

His eyes meet mine under the large, cream, ten-gallon hat.

Almost as if he’s embarrassed, Felix turns to the nearby full-length mirror. ‘Yeah, but getting caught looking like this —’ he gestures at his reflection ‘—would make him want to kill me even more.’

Ignoring how trim his waist is after he tucked in his plain, black t-shirt, I decide the contrast of the cream felt is too noticeable. ‘Dead is dead, JD.’

He rolls his eyes with a smile. ‘Why do you keep calling me that?’

I glance around the shop. ‘Would you rather me use your real name?’ While not particularly crowded, it isn’t empty.

‘Hell no.’ His eyes cut to the nearest person, the cashier at the counter who’s busy rearranging belt buckles in the glass case. ‘But I am curious over your choice.’

Grabbing a black hat, I swap it for the cream. ‘It’s not my choice.’ I step back and consider the difference. ‘ You’re the one who introduced yourself as John to start.’

While he looks annoyingly sexy in both the cream and black, the darker color and slightly smaller brim suit him better. ‘And the D?’

I grab a belt off the nearby rack as he adjusts the hat. ‘Douchebag.’

His amused expression deadpans. ‘Nice.’

‘Yeah.’ I shrug, holding out the belt for him to take. ‘I thought so. ’

He stares at the buckle, twice the size of a credit card, and doesn’t take it.

With a sigh, I step closer, threading the belt through the belt loops myself.

I realize my mistake halfway through when my front becomes flush with his. I’m close enough to hear his hard swallow before we both step back, clearing our throats.

I haven’t felt this awkward since I cut Brandon Harrison III’s lip with my braces in eighth grade during a scandalous game of spin the bottle at his parents’ black tie anniversary party in the Hamptons.

Felix drops his head, the hat affectingly shielding his expression as he grabs the ends of the belt. ‘I can, uh, take it from here.’

Though he can’t see me, I nod, still too flustered to speak.

When the buckle clasps, he takes stock of his appearance in the mirror.

So do I. And my lustful artistic drive very much likes the fact that my muse looks like the Portuguese love child of James Dean and Scott Eastwood.

Eyes traveling over his reflection, it’s no surprise that he’s an A-list movie star.

Felix has… something. Something illusive. Something frustratingly intangible. A simmering charm that underscores the cheekbones, cut muscles and blinding smile.

I hate it.

With that lie firmly planted in my mind, I avert my eyes. ‘You should head back to the car while I buy these.’ Reaching up, I rip the price tag off the black hat, then snag the one off the belt.

‘Whoa.’ He reaches for his back pocket. ‘I have my wallet.’

Breathing through the urge to rip more than just tags off his body, I step out of reach. My reach. ‘As you’ve insisted on buying all the groceries, it’s only fair to use my now defunct food budget to buy a disguise that ensures you ripe melons.’

The smile he flashes me makes me glad for the distance.

‘Besides. We’ve already been gone forty minutes.’ I turn toward the counter, throwing the next sentence over my shoulder. ‘Who knows what Mike’s done to the concierge by now?’

Felix

My eyes feel as big as Anne’s melons. ‘What is this place?’

‘It’s a supermarket chain called H-E-B.’ Like an immature teenager, Anne waggles her brows while weighing two melons in her hands – at chest level.

It’s jarring.

Not the melons, but the fact that, even counting the hairless cat, I’m having fun. In fact, I’ve had more fun in the past few days than I’ve had in all my red-carpet appearances over the last few years.

Finally done handling the melons, Anne rests one back on the pile. ‘My sister-in-law says H-E-B is the one thing she’d take to New York with her if she could. Even more so than snow-free winters.’ She hands me the other. ‘And she hates the cold.’

There’s a beat of silence while I file the Texan sister-in-law comment under things I know about Anne .

When I picked her up from work, opening the passenger door for her like my mother taught me, I watched, intrigued as she entered the car more gracefully with a hairless cat strapped to her chest than the well-practiced stars limo hopping during awards season.

Yet, over texts, meals and commuting, I discovered a crucial difference that separates Anne from the typical Hollywood crowd I’m used to. Something besides her frugality and her disinterest in counting calories before eating.

Anne hates talking about herself.

‘Well?’ She nods at the melon. ‘Is it ripe?’

Smiling at her interest, I lift the melon to my nose and inhale. ‘Nope.’

Her deflated enthusiasm is adorable.

I gesture her closer and lift the melon toward her. ‘What do you smell?’

Anne sniffs, frowning. ‘Nothing.’

‘Exactly.’ I place the melon back and grab another, one that looks less green. ‘What about this one?’

Anne’s arms brush mine as she leans closer. ‘Oh.’ She straightens, blasting me with a smile. ‘It’s sweet.’

I feel that smile below my massive belt buckle.

A woman pauses her cart pushing to reach for a cantaloupe. ‘Excuse me.’

I sidestep out of her way. ‘Ma’am.’ Tipping my head down, the brim of my hat blocks my face from view.

The woman doesn’t even look up. Just nods back and grabs a melon before moving on.

Anne takes the ripe melon out of my hands, a satisfied smile on her face. ‘See. I told you no one would recognize you.’ She places the melon in our cart and steers it toward the avocados. ‘Come on, JD.’ She struts, her ass moving in tandem to her swinging ponytail. ‘Not only am I getting hungry, but we’ve got a pussy to pick-up.’

All shoppers turn to Anne who, seemingly oblivious, stops to grab a few apples.

Awed at how relaxed I am in public, even with Anne’s mouth drawing attention, I do as she commands and amble after. ‘Yes, ma’am.’

‘I feel like I just bought Mike Hunt the feline equivalent of a blow-up doll.’

Anne, sitting next to me at the kitchen island, rolls her lips, her nostrils flaring.

She’s trying not to laugh. She’s been trying and failing throughout most of dinner.

I might be laughing too, if I wasn’t so busy trying to figure out how Mike managed to open a zippered backpack, pull out a limited-edition action figure – which, to me, looked more like a pornographic Japanese Barbie doll – and humped it until its head popped off.

A giggle escapes Anne’s mouth as she spears another bite of the avocado-topped chicken breast with her fork.

One of many giggles she’s been unable to contain since we got home to find our impromptu concierge cat-sitter in tears of despair, rocking himself in the living room chair as he watched Mike defile what appeared to be a prized possession, apparently too scared to wrestle it from the enamored feline after his first attempt was met with a claw swipe and a ‘tiger-like growl’.

I scrape the remaining salad into a pile on my plate with my fork. ‘Why would someone pay that much for a doll?’ While Anne calmed the guy down with tissues and pats on the back, I searched the cost of the doll on my phone, shocked at the prices listed for these so-called action figures.

My limited-edition Ken doll made in my likeness isn’t even close to this obscure manga character’s figurine price.

I ended up giving the distraught concierge everything in my wallet just to cover the ruined doll and his cat-sitting fee. Plus , a promise for an autographed picture once filming was done to ease his emotional trauma.

I scoop the salad up with a tortilla chip, chewing hard.

‘Collector’s item.’ Anne wipes her mouth with a napkin before hopping off her stool.

My eyes water when a jagged piece of chip slides down my throat. ‘What?’ I wheeze out.

Shaking her head with another chuckle, Anne grabs her plate and moves around the island to the sink. ‘They’re called collector’s items.’

I clear my throat with a cough. ‘It’s a doll.’ Standing, I grab my plate and follow her to the sink. ‘A minuscule porn doll.’

Anne snorts. ‘Collectors get very snippy if you call them dolls or toys.’

‘How would you know?’

‘My brothers’ middle school’s headmaster collected Star Wars memorabilia.’ She rinses her plate in the sink before opening the dishwasher.

My hair, no doubt smashed awkwardly from wearing a cowboy hat earlier, flops to the side as I tilt my head toward Anne. ‘A what now?’

‘A Star Wars collector.’ Anne, having mistaken my interest for the headmaster’s hobby rather than the fact that her brothers had a headmaster and not a principal, takes my plate from me and rinses it. ‘He made Stephen the concierge’s meltdown look downright stoic compared to his reaction when, years ago, he found my brother Chase playing with his previously mint-in box Darth Vader and Luke Skywalker action figures in his office.’

I watch her awkwardly loading the dishwasher from the front and wonder if it’s simply East Coast vernacular to call a principal headmaster, or if I’m right in thinking a headmaster is the title for those who run private schools.

But before I can press my luck and push Anne for answers, tonight’s man-meltdown instigator pipes up.

‘Meow.’

Anne and I lift our eyes to the living area where Mike is sitting curled around the decapitated collector’s item, looking very much like the cat who got the cream.

Or, in his case, an expensive humping doll.