Celebrities Don’t Date Bookworms (Texting the Boyband #1)

Chapter 20

twenty

“Are you sure you don’t mind?” Hudson asked for the third time. I rolled my eyes endearingly and shoved him toward the living room.

“Go,” I said. “Jude and I will hang out over here.”

I sat down on a barstool at the kitchen counter while Hudson went to join Neil on the couch. The laptop was already set up on the coffee table, ready for them to do the livestream.

“You know,” Jude said from beside me, “you can call me Luca if you want.”

I would be lying if I said it didn’t mess with my brain a little every time I saw his contact name since I staunchly knew him as Jude in my mind, but I thought it would be just as confusing to transition over to calling him Luca instead, especially since everyone but the boys called him Jude.

“Maybe one day,” I said. “But as of right now, I’m still trying to wrap my head around the fact that you guys are actually Take Five. No need to add more confusion into the mix.”

Jude laughed. “I can respect that.”

“If you don’t mind me asking, why do you go by Jude in the band, anyway?” I asked. “It's your middle name, right? Why not just go by Luca?”

“I don’t know...” he said. “Back when I signed up for the show, I was a little embarrassed about it. I was worried I was going to audition and get rejected. And I thought it would hurt a little less if I didn't have to see my real name on the TV. But then I got on and it was too late to change it, so I just had to go with it. But... I like it. It’s like having a secret identity. I’m basically a superhero.”

I laughed and thought back over all the times I thought the same when Eggo and Megan seemed like two different people in my mind.

“Yeah,” I said. “I know what you mean.”

We had to be pretty quiet after that, so we weren’t disrupting the livestream, but I didn’t mind. I liked watching the boys. It felt like not too long ago that I was so certain they were putting on personas for the camera, that they couldn’t possibly be who the fans thought. But when I saw them like this, I could see that wasn't true. If there was one thing they were good at, it was being true to themselves.

For most of the stream, Neil was reading out questions for each of them from the chat, so it shouldn’t have come as any sort of shock when the girlfriend question popped up .

“Question for both of us,” Neil read out. “Do either of you have a girlfriend?”

Hudson choked on the water he was drinking and looked over at me. I raised my eyebrows back at him, wondering how he planned to answer. We hadn’t talked this through, really, other than that we hadn't been planning to tell anyone for a little while. We thought it would be easier to navigate these early relationship days away from scrutinizing eyes, but it was hard to do that entirely when he was who he was.

“I don't have a girlfriend, no,” Neil said to the stream, oblivious to the silent conversation Hudson and I were having with our eyes. “I’ve actually never had one. Ah, thank you to everyone offering in the comments, but I think it would be easier for me to meet someone in real life, don’t you think?”

I laughed as Neil continued to ramble on. I wondered whether he actually had that much to say or if he was just trying to buy Hudson some time. I grabbed my phone and held it up, indicating to Hudson to glance at it. Then I sent him a text.

Megan

You can tell them if you want

Hudson (Bay)

Are you sure?

I appreciated him double-checking, but I also hated it because it made me second-guess my decision. Because honestly, I wasn’t used to this. I didn’t like this kind of attention and I didn’t really want it. Hudson and the rest of the band craved it—they lived to perform and interact with fans and share their lives with the world, but it felt unnatural to me, and I didn’t think I would ever be used to it. But even if I wasn’t willing to share everything about myself, I thought I could do this. I could let him share this.

He looked up at me and I nodded, trying to send him a reassuring smile. It was a little bit difficult since the thought of him saying it publicly made me a little queasy, but it must have been good enough, because he smiled and nodded back. He turned his attention back to the livestream just in time for Neil to pass the question over to him.

“Do I have a girlfriend?” Hudson asked. I saw him look at me again out of the corner of his eye, like he wanted to see me but also didn’t want to turn his attention away from the camera. I wondered what everyone watching at home made of that. Did they know I was here? Were they wondering what I looked like or what my name was? Were any of them the people who had started following me on Twitter after the boys did? I bet all of them had already put it together. “As a matter of fact, I do.”

“Why don’t you tell them about her?” Neil asked, a glint on his eye.

“She’s...” Now, he turned his whole head to me, not even pretending that his attention was on the stream. “She’s the most beautiful girl in the world. And she’s funny too—the kind of funny where she doesn’t quite realize it, you know? And she never thinks highly enough of herself even though she’s the best girl in the whole world. I know everybody in the world thinks that about their girlfriends, but I’m the only one that’s right, because nobody would ever compare to her. She’s such a ray of sunshine and happiness and...” He sighed deeply. “And I'm in love with her. And I am the luckiest guy in the world to be able to say that she’s in love with me too.”