“I’ve never been a big fan of toxic friends,” he said, and I stiffened halfway to my closet. Taking a breath, I dragged a pair of shorts and a tank top down, tossed them onto the bed, and spun around to face him.
“Cooper, she just got here. She hasn’t done anything to make you dislike her yet.”
But even as I said the words, they didn’t feel quite right. They sounded like I was trying to convince myself.
Cooper sneered. “Don’t be ridiculous, Wills. Every picture I’ve ever seen of the two of you makes me think she’s just waiting for the perfect moment to bury a hatchet into your throat.”
“Now you’re being dramatic,” I said. I still didn’t know how to handle this whole relationship thing where the guy I was dating actually gave a shit about what I was doing and where I was going. I sank down on the opposite end of the bed and placed my head between my knees. “Part of me is glad she’s here and the other part is—”
“My mum had this friend when I was a kid who’d come to Australia every now and then. Wanted me to call her Auntie Amy.”
Cooper rarely spoke about his mom, and I slowly lifted myself back up, mussing the blankets as I turned around to face him. I crossed my legs over each other, leaned forward, and waited for him to finish. “And?”
“Mum would disappear for a few days leaving me with him.” He shuddered, clenched the soft cotton comforter and then said, “And when she came back she’d be coming off a high.”
I rubbed my hand over my chest hoping it would ease the burning sensation in my heart, but it didn’t. “And you think because Jessica’s come here for vacation I’m going to fall off the wagon?” I asked in a soft voice.
“There are still pics of you on TMZ with her with your shirts raised and little silver stars over your tits. So sorry that I’m a little worried.”
I slid closer to him, so that my knees nudged against his side. Touching his face, I stared him straight in the eye. “Have more faith in me.”
“Come here,” he whispered, his voice deep, and he pulled me in to him. His hands were gentle as they hooked under the denim waistband of my shorts, but mine were desperate, dragging up the front of his Polo shirt and pulling at his collar.
One button hit the hardwood floor—then the other—and I felt him smile under our kiss and murmur something against my lips about liking it rough. We were partially naked in a matter of seconds, with me on my back and his fingers pushing inside of me.
“What you’ve done to me is—” he started, but I tangled my hands around his back, devouring his lips. I flicked my tongue at each corner. “You’re tearing me down,” he said, dragging away from me.
“I never said I was an angel,” I whispered, closing my eyes as he fished through the bedside drawer for a condom.
When I felt his body against mine again, Cooper blew his minty breath against my collarbone. “Bend over, Wills,” he ordered, and when I did, he pressed a kiss to the small of my back.
When we collapsed in a pile of sweat awhile later, I whispered, “You were right.” He swallowed hard and turned to me, his eyebrows pulling together. I cleared my throat. “Our first lesson you said you intended to see me like that, fully unclothed.”
He laughed and slipped his fingers under the ribbed cotton of my tank top. He’d pushed the neck of it down earlier when we undressed, exposing my br**sts. Guess he’d gotten used to me refusing to let him see me naked because we hadn’t argued about me not wanting to take my top completely off.
After a long time of lying still, he murmured, “Why won’t you let me see all of you?”
“You have seen all of me.”
He made a little noise in the back of his throat. “With the lights off.”
My shoulders stiffened. “Because I’m messed up,” I whispered at last. He propped himself up to look down into my eyes, and I brushed back a sweaty strand of golden hair away from his forehead. “Don’t look at me like that.”
“Like what?” he asked. “I’ve told you a million times you’re perfect. We’ve been going at this for what? More than a month?”
“Don’t be f**king pushy,” I said.
He held up his hands in surrender. “This is me, dropping it.”
“Good,” I said.
***
The next morning, Friday, Jessica called me bright and early, claiming she was still stuck on Los Angeles time. She mentioned a bunch of Honolulu sights she was dying to see and from the monotone voice she used, I was pretty sure she’d only found those five minutes before calling me and was reading them from Google as we spoke.
“I’m shooting in a little bit,” I said.
She gasped, excited. “Do you think James would mind if I watched?” she asked, and I hesitated. Dickson wasn’t the biggest fan of guests on set but then again, she’d worked with him before, on a movie a couple years before I shot Sleepless.
But when she greeted him an hour and a half later, smiling, he didn’t look too happy to see her.
“You look great,” he told her, giving her the once over he’d given me two months ago in Junction. But now the words didn’t carry to his eyes.
Jessica amused herself by flirting with Justin as I shot an emotional scene with my onscreen parents. Every now and then, I felt her blue eyes watching me, taking me in but when I met hers full on she grinned, waving.
And I found myself rubbing my throat more than once, imagining that hatchet that Cooper had mentioned last night.