Between You and Me (14 page)

“Logan!” Kelsey pulls me to her. “This is Travis. Travis, this is my cousin, and she’s a born and bred Okie, too.” Travis Moynihan turns with his trademark toothy grin, his blue eyes twinkling, a leather necklace taut around his chiseled neck.

“I’m her assistant—also,” I stammer.

“No way!” He high-fives me, and I slap what looks like a catcher’s mitt. He’s so . . . meaty and . . . manly that I immediately understand why every A-list actress of the last decade has been paired with him for ninety pratfall-filled minutes, realizing he’s the love of their lives. The color in Kelsey’s cheeks indicates she’s trying on a similar time frame.

“Way.” She giggles.

“Bet y’all are missing some barbecue right about now.” He winks at Kelsey, and she drops her head back.

“Ugh, yes!”

“Well, we have to get you a fix! I know a killer place.”

“Except.” Kelsey pouts sweetly. “I kind of have a show to do.”

“What a co-in-ky-dink. I kinda got one to watch.” I look from one tan to the other in this charisma-off and then scan the rest of the room. What the hell, was he lying? “Finn! Dude! Come on over!” I
jerk my face around just as Finn turns from the bar, parting a path toward us with two glasses aloft. Kelsey mouths an “O.M.G.” at me before two tween girls accost her. Awash in adrenaline, I duck while Travis reaches over me to take his glass. “Finn, meet some hometown girls! This is my assistant, Finn Harris.” Touché. “This is Kelsey Wade’s assistant, Logan from Oklahoma.”

“Hi.” I smile as Travis guzzles his drink. “Glad you could make it.” Travis’s ice clinks into his teeth, and he wipes his upper lip before patting a dumbstruck Finn.

“We’ve uh . . . yeah, we’ve met.”

I check the time. “I have to take her backstage. Kel?” I loop my hand through her arm, and she apologizes to the girls.

“Where were we?” she asks Travis.

“Steak! We’re getting you a real steak before you waste away.”

“Awesome. We’ll meet you after the show. Just give Logan the details.”

“Except after the show, we are . . . ” I try to communicate telepathically
getting on a bus for Barcelona.

“Catching a plane to Barcelona, but that’s not for a few hours, right, Lo?”

“Then we are co-pa-se-tic.” Travis mambos his torso along with the syllables. “Finn, give her the address for Paolo’s.”

“Um.” Finn, catches up. “We can take you, actually,” he says. “After the show, if that, uh, works for you.”

“Sure.” I shrug. “We just need a second car for our security detail. Now, can I get Marco to refresh your drinks?”

“Oh, I’m just water. High on life.” Travis rocks on the heels of his boots.

“We’re all set.” Finn says to me.

“Good,” I return.

“Good.”

“Great!” Travis rubs his hands, and I pivot Kelsey to the exit.

“That was Finn!” Kelsey says
for the eight-millionth time or, rather, sings it in a scale, as she gallops behind me holding her tutu.

“That was Finn,” I echo as we arrive backstage.

“So cute!” She glides up to her waiting dancers, and we all take hands and drop heads. “Dear God, we thank you for this opportunity to use the gifts you have bestowed on us. Please bless us with your grace to do an awesome show and to perform safely. To bring it to the kind folks of Rome and, most of all, to get Logan, here, laid. Amen!”

“Kel,” I moan.

“Amen!” Everyone gives me a thumbs-up and heads to the starting position.

“Not cool,” I admonish with beating cheeks as we walk to the rigging.

“What? If we want our babies to be playing together on our back porches while Travis and Finn man the barbecues, there’s no harm in asking for a little extra attention from the Almighty. Come on, this is too perfect. Get excited, that’s an order.” She hands off her necklace, then I hold out my palm, and she spits her lozenge into it, before grabbing her tutu and lifting a heel to the rail. She drops her head back, and I place a symbolic peck on her forehead.

“That was the most amazing five minutes of my dating life, and I don’t want to push my luck. Besides, I notice you neglected to ask for His blessing on
your
getting laid tonight.”

“Do you remember the movie where Travis was all sweaty, the serious one where he was the lawyer and everyone was all sweaty?” She dangles by one arm.

“The Grisham one?”

“I intend to catch a few droplets of my own tonight.”

“Oh, Kelkel!” I intone Michelle. “That’s just why all the girls look up to you.”

“Bite me.” She laughs, and the crew guy extends his arm at the dimming lights.

“I’ll leave that to Travis.” I smack her fishnetted tush as it passes.

It turns out that Paolo
is
the
Paolo of the Michelin-starred Paolo’s, and the address Finn gives me is for Paolo’s apartment, where Paolo will be personally cooking for the four of us. I send the buses on
ahead and arrange for a crack-of-dawn eight-seater charter flight to Spain for Kelsey and me. Which means she
really
wants this date. The last note is still hovering in the air when she strips off her costume, baby-wipes herself down, and pulls on a micro-tube dress, sans jeggings, of course.

When Travis swaggers into the dressing room to spin Kelsey to him, she visibly swoons—until her eyes pop as her face makes contact with his infamous chest or, rather, his black shirt which has a darkened V beneath his neck, because, “Man! I danced my ass off, I tell you what!”

“What do I do?” she asks as she tugs me into the bathroom to finish lacing up her heels on the toilet seat.

“About?” I reapply the red lipstick and check my teeth in prep to see Finn, who’s getting the car.

“About how bad he smells. Logan, oh, my God.” She grabs me by the shoulders to stress the severity. “You have to tell Finn that Travis’s deodorant timed out.”

“How can I say that?”

“Finn’s his assistant. It’s his job. If I smelled like that—if I smelled like a one on the scale of a million that is that smell, I would want you to tell me. Strike that, I would want you to shoot me.”

I promise I will try, and once we’re all packed into the limo, it’s impossible to imagine that Finn—hell, it’s impossible to imagine the northern coast of Africa—could not be eye-wateringly aware of it. But the thing is, Finn is enraptured.

I know it’s hyperbole, but he is. And it’s a shame that the experience of someone so ridiculously cute being enraptured with me had to come with one of my senses under such assault, but after so many years of trying so valiantly to hold the attention of idiots, only to lose it when they had something vital to do, like sneeze, this is heady stuff.

As we all hang around the refectory table that makes up the center of Paolo’s kitchen, Kelsey runs her finger around her untouched wine glass, while Travis “loves hard” on the tender steak, the bowl of cheesy pasta, the delicately fried zucchini, and finally, the ricotta cake that is being plated up. Finn’s fingers have found my thigh and made
me increasingly regret straying from Kelsey’s original vision for this dress.

“Sorry, which way to the ladies’?” I ask when an opening presents itself in Travis’s love as he audibly masticates the cake.

“Oh, I’ll show you.” Finn hops up before the question is fully out and points down the adjoining hall.

“Thanks,” I say lightly, walking ahead. Within a second, he is at my side, pulling me into a darkened bedroom and swinging me around against the door as it shuts. “Finn—”

He firmly shifts my head to the side, and I gasp as his warm lips descend on my neck, his other hand gripping my ass to lift my leg around his waist. “Finn.”

“Logan,” he murmurs.

“Logan?” I hear Kelsey on the other side of the door.

“One sec!” I call, pushing him back against every instinct. He runs his hand over his hair and blows out a steadying stream of air to the floor.

“Holy shit, you surprise me,” he says.

“Good.” I smile.

“That’s one hell of a camel,” he whispers at the door.

“Speaking of which, yours needs a new Speed Stick.” I adjust my tunic. “Badly.”

“Oh, that, yeah. He doesn’t believe in deodorant.”

“I wasn’t aware it required faith.”

“Logan,” Kelsey says plaintively, and I can picture her crossing her arms.

“Sorry, coming.” I open the door.

“Travis wants to show us some fountain.” Kelsey’s eyebrow lifts as Finn appears behind me.

“Oh, Trevi, he loves that thing.” Finn clears his throat.

“Yeah, he loves a lot of things,” Kelsey mutters as she walks around us and closes the bathroom door.

But Cupid might be making
a last-minute comeback when one of Travis’s enthusiastic gestures leads him to upend his double espresso
on his shirt and Finn reaches into his messenger bag for a fresh one. I look forward to comparing bags with Finn. Where mine is filled with lingerie tape, clear polish, spare fishnets, and a large Versace scarf that can pinch-hit as a shirt or skirt, Finn seems to dig through half a Home Depot circular before pulling out the Mylar-wrapped package.

As we speed though the quiet streets, Travis’s attention now has nowhere to go but Kelsey, who is perking up from his refreshed presence. Obviously generating his own heat, Travis leaves his parka in the car, as does Kelsey in favor of modeling a standing view of her dress. Finn and I, however, zip up to our chins.

Walking across the darkened plaza, she turns back to smile at me as we both take in the winged stone horses scrambling up Neptune’s feet. “Oh, Lo,” she murmurs, and I realize that it’s the first chance on tour that we’ve been able to see something of a city that’s not obstructed by a camera. Travis runs past Finn and me strolling hand-in-hand to swoop up Kelsey in his arms. She kicks with delight as he carries her down to the fountain’s glowing edge, and Finn pulls me back for a kiss.

“So, how did you end up here?” he asks, letting our hands drop.

“How did you?” I volley back reflexively.

“I landed a grunt-level job at Warner Brothers out of film school and got assigned to be Travis’s on-set guy. We hit it off, and he asked me to run his development company.”

“Oh, sorry,” I say, embarrassed. “I thought you were just an assistant like me.” I try to put it together. The girls in Kelsey’s office aren’t here carrying her spare hose.

“Nah, I’m reading scripts. He’s really hungry to branch out. So, did you guys go to high school together?”

I raise an eyebrow. “Did Travis go to high school?”

“Point taken.”

“Finn.”

“What?”

I study him, not sure if he’s teasing me. “Our dads are brothers.” He looks totally blown away for the second time this evening, but not in a good way. “You didn’t notice the last name?” I ask. “The dare-I-say-it resemblance? You know, if I had a team?”

He shakes his head. “My mom’s from Minnesota, same tiny town as Jessica Lange. Everyone looks like Jessica Lange. I thought maybe you were, like, the hot Wades from Wadesville.” He steps back, taking me in afresh.

“What?” I ask.

“I thought you were just an assistant like me,” he parrots, his voice tinged with a slight edge. “But you’re not ‘just.’”

“I am—”

“I can be fired tomorrow, and he won’t remember me in two days, but you, you’re family. You’ve got security. You’ll always—” We both turn at the sound of a splash.

We run as Kelsy flails in the fountain where Travis dropped her. He gleefully vaults the low stone ledge, then dolphins under the water. He whoops up to the inky sky, his voice echoing off the square. Kelsey struggles in her heels to get hold of the ledge. Then an engine guns and a flash goes off from a side street. Travis throws open his arms and grins as a string of paparazzi scooters figure-eight around the fountain. Kelsey scrambles out while I hold my hand up against the blinding strobe.

“Finn!” Travis yells, and my date leaves us in the fray without a second glance. “To the Colosseum! We need to howl at the moon!”

GM is suddenly at our side, running interference with the charging bikes while getting us to the car. He throws Kelsey inside.

“The airport,” he instructs the driver, who screeches through the labyrinth of narrow streets, a dogged scooter still behind us. “Get her seatbelt on.” GM calls ahead to security. “Next time, I’m strolling with you. I don’t care how much of America’s Sweetheart the guy is.”

“Kelsey, oh, my God, I’m so sorry.” The car swerves and we strap ourselves in with shaking hands. “Can you please turn up the heat, sir?” I ask the driver. “And GM, could we borrow your sweatshirt?”

He tugs off his coat and lifts it back. “Give her this, it’s warmer.”

I wrap the heavy leather around her shivering shoulders, hugging her tight. Her face collapses in tears. “I’m so sorry. What a freak,” I say. She shakes her head, her wet hair cold on my neck. “As soon as we get to the plane, we’re going to wrap you like a mummy in blankets and order you a hot chocolate. You have so earned a hot chocolate.”

“Finn seems really nice.” Her teeth chattering, she wipes her hand under her nose as she pulls away.

“He wasn’t exactly a prince just now, so I’m not sure what that means.”

She stares out the window at the lit ruins, tears rolling down her cheeks. “You guys seemed pretty into each other.”

“Kel.”

“I just miss it, that feeling of being matched. I put so much out, and I just get . . . nothing.” She drops her head back. “I mean, I know I get everything, I know. I’m not complaining, I’m not. But really, really, it’s nothing, you know?”

“Yes.”

“Where are my parents, Logan?” She turns to me.

“I don’t know.”

We ride in silence for another mile. “He wanted me to feel how amazing it is.”

“What?”

“The life he’s so high on, I guess.” She sighs. “It’s just been so boring, and then he wandered into the room, and my parents weren’t there to freak out that we weren’t getting on the bus, and—”

“This is ridiculous.”

“What?”

“You are one of the most sexy, accomplished women in the world.” We swerve and she knocks into me as the scooters gain on us.

“So—”

“So you don’t need to be waiting for some guy to wander into a room. We’re acting like you’re me sitting in my crap apartment in my crap life waiting for a crap text. This is like the president complaining he wants something to eat. What do you want to eat, Kelsey?”