He nodded. “It’s totally nothing. I’m sure it’ll look cool later when it becomes some rugged scar.”
I smiled again. “Scars are rugged.”
“See? It was worth it.” He flashed a smile at me. The man was so charming I’d need a new word for charming. He was more than charming.
“Well, thank you. That was quite gallant of you,” I said, pretending to bow grandly.
“Just call me Gallant William,” he joked.
“Do you need a Band-Aid, Gallant William? I have some with me.”
“You carry Band-Aids?” he asked, sounding as shocked as if I’d said I was packing heat.
“You don’t?”
“I’m a guy. I don’t carry Band-Aids. I also don’t need one for my forehead, but thank you for the offer.”
Then I heard an even more beautiful sound. The sweet soprano voice of a rising starlet calling out to her accessory dog. “Sparky, do you want some water?”
William and his bravery slipped into the rearview mirror.
I was the horse at the gates, ready to be the first out. I didn’t even need to bring the camera to my eyes. I whipped it out of my backpack, held it in front of me, and snapped picture after picture of Riley and Miles laughing as Miles held down the button that sent streams of water shooting into a green-rimmed silver bowl at dog-eye-level and Sparky McDoodle happily lapped up his H20. They didn’t even notice me.
“Oh, Sparky McDoodle, you are so adorable. Isn’t he cute just drinking water?” Riley said to Miles, her right profile in frame.
“He is adorable at everything he does,” Miles said, flashing his rising star smile at Riley.
William might have snagged some shots too. I stopped caring about him, because I had a higher calling, and I was off and running to the public restroom a hundred feet away. I raced into a stall, slammed the door, unzipped my backpack and yanked out my laptop. I grabbed the card from my camera, slid it into the drive, downloaded, and uploaded, and sent the pictures to J.P.
When I left the stall five minutes later, there was a reply on my phone from J.P.
“Check out Up Close in twenty minutes. Pics will be there. Come by tomorrow for $$.”
Cash. My favorite four-letter word.
Looked like I was a little closer to the price of admission for my next semester’s anatomy class, and learning exactly how the knee bone was connected to the leg bone.
Chapter Four
Jess
“Do you want to get an ice cream?”
The question came from William as I walked down the boardwalk, and I prayed I’d heard him wrong. The last thing I wanted was to get an ice cream with William because that’s the first thing I wanted. The ice cream and the time with him. Especially because he wasn’t only handsome. He was gallant.
“Why would I want to get an ice cream?” I tossed back casually.
“Why wouldn’t you want to get an ice cream?”
“I’m not hungry.” I didn’t make eye contact. The second I re-engaged with him, I’d want to spend more time with him. I kept on a path toward my beat-up black scooter with the well-worn seat. I’d bought this scooter myself because it was the only model I could afford, and even then it was used, and even then I’d haggled at the dealership for a lower price. But it was all mine. I owned that baby outright and I loved it.
“You don’t need to be hungry to get an ice cream,” he said, in a matter-of-fact tone, as if this were a completely obvious answer. “It’s like in that movie with Paulie DeLuca, Anyone’s Dough, when he offers a doughnut to the lawyer who’s trying to take over his firm and he says –”
I couldn’t help myself. I knew the movie. I loved the movie. “–Since when do you have to be hungry to eat a doughnut?”
We said the line in unison, and William couldn’t hide a big, fat smile. “You like the movies, don’t you?”
As if he’d learned my naughty little secret. I didn’t hide my affection for films, but I didn’t wear it on my sleeve either. And William had already figured it out. Like he’d figured out that I wasn’t Jessica.
Smart guy.
“Of course I like the movies,” I said, rolling my eyes, as if that would work as my Smart Guy Repellent so I could keep him at bay. “Name me someone who doesn’t like movies. That’s like not liking sunshine. Or puppies.”
“Or pie.”
I shook my head. “No. It’s normal to dislike pie.”
“But not ice cream. So why don’t you have an ice cream with me even if you’re not hungry since that’s what Paulie DeLuca’s character would have done in Anyone’s Dough,” he proposed, and this man was getting under my skin in more ways than one. I might have been Scientific Jess, OCD Jess, Driven Jess when it came to school, but movies were my guilty pleasure, and my soft spot.
I wished I’d brushed my teeth in the bathroom a few minutes ago. Not because I had bad breath. But because having minty, fresh toothpaste breath is the one surefire way to make sweets taste bad. Sort of like drinking orange juice after brushing. Ergo, a clean mouth not only was good for the teeth, it was also good for resistance. To sweets and to the hot guys who proffered them.
I pursed my lips, considering if I wanted to give in, and William seized the moment. “Ice cream is like a Band-Aid for me. For my forehead scar.” He brushed his fingertips across the small cut, and dropped the corners of his lips into a frown. “Besides, I hear the soft serve is irresistible especially with the shells that harden. I bet you like hard shells,” he said, and raised an eyebrow. He was no longer talking about ice cream. He was talking about me. Seeing through me, and my very hard shell.