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“Trust me.” He nodded, for the first time that morning looking impossibly young.

“Yeah,” I said. “Fine.”

A short, wiry woman with short blonde hair and serious ink on her arms was running from table to table, mostly just checking up on customers, and as I sat one of the men by the window called out, “Hey, Tori! Is Avery working today?”

Tori gave a pained wince. “Uh . . . no.” She grimaced. “Not today. But, you know, that’s no guarantee it’s gonna happen a—”

I hadn’t thought about it as we’d come in, but this building actually had two stories. I realized it now when a very suspicious thump and squeak echoed from the floor above us.

“Oh Lord,” Tori said, slumping resignedly.

Around me, the rest of the coffee shop broke into applause.

I looked up at Noah, and he seemed to be pointedly avoiding my eyes. And smirking.

The thumping and squeaking continued.

The same guy from the window said, “I think they’re finally getting quieter—”

And then we could all hear it. I knew that sound—or I remembered that sound. Or sometime in my life I’d
made
that sound.

Usually when Vinnie’s cock was so far up my ass I thought my lungs would collapse.

I let out my dorkiest laugh, buried my face in my arms, and kept laughing.

Above us, the sex of the century was commencing apace.

My stomach muscles were aching by the time Noah got back with our coffee, fruit, and a couple ham and cheese croissants that I probably shouldn’t allow anywhere near my hips.

He set the food down next to my head and poked my shoulder.

“Come out and eat.”

“No,” I said, my voice muffled by the table.

“We’re not an orgy kind of place,” he said soberly. “Nobody is going to force you to have sex just because Avery and Cal . . .” His voice softened. “Let’s just say that Cal has all the good sex in the world coming, okay?”

I peered out of the shelter of my arms. “You know these people?” I couldn’t decide if that made this more or less pornographic.

“Well, Avery Kennedy came to town a couple of months ago—”

“Wait,” I muttered. “I know him—”

“He’s a writer?”

“Oh yeah!” He’d come up during my and Jilly’s research. “He did that piece on fan fiction, and then another one about the town and the show. I like his stuff!” He was succinct, and funny, and . . . and . . . uhm . . .

“
Cal, harder
!”

Apparently getting ass-fucked by someone named Cal that Noah used to know.

“Not that stuff,” I said with big eyes.

Noah’s smirk broke, and he chortled. I looked around, and the entire coffee shop was in various stages of hysterical giggles.

“God—it’s a good thing there’s no kids in here,” I said, torn between horror and . . . oh hell. Arousal. There was no mistaking it. My groin was tingling, my nipples were puckered . . . three hundred and eighty-three days. My body had gone over a year with no stimulation—I’d been effectively dead.

And now I was not.

Noah laughed shortly. “You missed the woman hustling her preschooler out, but yeah—I don’t think they know how loud it is down here. Tori doesn’t want to kick them out yet—she’s been trying to rent out that top room forever, and, you know, ninety-nine percent of the time, they wait until after dark.”

“
Now . . . now . . . now . . . God, wait
!”

“Well,” I muttered, finding refuge in politics. “You never know when the one percent is gonna sneak out and kick you in the nads.”

Noah patted my hand. “You’ll live,” he said gently. “Now drink your coffee and eat your pastry. I actually have another movie star to run errands for this afternoon, so I’m afraid I’m going to have to drop you off.”

“You have another movie star?” I said, stunned into letting my actual feelings show. “I’m not your only movie star?”

There was another burst of noise from above—a climactic burst as it were—and then a sudden, relieved silence.

When I looked back at Noah, he was smiling at me crookedly.

“You’re my favorite movie star,” he said with a courtly little incline of his head. “But yeah—I’m on the clock in two hours. I gotta go home and get my suit.”

I blinked. “Hey—the suit thing. Uh . . . you don’t
have
to wear that for me, do you?”

He shrugged. “Not if you don’t want me to. I have to admit, though, I look more like a bodyguard in the suit.”

I grimaced. “Noah, I hate to break this to you but—”

A self-deprecating smile crossed his features—a bit of vulnerability I didn’t think he’d possessed. “Yeah,” he admitted. “My dad was rail thin until he was about thirty—no amount of working out did it. Now he’s got to fight to keep the weight off. I expect I’ll be the same way.”

Thirty. I sighed. “I need to start watching what I eat,” I said, pointing to the pastry.

He broke off a bite for me. “Yeah. When you turn thirty—”

“In September.”

“In September,” he acknowledged with a head bob. “I’m sure you’ll be all about the foodie stuff.”

I shrugged. “Hollywood. You want the bod, you work out, you eat the chicken and veggies, you—”

“Supply the world with methane,” Noah filled in dryly. “Yeah, I get it. But right now, you need a croissant.”

“I do?” I looked at him dubiously.

He nodded. “Before I go pick up
Shalene Cross
, my assignment for today, you need a croissant.”

I couldn’t help it. I brightened. “She’s a nice girl,” I said, because she was, and we’d worked together before. “I didn’t realize she was on the cast.”

Noah rolled his eyes. “As far as I know, she’s not—she’s visiting someone. But,” he held his hand up in a mock Boy Scout salute, “mine is not to reason why, mine is just to do or drive.”

I laughed and reached for the pastry. “Then let’s get it done so we can drive.”

From the room above, we heard bed springs creaking, and a low, drawn-out moan. “God, Avery, are you trying to kill me?”

I looked at Noah weakly, and the boner that had wilted with the conversation and the food and the idea of not being the center of the known universe came back with a vengeance.

Noah pursed his lips and nodded judiciously. “Maybe we could get it done on the way out.”

I grabbed my cup and the bag of pastries and we made a graceful exit, accompanied by the music of young (I assumed) love.

I couldn’t help thinking it, though, as Noah and I walked slowly down the boardwalk under a crisp blue sky.

Vinnie, how many people do you think heard
us
having sex in that first apartment?

I dunno, Con—how many people actually lived in the building?

Yeah. That many. That many people knew when we were getting lucky.

I wasn’t sure why, but in the days that followed, that thought gave me a lot of comfort.

Jillian was still working diligently when we got back, but she stood up from the table to say hi to Noah while he unloaded my bike into the garage, along with my helmet and pads.

“I’ll bring mine from home tomorrow,” he said brightly, and before I could object—for whatever reason—he’d hopped into the car and spun out of the garage, closing the door in his wake.

“So?” she asked meaningfully, as we walked back into the house.

“So what?” God,
so much
, but I was done talking—I’d bled my quota during the early part of the day.

She let out a little snort of disbelief—but the matter dropped.

That night though, after a dinner of chicken and wine sauce (that I managed to pull off very well, thank you), she sat and played with her wineglass thoughtfully.

“Connor?”

“Yeah?” I said, loading the last dish into the washer. “You want dessert?”

“Always, but that’s not why I’m talking. I . . .” She grimaced.

And I knew.

“You need to go back sooner.” I got it, but I hated how needy I felt.

“Just a few days,” she conceded. “Day after tomorrow—I already traded in the tickets. But there’s more.”

I sat down and poured myself the last of the bottle. Well, I’d used part of it to sauté the chicken. “Hit me.”

She glanced up from her fingertip on the edge of the glass. Today had been another no makeup day for her, and I suddenly realized this was a privilege. It was like Vinnie and me, spending the day in bed without showering.
We
were the only ones who got to see that. I was one of the few who got to see Jilly like this.

All those years of being her “kids” and this was an unexpected reward.

“I thought about Vinnie today,” she said, and I let out a bitter breath.

“Join the fuckin’ club.”

She concentrated on her finger again. The manicure was starting to chip.

“But, see, that’s what I thought about. The tiny club of people who really knew Vinnie. I had this long conversation with him—I told him about your new project, and how you were getting back into television and that you liked the script and you were hoping you could stay a little longer if the audience liked you.”

“Talk about getting ahead of yourself—”

“Shut up. I told him about that kid who took you out today, and how he . . .” She looked up and this time locked my gaze and held it. “How he seems really good for you, even if it doesn’t go anywhere. And I told him how lost you’ve been, and how work is going to be good for you too, and how maybe, since you won’t be trying so hard to take care of
him
, you might be able to work a little on your own career—”

“You shouldn’t have told him that,” I said tautly. “Jilly, you had no right—”

“I told him
now
, Connor, because
now
I can’t hurt his feelings the way you and I were afraid to before.”

“That’s not fair. We worked together, we had a relationship, that’s what you
do
in a relationship—”

“I told him this time I wouldn’t make you stay in the closet,” she said, voice shaking. “That if you came out, I’d find you work if I had to kick some producer in the balls, and that me and Vinnie, we were wrong to say you couldn’t, and that the silence is killing you—”

“
Goddamn it, Jilly
!” I shouted, standing up and trying to hold back the tears. But I’d been fighting them for weeks—ever since I’d left the house that first time, to get my nails and hair done, they’d been burning in my throat, behind my eyes, and here, in front of Jilly, with her makeup off, I realized I was just as defenseless.

“Connor, I—”

“It was a good day,” I told her, my voice broken with tears and nothing else. “I was just going to tell him it was a good day—why do we have to tell him all that other—”

“Because you deserve more good days,” she sobbed.

And that was when I turned and left the room.

I don’t remember getting undressed, and I’m pretty sure I didn’t brush my teeth. But crying myself to sleep—
that
I remember.

I’m sorry, Vinnie. I didn’t mean any of that. Jilly’s talking out her ass—

She’s right—

No.

Just, be honest, Con—

Shut up—

I held you back—

I don’t want to talk about it.

Let’s talk about two trips to rehab, and how you put your life on hold for me.

I don’t want to.

Let’s talk about how I wouldn’t let us—

SHUT UP.

Okay. I still love you.

“I still love you, Vinnie. For always.”

But I didn’t hear his voice in the dark. I hadn’t for too long a time.

The next day, true to his word, Noah came by and dropped off all the packages. He hung out with Jilly and me as we ran around the little rental and put all the kitsch in its appropriate place, and then, after we’d
ooh
ed and
ahh
ed at it all (and it looked
craptastic
if I say so myself), he produced the necklace I’d gotten for Jilly.

She pulled it out and lit up, like a little kid.

“Seriously? Con? This is awesome. What’s this for?”

I blushed. “We blew off Christmas this year,” I said, shamefaced because it was true.