“This is neither my home, nor your home.” I glance out the window after a short drive from the comedy club. We haven’t yet entered the ritzy area of Los Feliz, but we also haven’t made our way back to my stomping grounds. We are somewhere in between.
“You are accurate, but it is the best coffee shop around.” Ryan looks across the center console to where I sit huddled in the passenger’s seat. “Fancy a cappuccino?”
I narrow my eyes at him. “Is this another fake date?”
He climbs out of the car, and I beat him to the door this time. He takes my hand anyway and marches me to the front of the cafe. “It feels pretty real to me.”
“I thought—”
“I’m kidding,” he says. “Your car is at my house, and I assume you want to drive home tonight. You probably need another hour or two before you’re good to go. I figure I might as well show you a good cup of coffee.”
Of course, I say to myself. All in one sentence he’s told me that I’d better find my way home tonight, that he has no intention of this being a real date, and that I’m probably an idiot for thinking this was anything more than an attempt to sober me up.
So I do what Andi Peretti does best—I make awkward conversation until the mugs arrive. Thankfully, they give my hands a nice distraction as I play with the spoon and the sugar packets.
Sitting across the table from Ryan Pierce is hard work. He’s intimidating because he’s so nice, not to mention smoking hot. So, I play with more sugar packets.
“This is the best espresso I’ve ever tasted.” I sip my frothy, foamy, milky cappuccino. The diner is cute, small, and out of the way, so out of the way of normal LA traffic that we’re the only customers at this hour, even though it’s now two thirty in the morning. I suspect that soon, we might encounter the post-bar-closing rush.
My mind travels back to the way Ryan led me inside, his arm never leaving the small of my back, his fingers brushing the skin between the bottom of my tank and the top of my jeans. He didn’t remove his hand when the waitress greeted him by name, or when she showed us to his “usual” table in the corner. Only when I removed my leather jacket and slid into the booth did he move to sit across from me.
“Hang on, you’ve got some foam right here…” He extends a thumb, hovering it above my lip. “May I?”
“Embarrassing.” I swipe at my own lip, saving his fingers from having to remove the bit of froth just hanging out on my upper lip.
I’m an adult—I should be able to control where the food goes when I consume it.
Ryan brings his hand back, looking almost disappointed. Then, he reaches for my cup. “May I?”
“Have a sip? Go ahead.” I look over at his cup. “I’d ask for a sip of yours, but I can’t handle black coffee. It looks like mud.”
Ryan takes a sip of my cappuccino, and when he pulls the cup away from his mouth, his lips are coated in foam.
I laugh at the image, a surprisingly loud sound in the quiet diner. A waitress looks our way with a frown, but Ryan is oblivious to her. I shift in my seat and try to be oblivious, just like Ryan.
“May I?” I extend my thumb toward his lips, mimicking his actions.
Ryan’s hand snakes out and clasps my wrist.
“You may…” His eyes twinkle. “But you can’t use your hands.”
My mouth goes dry. Then I say the dumbest thing that could possibly pop into my mind. “What do you want me to use?”
“For starters, your imagination.”
I clear my throat, realizing I almost dropped the ball on flirting with Ryan Pierce. He just gave me another chance, and I’m not about to mess this one up.
“No hands, you say?” I try to be all calm and seductive, but I’m not convinced it’s working. “Well, I can’t reach you from all the way over there.”
“We can fix that.” He stands and gestures to the open space on my side of the booth. “May I?”
“I suppose I can make room.” I scooch over the smallest bit. “Take a seat.”
He sits, the scent of him enough to send my stomach into a rush of nerves. Those brown eyes melt mine as he leans close. “Go on, you can reach me now.”
The drop of foam is all but gone by now since he ran his tongue over his lips. Even so, I think he might still want me to kiss him—but this isn’t right; we agreed to be friends. Not go on dates.
“Let me give you a hint.” Ryan leans toward me, his mouth balanced a hair’s breadth from mine.
I find myself drawn toward him, tilting, my lips falling toward his, until—
“More coffee?” the waitress asks loudly.
Ryan, to his credit, doesn’t look at all embarrassed. On the other hand, I look like a red hot chili pepper.
“I think I’m good.” I push my mug forward and turn to Ryan. “I should head home, now, anyway. You said you have an early morning.”
“I don’t have an early morning,” Ryan says, pulling his credit card out of his wallet and handing it to the waitress. “I just wanted some time alone with you instead of being crammed like sardines into a bar and going hoarse trying to talk over the music.”
“Well, I do have class tomorrow,” I tell him, trying not to show my surprise. “And I’m fine to drive now, really. I should be going.”
“Thanks, Dianne,” Ryan says pointedly to the waitress, who is standing there listening to us with unabashed curiosity. “That’ll be all.”
“Sorry,” I say once she’s gone. “I don’t think she likes me much.”
“She’s just not used to seeing me here with anyone else. Whenever I’m staying with Lawrence—my brother—I make it a point to come here. Besides my brother and Lilia, I don’t know many people, so I tend to come here alone.”
“Oh, I’m sorry.”
“No, I like it. Sometimes I need to get out of the house—it’s not my house, and it’s exhausting always being a guest. Sometimes it’s a relief to just sit in the corner. Nobody recognizes me here. It was actually Dianne who gave me her copy of Harry Potter when she heard I hadn’t yet read it.”
My heart both warms and constricts at the thought of Ryan sitting here alone, in the corner, with nothing but a book for company. For some reason, the image carries both a sadness and a peacefulness with it.
“Ready?”
While I lose myself in a daydream, Ryan signs the check, leaves a twenty on the table, and stands. “I can bring you home.”
“Your home is fine,” I say. Then I quickly clarify, “I mean, to my car, which is at your home—or your brother’s home, whatever. You know what I mean.”
“There’s an extra guest bed if you’d like to stay.” That arm of his sneaks around my waist and he toys with the end of my shirt. “You’re welcome to crash.”
His hand, which is moving closer and closer toward my girl parts, is sending contradictory signals from what his mouth is telling me. His mouth is saying I can crash at his place as one of the guys while his hand is pretty damn close to getting in my pants. My stomach lights on fire, and I realize that if he tiptoed those fingers a few inches farther down, I wouldn’t mind all that much.
Then Dianne, the waitress, gives me a scathing look as we leave the restaurant, and I’m brought back to reality. I’m Andi Peretti, struggling comic and delivery girl, and he’s…well, he’s Ryan.
“I’m fine to drive,” I tell him. “Thank you for the offer, though.”
Ryan pauses right outside the diner, holding the door open for me. “I know you’re fine to drive.” He winks then pulls me close, his arm low on my hip. “But that wasn’t the question.”
There are those damn mixed signals again. If he doesn’t stop, I might just stay over…in his bed…without pants.
CHAPTER 16
Andi
“Were you born funny?” Ryan asks as we near his house. “Or is it something you’ve practiced?”
“Funny?” I smile. We’ve spent most of the ride home chatting about the comedy industry. Whether Ryan is actually curious or just trying to make small talk, I can’t quite tell. “Being funny is way harder than it looks.”
“I’ll bet.”
“I’ve written thousands of words, practiced hundreds of hours of standup, all to whittle my routine down to a ten minute punch that will hopefully make one person laugh.”