Susan had fallen completely for the sly liar’s act. Even without getting a definite answer from him, she looked confident.
“The vibe wasn’t bad. We really clicked in conversation. And his voice is incredible. It made me want to hear him say good morning to me.”
I visibly frowned at how specific that wish was.
“Susan. That’s bordering on sexual harassment.”
“What a narrow-minded way to think. People don’t only say good morning in bed.”
“Oh really? So your brain’s rated for general audiences?”
“Of course not. Minimum R-rated. Did I tell you I bought a new bed last month? I even got expensive high-end bedding for it. All that’s left is inviting someone over to show it off.”
I pictured Eden Reed lying across that wide bed. The imagined bed felt familiar because my memory had supplied it.
Leaning back against the pillows, he bites down on his lip before letting it go. His flushed lips glisten with moisture, looking even fuller than usual. It feels like touching him would open up an entirely new world. The unexplored continent called Eden Reed stirs up my sense of adventure.
If the version of him lying on the bed and smiling lazily at me had never existed—if he had never trapped me beneath a predator’s gaze—I could’ve simply flipped past the scene like turning a page in a comic book.
Pulling myself back out from between imagination and memory, I badmouthed Eden for the good of society.
“He gives off a bad vibe. Bet he’s hiding something shady.”
I couldn’t just stand by while my stalker became my friend’s dream man. There had to be some ulterior motive behind the vague hope he’d given her.
“No way. He looks trustworthy from every angle.”
“There are plenty of people who hide rotten insides behind a clean exterior.”
“And what exactly makes you think he’s one of those people?”
“Instinct.”
Since I couldn’t reveal the truth, I had no other explanation. My flimsy but stubborn insistence made Susan hesitate.
“Are you in a bad mood today?”
Her guess sounded plausible, but it was wrong. The reason I’d gotten irritable wasn’t my mood—it was the situation.
The situation where a low-grade stalker had shown up brazenly at my meeting place. The situation where my friend showed interest in that stalker and handed him her number on a note. The situation where that stalker didn’t throw the note away and instead tucked it into his pocket.
This fucking situation.
I massaged my cheeks to loosen my stiff facial muscles and glanced back. Eden was glaring at his cocktail glass. When the bartender spoke to him, he lifted his head. He’d obviously developed a grudge after tasting that terrible cocktail, but he hid it well behind a calm expression.
“Don’t get involved with that guy. As a friend, I’m advising you—no, I’m asking you.”
If she carelessly trusted a man capable of creating two faces with acting skills that good, she’d end up seriously burned.
“Are you jealous? Did you finally start noticing women?”
Susan was wrong again. I couldn’t live up to her expectations.
“No. Which is why it’s a shame. If I were straight, I probably would’ve tried to seduce you.”
Partly to protect my friend from a terrible stalker, sure—but I probably would’ve genuinely wanted to deepen my relationship with Susan too.
“Could you not say things that are that open to misunderstanding?”
“What misunderstanding could there possibly be between us?”
“You forgot how I used to squirm all shyly in front of you when we first met?”
Maybe I had. Back when I’d just started working as a model, Susan had already been a successful established one. I recognized her immediately when we ran into each other at the agency building, and after looking me up and down, she smiled brightly and treated me kindly.
“I’ll be honest. I completely forgot.”
“Do you know how rare my shy side is? Forgetting that is humiliating. As punishment, you’re buying the drinks.”
“I was planning to anyway. I can’t drink for free with a beauty sitting in front of me. You deserve to be treated well.”
Susan laughed, showing off the gap in her front teeth charmingly, then made me hold up a beer bottle while she took a picture with her phone.
“I need to brag that I’m drinking with the hottest man in New York.”
“The paparazzi are gonna latch onto us again.”
“Our industry survives on gossip. You should enjoy it like I do.”
For all her swagger, when she uploaded my photo to social media she emphasized three separate times that we were friends. Though there’d probably still be people deluding themselves after reading what amounted to a hymn celebrating friendship.
Like proper friends, no matter how lively the drinking session became, there was no sticky physical contact or anything like that. Whether it was industry gossip, the cosmetics business she was planning to launch, or my exhibition design work, Susan and I simply talked.
Once the beer ran out, we had no choice but to drink terrible liquor, but we still didn’t change locations. Susan insisted on staying. The person responsible for influencing that decision left me a message before leaving the pub first.
Stalker
[I’ll be outside.]
Susan, having lost sight of him as he skillfully disappeared, kept turning her phone screen on and off.
“I thought he’d contact me the second I stepped outside.”
To comfort her disappointment, I ordered whiskey. This place had a policy of adding weird things to every drink unless it was bottled beer, including whiskey, so I practically begged them to break the rule. Please, straight whiskey is fine.
“If you go anywhere else right now, there probably won’t be any seats left. This is the only quiet place around.”
But the bartender, who had embraced the sad reality of having barely any customers with suspicious optimism, wasn’t easy to persuade. Susan had to step in and demand he treat his regulars better before he backed down.
“Just this once. No next time. The cocktail I developed this time is really ambitious, so let me know if you’re interested.”
Only after sharing the precious whiskey we’d struggled to obtain did we reluctantly order cocktails. He’d called them ambitious creations, but unsurprisingly, they tasted awful. The two of us pushed our glasses aside simultaneously.
After talking so much my jaw muscles ached, we finally left the pub. It was late into the night.
The nights on Fifth Avenue were dazzling. Standing at the edge of the scattered city lights, I placed the candy Susan handed me on my tongue and slowly let it dissolve. It was a careful effort to revive the taste buds ruined by the horrific cocktail.
By the time Susan’s manager arrived with the car, my mouth carried the scent of lemon.
“Do you have one more candy?”
“You want it?”
“Yeah.”
Susan handed me the last lemon candy, and I took it. Just because… there might be a situation where I’d need it. No other reason. Really. I’d simply become a thoroughly prepared man.
“I’m heading out first. Guess I’ll see you backstage next time. Until then, work hard preserving that ridiculously handsome face of yours, Somerset Quinn.”
“I’ll protect every eyebrow hair like it’s a cultural artifact.”
After seeing Susan off with a light kiss on the cheek, I headed toward my car. Eden was standing there waiting in front of it.
“You’re going home, right? Get in.”
“Anyone seeing this would think it’s your car.”
“I’m not really into grass-colored cars.”
Openly declaring his preferences, he opened the passenger-side door for me before heading around to the other side.
“You’re driving? Didn’t you drink?”
“It was nonalcoholic. Extremely disgusting.”
His face crumpled like discarded paper at the memory of the taste. Chuckling under my breath, I tossed him the car keys.
“If you don’t rinse your mouth out quickly, that taste is gonna cling to you like a curse.”
The method to dispel that curse was sitting in my pocket. I only considered taking the candy out before climbing into the car.
Outside, there had been so many mixed smells that I hadn’t noticed the alcohol scent lingering on me, but trapped inside the car, it became obvious. Maybe I should just eat the lemon candy myself after all…
“That curse is vicious.”
Eden climbed into the driver’s seat with a grimace that strangely stirred my sympathy. I pulled out the candy and asked,
“When you’re in a bad mood, do you drive aggressively?”
“Not really.”
“You might do it subconsciously. I’m giving this to you because I’m worried you’ll drive recklessly.”
I was merely making a sacrifice for the sake of my own safe trip home. When I set the candy on top of the console box, Eden read the brand name on the wrapper out loud before taking it.
“It’s not anything weird! You can eat it without checking first.”
“It’s like a procedure.”
Eden was the one who put the candy in his mouth, yet somehow I felt refreshed too. It absolutely wasn’t because of the subtle smile curving at the corners of his lips. It had nothing to do with how devastatingly beautiful his face was.
I just remembered the taste of lemon candy. Yeah. That’s all.
Pretending to suck on candy by pressing my tongue against the inside of my cheek, I suddenly shoved my hand into Eden’s jacket pocket.
I was stopped before I could even rummage around.
It happened so quickly my mind blanked. By the time I came to my senses, he was gripping my wrist, my fingers spread open as if I were surrendering.
“Is this part of your procedure too? Don’t you think that’s excessive?”
I could feel his grip slowly loosening, but for a moment it had been tight enough to cut off circulation.
“Ah, a little…”
“You seemed to misunderstand and think I was about to do something. I was just trying to find the note you got earlier.”
He released me and flexed his hand open and closed.
“There was static electricity.”
“I didn’t feel anything.”
“Maybe I felt your share too.”
Can static electricity transfer between people? Science wasn’t exactly my strong point, so it was hard to tell whether Eden’s explanation was true or just an excuse, but when he pulled out the note and handed it over, there wasn’t much left for me to argue about.
I crumpled the note and shoved it into my pocket. Soon Eden started the engine and the car began moving.
The brilliant city lights streaming past outside the window illuminated my wrist. Faint finger marks lingered against my dark skin.
All that over static electricity. He’d been way too sensitive. Good thing I was a grown man—he absolutely couldn’t go around doing that to women. I didn’t think Eden Reed was a violent person, but I still needed to warn him.
“I still can’t allow it. Don’t approach my friend. If you already saved her number, delete it.”
His reply came back as if batting my words aside, catching me off guard.
“Was that agreed upon with Ms. Whitaker?”
Of course not. I’d asked Susan, but the conversation had fizzled out, and if Eden contacted her tonight, she’d welcome it enthusiastically. The thrill would probably be even greater because her best friend opposed the relationship.
“No.”
“Then you’re overstepping.”
Wouldn’t some famous philosopher have said something like, Humanity advances when people refuse to settle for the rights they’re given and instead fight to obtain more? And if no philosopher ever said it, then I’d become one myself.
Therefore, I fought for progress.
“My stalker dug into my background deeply enough to bring up her name. That means I do have some right to interfere.”
“If he’s your stalker, then he should also know perfectly well that she isn’t your romantic partner.”
“Weren’t we not talking about my love life? Who was it that drew a line at discussing sex lives again?”
Called out directly, Eden fell silent. The only response available to him was referring to himself in third person as “the stalker.”
Using the rights I’d fought to claim, I pressed further.
“What exactly are you after? If you’re trying to toy with Susan, give it up. If you hurt my friend, I’ll never forgive you. And what the hell is with Alex Howard? When are you going to quit that annoying habit of using fake names?”
My voice nearly rose, so halfway through I had to mentally tell myself easy, easy. Like trying to train an instinct-driven beast.
I took a deep breath to stop myself from getting aggressive. Instead, the smell of alcohol surged up with the breath, making things worse. Even though I hadn’t drunk anywhere near my limit, the alcohol was slowly taking over. For some reason, I was unusually vulnerable to it tonight.
I scrubbed a hand down my face and looked at Eden. The way he drove my car as comfortably as if it were his own irritated me for some reason. Honestly, right now, anything he did probably would.
“Don’t just sit there keeping your mouth shut. Answer me, Mr. Howard.”
“…You don’t need to call me by that name either.”
“This isn’t the first time I’ve done it.”
