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“Sopo-what?”
“Soporific. Like how turkey makes you fall asleep at Thanksgiving. Flying makes me fall asleep.” She leaned closer to him. “I learned that word from The Tale of Peter Rabbit. How about you? What kind of flyer are you?”
“I’m usually trying to avoid being recognized, so it’s a bit different. Sometimes I read, but I try to remember a card deck. I like solitaire. If I fell asleep, I’d be afraid people would take pictures and I’d end up in Life Talk magazine drooling on myself.”
Reese giggled. “There are worse things in life.”
Sterling’s mouth tightened and Reese wanted to take the words back. Of course, there were worse things—like his sister’s intervention that he was heading toward. She put a hand on his arm. “Sorry. That was insensitive.”
“No, you didn’t mean it like that. It’s fine.”
He looked down at his drink, a seltzer water with three limes. Morgan had said there was a no-drinking on tour rule. Reese wondered if Sterling ever drank or if there was more than just his sister’s situation that kept him away from alcohol. She thought Morgan also mentioned his dad drank, but Reese wasn’t about to ask that.
“Are you fine? How are you feeling about this? And if you don’t want to talk about it, just tell me to shut up. But I’m here. I’ll listen.”
Reese knew she should take her hand back from his arm. It had been there too long. It moved from being just a gesture of kindness to something more intimate. But she was asking more intimate questions and his face still had a bruised sort of expression, soft and wounded. She kept her hand there, feeling the warmth of his skin through her palm.
He had excused himself when they first got to the airport, ducking to a more secluded area of the lounge to let his mother know he was coming for the intervention. When he had come back, his expression remained dark for several minutes, like he couldn’t shake the conversation. Sterling had told Reese before that his mom didn’t want him there. She didn’t want to press him for details about his mother’s response, but they were still planning to go, so it must have gone okay.
“I don’t know how I’m supposed to feel. I’m concerned about May. More than anything, I want her to get better. But I’m scared. My mom said not to come. Maybe she was right. I don’t want to make things worse.”
“Are you and May close?”
“We were. And then I got famous and she got bullied. She blamed me. It was my fault, even if incidentally. If I hadn’t been famous, she wouldn’t have been bullied. It started a whole avalanche of things in her life that led to this.”
Reese wanted to throw her arms around him again, to hold him the way she had on that balcony. His pain was almost a physical thing she could see and touch. It laced his words and lined his face and she could feel the muscles in his arm tensing under her fingers. Before she could question the wisdom in it, Reese slid her hand down to his and laced their fingers together. He tensed a little more, then relaxed, squeezing her hand. His gaze stayed fixed on their joined hands.
She prayed silently for the right words. She didn’t want to say something trite or cheesy or make false promises like, “It’s all going to turn out okay!” That wouldn’t help. And Sterling looked lost.
“Sterling, I don’t want to say a bunch of shallow things that won’t really help. Maybe she got bullied because of your job. Maybe she would have been bullied anyway. Maybe that’s why she started drinking and everything because of this. Maybe she would have anyway. You can’t bear the weight of all this on your shoulders. You made choices. The people at her school made choices. She made choices. It’s too complicated to boil it down to blaming one person. Stop blaming yourself.”
He nodded slowly. “I know that in my mind. But it’s hard to really believe it when I feel it. I feel like I’m to blame.”
“Sometimes the head has to convince the heart. You should tell yourself the truth—and often—until your stubborn heart can hear it: This isn’t your fault.”
An overhead speaker announced their flight. Reese tugged her hand, but Sterling did not let go. Instead, he looked up at her, pinning her to that spot.
“Thank you,” he said.
His words had sounded a little shaky. Reese smiled and nodded. She was about to climb down off her stool, but his words stopped her.
“One more thing.” He took off his sunglasses and met her eyes, full on. Her heart jumped straight to light speed. “Right now, you do not work for me. Or Azul. This is personal time. Vacation. Whatever you have to call it. Ignore social media.”
“That sounds … refreshing.”
“Good. This also means that you can forget all about my, um, fake relationship. That doesn’t exist here. It’s just you and me.”
For a moment, he held her gaze and Reese simply could not move. Had she tried to tell her body to get up and walk, it would have said no. She was caught completely and firmly in Sterling’s eyes. She wanted to ask him what he meant by “just you and me,” but didn’t trust her mouth to not babble and confess how much she wanted it to be “just you and me” in the more-than-just-two-days kind of way. Maybe in a much longer term kind of way.
No, she definitely shouldn’t speak.
Instead, she smiled. In return, he rewarded her with one of his amazing, authentic smiles that had her whole body feeling it. He hopped down from the stool, still holding her hand. But it was too hard to pick up her purse and her laptop bag that way.
“I need two hands,” she said, laughing. He let go, but as soon as she had her bags, he took her hand again, pulling her to walk close beside him.
Reese was thankful that Sterling was beside her, not facing her, but he still probably saw the giant grin that spread on her face. The warmth of his hand traveled up her arm in shooting bolts of adrenaline that lit up her skin, sending a flush not only to her cheeks, but to her chest and neck along the way. She even felt it in her ears.
The night before, Reese gave herself a pep talk, reminding herself that she shouldn’t think about Sterling romantically and that this trip was to support him during this time, nothing more. But it didn’t sound like he had the same pep talk with himself. In fact, it sounded very much like he was saying that they should enjoy this time and whatever came with it.
