Getting over your first crush seems impossible - especially when he's the star of the world's biggest movie franchise.
***
Jess Wheeler is happily single and perfectly content with her simple life in Hemlock Landing, South Carolina, where all she kn...
Oops! This image does not follow our content guidelines. To continue publishing, please remove it or upload a different image.
By the time Bay reaches our table, there are at least one hundred people crowded around behind him, hushing each other to hear what he's going to say. Teresa, Cody, Mom, and I stare up at him like we're under attack, and I kind of get the feeling that we might be until Nigel brushes off the jealous fans, muttering some very crude threats. With a mouth like that, I suppose I underestimated him when I assumed that he could never be Bay's bodyguard.
Bay grins sheepishly, nodding to each of us in turn, and — Why, God? — takes the seat directly beside me. Except, the seat is more of a bench, so we have to awkwardly squish together until a whole lot of him ends up pressed against a whole lot of me.
On the other side of the table, Kayley is frozen with a forkful of potato salad hovering in front of her open mouth, and Teresa and my parents don't look much more dignified.
"Thought I'd join the fun table," Bay says with a nervous, teasing grin. And while it does the job of easing some of the awkwardness, the tension is still heavy in the air around us — especially when I glance up to see that Vivian and George Connor have just entered the square with fake jack-o-lantern grins plastered on their faces. Bay seems to notice at the same time, and he quickly drops his gaze.
"Well, this is the place to be," Teresa says in her typical, perky way. She swirls her fingers in the air. "Woot woot, fun table coming through."
Everyone around me finally seems to snap out of their reverie, going about their business as normal and doing a bang-up job at not acting like there's a movie star inches away from them. It's a bit harder for me to pretend that I'm fine, though: especially when Bay's sweet and deep cologne washes over me with every twist of his head, when the low tenor of his voice vibrates directly through my bones. I notice that at some point, probably following the parade, Bay had changed out of his expensive clothes into a baseball cap, a plain white t-shirt, and tight-fitting jeans. Which does nothing to knock him down a few pegs on the attractive-meter: in fact, such a casual look does him wonders, and I'm sure is driving all of the fans around us absolutely feral.
Not me, though. Nope. I feel nothing. Absolutely nothing at all. In fact, I decide to prove it to myself and everyone around me by leaning closer to Bay and hissing in his ear, "What the hell are you doing?"
He turns, eyes narrowing, and our faces are so close together that I foolishly start to imagine what might happen if we closed that distance. "I wanted to spend some time with you guys. You know, catch up," he says, which makes me feel like an asshole. And then, sheepishly, he adds, "And I wanted to avoid my parents."
"Ah. Now I get it," I reply, and my gut sinks with a touch of disappointment. Of course that's why he's been hanging around us so often: Bay and his mother must be at odds again, and he knows Vivian wouldn't be caught dead fraternizing with us plebes. I gesture to the table at large. "So be it. Let us be thy human shields."
