Page 48 of One-Star Romance

“No, that was…” Strangely perceptive? “You’re right. I do feel mixed-up about it all.”

“Yup,” he said, and patted her arm in a brotherly way. Then his eyes slid to the side, his father trying to get his attention. “Oh, shoot. Got to keep helping with this futon!”

Natalie stared after him for a moment as he walked away, then shook her head and ran to catch up with Gabby, now ascending the stairs to the second floor with a crying Christina. “Hey! Where are you going?”

“She’s getting hungry,” Gabby said. “I’m going to go feed her. Nobody here besides Angus needs to see my breasts.”

“I could see your breasts. Can I come with?”

“Okay, perv,” Gabby said, and led the way to her childhood bedroom.

As Gabby sat down on her twin bed with its princessy canopy and unfastened her buttons, Natalie cast a glance around the room, which she’d visited a few times with Gabby in college, sleeping in the trundle bed underneath the one they sat on now. The walls were hung with some of Gabby’s original watercolors and old posters from their teenage years. Mostly inspiring women—Venus and Serena Williams, Frida Kahlo, all giving Gabby something to strive toward. But—Natalie opened up the closet to check if her memory was correct—yes, Gabby had plastered the inside of her closet door with pictures of heartthrobs. Natalie bit back a smile as she looked over them all, hidden out of sight of Mr.Alvarez, who would not have approved. Next to Freddie Prinze Jr. and Orlando Bloom, there was a poster of Tyler Yeo from his Portal Makers days, holding up a glowing cube and considering it with his shirt slightly unbuttoned. (Natalie knew that Tyler had posed for photos with his shirt fully unbuttoned too, but Gabby had stuck to this one just in case her strict father went into her closet after all.)

Iman had put her in for the ghostwriting job, feeling bad about the failure of her second book. Tyler was repped by someone at the same agency, so a semi-depressed Natalie dutifully submitted a writing sample, assuming nothing would come of it given her recent track record. But then her phone had lit up with Iman’s name.

“Good news, Tyler loves your writing,” Iman said. “You’re on the short list. But he wants to meet all the finalists in person for, and I quote, ‘a vibe check.’ ”

When she walked into what could only be described as a bro pad—the living room of Tyler’s huge SoHo loft—Tyler bounded off the couch toward her, arms wide open for a hug. “Hey!” Then he stopped himself. “Wait, would you rather high-five hello instead? No pressure. It will not affect whether or not you get the job.”

Natalie was immediately charmed by this gorgeous doofus of a man who still, in his midthirties, thought that a high-five was one of the top ways to say hello. “We can hug,” she said, and held her own arms out. He pulled her in. His chest was so rock-hard, it practically bludgeoned her. She deduced that the answer to “Tyler Yeo—where is he now?” was, in general, the gym.

The walls of the living room were hung with framed canvases of neon graffiti, words like “love” and “peace” and “Tyler.” A Ping-Pong table sat in a corner. Tyler gestured to it. “I hate just, like, sitting up straight and being all formal. You wanna play while we talk?”

He handed her a paddle. As they took their positions, the whole thing had the surreal quality of a dream. Natalie told herself that it was a dream, that some unconscious recess of her brain had conjured up playing Ping-Pong with has-been movie star Tyler Yeo, and since she was going to wake up, none of this mattered, so there was no need to be nervous.

He sent over a casual serve, and she sliced it back. “Whoa, you’re good!” he said.

“Yeah, after my parents got divorced, my dad got a Ping-Pong table in his new house. Whenever I went to visit him, this was pretty much all we did. I think I channeled all my repressed anger at him into learning how to beat him.”

“Family…man,” he said as they volleyed back and forth. “It can be complicated.”

“Yup. Yours too?”

And then he was off and running. As he told her all about his upbringing, Portal Makers, and his life now, she casually whupped his ass.

A week later, Iman called with the job offer. “He liked you,” she said. “Apparently, you were the only one who didn’t let him win at Ping-Pong.”

It was still so odd to Natalie that she knew Tyler, an incongruous fact that sat alongside the rest of her life. If she could time-travel back to tell her teenage self that she was working with the Tyler Yeo, sweet naive teen Natalie would probably jump up and down in glee, assuming that her older self was set for life. But she wasn’t set for life. She wasn’t even supposed to talk about it.

Now the job was done, even if Tyler kept calling her every time their book reached some fun new benchmark, wanting to praise her work and also rejoice in their success, assuming she cared just as much about all of it as he did. He probably had no idea that she didn’t get any royalties, that his agent had cut a ruthless deal. Still, she was happy for him each time he got another hit for his sweetly ravenous ego, very happy to have made in the mid five-figure range for a writing job. Not to flatter herself, but she thought that part of the reason he kept calling was that he missed her. They had spent a lot of time together over the past year. Her job had been to pay rapturous attention to him and ask him questions about himself. No wonder he liked her.

Natalie closed Gabby’s closet door and went to join her on the bed. Gabby might have been happy enough to sit there in silence, catching her breath as Christina fed, but Natalie shifted, scratched her ear, then said, “So, Jeff wants to move in together.” Interest lit up Gabby’s exhausted features. “His friend is leaving his apartment, and we could get it without a broker’s fee if we commit by tomorrow.”

“Oh yay, do it!” Gabby said, surprising Natalie not one bit. Sometimes Natalie felt that the best way to engage her friend now was to hint that she was joining her in domesticity. If Nat got married and had babies, then they’d have so much to talk about. They no longer knew the day-to-days of each other’s lives, but if they could only debate the quality of different strollers, they’d once again be as close as they were at twenty-three. “Living together is great. You can see your favorite person whenever you want.”

Natalie bit her tongue. Would she say that Jeff was her favorite person? No, she’d still say Gabby, even if Gabby wouldn’t pick her. (Though, she loved Jeff. He was very close to being her favorite person!)

“I really like Jeff,” Gabby said.

“Same.”

“I should hope so!” They laughed. “And I really like how he treats you. He knows how special you are, you know?”

Natalie nodded. She never had to worry about being enough to Jeff, never had to look into his eyes and hear her mother saying, He’ll get bored with you eventually. If anything, she wished Jeff would push her a little more, but that seemed like a ridiculous complaint.

“So,” Gabby went on, “you’re going to say yes?”

“At some point, you’ve just got to take the plunge, right?” Gabby nodded approvingly. “Besides, the apartment is closer to you and Angus, so that would be nice. Only two subway stops away. We could even walk if we were ambitious.”

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