Page 44 of Not Exactly a Small-Town Romance

That’s weird. I haven’t had that happen since Joseph Keen smiled at me in ninth grade. Of course, I smiled back like a big fool before realizing the catch of North High was actually aiming his megawatt attention at the cheerleader behind me.

But this one is for me, and it’s a powerful look.

“Hey,” he says.

“Hey.”

Crawling into the bed next to him, even with the pillow wall, is way sexier than I expect. My heart hammers as I slide beneath the sheet. I’m wearing the gray sweater because otherwise, in this thin sleep shirt, my headlights areshining.

But it’s not lost on me that I’m beneath the same sheet that is coveringhim.

“Are you a cover stealer?” he asks.

“The worst.”

He clutches the sheets with both hands. “I’ll sleep with one eye open, then.”

“It won’t help. I’m a ninja when it comes to midnight bedding thievery.”

His laugh is low and rumbly and reverberates through my body. I feel it in my chest, my belly, my toes.

This is a lot.

“Good night, Zachery,” I say. I snuggle down on my side, facing our pillow wall. I can just see his face above it.

“Good night, Kelsey.” He reaches over to the lamp and flips it off.

For a few minutes, he stays on his phone, the light illuminating his face.

He’s beautiful. He has no bad side. His jaw is sharp, his dimple visible even when his face is at rest.

It’s shocking, really, that his career dwindled like it did. But it happens most of the time. A sustained lifelong place on the A-list is a real rarity, even though those graying actors with decades of movie credits are the most visible.

It’s easy to forget the leading players of ten years ago when they’ve fallen out of the limelight.

I’ve watched Zachery’s movies. He was miscast in all of them, a career doomed by a bad match of his strengths to the trajectory he found himself on.

It happens a lot. The only real way to combat getting pigeonholed early in your career is to diversify as soon as possible. But Hollywood, like a lot of industries, is comfortable with its known quantities.

If the directors you’ve worked with are comedic, the actors in your circle are comic, and the hits under your name all fall in the same category, that’s where you’ll keep getting work. Those will be the scripts that come your way. And it’s your name that will come to the casting directors’ minds when the same type of story needs a lineup.

It’s a self-perpetuating cycle.

And it was all wrong for Zachery. When the scripts got mediocre, and his talent wasn’t aligned with them, no movie magic was made. So he got dropped for the next pretty face.

His phone fades out as he sets it on the nightstand.

I listen to his breath, feeling every shift of his body on the stiff mattress.

The last thing that goes through my mind before I fall asleep is that I like sharing a bed with him.

Even if the Walls of Jericho come between us.

Chapter 14

ZACHERYGETSSTEALTHCUDDLED

Sleep should have been elusive. Hard bed. Scratchy sheets. Thuds and door slams and late-night laughter.

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