Page 20 of Wildest Dreams

“What?”

“You know what. How was the date?”

I sigh and lean back in my chair, closing my eyes and putting my hands on my head.

“He’s perfect.”

Patsy squeals. “I knew it! I need all the details. This is the best thing that could’ve happened to you!”

“No, Patsy. It’s not.”

“Why? What happened? You said he’s perfect.”

“It’s not him; it’s me. I’m very much not perfect.”

“Oh, don’t start with that crap again. You need to move on and a big celebrity is the perfect guy to get you out of your head.” She sits down in the chair in front of my desk. “Tell me every detail from the beginning. I already know Tucker was there.”

“What? How?”

“Mercuria Beaumont texted me.”

I roll my eyes. This town.

I go through our date, line by line from what I can remember. When I tell her about the botched kiss at the end of the night, I thought her eyes were going to pop out of her head like a cartoon.

“Shut the f-ing door. Pierre f-ing Chatham tried to kiss you and you turned away from him?”

I nod, giving her a tense, toothy smile.

“We need to take you in for a lobotomy or something. When Pierre Chatham kisses you, you’re supposed to kiss him back!” She looks at me like I’ve grown a third eye.

“No. This is bad! All bad! Nothing good can come from this. There’s no way I’ll come out of this without getting hurt.”

“You don’t know that.”

“I do. I felt crazy close to him yesterday. We talked about his past, my past. He has this way of seeing into my soul. It’s unnerving and incredibly sexy at the same time. If this goes any further, I’m going to fall so hard that the splat will leave a permanent mark and you will never be able to clean it up.”

She shakes her head. “Like Humpty Dumpty?”

“Yes! Exactly. Think of me as an egg on a ledge.”

Patsy’s expression softens. She walks around my desk, kneels, and takes my hand.

“Kendall,” she says, “it’s not a bad thing to be scared. I know the divorce was hard, but?—”

“No,” I say, pulling away from her, and a dam inside of me breaks. “You don’t know. You and Garion are perfect. You got your happily ever after with your high school sweetheart. You have no idea what it’s like for that to blow up in your face. I hope you never do.”

She takes a deep breath. “You deserve to be happy, and you’re not happy holed up in your apartment all the time. You never will be at this rate. Put yourself out there. You never know…”

“This isn’t a practical dream to chase. He’s from a completely different world.”

“He’s not an alien.”

“He might as well be.”

“For all we know, he could sweep you off your feet and whisk you away to California to live a life of luxury.”

“Not only is that highly unlikely, it’s not even what I would want. This whole thing is an exercise in futility.”

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