Page 95 of Nothing Like the Movies

—Pretty Woman

Liz

“Okay, here’s the plan.” Sarah put her hands on her hips as we exited Emerson Field and announced, “Clark is going to ride with me and Mom, Wes is going to ride with Michael, and Liz is going to take Lilith and the equipment back to the hotel and then meet us at Nicola’s.”

Michael had shown up at Emerson while we filmed, which thrilled Lilith because it gave her more interview content to play with as he and Wes reminisced, and by the time we were done, Michael had organized an impromptu dinner meet-up with some of Wes’s friends (the ones who’d stayed local for college).

I was over-the-moon excited to see everyone, because it’d beenwaytoo long.

“So fricking bossy,” Clark said, looking at Wes’s sister like he’d never met anyone like her.

Which was fair for sure.

“So frickingboss, you mean,” she said, then laughed when he groaned at how lame it was. “Go dump your gear in the van before we leave without you.”

“Oh, we won’t leave,” Wes’s mom said. “She’s just being a snot.”

“She’s good at that, isn’t she?”

“She was born that way.”

“Why are you assigning car pools, exactly?” Wes said, but I didn’t look at him because I couldn’t.

Meeting his eyes wasbeyonddifficult after last night.

I can still feel him kissing away my tears.

I’d lost my mind, swept up in the moment of trying to help an old friend, and I’d almost kissed him.

It was fine, because it was simply the product of exhaustion and emotion, but I didn’t want to look in his eyes and see that he thought it was more.

That he’dseenhow much I’d wanted—in that vulnerable moment—for him to kiss me.

“Because she’s clearly a leader,” Lilith said, smiling as she looked down at her phone.

“She’s clearlysomething,” Clark replied. “But I’m too hungry to debate. Let’s go.”

Clark, Lilith, and I were walking across the parking lot, and the second Lilith answered a call, Clark said to me, “He’s not over you.”

“What?”My head whipped around to gawk at him, and then I glanced to see if Lilith was listening.

She wasn’t, thank God.

“Who?” I asked, even though I knew damn well what he was saying.

“You know damn well who,” he said quietly, his gaze spearing me with total accusation as we approached the minivan. “I know what you told me, but it’s obvious there’s unresolved stuff between you two. The dude looks at you like he knows he’s going blind in an hour and he’s trying to memorize every detail of your face.”

My stomach flipped, and I remembered the way he’d looked at me on the floor of his living room.

No.I wasn’t going to revisit it. It was all about grief and had nothing to do with other emotions.Nothing.I calmly said, “He does not.”

“Hedoes, and it makes me feel like trash.”

I darted a glance at Lilith, who was nodding her head and looking in the other direction as she listened to the caller.

“There are thick undertones when you two are together,” he insisted, looking a little mad at me. His barely visible blond eyebrows were furrowed when he said, “And I don’t like the way our dating lie makes me feel.”

“How does it make you feel?” I asked, hitting the button on the remote that opened the back of the minivan.

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