Page 30 of The ABCs of You & Me

He looks at me, those amber eyes so intense I have to actively remind myself this isn’t real. “I’m a very good actor.” And there it is, the reminder of what this is.

“You are indeed. Fooled me completely.”

“Dan, why do you have a picture of Ray Romano on your wall?” Miranda asks, coming back into the room.

“Excuse me?” Dan asks, standing up and heading in the direction Miranda had come from. He stops in front of one of the framed pictures in the hall. “That’s my uncle Gabriel,” he says coyly.

“That’s Ray fucking Romano and you know it. And that’s Jennifer Aniston,” she says, pointing at another picture.

Foster stands and walks over to the framed pictures on the mantle and starts to laugh. “I had no idea you two were so close to this many famous people including”—he leans in—“Queen Elizabeth from like 1960. When were you born again, Danny Boy?”

“Nineteen sixty-nine.”

“Did you invent a time machine between then and now?” Nick asks, joining Foster at the mantle.

“If so, you should send Foster and Sophie back so they can share their feelings in a more timely manner,” Heather says absently while studying more pictures. “No one from your family is even in this one, it’s only the BeeGees. Wait, is it the BeeGees? I don’t know, I’m so young.”

Everyone is laughing, and I’m lost in a daydream of what it would have been like if Foster and I had actually confessed having feelings for one another long before Gregory. Would I have gone to Korea with him? Would we have made it until now? It’s silly to wonder—there are no time machines, and one of us is acting while the other is trying desperately not to fall for it.

By the time all the pictures are studied, thirty-two famous faces are discovered pressed between real family pictures and their glass covers. One of them has five versions of Jon Stewart, which throws the friends into a lighthearted argument about which expression correlates with which famous quote.

“That one is from the episode where he rants about deep-dish pizza,” Foster says before quoting him in a terrible New York accent. I struggle to hold in my laughter.

“Didn’t you say you were a good actor?” Alex scoffs.

“I never said I was good at accents, but I do have a fantastic memory. and that face is definitely the pizza rant face.”

“I’m not saying this because of the whole being with him thing, but he’s right, that’s pizza rant face. I must have rewatched that episode a hundred times in the Walshes’ basement.” I go on to quote the next part of the line.

“Now that is acting,” Alex exclaims, with a flourish of jazz hands.

I bow dramatically. “Thank you. I’ve been training my entire life to be a Jon Stewart impersonator.”

“Hate to break it to you, sunshine, but you’re way too beautiful for that,” Foster says.

I roll my eyes before looking up at him. “You have to say that.”

“I don’t have to say anything,” he says quietly, moving closer. He wraps an arm around my shoulders and pulls me gently into his side. “When it comes to you, I want to say it, yell it from the rooftops actually.” And then he bends and plants a kiss on my forehead.

Holy shit, holy shit, holy shit, Foster’s lips are on me. Sure, they aren’t on my lips, but they are on my face, and that’s a step in a direction I’ve only ever dreamed of.

FIFTEEN

FOSTER

My lips have been burning since I kissed Sophie. Sure, it was only her forehead, but my lips were on her skin, and it turns out I like that more than my lips not being on her skin. When I moved away, she acted like the kiss was nothing new. Which was good, to everyone else in the room. To me on the other hand, it felt like I’d crossed a line—or blurred one. And now I was pulling into her driveway and this whole act was about to end.

“Would you mind if I drove on Thursday?” she asks before she gets out of the car.

“Something wrong with my driving skills?”

“No, you are an excellent driver, no notes.” She giggles. “I was thinking it’s a school night and you just might be tired by the end of the concert.”

She’s not wrong. Work has been intense of late, and the thought of not only going out after work but going somewhere that’s going to be hours of high energy is already making my eyes droop. “I won’t fight you on this. Are we going to leave right after school?”

“Yeah, probably for the best. We can grab food near the arena first, but we can figure that out later.” She doesn’t jump out right away; instead, her eyes focus on something out the windshield, her fingers tapping nervously on her thighs.

“Everything alright?” I ask, focused on her hands.

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