Page 57 of Perfect on Paper

I’d kind of assumed he would want me to take him home. But now that I thought about it, of course he wouldn’t want that. Not ifthat’swhat he had to go home to. But at the same time, I got the feeling that the last thing Alexander Brougham wanted was to be labeled a victim. He wouldn’t ask for help. He wouldn’t admit he hurt.

Well, if the Disneyland trick had worked once…

“Do you have to get back just yet?” I asked carefully. “There’s something I’d like to do.”

A rivulet of water dripped down Brougham’s forehead and along the bridge of his nose, and he pushed his hair back once more. It didn’t stay slicked back for long. “Sure, I’m not in a rush.”

Bingo. And in one sentence, I was framed as the one asking for a favor. Brougham didn’t need to reach out, or feel pitied.

“Where are we going?” Brougham asked as we crossed the border of the city and started down the highway. “This seems ominous.”

“Regret getting in a car with me now?”

“Now you mention it, I might just shoot my GPS location across to Finn.”

“He won’t make it in time to save you,” I said in a low, gravelly voice.

“You’re a massive creep, Phillips.”

I drove carefully, well aware of the dangers of highway driving in weather like this. There were barely any other cars on the road. Just us, the bruised sky, rain thundering on the roof of the car, and drowned fields of grass stretching into rolling hills.

Brougham grabbed my phone, which was plugged into the car’s USB port. “Can I be DJ?”

“Sure.”

He scrolled through Spotify and I tried not to take my eyes off the road, but it was hard not to glance sideways to try to catch his reaction. Music taste always felt so personal. Like if someone judged your playlist, they were really judging your soul.

“Dua Lipa…” he murmured to himself. “Travis Scott. Lizzo. Shawn Mendes. Oh, Harry StylesandNiall Horan? Where are the others?”

I felt like he was making fun of me, but it was hard to tell. “I’m sure Zayn and Louis are on there somewhere. I’m not a Liam fan.”

“Oh, come now, poor Liam.”

“Don’t give me any ‘poor Liam’ shit. He knows what he did.”

I didn’t want to say I was surprised Brougham knew the members of One Direction, just because he was a straight guy. But a part of medidwonder if he got his base knowledge from Winona by any chance.

Brougham settled for Khalid. “I know, I know, I like top forty stuff,” I started. “But it’s good. Sue me.”

“Totally. Just because something’s popular doesn’t make it bad.”

I couldn’t help but look over at him at this, but he didn’t notice. He was too busy delving deeper into my playlists.

“You know, though,” he started, and as soon as I heard the tone of his voice I hit the steering wheel.

“Here it comes! IknewI was gonna get roasted!”

“What? I said I like your music.”

“So youweren’tgoing to get all indie and suggest something better?” I asked.

Brougham hesitated. “Kind of… sort of… ‘better’ is a strong word, though.”

“Hah, I’m sure.”

A Jeep took a break in the oncoming traffic to overtake us, followed closely by a sedan. Apparently I was the only person in California who followed the suggestion to drive slower in the rain. Even if the rain was getting lighter the farther away we drove, as far as I was concerned, that was no excuse for driving at the speed limit like a reckless hooligan. Mom’s words, not mine. She had a real thing about hooligans.

“No, I swear, your stuff is good! But before I was saying how fun it was to move here, because we get all of your media. And the thing is, we get all of yours and you getso littleof ours, and honestly you’re missing out.”

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