Page 65 of Big Balls
I pause. “I was talking about you. I didn’t want to say your name in case you didn’t want to hear it, but I meant everything I said in that interview.”
Zoe purses her lips and looks down. “I didn’t watch it.”
“But you kissed me.”
She looks up at me like I’m an idiot, and the thought occurs to me that perhaps Katy learned that little trick from her. “What does one thing have to do with the other, Ethan?”
I pause, trying to gather my runaway thoughts and corral them into some semblance of order. “If you kissed me, then you must still like me. But if you still like me, why wouldn’t you watch the interview where Big Balls bares his soul?”
Zoe snorts. “Okay, first of all, please never refer to yourself in third person ever again as long as you live. Because that was ridiculous.” She leans up against me, and it feels so right that I want to kiss her again right now, but this is still a talking moment.
“Second, I meant what I said about wanting you to be happy, but I couldn’t exactly watch you talk about how easy it was for you to find love with the right person so soon after you’d told me it was impossible for things between us to work out.”
I press a kiss to the crown of her head. “That wasn’t exactly what I said.”
She pops her head up and gives me a narrow-eyed look. “That’s how everyone is taking it, though.”
I tuck her back against me, and this time I run my fingers down the bare skin of her arm, leaving a little trail of goose bumps in my path.
“No, Zoe. They’re not. Maybe if you’d watched it, you would know what was actually said.”
She clicks her tongue in clear disapproval. “Why don’t you tell me now? Then later we can watch what you actually said and compare the two.”
I shake my head. “No way. That’s a trap, and I’m not falling for it. Let me grab my phone.” I thumb to the open tab with my video on it. And without thinking too hard, I scroll right to 38:46, the moment I somewhat declared my love for Zoe on national television.
“I can’t believe you know what exact moment you wanted from this video, you egomaniac.” She sticks her elbow into my ribs, and then I hit play.
Zoe gasps when I play it back, then pauses the video and stares hard at me.
“You better mean it or my father’s going to murder you this time.”
I wrap my arms around her and kiss her hard, showing her how very much I mean it.
“Later,” she says, swatting at me as she stands up and wriggles her dress back into place.
“Not too much later,” I murmur.
Then she gives me the most beautiful smile I’ve ever seen. “Don’t be that way. We have the rest of our lives to make this work between us.”
Her smile is contagious, and I rise to my feet and take her hand to walk us back out to the ballroom. I’m dying for her to meet my mom, who is going to be over the moon when she finds out Zoe and I have made up.
As usual, I’m right.
My mom loves her, of course. To be fair, my mom already loved her before they even met because of everything I’d told her about how Zoe was with my Katy. And my mom’s very favorite person is Katy.
But above and beyond that, my mother has the same eternally happy outlook as Zoe. It didn’t even register with me until I saw the two of them together, partly because I still think of my mom as the most frightening woman I know.
But they both have the same distinctive manner, filled with a positivity that shines out from inside them and makes everyone around them happy to be there.
For me personally, this is the happiest I’ve been in months. Years, even.
It finally feels like everything has fallen into place. I’ve rehabilitated my public image fairly completely and in a way that I can live with—through the truth and openness about my family that I’d always been afraid of. My mother is well on her way back to battle-ready, and should be safely out of the clutches of cancer for good now. My daughter is loving her new school, the one right here in New Orleans, and already has some friends, real ones this time.
But the best part of my current existence is beside me, holding my hand and smiling at the people around us. I don’t know what I did to deserve having a woman like Zoe Deveraux in my life, but I’ll do whatever I need to in order to keep her there.
You can bet on it, because I always deliver on my promises.
22
