Page 365 of Rock Me All Night
"No." I move closer. Until we're touching. My heartbeat picks up. A flutter builds below my stomach. Moves lower. Lower. "And I don't think that the fame matters to you, whatever you want to claim."
"Of course it does. I'm an attention whore."
"If you insist."
He turns, leans against the concrete banister. His posture screamsleave me alonebut there's this sadness in his eyes. I can't go anywhere. It feels wrong.
I stare at the flowers from afar. They're beautiful but infinitely less interesting than Tom is.
I line up another picture. The composition is perfect. It's moody, raw, authentic.
Yet, I don't want to click. I don't want to be behind the camera. I want to be here, with him. Whatever that means.
I set my camera on the soft ground and turn back to Tom. After a few more minutes of staring out at the sky, he speaks.
"My mom, adopted mom, Ophelia. She loves roses."
"Yeah?"
"First day I got to her place, she had this big bouquet of roses on her dining table. But no ring. No sign of a boyfriend. Nothing. I lived to piss people off, so I looked at her and asked 'who the fuck bought you the roses, lady?' Pretty sure I added a few things about her being ugly."
I move closer. Until I can feel all the heat from his body.
"She looked me in the eyes, and she told me she bought them for herself. Of course, being a little asshole, I stared back at her and called her a loser."
"You didn't."
"I did." His gaze shifts to me. "She didn't blink. She stared at me with all this love and patience, and she said, ‘you can't wait for people to give you things you want. You have to ask for them.’"
"Smart."
"Took me a while to figure out what she meant." He kicks the grass, muddying his shoe.
"Did something happen to her?"
Tom doesn't answer. He pushes himself away from the railing and makes his way down the next set of concrete steps.
He stops in front of a peach rose bush and stares intently at the flowers. "She always had roses. Every week or two, she got a new bouquet."
"That's really sweet."
He holds up our takeout bag and points to an amphitheater to our left. "Food's getting cold."
He shakes his head, shaking off his bad mood. I follow him to the empty stage and sit cross-legged on the still-damp grass. The butt of my jeans is going to be wet. At the moment, it's hard to care.
Tom plops next to me. He eats quickly, then lies on his back and stares up at the sky. It's not raining anymore. It's mostly blue and bright and beautiful.
But none of that really matters to me. The only thing I can see is the pain in Tom's gorgeous green eyes.
I have to get him out of his mood. I line up a picture of him lying on the grass.
He looks up at me, raises a brow. "You have to do that now?"
"You can have these for free. Something soulful and pensive to get all your fans thinking you're sensitive."
"Don't need them thinking I'm sensitive." He looks back at the sky.
Okay. Here goes nothing. I move closer. Until I'm kneeling next to him. But the angle isn't quite right. I sling my knee over his legs, straddling him.
