Page 53 of How to Kiss a Movie Star
Flint:Yeah? Maybe I should go into ACTING or something.
Lennox:Okay. Point taken.
Deny, deny, deny.That’s the game here. I just have to convince myself my feelings aren’t already involved.
I’m not invested.
I’m perfectly fine knowing this thing with Audrey isn’t ever going to be real.
As I field a few more of my brothers’ idiotic responses, my brain is fully on board.It’s all pretend. It’s only going to be pretend.
But when a new text pops up, this one from Audrey herself, the way my heart jumps clean out of my chest tells an entirely different story.
Chapter Fifteen
Audrey
Ittakesmeaboutfifteen seconds to figure out that the pictures that pop up on my phone came from Flint himself, and not Joni.
It shouldn’t be a big deal. But he made such a point of not giving me his phone number. What changed? What made him suddenly okay with texting me directly?
The bigger question. Why am I so happy about it?
I scroll through the three photos he sent over with trembling hands. They’re better than I expected. He must have run them through a filter because they look more artistic than just a regular snapshot. The shadows are heightened, and it looks like he deepened the contrast in a way that really emphasizes the distant mountains behind us.
I zoom in on the photo of me, looking for anything that might identify who I am.
The woman in the photo could be anyone. The one of us together shows a little more of me—the line of my jaw, the bend of my arm, my palm pressed against Flint’s chest.
My sisters might be able to look at it and tell that it’s me, but no one else could. Especially without any context.
A pulse of anxiety pushes through me as I think about all 56 million of Flint’s Instagram followers seeing photos of me.Yes—56 million.Ten minutes ago, I thought he might have a few hundred thousand followers. A million, tops.
When I said as much out loud, Summer laughed until she cried real, actual tears, then she pulled up his account and showed me how far off I was.
I understood that Flint was famous.
I didn’t understandhowfamous.
I click out of the photos and drop my phone onto the bed like it’s too hot to touch. A part of me feels like it was a different person in the pool with Flint today. The woman in the photos—it’s not me. Itcan’tbe me. If someone sat me down right now and explained that I was a part of some cutting-edge experiment in which someone else borrowed my body for the afternoon to frolic through the pool with Flint Hawthorne, I would believe it.
And then I would feel relief because it would mean I get to go back to my regularly scheduled life. My work. My research. The woods I know as well as I know my own name. The occasional run-in with my sisters when they insist I need to take off my cargo pants and socialize with humans instead of wildlife every once in a while.
I lean back on my bed and stare at the ceiling.
The only trouble with that scenario is that I actuallyenjoyedswimming with Flint today. I know my sisters think the man walks on water just based on how beautiful he is, and I’ll be the first to admit it—I definitely enjoyed the view he gave me today.
But aside from the abdominal muscles and the nicely sculpted shoulders and the biceps—I definitely have a thing for biceps—he was also really fun to be around. He paid attention to me. Made sure I was comfortable. Teased me in a way that immediately put me at ease. Had the afternoon not ended with the wholesnuggling up against him for a picturething, it might have just felt like a fun afternoon with a friend.
That’s what he said, after all.
I had a lot of fun.
Sure. Fun. Until his touch lit my skin on fire and turned my heart inside out.
But was it Flint that did that? Or just the fact that I was being touched by anyone at all?
It has been a very long time since a man has touched me in any kind of intimate way. Since that much of my skin has been in contact with that much of someone else’s skin.
