Page 81 of The Moon Also Rises
“Shit,” I say. “I’m sorry. It’s late. You were asleep and—“
“No, no. It’s okay,” he says, still gruff and sexy and probably wearing another pair of pastel-coloured silk boxers.Fuck, this was a terrible idea. Damn you, Dana!
“What’s going on? Where are you?”
“Just off Brick Lane having just put a very drunk Dana in an Uber.”
“That’s just around the corner,” Rami says.
I chuckle to myself. “It’s really not.”
“Do you need some help? Money for a taxi?”
“Jesus, no,” I say and I’m about to berate him for thinking me incapable enough to get myself in a pickle like that, but I stop myself just in time. It would certainly be harsh to be angry with him after I’ve woken him. “I just… fuck.”
I hear some muffled rustling and imagine him sitting up in bed, the sheets falling down to reveal his dark, hairy torso.Focus, Jake!
“Do you need me to come meet you?” Rami asks.
“You’d do that? For me?”
“If you’re in trouble or stuck somewhere, of course.”
I sigh into the phone. “I don’t need help. I’m not stuck. I was calling – stupidly and perhaps a little under the influence – to try and clear the air between us. I’m aware things have been… tense.”
“That’s one word for it,” Rami says with a gentle laugh.
“I don’t like it when things are tense,” I say and it feels freeing to say something so deeply true.
“Neither do I, Forester.” It’s hearing my surname in that gruff sleepy tone that makes me reach for my magic phrase.
Fuck it.
“Rami, I—” I begin, but he is just as quick.
“Jake, do you want to come over?”
Chapter Twenty-Six
Rami
Jake doesn’t look out of place in my apartment. He looks like he could live here, despite what he’s saying and how he’s behaving.
“What the fuck are you doing living in a place like this?” he demands standing at the floor-to-ceiling window and staring at the sparkling lights of London’s night sky.
I walk over to stand beside him. “What do you mean?”
“It’s a fucking penthouse apartment with a view that alone would have cost a million pounds.”
“Well, then that would have made the apartment very cheap,” I mutter, attempting humour.
“Seriously, what the hell were you doing in LA? Drug smuggling?” Jake puts his hands on his hips as he turns to me.
I look him up and down again, deciding this is possibly my favourite look on Jake. The slightly undone version of his once most done up appearance; his shirt a little creased and untucked on one side, his cheeks pink with warmth from good conversation and wine, and his hair suffering from his hands running through it all night, that front tuft threatening to fall down the centre of his forehead.
“I can assure you I was not drug smuggling,” I say, choosing to deny falsehoods rather than create my own.
Honestly, when I bought this apartment, I didn’t realise how flashy it would look, or how out of other peoples’ price brackets it would be. I could blame that on over a decade of acclimatising to the LA-lifestyle where money has a very different value and your status depends on where you live as much as how you live, but it wasn’t quite that simple. I bought this apartment without seeing it on a whim because I needed the kick up the backside to leave my mom’s house. I needed to have somewhere else to go, a new life to start living, and I promised myself I’d make it a home, eventually. I’m still working on that part.
