Page 13 of Unrealistic Expectations

Jessica wasn’t going to delve into Galvin’s psyche any more deeply than she already had. He was trouble. She knew he was trouble, and she wasn’t in the market for any trouble. Not in her personal life, not ever. He wasn’t a client, and she wasn’t responsible for getting him to see that his fear of commitment came from a fear of turning out like his parents. But she wanted to ask what it was like for him when he bailed on relationships. Did he feel trapped? Did he start to pick apart everything about his partners? What was his deal?

His deal wasn’t any of her business. Right now, all she had to think about was pastry.

Galvin chuckled. “I think you’re a secret hedonist.”

“What do you mean?” Jessica wasn’t a hedonist, secret or otherwise.

“Most people would order one pastry and see if that was enough.” Galvin’s green eyes seemed to pierce the wall that Jessica carefully maintained between her baser desires and her behavior. Even though she was hung over and should be thinking about her extremely recent breakup, the slow heat that his gaze elicited in her body couldn’t be ignored. “But you know that you need at least a croissant and a half to slake your hunger.”

“Hmm.” She couldn’t form words, so she made a sound and looked away from him. She looked around the crowded café, filled with couples and some groups of women who appeared to be debriefing on their weekends. She should really be doing that instead of having brunch with a man she’d felt up the night before. It didn’t matter that he’d seemed to be into it. She’d felt him up like a horny teenager—it was so embarrassing. She didn’t know why he was continuing to humor her—continuing to flirt with her. This went far beyond the kind of compassion one might feel for an old acquaintance who’d had a bad day.

As she was lost in thought, she saw the last person she wanted to see—Abby, her publicist. The one who’d set up all of the awkward podcast interviews, and the one who’d encouraged her to share more about her personal life so she could be more relatable, despite Jessica’s resistance.

She looked away immediately, hoping that Abby wouldn’t notice that she was here with someone who wasn’t her boyfriend. She’d told Abby about the breakup, but she didn’t want anyone to think that she was getting over Luke by getting under a notorious fuckboy.

Luke had been cute in college—in a sort of boring, frat boy way. But he was a surgeon, and that training had taken a toll on his looks. She cringed, internally, at thinking something so shallow about someone she’d loved very much. But it was true. Luke had aged like a banana, and there was no use trying to see beyond his receding hairline and sallow complexion now. During their relationship, she’d done her best to ignore the fact that he’d made shitty remarks about ten pounds of weight gain and expected her to still be hot for him no matter what. Now, that was useless.

She really shouldn’t compare, but Galvin, on the other hand, was in the fine wine category of aging. Maybe there was something to be said for avoiding serious commitments. It probably left more time for the gym and skin care. She’d never have to tell Galvin that scrubs weren’t appropriate dinner wear, especially ones with bloodstains on them. He even looked good in a suit that she’d crumpled up and thrown on her floor. Sort of like one of the roguish-looking heroes on one of her mother’s romance novels.

Jessica was still contemplating Galvin’s good looks and trying to remember why they didn’t matter at all when Abby approached the table. She felt as though she’d been caught cheating on a test, and her face heated.

“You’re a public figure now. You really should put on makeup before you leave the house. And what the fuck are you doing with this guy?” Jessica swore that Abby’s favorite punctuation mark was the f-word. Even though they didn’t know each other that well, it didn’t alarm Jessica the way it used to. She found it kind of charming now, but it had taken some getting used to.

Jessica didn’t quite know how to explain this. For all that Abby knew, she was still in deep mourning about the demise of a happyish relationship with her college boyfriend. It was weird that she was eating breakfast with a man who clearly wasn’t said boyfriend with second-day stubble and wrinkled clothes. Jessica didn’t socialize with clients, so her being here with a man she was not in a relationship with did not make sense.

She decided the best course of action was keeping her answers short and honest—they could have a discussion about her breakup later, in private. “Eating breakfast?”

She hadn’t meant for her answer to sound like a question, and her hesitance made Abby examine the tableau a little more closely. “Who is he?”

Galvin looked up at her with his most winning smile. What he didn’t know was that Abby could freeze the balls off an NFL player with one glare and had done so in Jessica’s presence when he didn’t wear the suit Abby had told him to for an interview about his memoir. “Galvin Baker.”

Abby squinted at him like she knew him from somewhere. Considering why he’d recently been in the public eye, that was a bad thing. Jessica wanted to protect him from Abby’s wrath, and that made her stop to think. Galvin was nothing to her but an old acquaintance. Sure, they’d had a weird evening together when they were both in a weird time in their lives and it had turned weirdly sexual—at least on her part. But that was the end of it. After this breakfast, they’d go their separate ways and probably never speak again. She was probably only protective because he didn’t need Abby’s scrutiny. Her publicist was there to protect Jessica’s image, and it didn’t need protecting from Galvin.

But while Jessica was pondering the way she wanted to come to Galvin’s defense, even though he didn’t need it, Abby figured out who he was. “Oh, you’re Kennedy Mower’s ex. The one with the sad penis.”

Galvin’s face paled, and before she could stop herself, Jessica said, “Galvin’s penis isn’t sad.” Oddly, that didn’t bring the color back into Galvin’s face. If anything, his neck turned red, and he looked as though he wanted to crawl under the table.

“That was really loud, Jess,” Galvin whispered, and then it was her turn to flush. She looked around, and a few people were staring.

“Abby, sit down,” Jessica said. It didn’t help that the most powerful book publicist in town, responsible for forty-eight of the fifty-two number-one books on the New York Times Best Sellers list in the past year, was standing around in a restaurant filled with reality television hopefuls who probably thought their lives were worthy of at least three memoirs, with a raised voice.

Unlike most of the time, when Abby never listened to anyone, she took the empty seat at their table. “This is bad.”

“What’s bad?” Galvin asked, his composure and the easy confidence that he usually wore like a finely tailored suit back in place. “We’re just two friends having breakfast.”

Abby scoffed. “You, sir, look rode hard and put up wet.” Jessica chuckled at Abby’s colloquialism, until her shrewd gaze turned onto Jessica. “And you don’t look much better. Is this a rebound? You could do a lot better. What are you doing canoodling with Sad Dick Energy over here?”

“No one says canoodling,” Jessica said, trying to distract Abby. And the stellar professional who was doing her a huge favor by taking her money to work on her book when she usually had a wait list about seven years long. “And, even if people still said canoodling, we’re not doing that.”

“We were canoodling last night,” Galvin said, and that earned him a death glare from Jessica. He seemed impervious, though.

Now Abby seemed truly incensed. “Well, now I’m glad we didn’t go with the ‘Jessica Gallagher has such a stable relationship that you should listen to her advice’ angle.”

“I told you that it was best to keep my private life private.” Jessica felt a little smug about that at the moment.

“He was a fucking douche anyway,” Galvin said. Jessica was beginning to think that he was a really supportive friend. She appreciated him a whole lot in that moment. “You’re going to be way better off without him.”

It was Jessica’s turn to flush. There was a subtext of admiration for her in his words that she wouldn’t have expected after everything that had happened the night before. Even though he’d needled her this morning about her rigid breakfast habits and abhorrence for hedonism, she could feel that he genuinely liked her.

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