Page 14 of Unrealistic Expectations

Abby looked as though she’d blown a few circuits in her brain and needed to process some more, but she was looking at both Jessica and Galvin shrewdly. Jessica didn’t trust that look at all.

“We ran into each other last night at the bar. I was out with Barbie and Kelly, drowning my sorrows. Galvin was drowning his sorrows alone, and so we decided to pool our sorrows to drown them more effectively.”

“And did it work? Did y’all fuck?” If there was one thing about Abby, it was that she got straight to the point.

Galvin answered for them both. “Unfortunately no.”

“Maybe for you.” Abby also gave as good as she got, and she wasn’t buying any of Galvin’s charm. Jessica didn’t buy it, either, but over the past eighteen hours or so she had gotten the sense that there was more to him. Abby looked at her. “The last thing you need after breaking up with a man who couldn’t find a clitoris on a clitoris farm is Droopy Dick Dave over here.”

Galvin looked too pleased at the dig on Luke’s sexual prowess to care much about Abby’s new nickname for him.

“He could find a clitoris.”

“Yeah, he just didn’t want to, which is worse.”

Jessica was a little offended at Abby’s assumption about her unsatisfying sex life. It was true, but it kind of stung. And, before the breakup, Jessica had thought of a boring relationship as a good thing. They hadn’t had to work at things because they were good. She couldn’t stop beating herself up over the fact that she hadn’t noticed anything wrong with them until he was literally walking out the door.

“I thought you wanted me to trot Luke out for publicity?”

Abby rolled her eyes. “Listen, when he was the perfect surgeon boyfriend, I wanted him out there, singing your praises. Or just on your arm, looking hopelessly in love with you. He looked good on paper, and I could have hooked him up with some hair plugs and better clothes. He would have been a sign to men everywhere that—if they used your ten handy tips—they might end up with a stone-cold fox like you.”

Jessica did not buy into Abby’s argument that she was a stone-cold fox. She pulled herself together well, but her hotness was the least interesting thing about her. Her unwillingness to rely on her appearance alone to sell her “brand” was sort of anathema in L.A., but she stood by it. She cared about substance, and that made her different from her mother. She didn’t go around chasing stuff that just frittered away.

But what she had gone chasing had moved out of their home a few days ago. That had to be why she was questioning herself. It had to be why she was having warm feelings toward a man who didn’t have any of the qualities she needed in a long-term partner.

She looked at Galvin then, really looked at him. Even though his suit wasn’t perfectly pressed, he was at ease in his skin. Everyone in the café had probably seen the video blasting his performance in the bedroom. Most of them probably thought that he was the one who could wander the fields of Clitoris Farms in Vulva, Virginia, and come away without harvesting even a single orgasm.

But he’d kissed her like he knew what he was about. Her skin heated and the core of her became heavy just thinking about the way he’d kissed her, about the way his hands had cupped her chin and ghosted over the skin at her collarbones and upper back. The way his need to touch her more had been palpable and how he’d held back—because she’d told him to—pressed into her mind and made her forget that Abby was sitting at the table.

“You guys, like, like each other, don’t you?” Abby sounded completely disgusted.

“What? No!” Jessica responded to her publicist’s accusation without thinking. But she did like Galvin. Despite the fact that they were incredibly ill-suited as romantic partners, he’d given her something she’d needed last night and this morning. They hadn’t fucked, but he’d made her feel as though she was desirable on one of the worst days she’d had in a very long time. It would never happen again, but he’d been a true friend to her. “I mean, I like him. But we’re not involved or anything. And we won’t be. We can’t be.”

She was rambling, so she stopped talking. It would be better for everyone that way.

“She’s all right,” Galvin said with a crooked grin in place. She didn’t like what that crooked grin meant. The way he looked at her right now made her feel as though she was a bug under glass.

—

In the last few moments, Galvin had figured out that Abby was more bark than bite, and that Jessica was flustered by him. He liked that she was flustered by him, and he wanted to explore that later. But he had the sneaking suspicion that her friend and publicist Abby would be a significant gatekeeper to him spending more time figuring out all of the things that made Jessica blush and ramble.

“Stop grinning like that,” Abby said. “It’s distracting my client, and I need her focused.”

“On what?” Galvin asked. “We were just having breakfast, and she didn’t mention anything about the two of you having a scheduled meeting.”

“She doesn’t keep you abreast of her schedule, because you are not her boyfriend.” Abby sighed and pinched the bridge of her nose. “And I need to figure out how to spin this if you two are seen out together so I can minimize the damage to her public image and book sales if it gets out that she wrote a dating advice book and got dumped the day before it was released. It’s a fucking nightmare. She’ll be a meme. Do you want her to be a meme?”

Galvin was the tiniest bit chastened. “No. I don’t want her to become a meme.” And he didn’t. Jessica was pretty, smart, and cool—she always had been. But spending time with her had made him realize that she was more sensitive and vulnerable than he’d thought.

“This is why I didn’t want to talk about my personal life in the first place, Abby.” Jessica sounded frustrated. He hated that.

“And I agreed to you not talking about your personal life in the press because Luke was a bore. And there’s only so much magic I’m capable of.” He couldn’t help himself, but he grinned at Abby again because she also disliked Luke. Her voice dripped with disdain when she spoke about Jessica’s ex, which meant that she had good taste.

“Well, he’s gone now. Neither of us have to be bored by my ex-boyfriend anymore.” Jessica sounded defeated, and he really didn’t like that. It made him want to find Luke and punch him in the face. He was unfamiliar with the urge to defend someone else’s honor. He was more of a lover than a fighter. He hadn’t even sent Kennedy an angry text when she’d tried to destroy his chances of ever getting laid again. Instead, he’d moped around for the last few months—which was pathetic, but at least it wasn’t toxic.

“Listen, is there any chance that Luke would talk to the press about your breakup?”

Jessica pulled a face that he was sure she didn’t intend to be cute, but it was very, very cute. She bit her lip, and he almost groaned. “Not unless the press tracks him down in the operating room.”

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