“Nope. Done with that series. This is one of my favorites,” I say, lighting up at the prospect of sharing. “A country singer who’s forced to go on tour with her ex, a sexy, broody guitarist.”
“Second-chance romance?” he guesses. It’s a game we started playing, where he guesses the trope based on a one-line description.
I mock surprise. “You’re getting good at this. This one is also a forced proximity. They have to travel together on a tour bus. It’s pretty hot.”
He raises a curious brow as he takes a couple of steps into my room to rearrange my bookshelf again. “Yeah?”
I flip a few chapters back to a particularly steamy scene involving the kitchen counter and hand it to him. “You may relate to this one.”
He sits on the end of my bed to read, the mattress sinking underneath his weight. His nostrils flare as he scans the page. “Basically it’s written porn? But with no visuals.”
I pluck the book from his hands and bop him on the shoulder with it. “You don’t need visuals when you have your imagination. Besides, porn usually caters to the male gaze. Doesn’t really do much for a lot of women.”
“Of course. The emotional connection is key,” he says sarcastically, reaching into my lap to open the second Cheetos bag.
I suck in a sharp breath when his hand paws dangerously close to my vibrator hidden under my covers. Before he accidently touches it, I shift it over with my leg and it falls with a clatter down the crack between the wall and my bed.
“What was that?” Trevor asks.
“Oh, nothing. Just a book. No big deal.” I shrug it off, while internally I’m screaming and praying it hasn’t skidded out from under my bed. I even peer over the edge to confirm.
His eyes flicker with something that looks like suspicion, so I ramble on as a distractive measure.
“Feel free to borrow my books anytime, by the way. Maybe you could learn a thing or two. Pick up a few tips and tricks to use in your relationships going forward,” I offer teasingly.
He snorts. “What relationships?”
“Come on, you can’t really want to spend your life alone.”
“Being alone is my favorite,” he says ultraseriously, crunching a Cheeto. “Days off when you’re at work are the fucking best. I get the couch and the TV all to myself without you chatting my ear off in the background.”
I launch a weak punch in his side. “Wow, shots fired. I’ll try to make myself scarcer.”
He cracks a small smile. “I’m just kidding, Chen. You’re not too bad to be around . . .” Our eyes snag for a beat too long before he adds, “when you’re not all frazzled, hunting down your exes.”
I straighten my shoulders, ignoring the heat gathering in my neck, getting hotter and hotter the longer he smiles at me like that. From the edge of my bed where I was just . . .
“How goes the search, anyways?” Trevor asks.
Truthfully, I’ve been too busy with work the past week to put emotional effort into the ex search. Until today. “I’m now focusing on Brandon Wang. Sent him a message this morning, though he hasn’t responded . . . yet,” I note with a grimace. “He’s one of my college boyfriends.”
“All right. What’s the story with Brandon?”
“We were just friends at the beginning of college,” I say, finding myself smiling at the memory of him. “I always had a little crush on him, but I didn’t act on it because he had a long-term girlfriend from high school. He broke up with her going into junior year, and a week later, we made out at a campus pub trivia night. After being in such a long-term relationship, he was really against putting a label on things, which drove me nuts. I mean, not knowing whether I was his girlfriend or not was so stressful. Do I list him as my emergency contact? Do I put him in my will? These are things any sane, responsible human needs to know.”
Trevor covers his unapologetic laugh with his fist.
I reach over to give him a swift smack on the biceps, which frankly feels like hitting a metal pole. “Then things ended on a . . . dramatic note.”
“Dramatic?”
“He wanted to travel the globe after college before settling down. He wanted me to go with him, and I didn’t.”
“Really? Why?”
“I’m not great with unfamiliar places. Plane crash movies traumatized me,” I explain. “Airports freak me out too. The last time I was in one, I got arrested by airport police,” I admit, raising a bitter brow.
Inspired by Love Actually and Crazy Rich Asians, I tried my hand at an airport grand gesture. Turns out, one can only evade airport security in the movies, lest you pay $850 for a ticket just to confess your love in front of hundreds of sleep-deprived travelers.
This juicy tidbit of my past thrills Trevor. He descends into a fit of deep laughter as I explain how my ill-fated adventure resulted in hours of interrogation in a tiny, dimly lit room until the border officers finally believed I was an innocent, hopelessly-in-love girl and not some crazed terrorist. To this day, Brandon remains blissfully unaware of my airport arrest on his behalf.
“Okay, this is worse than I thought.”
“Look, if you attempted an airport grand gesture, everyone would say it was so romantic. But it’s crazy when I do it.”
He regards me like I’m a walking Caution sign. “Maybe you should approach dating more casually.”
“I can’t just hook up with someone casually.”
“Why not? It’s just sex.”
When he says sex, my face flushes like I’m a prepubescent teen in health class, all giddy over some anatomy word like labia. I’m not sure if it’s the fact that he’s sitting an arm’s length away from me, on my bed, but looking him in the eyes feels dangerous, vulnerable, like I’m staring into a solar eclipse, a second away from burning my retinas.
“You’ve never had casual sex?” His question comes out gruff.
My silence reveals me.
“Seriously? Never?” When I don’t respond, he points at me. “I have a theory about you.”
“Please enlighten me.”
“You’re obsessed with the idea of pursuing your exes because you’re scared to meet someone new.”
I scoff. “I’m not scared to meet someone new.”
“Why do you only read books you’ve already read?” he challenges, gesturing to my bookshelf, filled with the worn and cracked spines of well-loved books.
“Slander. I read new books sometimes. But if you must know why I reread, it’s because I already know I like them. I know how they end.”
His eyes glitter with satisfaction. “See? You don’t like new things. Same with food and traveling. You also hold on to things, like literal garbage from your exes, for example.”
I ignore his weirdly accurate assessment. “It’s not garbage. They’re priceless, sentimental relics. And I can’t just have sex with randoms, okay? Not everyone can turn their feelings off at the drop of a hat.”
“It’s really not that intimate. Just don’t allow your mind to go there.” He says it so casually, like it’s second nature.
I lean forward, mattress creaking. “Can I ask you a serious question?”