“He is the CEO of a major international corporation.”
Confusing. “What does that have to do with anything?”
“How does a man like that have so much free time to just hang out with you? Do you realize that he is rearranging his schedule to be able to spend time with you?”
“That’s not—” But I stopped. What if that were true?
“And before you but, Craig me, you also have to realize that what you have with him is just a long-standing crush that is like a shadow that would disappear under harsh light.”
What was I supposed to say to that? I suspected she was right. “I don’t know how I feel.” It was about as honest as I was willing to be in that moment.
“You do tend to crush on unobtainable men,” she said softly, like she was afraid of hurting me. “You want your fairy tale. And I know you’re waiting for your white knight.”
“I’m not doing that,” I immediately protested.
“You are. You love the idea of being rescued. Your grandma did it with your grandpa, your dad did it for your mom, and Craig rescued you in a parking lot.”
“That’s not the only reason.”
“I would also like to point out that Marco kind of rescued you in that bathroom. And instead of leaving ten minutes later like Craig, he’s stuck around.”
It was extremely disconcerting to have someone close to you point out something you’d never even considered. Was this true? Was I so obsessed with fairy tales and happily ever afters and being rescued that I’d been waiting around for something to happen instead of going after what I wanted?
Like I’d resolved to do?
“Also, I would like to file a formal complaint that you haven’t been kissing Marco this whole time. You should do it every chance you get. You can kiss him. You don’t have to wait for him to make a move.”
“I can’t just kiss him.” She was not understanding the situation. At all.
“Why not?”
“Because he doesn’t actually want to kiss me.”
“How long did he kiss you for tonight?” she asked.
I didn’t know. Because time had basically stopped when his mouth was on mine.
“People don’t actually go around kissing random other people for no reason,” she added.
We had a reason. “Science?” I offered weakly, but I anticipated her response before she said it.
“Nobody kisses for science, either.”
“That’s not true. There are people who study kissing specifically as a field of study and—”
“You have put all your eggs into one poorly woven basket,” she said. “For once in your life, be bold. Do something scary. Tell him. It doesn’t bode well for your fake relationship if you can’t communicate what you’re feeling.”
The idea of telling Marco that I had feelings for him was too much. “I’ve been bold. I went after Craig.”
“You didn’t. You and Marco invented some wackadoodle scheme to get him to notice you.”
It was like she was forgetting all the scary things I’d recently done. “I quit my job!”
“And then had a new job a few hours later as a consultant. You’ve never been without a safety net. Start your company. Go get the man of everyone’s dreams. Pitch your idea to an investor. Go for it.”
I had the feeling she was right. And maybe I needed to spend an obsessive amount of time thinking about it. “What’s going on with Zhen?” I asked and walked upstairs as she told me all about their date last night, and I smiled as I listened.
I wished, for the millionth time, that I could be more like her.
Because Catalina would be bold when it came to Marco.
Maybe it was time to be more like her.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
Marco kept being available to me in the evenings. During the day, I refined my mood ring lipstick, and at night, he and I hung out. We mostly stayed at his place—I supposed there was no need to keep getting photographed when Craig was a hundred percent aware that we were a couple.
We ate together, watched movies. We spent three days in a row watching all three Lord of the Rings movies. And during The Return of the King and Gandalf’s speech to Pippin, I realized that Marco was mouthing the dialogue, probably unaware that he was doing it.
“You know all the words,” I said, delighted.
“What? No.”
“You do, you do!” I clapped my hands together. “You might love these movies more than I do.”
“Not possible. I don’t want to marry Legolas, so you win.”
We spent a lot of time working on a business plan. He gave me a list of potential suppliers and manufacturers along with all sorts of projection numbers that I probably never would have been able to come up with on my own. He seemed just as excited about the prospect of pitching to his dad as I was.
“Do you have a name?” he asked the night before we were scheduled to fly to Vermont.
“I was thinking Aviary Cosmetics.”
“That’s pretty,” he said as he reached for the first-quarter projections. A term I now understood, thank you very much. “Do you have a tagline for the company?”
“Beauty takes flight.”
“Like you’re trying to leave beauty? Fly away from it? That might come across negatively.”
“Okay,” I said, nodding. Fair note. “What about where beauty soars?”
“Sounds like sores. As in wounds. It’s okay. We’ll have a marketing department for that.” He heard the mistake and corrected himself. “I mean you. You’ll hire marketing. I can help advise you or . . . you could just do it yourself. I don’t want to overstep.”
It would be hard for him to overstep when he was taking care of so many important details for me. “You’re not. Hiring a marketing adviser would be smart. More brain, less storm that way. I was also thinking it would be fun to have palettes that are named after birds. Like we’d have Peacock Blue. Canary Yellow. Oriole Orange. Cardinal Red.”
That got his attention. “Cardinal? Like sin?”
My blood turned thick and heavy. “What? No. Like the bird.”
“Too bad.” He put the projections down, focusing all his attention on me. “Cardinal sins can be fun. I’m a fan of lust.”
That made heat prickle up the back of my neck. “I’m more partial to sloth and gluttony myself.”
He ignored my weak attempt at humor. “What color would that be? Cardinal red? Would it be a deep, dark red?”
We hadn’t kissed all week. I had been longing for him so badly that I was literally dreaming about him. It was kind of torturous to spend so much time with him, be so close, but not be able to touch him.
Especially now that I knew how good he was at it.
But his question now—that felt like an opening to something that I was eager to seize. Because despite Catalina’s sage advice, I had not taken a single bit of it. I should have. I should have made some kind of move before this.
“It would. A deep, dark red.” I nodded, pushing the slideshow presentation to the side.
“I thought of a test we haven’t run yet. Water.”
“Water?” I repeated because suddenly this was not going where I thought it was.