Page 50 of Play With Me
This was the right decision, I know it was. But I still had a good ol’ minor panic attack about it with Sasha as she helped me pack my bag. It didn’t help that she threw in a gift bag of lingerie she’d bought recently that she’d never worn. Or the fancy dresses and high heels.
“I’m not going to need any of these,” I said. They also looked ridiculous tucked in next to my hiking boots and jeans and argyle sweaters.
“You’re going to make sure you need them,” she insisted. “Besides, Laila told me the resort Jude booked is beyond five-star. It’s a favorite among European billionaires.”
I groaned. “I still can’t believe we’re not just renting a cottage in town. It would be way easier to do everything from there.”
But I know Jude wants Farrah and Cap to have access to not just all the fun stuff at the resort, but the safety of all its staff, too. “None of us speak a word of French,” he’d said as we were boarding the train.
“Or German, Italian, or Romansh,” I added.
He’d gawped. “They speak four languages there? But the country’s so small!”
After that, we started the train ride with a quick geography lesson, along with some Swiss history. I pulled up all my librarian-only access sites and considered doing a slide show.
By the time the train emerged in France, I was confident he knew twice as much about the country than the average American, and filmed Jude reciting some of the facts he’d learned.
I’d been turning my thesis project over in my mind. It wasn’t really conventional to do a video project for my thesis in the first place, but my advisor had approved it after I nervously showed her some of the film work I’d done on my own. I knew making Jude my main focus was the best choice from a documentary perspective, given it was his hotel Eleanor was said to haunt—and that he was such a personality.
Now, though, with my camera away and the day waning into dusk outside, nerves tingled in my stomach. If I had a pen with me, I’d be chewing it. Instead, I wove my braid through my fingers.
“You okay?” Jude asked.
I nodded. “I’m okay.” I pretended to turn back to my book.
I was not okay. I’d been trying so hard to get Jude out of my head over the past year, and now for the next week, I would be with him 24/7.
Worse, I couldn’t get the wordsfriends with benefitsout of my head. Each time he looked at me, I was sure he’d be able to tell, but as I look over at him now, he stretches. He sets down his book and yawns languorously, looking completely unaffected by anything like the jumble of feelings gnawing at me.
When I’d met up with him again at the station, he’d forgone his usual man bun and was wearing his shiny blond hair down. He looked like Brad Pitt in that old 90s movieLegends of the Fall. All he was missing was an open white shirt, some pec cleavage, and a horse.
“Excuse me,” a woman says now. She’s stopped next to our seats. I recognized her from the pack of middle-aged Canadian women we’d run into at the train station. “I texted my husband in the station that we met you, but he still hasn’t forgiven me for not getting your autograph.”
She says that, but her beet-red face tells me she’s here for herself. I can relate, honestly.
“Of course,” Jude says. “Babe, you got a pen?”
It takes all my strength not to react to that. I smile politely while trying not to break a molar as I reach for my pen in the pocket of my corduroy blazer.
“Here you go, love bug.”
Jude snorts.
I pick up my book again, burying my face in it. He used to do this at home all the time, pretend I was his girlfriend if someone approaching him was particularly friendly. I hated it, partly because I knew no one would buy that nerdy Nora was Jude Kelly’s girlfriend.
This woman’s just nervous though. And she’s not lying about her husband. Or if she is, it’s an elaborate lie. She’d told us all about his favorite matches of Jude’s for a five full minutes while he took smiling selfies with her and her friends, grinning at me between shots as I glanced increasingly anxiously at the departures board.
“Miss, I just have to know… Are you his assistant?”
I lower the book. I can see the fake girlfriend thing hasn’t seemed to register. Or maybe she thinks this is how celebrities talk to their assistants.
Jude looks like he’s holding in a big laugh.
“No,” I say politely, smiling.
“Oh! His agent then?”
Jude looks more rapt than she does. He’s not going to rescue me.
