Page 49 of The Spirit of Love
But Ivy’s here. They need him, and nobody needs me.
Jude looks at me. “I should probably…” He points toward the action, toward the show he’s making today.
I just nod at Jude.
“I’ll let you get back to it,” I say.
He turns toward the set, toward the action. Then he turns back to me. “Hey.” He leans in so his shoulder brushes mine,which makes my body go very still. We’re touching, but I don’t move to pull away. “Going to the cactus garden today?” His voice is lower, almost a whisper.
I meet his eyes. They hold a hesitant smile. I can’t tell what’s happening in this moment, but it’s not what I was expecting. “No…”
“Then, you’re free?” His smile broadens. To the point where, once again, he reminds me of Sam.
I look away. It’s too much. “I didn’t say that.”
“I need a favor. Can you meet me at the Universal Costume Department at eight o’clock tonight?”
Chapter Thirteen
That evening, Jude waits forme outside a warehouse named for legendary Hollywood costume designer Edith Head. It’s a warm night, the sunset golden in the sky behind the building, and he’s taken off his suit jacket. It’s the first time I can see the shape of his shoulders, the lean muscles of his chest. With the top button of his oxford shirt undone and his sleeves rolled up, exposing strong forearms, Jude’s whole enchilada is giving me the kind of buzz I get when I meet a Tinder guy for drinks and he looks the same as he did in his photos online, yet also somehow better.
Jude holds two badges on lanyards, and I wait as he leans forward and slips one over my head. His fingers brush my collarbone, then the chain Sam’s stone hangs from. I meet his eyes, surprised by how intensely he holds my gaze.
Chemistry: It’s never a one-way street. But what’s in it forJude? I’ve not exactly been warm to him since we first met, and I have no plans to change that. Maybe he’s the kind of closed-off weirdo who’s into it when women are mean to him? It’s clear enough that on my end, any chemistry with Jude—however bizarre and undesired—has everything to do with Sam. It makesa kind of sense that I keep conflating Sam and Jude, using Jude’s eyes and his hands and those lips, which areright there, very close, as a way to wean myself off the intensity of my fling with Sam.
Lorena said it might mean there’s something “not quite right” about my time with Sam, but I’ve had no time to ponder that conundrum this week. And what does that really matter anyway if I never see Sam again? For now, I’m content to let the memory stay golden, to call on Sam’s sexy, teasing smile when I need a boost. Like every second for the past two days.
“Ever been here before?” Jude asks, holding open the door. “They close at five, but they opened it especially for me.”
Inside, it smells like mothballs, leather, and Chanel. We flash our badges at reception and round a corner, and I have to suppress my audible awe at the vast treasure stretching out before me. I’m not telling Jude I’ve always wanted to see this place, that I deep-dived it on YouTube when I first moved to LA. This giant vortex of a warehouse stores every item of clothing and accessories that anyone in almost any film or TV show has ever worn or would ever possibly want to wear. It’s room after room of double-racked costumes, from eighteenth-century ballgowns, to postapocalyptic armor, from the golden age jewelry to the world’s largest selection of MC Hammer pants. I fucking love Hammer pants.
“So what are we looking for?” I ask, running my hand along a rack of beadedBoogie Nights–style vests. I follow Jude because he seems to know where he’s going, down the seventies aisle and around the corner into the Wild West. I touch a pink taffetagown that looks like it could suit a very badass saloon owner. “Is there a zombie aisle?”
Jude turns back to face me, confused. “Oh, no. We’re not here for the show. Not directly anyway.”
I narrow my eyes, suddenly guarded, sensing a trap. “Then what am I doing here?”
Jude flicks absently through a rack of colorful men’s peasant blouses, the kind Westley wore inThe Princess Bride, thereby cementing them as an evergreen stud clothing article. I picture Jude in the pale-green blouse at his fingertips. Actually, I picture him changing into it, unbuttoning his oxford shirt all the way to his navel, letting it drop to the floor.
I wonder: Could my erotic conflation condition make Jude’s chest look like Sam’s, too? Because I might be into something like that.
No. I’m not seeing Jude shirtless tonight. Or ever. The less of him I see, the better.
“I like it here,” he says. “When I was a kid, my mom worked a bunch of different jobs. One of them was at our town’s only costume shop. She took extra shifts the month of Halloween, and when I was in sixth grade, I got suspended from school for a week—”
“Because?”
“I might have skateboarded off the school’s roof, narrowly avoiding my former kindergarten teacher’s head. Stuck the landing though.”
I give Jude an appraising look. The polished brogues, the permasuit. “I don’t see it.”
He laughs. “You think I’m making this up to impress you?”
“Maybe try giving me a nightofffrom you and see how impressed I am.”
“How’s tomorrow night?” he asks, meeting my eyes in this way that almost feels like he’s asking me out. But he’s not.
“You mean,notto hang out with you?”
