I laugh. “Take a deep breath. It’s all good.” I push the heat bag back to her. “I don’t think your boss would be very happy if you gave away the heat bag.”
She blinks. “Oh. Um. Right.” She doesn’t move to take the pizza out of the bag, though. “I can’t believe it’s you. What—what in the world areyoudoinghere?”
“Road trip.” I open the flap and remove the pizza, hold up a finger. “Hold on.”
I set the pizza on the table inside and go back out to the hallway, where the girl is still standing in stunned immobility.
“Got your phone?” I ask.
She holds it up. “It’s a Samsung.”
I laugh. “Nice.” I turn and stand beside her, put my arm around her shoulders. “You want a selfie?”
She nods. “Selfie.” She blinks as if coming awake, finally. “Wait, for real?”
I grin. “Yup. For real.”
She opens her camera and snaps half a dozen in quick succession. Then, she digs a pen out of her back pocket. She holds it out to me. “Can I have your autograph, too?”
I hesitate. “What should I sign?”
She looks baffled for a moment. “Um.” Then, glancing down, she realizes she’s wearing a company logo-emblazoned polo with all of three buttons open, and tugs the top down, exposing the upper portion of her breasts. “These?”
The receipt is inside the heat bag, I notice, which is on the hallway floor, opening facing up. I reach in and grab the receipt, flatten it against the wall, and glance at her. “How about this instead? What’s your name?”
“Katie?” It comes out like a question.
I sign it with her name and a smiley face:
To Katie, this autograph won’t vanish next time you wash. —Westley Britton
I hand it to her, and she stares at it with wonder. “There you go.”
She then stares at me. “You’re so beautiful.”
I grin. “Thanks. You are too, Katie.”
“You remembered my name.”
I snort. “I mean, you just told me ten seconds ago.”
“Oh, right.” A shake of her head. “Sorry, I’m not usually this stupid. You’re just really hot and I can’t believe I’m meeting you.”
I smirk. “Hey, I once had someone ask me for an autograph, and then she couldn’t remember her own name. It happens.”
She blushes. “I had to think about it. Like, ‘what’s my name again. Oh yeah, Katie.’”
“Well, Katie. It was great to meet you, and thank you for bringing me pizza.” I hand her the hundred. “Keep the change.”
She boggles at me. “It was less than twenty dollars, Mister Westley, sir.”
“Just call me Wes—and I know. It’s cool. Drive safe and have a nice night.”
“Eighty bucks! That’s more than I’ve made all week.” She turns away, then pauses and looks back at me. “Hey, um. Can I tell people I met you?”
I laugh. “Yeah, that’s the point of the selfie, right? Just don’t tell them where to find me.” I realize the blunder in my plan, then—she has my actual, personal phone number. She recognizes this at the same moment, judging by the sudden widening of her eyes, and the surreptitious glance at her phone, still in her hand. “Yeah, um, could you…delete that call? Please?”
She grins at me. “Awww. I was gonna text you obsessively until you have to change your number.”
