Only With You (26 page)

“No, not at all. He’s great.”

Chris smiled. “Good. You deserve great.”

“So, any chance you think I could get out of going to Dillon’s show tonight? I sort of didn’t think about it, and made plans to go out with Ryder on a date – as friends to anyone who’s looking, but we’d know it was a date.”

“What do you think?”

Elisa’s words echoed in my ear.

“I think I’d better start figuring out how to tell Ryder that we’ll have to postpone our date.”

“Good idea,” Chris said.

When I walked back into the studio, I saw Ryder sitting with Elisa eating lunch, so I walked over to them and sat down.

“Hi guys.”

Ryder smiled at me. “Here,” he said, handing me a plate. “I fixed you some food.”

“Thank you. You’re the best,” I said, taking it from him. He winked at me. “So what are we talking about?”

“The best alternative rock bands. Ryder and I have similar taste in music,” Elisa  supplied.

Ryder turned to her. “Best alt rock song ever,”
he said, as I took a bite of the turkey wrap he’d gotten me and waited for her to answer.

This might have been Ryder’s favorite music question. I’d heard him as
k it a hundred times, and I always got a kick out of what people said and how he reacted. He could get very passionate about this subject.

Elisa
waved a hand in dismissal. “
Smells Like Teen Spirit,
” she said, and the ‘duh’ in her statement felt implied.

Ryder just shook his head, and I smiled. I knew
exactly what he was going to say.

“What? You don’t agree?” Elisa asked, and Ryder just smiled.

“He’s going to say
Black Hole Sun
by Soundgarden,” I chimed in as Ryder started to open his mouth. “He’ll argue that Nirvana is an easy pick, because they broke onto the scene first and brought alt rock to the mainstream, but at the end of the day,
Black Hole Sun
has more depth – and a better video.”

Elisa made a face, and Ryder shoved her in the arm.

“That song is awesome,” he argued around a mouthful of sandwich.

Elisa shrugged. “I’m not denying that, but it’s not the best. I’d
at least put
Under the Bridge
and
Seven Nation Army
before it in my top ten.”

“
Shenanigans. I can’t listen to this. What do you think, Syd?” Ryder asked, turning to me, and I wondered if I had to agree with him now because we were sleeping together.

Nope.
I never had before, and I wasn’t going to start now. I was honestly surprised he was even asking. He knew what I was going to say.

“
Yellow Ledbetter.
You know that,” I said, full of confidence, and Ryder kicked me under the table.

“Damn, see if you get any later,” he mumbled, and then his eye
s went wide when I looked up and met his gaze.

Out of the corner of my eye I could see Elisa looking at him in question. “What did you just say?” she asked.

“Uh,” Ryder said, looking from her to me.

“
He said what you think he said,” I told her, keeping my voice low, hoping I could trust her. “We’re actually together.”

She’d been on my PR team for a year, and she’d always done what she could to help my career. It wouldn’t do her any good to spread negative things
about me. And truthfully, I knew if she went to the press, Laurie would fire her. Elisa was only a few years out of college, and she needed this job.

She cocked her head for a second as what I said started to work its way through her brain. Then she jerked her thumb at Ryder. “But he’s gay.
You said he was gay.” Then she shook her head, realizing the truth. “He’s not gay, is he?”

“Nope,” Ryder
confirmed. “She just didn’t want you to make a play for me, because she wanted to keep me all to herself. Selfish girl.”

He grinned at me.

Elisa raised her eyebrows. “How long has this been going on?”

“Eight days,” Ryder said, and I was kind of glad he was doing all the talking.

“Eight days?” she said, looking at him speculatively.

He smiled. “Yeah. Eight days,” he said proudly.

Elisa turned to me then. “Does Dillon know?”

I realized in my excitement to tell someone about Ryder and me, I’d actually implicated Dillon. I hadn’t meant to do that.  I wasn’t sure what to say.

“Don’t worry. I know about the fake relationship,” Elisa said quietly. “I just want to make sure he’s okay. He’s a nice kid, and I don’t want him to get hurt in all of this.”

“Yeah, he knows,” I told her.

“Okay good. You know I’m the one who convinced Laurie to go through with the relationship between you two, right?”

I was taken aback for a second.
I had no idea. I thought Laurie and Chris were the only people who knew

“Really?”

“Yeah, I saw how that shit with Whit went down back in December and how upset you were about the negative press. I’ve always liked you, Syd, and I figured you could use some people on your side. Dillon was such a sweetheart when I met him when Westside played in Times Square last New Year’s Eve, so when Laurie told me what Westside’s PR team was proposing, I told her to go for it. I knew the benefit would outweigh the cost for sure.”

“Ah, so you were the source of many months of pain for me,” Ryder chimed in
before I could respond, and we both looked at him. “Thanks so much.”

“What do you mean?” Elisa asked.

“I hated that guy for months,” he said. “I kind of wanted to throw my remote through my flat screen when I saw them together at The Grammys.”

My eyes got wide. “You did watch
it, you liar!”

He turned to me. “I watched your performance, and then about five minutes
more before I turned it off to go drink beer with Jake.”

I smiled. “Aww, that’s really sweet.”

He threw his hands up. “It was friggin’ torture. I equally hated and loved every second of seeing you looking all beautiful and sexy and sitting next to him all smiley. It pissed me off – but frankly I was more pissed at myself than you, because I was so stupid for kissing you.”

“
No, I was stupid. I’m the one who thought you were gay,” I hissed.

“
That
was
pretty stupid, but at least you had your fake boyfriend to keep you company. I just had Jake and some faceless sorority girls.”

“Eww,” Elisa and I both said in unison.

“Oh, sorry,” Ryder said quickly, realizing his mistake. Then he mouthed he was sorry again, just to make sure I saw it. “For the record, I didn’t sleep with any of them.”

I waved him off, hoping he’d shut up before he put any more images in my head
that I didn’t want there. “It’s fine. It’s a little weird hearing you talk about other girls, but I’ll get over it.”

“I only
ever wanted one girl,” he reminded me, a grin eating up his face. “And now that I’ve got her, other girls don’t exist to me.”

“Aww, you guys are cute,”
Elisa said, as she watched us, her chin resting on her palm.

“Love you,” I tol
d Ryder quietly.

“So, did you used to hook up with guys
or something?” Elisa asked, and we both looked at her. “Is that who Jake is?”

Ryder snorted a laugh. “Hell no! Jake is my roommate.” Then he jerked his thumb at me. “She thought he was my boyfriend, because she thought I was gay for some reason she manufactured in her head. No, I’ve always been very much straight. Not that there’s anything wrong with being gay. It’s just not for me.”

“Yeah, apparently you like random sorority girls,” I teased him, and he just shook his head.

“I can’t win with you, woman!”

“I’ll make it up to you later,” I promised.

“So, wait. You just assumed he was gay? How does that work? He seems pretty straight to me.”

“Thank you,” Ryder said.

“Apparently my gaydar sucks.”

“You do know Van is gay, right?” she asked, and I looked at her with wide eyes.

“No way?!”

She grinned. “No, not at all. I was just kidding. I’m actually kind of dating him. I just wanted to see what you’d say. He’s kind of pretty, so people assume that, but he’s very much straight.”

I didn’t want to tell her that I’d see
n Van hooking up with a well-known teenage actress at a club in West Hollywood a few months ago, so I’d figured he was straight. Elisa didn’t need to know that, and I wasn’t even sure how long she had been ‘kind of’ dating Van. He was the oldest member of Westside, and he was a nice guy, kind of shy, like Ryder. I liked him, so I didn’t think I should broadcast his past to the girl he was newly dating if he didn’t want her to know about it.

“That’s coo
l. I like Van. He’s a good guy,” I said instead.

“I like him
too. We’re not like exclusive or anything. That would be ridiculous since I’m not under any delusions that he’s resisting temptation when it’s thrown at his feet nightly. I mean, he’s a hot twenty-two year-old guy in a boy band. But he’s fun and cute, and we hook up when we’re in the same city,” she said, shrugging, and I shot a look at Ryder.

There was a small smile playing on his lips, and he was shaking his head just slightly. Knowing him as well as I did, I could tell it was his way of telling me that I didn’t have to worry about him resisting temptation. And that was good, because I didn’t think I’d be able to handle a
non-exclusive relationship where he was concerned. Just the thought of him kissing another girl made my stomach turn.

“As long as you’re okay
with casual dating,” Ryder commented to Elisa, and she shrugged.

“It’s fine. I’m so busy most of time that it’s not like I’m sitting at home waiting for him to call. It’s good for both of us.
We’ll see where it goes, I guess. I am excited to see him tonight. We’re all going out to dinner after the show. I’m assuming you guys are coming too?” Elisa asked then.

“Uh,” I said, and it was my turn to be at a loss for words. I hadn’t gotten a chance to talk to Ryder about what I had to do that night.

Ryder reached across the table and squeezed my hand for a second. “I think we’re going to do our own thing tonight,” he said, and I felt my shoulders slump, which caused him to look at me in question. “What?”

I looked at Elisa. “Could you give us a minute?”

“Sure,” she said, taking the remnants of her lunch and getting up from the table. I watched her walk over to where Shelly and Clea were sitting before shifting my gaze back to Ryder.

“You’re going to be so mad at me,” I told him.

“We’re not going out are we,” he deduced, his face showing exactly what he thought of that idea.

“No, here’s the thing. I told Chris, and they’re going to orchestrate a friendly break-up
between Dillon and me, but it will look really bad if I’m seen out to dinner with you – even if you’re just ‘a friend’ – when my ‘boyfriend’ is playing a concert in the city. I’m so, so sorry, and I promise I’ll make it up to you, just please, please don’t be mad.”

He took a few seconds to process what I’d shared. “So you have to go to the Westside concert?”

I shrugged. “I don’t have to go, I guess, but I can’t be seen out with anyone else either. It would start too many rumors.”

I watched him, waiting for a
response or for him to storm away from the table in anger, but he didn’t move. He just looked at me thoughtfully.

“So if I were to order food from a restaurant and have it delivered, you could eat it with me in our hotel suite?” he questioned.

My whole face might have lit up, and I wanted to leap across the table and kiss him. “Yeah, I can definitely do that.”

He smiled. “Cool. Then we’ll do that.”

I let my whole body relax. The tension had been slowly creeping up my spine dissipating.

“That way I can kiss you across the table and hold your hand if I want to,” he said coyly.

I leaned forward, wishing I could close the distance between us. “I would love that.”

“Good. Then you’ll go to your signing thing, and when you come back we’ll have our first official date. But I will warn you that I’ll kind of expect you to put out afterward.”

I laughed. “Done. As long as you don’t think I’m a slut for sleeping with you on the first date.”

He shrugged. “Nah, I’ll be so excited to get some that I won’t have time to judge you.”

I reached over and smacked his arm as he raised it to take the last bite of his sandwich. “Jerk.”

“You love me,” he said, using the same line he always did when we were just friends.

“Yeah, I do,” I told him.

“Hey, just a thought. If Elisa’s going out with the guys from Westside after the show, do you need to be there?”