“And?” I ask Maximoff. He knows that Akara can’t hear me unless I touch the microphone.
He leans forward, forearms on the table. “Tell him no.”
I click the mic. “No, not anytime soon.”
Akara says, “Thanks.” The line goes quiet after that.
Taking a deep breath, Moffy straightens up, and neither of us unfastens our strong gazes.
“Did you like that?” I ask, my lips lifting.
“So badly it hurts,” he says dryly, but a real smile crests his mouth. “Would you be willing to do that for me all the time?”
“Would you want me to?”
I love giving him things that no one else can. For a guy who has the world at his fingertips, you’d think there’s nothing left to offer Maximoff. But he’s been denied some simple pleasures and human rights.
Like the ability to drive safely down a fucking highway.
Maximoff cracks his knuckles. “Actually, no. Security will kill you.”
“Now you care if I die? What happened to shoving me out of the car and backing up over my body?”
“Give me five minutes,” Maximoff says, “we’ll be back to your death.”
I roll my eyes into a wider smile, and my tattooed fingers rotate a saltshaker like it’s a coin. I catch Maximoff staring at my fingers for two long beats. He’s in love with my fingers. I try to seize his gaze.
He purposefully glances behind me.
I follow his attention to the bar, and I run my tongue over my molars, my smile slowing hardening. A guy about my age sits on a tattered leather stool, dressed in a black beanie and graphic T-shirt.
My jaw muscle twitches. I look between them, and the guy gives Maximoff a suggestive I-want-your-ass once-over.
Maximoff begins to smile back.
I can’t tell if he’s just being nice or if there’s real interest. My narrowed gaze pings from him to the guy, my muscles burning the longer they scrutinize one another.
I shouldn’t care.
I set my elbow to the table and put my hand to my mouth. I spin a saltshaker with my free fingers while a million replies grind at me.
He’s not good enough for you.
You could do better.
You really like that dickhole?
You’re here with me.
Don’t flirt with him.
Don’t fuck him.
The saltshaker falls on its side.
Moffy glances at me while I upright the salt.
Jealousy. I’m jealous of a nameless, beanie-wearing dickhole on a barstool. My ex-boyfriends would laugh at me for caring this much about a twenty-two-year-old celebrity.
I unwrap a piece of gum, and as soon as I peel the foil, Maximoff asks, “What’s your favorite color?”
The corners of my mouth curve upward. “My favorite color?” I repeat like he asked me a kindergarten question. Which he did. But I keep thinking, he’s not interested in that other guy anymore.
He’s more interested in me.
Maximoff crosses his arms. “What kind of high school names someone valedictorian when they can’t even answer their favorite color?”
I lean forward and whisper lowly, “Says someone who doesn’t know what it’s like to be valedictorian.”
“Just admit it,” he says, “you don’t have a favorite color. It’s sad.”
“It’s silver,” I retort.
He nods a couple times, his own smile appearing, and just as he goes to speak, the waitress brings out two Fizz Lifes, a plate of loaded potato skins, and basket of French fries.
He stares off for a long second, lost in his head.
I wad a straw’s paper and toss the tiny ball at his face. It hits him square in the forehead, and he wakes up to glare at me.
He asks, “Do you know mine?” His favorite color.
“Orange.”
“You actually Google-searched me,” he says it like he caught me jacking off.
I almost laugh. “Man, you have a mom who buys orange plastic silverware and plates for any Maximoff-Hale-related event.” I count off my fingers, starting with my thumb. “Which includes your sixteenth birthday party, your prep school graduation—”
“Alright.” He cringes. “You knew me when I was sixteen. I get it. The world gets it—”
“The world doesn’t care that I was at your sixteenth birthday.”
He flips me off with one hand and grabs a potato skin with his other. He gestures at me with the potato skin. “Eat. Stop staring at me.”
“Not until you admit that I know you better than a Google search.”
Maximoff pauses eating, just to quiz me, “Why don’t I date anyone, Farrow?” That’s not a fact available on the web, and it’s also something he’s kept private from me.
“You’re not into relationships,” I guess.
“Not because I wouldn’t want to be. I just can’t.”
I shake my head. “I don’t follow.”
“I’ll never be in a relationship,” he tells me flat-out. “I’ll never experience any kind of romance beyond a one-time hookup. Because once I date someone in public, media will hound them to the point of intrusion, vulnerability—I won’t ever subject someone to an extreme loss of privacy that they’ll never get back. I’ve accepted that this is my life, and I’m satisfied with that.”
My brows ratchet up. “You’re not satisfied. You’re just resigned.” Before he protests, I ask, “Have you ever wondered what it’s like to hold someone’s hand romantically? To see them in your bed two nights in a row? Cook breakfast the next day, share clothes, wake them up before work? You’ve never imagined that?”
Maximoff shakes his head once. “I can’t.”
“That’s sad.” Because he wants to desire those things, but he’s not even allowing himself that.
And no one else among the Hales, Cobalts, or Meadows would sacrifice the possibility of a relationship just to protect their significant other from the media.
Only him.
“What about dating privately?” I ask.
“No. If I can find someone to trust for longer than one night, they’d be all over the news every time I was spotted with them. Especially if I let them meet my siblings.”
I’m the exception to that. Our eyes meet, and that fact passes between us. He clears his throat and reaches for his Fizz Life, the world’s most popular diet soda.
“Give it here.” I gesture for the glass. He has a rule about ordering drinks. #45: sip all my drinks first. I don’t trust bartenders.
He slides over his Fizz Life and takes a moment to eat another potato skin.
I swig his drink. No alcohol. “It’s good.” I slide the Fizz Life back.
Maximoff Hale doesn’t drink alcohol. He never has. It’s public knowledge that alcoholism runs in his family, and he chose to be sober. Bartenders sometimes purposefully spike his drink. Hell, some people pay the bartender to do it.
Just to see a celebrity break sobriety.
Maximoff washes down his food with Fizz Life. Then he motions to me. “What’s your favorite childhood memory?”
I smile and eat a fry. “What’s with the twenty questions?”
“You can Google me. I can’t Google you.” He wants to be on equal footing.
Okay. I swig my own drink. “My favorite childhood memory is the only memory I have of my mother.” He’s aware that she died from breast cancer when I was four.
Maximoff holds my gaze strongly.
“I can’t distinguish her features, but I can hear her silky voice as she says my name. That’s all, just my name.”
Farrow.
She named me. And she could’ve picked Edward Nathaniel Keene after my father, my grandfather, my great-grandfather, all the men in a long legacy before me, but she chose differently. Apparently she loved the old film version of The Great Gatsby, and she named me after the two lead actors.
Mia Farrow.
Robert Redford.
And I’m a Keene.
I rec
ognize how special and unique Maximoff’s name is too. His parents also named him after something they love, and it’s why neither of us ever use our names in banter—and why I’m trying to honor whatever the hell he wants me to call him.
He nods a couple times, appreciative that I told him that story.
I dunk a fry in mustard. “Anything else?”
“If I asked about medical school, you’d tell me…?”