Temporary Bliss (Love By Chance Book 3) Page 5

  “Argh! He’s a rockstar, idiot. How the hell did you hook up with a rockstar?” She threw her hands in the air and spun away from her brother like she just couldn’t handle him right now. Unfortunately, her attention zeroed in on me. “I swear he’s not related to me. Can I have your autograph? Pretty please?”

  “After dinner, Madison,” their mother chided. “It’s Thanksgiving, so get your butts in here and give thanks. I didn’t slave over a hot stove for nothing.” She tugged her apron strings loose and cast it aside. She grabbed a carving knife out of the block on the kitchen counter. She pointed it threateningly at us, then crowed with laughter and began to cut the bird.

  And fuck, Mika had been right when he said she went all-out for the holidays. Platters heaped high with food sat on the table; deep-fried turkey, homemade dressing, mashed potatoes and gravy, dinner rolls, and there was even a small crystal bowl of cranberry jelly. My mouth started watering just smelling it.

  I wasted no time sitting down. Mika and his siblings were hot on my heels. When he took the seat beside mine, he kicked me under the table hard enough to hurt. Okay, I deserved that but still. Ouch. I’d definitely get a bruise out of the deal. Something to remember him by, I guess.

  At Ma’s insistence, we joined hands around the table and gave our thanks by saying grace. Mika’s entire family sort of…chanted this quirky little prayer at the same time, like they had it memorized by heart. I kept my big mouth shut. My family had never been one for religion. My family hadn’t even been one for family. Maybe this was normal?

  “This looks amazing, Ma,” Mika said. Everyone began dishing food onto their plates. China clinked and clattered. He reached over and snagged a turkey leg, looking as proud as a dog with a bone. “I’ve been looking forwards to your holiday cooking all month.”

  “Flattery gets you nowhere, darling,” she tutted. “Now if you and Gideon were to come over more often, I could perhaps be swayed to make some of your favorite dishes, but no. My kids never want to visit their dear old Ma.”

  “Hey, I don’t know what their excuses are, but I’ve got work up to my ears,” Matthieu said, matter-of-fact. I could totally see him as a lawyer. He had that razor’s edge about him. Something told me that he really would chop off my fingers if I hurt his little brother.

  “I have school!” Maddie cried out, pointing her fork at her eldest brother. “And my roommates party like, all the time, so it’s hard to get anything done.”

  Everyone turned their gazes to Mika, who fidgeted and looked down at his plate. I quickly stepped in to defend him. “Hey, now. Have you ever dated a rockstar? I’m high maintenance. Trust me, I keep this boy plenty busy.” I waggled my eyebrows suggestively and Mika kicked me again. “Well, I do!”

  “Shut up,” he grumbled. “Ma, could you pass the dressing please?”

  From across the table, Sierra cleared her throat and sat up a little taller in her chair. She met my gaze head-on. The look on her face was decidedly impish. “So, if I may ask, how did you two lovebirds meet?”

  I glanced over at Mika, whose mouth was conveniently full of mashed potatoes. His eyes grew round as saucers, begging me not to answer. I only smiled. “I don’t think that’s really dinnertime conversation, but if you must know. We met at a club.”

  “Romantic.” Matthieu snickered.

  “There may or may not’ve been booze involved,” I added. “He came strutting through the room, and he was wearing these killer boots. Boots that made a statement. Boots that were practically begging me to—”

  “Gideon!” Mika flushed bright red. “What happened to dinnertime conversation? Jesus.”

  “They asked. I answered.”

  He snagged a roll off the table and promptly shoved it into my mouth. “Here. Keep your big mouth busy, why don’t you?” Huffing under his breath, he took another bite of mashed potatoes and chewed thoughtfully. “Mmm. I almost like it better when you don’t speak.”

  The table burst into laughter at the same time and I nearly choked on the offending dinner roll. “You could’ve at least buttered it first,” I grumbled around the mouthful of food, which earned another peal of giggles from the girls. Beneath the table, Mika’s knee bumped against mine and when he smiled, my world sort of tilted for a minute.

  What was that?

  I spent the rest of dinner doing my best to ignore the weird, fluttery feeling in my gut. When we were shooed out of the kitchen, Mika led me into the living room, where we settled down on the couch. He snuggled up against me, resting his cheek on my shoulder while his thumb rubbed over the skin of my knuckles.

  “Were you going to tell me you’re a rockstar, Gideon?”

  I shrugged. “Nah.”

  He twisted around to look at me. His expression was almost wounded and once again, I felt like a dickbag. “Why not? Don’t you think that that’s pertinent information?”

  “I didn’t think it really mattered. I guess I liked the fact that you wanted me for me, not because I’m someone famous,” I told him. “Is that so wrong?”

  “When you put it that way… I’m sorry. I can’t even imagine.” With a soft sigh, he resumed his earlier position. He brushed his nose against my arm and breathed in. “You smell good.”

  “I always smell good,” I whispered into his ear. “But I’ll tell you a secret. You smell even better.” Anything else I might’ve said was whisked away, the moment shattered by his little sister dancing into the room with an armful of board games.

  “Who wants to play Uno?”

  Sierra held up a bottle. “Who wants some wine?”

  Mika grinned. “I’m down for both of those things.”

  Everyone gathered in the living room to play games and eat Mika’s caramel apple cookies. The fire in the hearth crackled and popped. We joked around and laughed while we tried to kick each other’s asses in Sorry. It was weird, but I actually enjoyed myself. I didn’t think I would. Mika’s family seemed so nice and normal, nothing like what I had growing up.

  After a slice of cheesecake so rich I needed two glasses of milk, we said our goodbyes. To my surprise, Mika’s mom threw her arms around me and squeezed me tightly to her chest. “Thank you so much for coming. Mika’s not one to bring his boyfriends around much, but I want you to know you’re a charming young man and you’re welcome in my home any time. Oh! You should come to our Christmas dinner.”

  “Ma.” Mika groaned.

  “Bring Gideon along to Christmas, darling,” she said, not one to be deterred. I liked that about her.

  “Do you really think it’s a good idea to subject poor Gideon to your sister? Really?”

  “Wanda will adore him!”

  “Wanda will suffocate him! I’ll think about it. We really gotta go, Ma. Here, one last hug for the road.” He kissed her noisily on the cheek.

  “Drive safe. Oh, wait, let me grab you some leftovers. Be back in a jiffy.” She winked at me and scurried off.

  With another round of hugs and our doggy-bag of food in tow, Mika ushered me out the front door. He’d no sooner sunk down in the passenger seat and clipped his safety belt when he heaved a huge sigh. His head fell back against the headrest. “Thank god for silence. I love them, but family is so exhausting.”

  “You got that right.”

  The drive home was quiet, neither of us quite sure of what to say to fill the void. Finally, Mika sat up to fiddle with the radio. Christmas music poured from the speakers and we both groaned.

  “It’s only Thanksgiving!”

  “Bah humbug,” I agreed, to which Mika laughed and squeezed my hand. I knew right then and there, saying goodbye to this guy was gonna suck.

  I took my time driving back to my apartment complex. I knew that when we got there, tonight’s magic would float away like dust in the wind, but I couldn’t put off the inevitable forever. I pulled into the lot beside where Mika’s car was parked. Neither of us made a move.

  He was the one to break the ice. “Um… Thanks for doing this for me, Gideon. It
means a lot.”

  “Hey, we both got something out of the deal,” I pointed out. “So I’m not totally selfless.”

  He smiled. “True, but it was so worth it.” He unbuckled his seatbelt and reached for the handle of the door, but didn’t open it. “Thanks for a good time. This week was really nice, even if you did end up being some high and mighty rockstar. See you around?”

  “Yeah.”

  He pushed the door open. The door ajar bell began to ding. He gave a little wave, then unlocked his car and started it up with a plume of frosty exhaust. Suddenly, the air was too cold to breathe. I watched him for several long moments before something inside of me snapped. I killed the engine and jumped out of my car, then ran around to knock on his window.

  Puzzled, he rolled it down. “Forget something?”

  “No. Yes. I don’t know and I’m not good at this, but I was wondering—hoping—maybe you’d want to continue seeing each other.” I swallowed around the strange lump in my throat. “No strings. Just fun, but Mika? No one should be alone for the holidays…and your mom’s cooking is the bomb. She did invite me, you know?”

  Mika giggled. “I’d like that, Gideon. I’d like that a lot.”

  “Text me?”

  “I will. Bye.” With a huge smile on his face, he put his car in reverse and backed out of the lot. I watched him drive down the road until I could no longer see the cherry red of his taillights. My heart thudded a quick beat in my chest, but I couldn’t erase my smile.

  And I didn’t want to.

  11

  Mika

  I slept like a rock. Stuffed full of turkey and dressing—not to mention that amazing pumpkin cheesecake—I’d no sooner pulled my clothes off and crawled between the sheets, and I was fast asleep.

  I woke up feeling like a stranger in my own house. I’d spent the past week sleeping in Gideon’s huge bed and now my full-size seemed so tiny. I stretched beneath the cozy warmth of my comforter and listened to the click-click of the baseboard heat kicking on.

  I could’ve laid there all day, but I had some sleuthing to do. The fact that Gideon wanted to continue seeing me was great and all, but let’s be serious for a minute. I was being wooed by a rockstar and I’d never even heard one of his songs. I reached for my phone to see I had a text and I smiled.

  Morning sleeping beauty. U still in that bed?

  I quickly responded with, Wouldn’t you like to know? ;) Gonna shower.

  Thnx for that mental image. I appreciate it.

  I didn’t send anything back. Not yet. Instead, I popped open a browser window on my phone and Googled Gideon Grey. Immediately, pictures and links popped up for the band Gravitation. I found myself swiping through a barrage of images and sure enough, grinning at the camera like the Cheshire cat, was Gideon in all of his drop-dead sexy splendor.

  He really was easy on the eyes. Didn’t hurt that he had a great dick, too.

  Rolling out of bed, I queued up Gravitation’s most recent album on Spotify and turned up the volume. With my phone sitting on the bathroom counter, I flipped on the rattly exhaust fan and cranked the water up as hot as I could handle. The first splash of liquid fire on my skin made me groan. So good. I took my sweet time soaping up and closed my eyes, intent on the music. I paid close attention to the percussion. Didn’t Maddie say Gideon was a drummer?

  It was catchy, I had to admit. It had a feel-good vibe to it, something that made you wanna get up and dance, and wasn’t that the point? I’d never really been a music sort of guy, not unless you counted ambient mood music set to the sounds of nature. I liked yoga music, thunderstorms and chimes—you know, stuff I could zone out to while cooking or browsing Reddit on my phone. I liked to be able to hear myself think.

  Yet I found myself replaying the album when it ended. I kind of liked it.

  I poured myself a huge bowl of Cheerios and added too much milk. The cereal overflowed the bowl to land on the table. I picked each piece up and popped them in my mouth, then ate breakfast on autopilot while I browsed the myriad of articles spread across the web. And there were a lot.

  Full-color magazine spreads. Q & A’s with the band. Personal interviews. Videos of live recordings and B-sides. I watched a handful of their old Vines on YouTube. Hell, they’d even been on The Tonight Show a couple years back. Maddie hadn’t been joking when she said they were famous. There was so much news coverage it was almost overwhelming, but something caught my eye.

  Again and again, the press called Gideon a playboy, going so far to claim he’d never been seen with the same partner for longer than a week at a time. Gideon himself even admitted to playing the field on tour in one of his interviews. Quote-unquote: “Why settle for one chocolate when you can sample the whole box?” to which the reporters both laughed.

  That wasn’t the Gideon I’d gotten to know, though…was it? They made him seem so shallow, so self-absorbed. The man I’d spent the last week with might’ve been more than a little cocky, but there was also a sweetness about him. Was he a playboy? Or was that a persona he wore for the press?

  I didn’t know.

  What I did know was that in these photographs, his partners shared the same defining trait—they were all undoubtedly rich. He dated models and actors, people of fame and fortune who wore fashion from the latest designers and thousands of dollars worth of ice. They were gorgeous to boot.

  I felt the tiniest stab of inferiority. If Gideon had that, what the hell did he see in me? I didn’t have money, I didn’t have big life goals. I didn’t have much of anything. I was just another guy for him to fool around with, but wasn’t that what we’d agreed on? Why did I have to be anything more than fun?

  I was overthinking things, as usual, and it sucked. That suckage turned into an ugly black cloud of self-doubt and insecurity that clung to me like a second skin. Desperate to get my head in a better place, I showed up at Saint’s doorstep at lunchtime with the leftovers Ma had sent home with me. I pushed the intercom button and a minute later, Saint’s face popped up on the screen.

  I held up the bag with a lopsided smile that felt weird on my face. “Beware of geeks bearing gifts. Wanna let me in?”

  He chuckled. “Sure, come on up.”

  “Hope I’m not intruding on anything,” I said when Saint welcomed me inside. His condo was toasty warm and smelled faintly of cinnamon. “I probably should’ve texted you first, but it was an impromptu decision. I needed to get out of the house because my brain is an asshole, but hey, I brought some of Ma’s cooking?”

  “Just in time for lunch, too.” Saint grabbed a couple of plates out of the cupboard, then paused to look at me. The china clinked against the glossy countertop when he set it down. “Are you okay? Did Thanksgiving not go as planned with your stand-in?”

  I quickly shook my head. “No, no. It went good. Really good, actually. Ma loved him. She even invited him back for Christmas.”

  “But…? There’s a giant but on the end of that sentence.”

  Where did I even start? “Would you believe that Gideon’s a rockstar?”

  Saint’s expression didn’t change. “Legit?”

  “Yeah. I had no idea till Maddie about flipped her shit and went into fangirl mode. Have you ever heard of Gravitation?” I asked.

  “Pretty sure everyone’s heard of Gravitation.”

  I huffed. “Everyone except me.”

  “So that’s cool, right? It’s not every day you get to bring a rockstar home for the holidays. Besides, I thought your little tryst was temporary? Wasn’t that the deal? You got to fool around with him till Thanksgiving and then you’d go about your life?”

  I chewed on my lip. “Yeah.”

  “What’s the problem, then?”

  Was there a problem? Or was I running myself in circles? “He wants to keep seeing me.”

  “O…kay? Sorry, Mika, but you’re gonna have to spell it out for me. I’m not seeing the issue? I’d give my left nut to date a rockstar.” His smile was wry. “He’s fun. You enjoy his
company, obviously. You’ve been floating around in the clouds for the past week. Don’t tell me you didn’t have the time of your life, because we both know you’d be lying.”

  An unexplainable emotion swelled in my chest, making it hard to breathe. I shook my head. Not wanting to face it, I started opening up the Tupperware containers Ma had sent home with me. I peeled the lids back and grabbed a spoon, then began to dish out mashed potatoes and gravy onto the plates.

  “Mika.” Saint’s voice was a gentle rain, trickling down a pane of glass. Calm. Quiet. “Look at me.”

  I did. I tore my gaze away from the congealed gravy pooling in the center of the potatoes and stared at the man who knew me better than I knew myself. Or at least, that’s how it seemed sometimes.

  “You don’t have to see him if you don’t want to. You know that, right?”

  “That’s the thing, though,” I said. “I want to. I really like him and that’s the problem. It would be too easy to get attached to a guy who just wants to keep things temporary.” The truth came frothing out like foam on the crests of an angry sea. I squeezed the spoon in my hand. “He’s a playboy, or at least that’s what the internet says, and I don’t know if I want to get involved with someone like that after what happened with Brandon.”

  “I get that.”

  “He’s a fucking rockstar. He’s loaded and could easily have first pick of anyone that came along. I’m nothing. I’m like, an amoeba or something.” I barked out a laugh. “And I’m totally, one-hundred percent overthinking something as stupid as an extended fling. God, I’m pathetic.” The spoon clattered onto the plate as I pushed myself away from the counter.

  “Mika, stop.” Saint followed me. When I pulled up short in the middle of the kitchen, he looped his arms around my chest and hugged me from behind. “Relax. What’s the worst that could happen?” His breath was a puff of warmth on my neck. “Think about it. Be honest.”

  “I could get hurt,” I whispered.

  “Yeah? You think he’d do that?”

  “No, but the press says—”