Falling Into You by Lauren Abrams

character). It’s not like I was totally naïve or anything; I know that appearance s matter. It’s just that I always know what I’m going to find when I look in the mirror, so it seems silly to spend endless hours preening over myself . My looks are good enough.
    But not good enough for Chris.
    He was the most ridiculously handsome person I had ever seen in my life. He was going to be famous, and there was no doubt about that. I had no idea of whether he could act or not, but it didn’t really matter. He was going to be plastered all over the bedrooms of preteen girls and they would draw hearts all over their notebooks with his name stuck right in the middle. I had a few of those posters myself, and maybe even a few notebooks , when I was younger.
    I try to console myself with the fact that I would have a good sto ry to tell my friends at home . Not only did he ask me for a light at a party, we had a whole conversation. He even made fun of my shoes.
    So, this trip was already a success, if you looked at it in a certain light.
    As I lay back, I shiver , remembering the way his skin had felt, taut and smooth when I had touched him. I just hadn’t been able to resist. If I would never see him again, I had to at least allow myself that. I let myself slip into a day/nightdream, a moment of indulgence in the moments before I fell asleep. Of course, the perfect life in New York that I had dreamed about since I was barely more than a baby had come complete with a perfect boyfriend. Sometimes I pretended that he was a famous actor.
    Chris would have fit that bill. He’d been so real. So normal. Talking about movie sets and co-stars and his actress mother like it was nothing at all. I’d come off like some little country hick, and I hadn’t been able to scrape my jaw off of the floor once he had started talking about his movie. I had even admitted that I had a whole barn full of guilty pleasures, like terrible teen movies and celebrity magazines. I had peppered him with questions, when the last thing he had wanted to do was talk to me.
    It didn’t matter. I would never see him again, I tell myself, hoping that the notion will somehow allow me to sleep.

Chapter 6
    CHRIS
    After flip flops had run off without even telling me her name, I sat there for a few minutes, unable to feel of her fingers off my skin . God, I was such an asshole. First, I thought she was the maid . I had handed my coat to her without so much as a second look . Then, I ran my mouth the entire evening without even trying to figure out how I would ever see her again.
    When I entered the diner, I had resigned myself to a lifetime of chasing Sophia Pearce, who was the same as she ever was—beautiful and ruthless. She hadn’t missed a beat, asking me all about the movie I was making with making quick calculations in her head about what could be in it for her. I wasn’t in love with her. Hell, I didn’t even like her very much.
    But there was something about her taunts that made sure that I would keep crawling back for more. It was like her name was inscribed into my brain.
    But Sophia Pearce hadn’t even crept into the corner of my head while I was in that booth. I could find flip flops again, I think . She had definitely been invited to that part y by someone who belonged there, because n o one managed to crash Sampson parties, even if we weren’t at Sampson any more.
    Who had she come with? The thought that it was one of the guys I went to school with caused a sick little ripple in my belly. I would think abo ut how to deal with that later.
    I would go to more parties, ask around, and see who she was. Sophia would be at some of them, I thought, and for the first time in as far as I could remember, I couldn’t quite decipher what I felt about that.
    After flip flops leaves, I don’t have an excuse to hand around the diner anymore, so I jump in a cab to head to my family’s apartment on the W est Side . I didn’t want to see him tonight, or any night,