Honey on Your Mind Read Free Page B

I looked up at him, standing over me, his wavy brown hair falling into his beautiful eyes.
    I reached my arms up to him.
    “Now it’s your turn to come here,” I said softly.
    He smiled and nodded.
    Then he kneeled on the mattress.
    He slowly began to lower himself on top of me.
    Then his weight blew a huge hole in the mattress, and together we sank to the floor.
    He collapsed on top of me, totally cracking up.
    “Nice,” he said, still laughing.
    I started cracking up too. “How…ro…man…tic…but…I…can’t…breathe.”
    • • •
    The movers arrived early the next morning, and Jake and I spent the weekend getting everything unpacked and sorted. By the time Sunday night came around, we were exhausted. But at least we had my sturdy queen-sized bed on which to collapse. After the air mattress experiment had literally exploded in our faces, we’d spent Friday at a boutique hotel down the street. Jake insisted on paying. He always did.
    “So tell me more about the job.” He played with my fingers as we lay side by side on our backs, gazing up at the old-fashioned ceiling fan in my bedroom.
    “To be honest, I’m pretty much going to be drinking from a fire hose. I don’t know anything about how a TV show works, but Scotty said it’s a lot easier than it looks, and that I’ll learn as I go.”
    “Just don’t plan on telling any of your jokes on the air.”
    I lightly pushed his arm. “Shut up. You know you love my jokes. Scotty’s convinced that the viewers will respond to what I have to say, so he’s excited to get me out there, even though I’m a total rookie.”
    “And what do you have to say, exactly?”
    I laughed. “Honestly? I have no idea. Honey on Your Mind was always such a hodgepodge, you know? An entertaining hodgepodge based on hilarious reader e-mails, but a hodgepodge nonetheless. So I guess I’ll be free to report on whatever’s on my mind , so to speak.”
    He laughed. “So they really haven’t given you any direction?”
    “Not yet.”
    “Not even a list of topics to cover?”
    “Nope.”
    “So what exactly are you supposed to do ?”
    I put my finger on his chin. “You ask a good question.”
    He laughed. “You really up and moved across the country without a formal job description?”
    “Apparently I did. I guess I’m just trusting that Scotty will take care of me.”
    “You do realize that’s a little crazy, right?”
    “Good point. But we’ve already established that you think I’m crazy, so are you all that surprised?”
    “Actually, I am. I guess your craziness never ceases to surprise me.”
    I pushed his shoulder again. “Be nice.”
    “But seriously, what’s the plan?”
    I shrugged. “I guess we’ll see what happens at that first meeting. It should be illuminating, to say the least. I’m sure Scotty will point me in the right direction. After all, he convinced the higher-ups at NBC that I’m worth a paycheck, right? He must have some ideas floating around in that pretty head of his.”
    “Did I ever tell you that I’ve seen the show?”
    “You’ve seen Love, Wendy ?”
    He nodded. “Just once, after you got offered the job. I stumbled across it on a road trip. I was ironing my shirt before a pregame meeting and turned on the TV.” Jake was the head trainer and physical therapist for the NBA’s Atlanta Hawks.
    I propped myself up on my elbow and looked at him. “So what did you think? Was it cheesy? I’m not sure what to make of Wendy’s style, especially given all that hairspray holding her blonde helmet in place. If she’s not careful, she could easily catch on fire around an open flame.”
    “It’s actually not bad. I was surprised, given how you’d described her to me. I expected her to be wearing a tiara or something.”
    I raised my eyebrows. “Really? You didn’t think it was that bad? In the only episode I saw, she was talking about all the beauty pageants she used to compete in. After that I couldn’t bring myself to watch