After his meteoric rise to superstardom, Jim O'Brien is no longer a small-town boy who plays in bars and dreams of success. His handsome face is plastered on the covers of celebrity gossip magazines, and his voice alone is enough to make girls swoon...
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The house Jim showed me was beautiful and special because of the couple who used to live there. I caught glimpses of their lives — their young, smiling faces in the pictures on the walls and the souvenirs from the trips they'd been on. Alfie and his wife saw lots of places. As we stood looking at the photo of the two of them in Paris, Jim drew an arm around my shoulders and pressed me to his side, planting a kiss on my forehead.
"What?" I asked, blushing because of the tenderness of the sudden gesture.
Jim chuckled. "Nah, nothing." After a brief pause, he sighed. "Okay, that's not true. I would like to go there with you. I would like to go to lots of places with you."
"So, you like traveling."
"I love it. It makes you see things in a different way."
"How?"
"You realize there are more cultures, more people, more languages than what you're used to. It's enriching. It makes you open your mind. And let's not forget about the food."
"Always the food."
Jim bent his head down and pecked my lips. "Tell me I'm wrong."
"You're not. Living in France was the best decision I could've made. It was different, and it helped me grow up. For the first time, I had to manage on my own, without my dad."
"It must have been hard. You were basically a baby."
I fake-punched Jim's side. "A baby at eighteen?"
Moving to stand behind me so that the two of us faced the photo-covered wall, Jim circled my waist with his arms, keeping me close to him.
"I don't mean it in a bad way," he said. "But objectively, it must have been intimidating. I bet it was the first time you'd been away from home for so long."
"Yeah." I shrugged. "But there's always the first time, right?"
"Right."
"What about you?"
"The first time I traveled far without my family?"
I nodded, studying Jim's expression.
"I was eighteen." He smiled. "My friends and I took our savings and went on a trip. We didn't go abroad; we just visited some places far from home. We slept in tents, drank so much I couldn't look at alcohol for a couple of months after that and made other questionable choices."
"Questionable, huh?" I quirked my eyebrow.
Laughing, Jim squeezed me tighter. "We were a bunch of hormonal teenagers, baby. I'd love to believe growing up made me wiser."
"You called me baby."
"And you liked it."
"I did. As long as it doesn't mean that you see me as someone young and stupid."
