Free Adventure to Love by Bethany Ramos Page B

leisurely finished the rest of her champagne and poured herself another glass. She was starting to enjoy herself.
    “Um . . .” Ky squirmed in his seat. She could see the moment that the light bulb went on in his head. Aha! He had an answer!
    “My ex-girlfriend and I dated for two years, and I was almost ready to propose to her. But I just realized that we were two different people. Thankfully, I realized it in time so that we could part ways as friends.”
    Hmph. She doubted that. No girl in her right mind ever remained friends with a guy after they broke up.
    “Really? I was engaged once. His name was Jack. He was a total douche bag. He popped the question, and then the next thing I knew, he had pushed back our wedding date three different times.”
    She slapped the table for emphasis. The silverware rattled. “ Three different times! Can you believe that shit?”
    She giggled. She probably wasn’t supposed to say shit on TV. She could only imagine how embarrassed her mother was going to be when they had to bleep out profanities on her very first date with Ky. Oops!
    Ky had a pained expression on his face. But he continued to smile back at her anyway. What a trouper .
    “Well, Morgan, that sounds like a pretty tough experience that you went through. Do you want to talk about it?”
    “No, of course, I don’t want to talk about it. If I wanted to talk about it, then I would be talking about it, wouldn’t I?”
    She stopped for a moment to catch her breath. She needed to pull in the reins before she got really sloppy. Acting tipsy over one glass of champagne was one thing but getting shitfaced on national TV was another. Pull it together.
    “Sorry, you have to forgive me. I just get a little heated about that topic. But back to you. What do you do back in LA?” She resisted the urge to pick her teeth with a butter knife as she prepared for yet another snooze-o-rama answer to her expected question.
    Ky opened his mouth to reply, but she swiftly interrupted. “You know what’s weird? I feel like I’ve seen you somewhere before. Are you an LA socialite or something like that? You just look really familiar to me.”
    “Yeah, about that. You probably have seen me around before. Like in the early 2000’s, I was in the boy band 101 . . .” He trailed off and continued to cut and rearrange the meat on his plate.
    She snapped her fingers. “Holy shit! That’s it!” She started singing, “ Grrrl, I’ve got to get you, grrrl. I’ve got to have you, grrrl. ”
    Okay, maybe singing had never been her strong suit. But now she was putting all the pieces together. “So you were in 101? I totally loved you guys back then. And you had that one single, right?”
    “Yes.” Ky had a pained expression on his handsome face. “You had it right. It was ‘Got to Get You, Grrl’ , Number One for twelve weeks in the US and for eighteen weeks in Japan. We did a world tour.”
    Morgan thought those interesting tidbits of trivia would have been something Ky was proud of, but, no . As he spoke, his voice got softer and softer. He continued to sink back into his chair until he was as far away from her as possible. What was going on with this guy? Didn’t he want to brag about his awesome boy band greatness, especially on camera?
    “So, what? You don’t sound like you’re very excited about 101.” She leaned closer.
    “It’s not that. Don’t get me wrong. It was a really great experience.” Ky continued to fidget.
    “What does 101 mean, by the way? I’ve always wondered that. Did it have some kind of special meaning for the five of you?” She was all ears. This was better than digging up dirt on her favorite musicians on Wikipedia.
    Ky took a large bite of his grilled salmon. He took his time chewing.
    “You know, I really couldn’t tell you. Truthfully, I have no idea what our band name even meant! I always wanted to ask, but I felt like it was a stupid question. It was something that our manager suggested, and it