by L. D. Davis
I liked her better when she was a near-dead blob on the couch.
Emmet’s arm slinked around my waist. I gasped lightly as he pulled me close to his body. I wanted to pull away. I wanted to move closer.
I didn’t smile for the pictures. I was trying to focus on breathing while in close proximity to Emmet.
He hadn’t said much since he arrived. He said hello, and I said hi. Then my mom jumped in, rambling on about how it had been a surprise because she knew I hadn’t seen Emmet since he left for college and wasn’t it nice to see him again. Then she started in on the pictures.
My mother’s behavior was…perplexing. She was never the giddy type, but while taking the pictures she didn’t stop smiling. She took picture after picture and even dabbed at her eyes a few times. I didn’t understand it. I wanted her to simmer down and go back to being her quiet mildly pessimistic self.
When her excitement got the best of her, and she started looking tired and drained, she finally let us go. Though I had just thought some unkind things about her, her seemingly constant state of tiredness was nagging me a little. As Emmet and I walked out of the door, I kept throwing glances at her. Before the door closed, I saw her sag with exhaustion.
“She must be on some really good drugs,” Emmet said, leading me by the elbow towards the bank of elevators.
My attention shifted from my mother, and I looked at the man beside me. He was wearing a dark Armani suit without a tie.
Several buttons of his white shirt remained undone, and the jacket was open. He looked good, really good. I couldn’t drag my eyes away from him for several moments. Only because I had to step onto the elevator did I finally tear my eyes away.
“You look amazing,” Emmet murmured.
“Thank you,” I managed in a soft voice.
We were quiet for the rest of the ride to the lobby. Emmet put his hand on the small of my back to guide me outside where a limo waited for us.
“Where did this come from?” I asked as the driver opened the door for us.
I carefully got in first and moved over as far as I could go. Emmet slid in after me and left very little space between us.
“I thought since we were going to a VIP party, we should at least ride in style,” Emmet said.
“You did this?” I asked, turning my head like a puppy.
He nodded as his eyes raked over me. I suppressed a shiver and folded my hands in my lap. I looked down when I felt his fingers on my wrist. He was slowly turning the bracelet.
“How have you been?” he asked softly.
I looked up and met his green eyes.
“Surviving,” I whispered. I turned away from him and looked at the bustling city life outside of my window. My chest hurt. My skin burned where he was touching me. The invisible tether vibrated softly between us. I wanted to cry. I wanted to cry so badly. Emmet was finally right next to me, but I almost couldn’t handle it.
After he had left for college, it took me a few days to get myself together. The experience left me gutted and weak. I couldn’t erase the memory of Emmet’s face when I uttered those terrible words. I couldn’t forget the shake of his head when I turned to him in the car to apologize. I couldn’t forget how it felt to feel him leave me without a goodbye. It took me a couple of months to accept the fact that he wasn’t going to call, and he wasn’t going to reappear in my life.
By the time New Year’s had rolled around, I had to accept the fact that he was gone from my life entirely. Those weren’t easy circumstances to accept. I had to let some coldness seep into me. I had to let it settle in and harden. Only when Emmy gave me the bracelet did the bitter cold wall begin to crack a little. Sitting within inches of him, I felt like it was going to shatter altogether, and that wasn’t necessarily a good thing.
Emmet must have sensed the tension and emotions within me. He pulled his hand back and put it on his knee with a sigh.
“So, you met Felix at a photo shoot for Rolling Stone?” he asked.
“Yes,” I nodded.
“That’s incredible. You must have impressed the right people to get that gig.”
The impression came during the shoot, but I didn’t tell him that. Instead, I said, “Just got lucky I guess.”
“Donya,” Emmet said my name softly, but it sounded like he was pleading.
I turned my head and looked at him. His eyes were so damn sorrowful that it made my breath hitch.
“Do you want me to take you to the party and leave you there on your own? I can come back for you later.”
I was startled by his question. “Why?”
He sighed. “You’re so stiff,” he said inaudibly. “I have the feeling that you really don’t want me here.”
I stared at him. I wasn’t entirely sure what I wanted, and I told him so.
“What will make it easier for you?” he asked with sincerity. “I’ll do whatever you need to feel comfortable.”
My eyes closed slowly, and I took a long, deep breath. As I let the air out slowly between my lips, I opened my eyes and looked at Emmet again with a little more clarity.
“I want you here,” I said honestly.
Some of the tension eased on his face. “Can we just try to have a good night?” he asked. “Can we just for tonight put the past out of our minds?”
“I don’t know,” I said softly, but then continued bitterly. “What happens at the end of the night? If you’re just going to go back to hating me, I don’t think I want to continue. I’ll go back to the suite and go to bed.”
“I don’t hate you. I’ve never hated you. I promise you that,” he said quickly.
“Don’t promise me anything, Emmet,” I snapped. “You promised that I would always have your friendship, but you broke that promise. You didn’t even give me that much before you ran away to Cambridge.”
“I didn’t run away, Donya,” he said defensively. “I went away to school.”
“You cut me off!” I yelled.
Emmet opened his mouth to argue but quickly shut it. He sighed heavily and rubbed a few fingers across his forehead. After a moment, he was able to look at me again.
“Coffee,” he said.
I tilted my head. “What?”
“Coffee,” he said the word slowly.
“What the hell are you talking about?”
“You asked what happens at the end of the night, and I’m answering your question. Coffee. At the end of the night, we will have coffee.”
I crossed my arms and faced the front of the car. It was eerily quiet inside the vehicle.
“I want a donut,” I said stubbornly after a minute.
“What?”
“I want a donut with my coffee,” I snapped, glaring at him.
His lips twitched as he tried not to smile. “You drive a hard bargain.”
“Shut up,” I said, as my anger began to slip through my fingers.
“I hope you don’t ask for a special donut, like one with sprinkles or something,” Emmet said, unable to hide his smile. “I’m not sure if that would be a deal I could close on.”
I bit my lip to stop myself from laughing. It wasn’t even that funny, but I couldn’t help the little bit of laughter that bubbled through my lips.
We fell into a light conversation for the last few minutes of the trip. I was still off-kilter being so close to Emmet again, and I was still shocked that he came at all, but I tried to push that to the back of my mind and just enjoy the conversation.
When he got out of the car in front of Felix’s building, he held out his hand to help me out of the car. I looked at it blankly for a moment before placing my hand in his. His thumb glided gently over my knuckles, sending tiny shockwaves of electricity racing up my arm. I smiled shyly at him on the sidewalk before security escorted us through some paparazzi and bystanders.
The Paps asked questions that I didn’t hear. I heard my name, but I had heard it more than a few times since hanging around Felix. I didn’t pay them any mind.
“What are
they talking about?” Emmet asked me after security cleared us to go up to the penthouse.
“Who?”
“I couldn’t hear everyone all at once,” he said, his brow creasing with concentration. “But I heard the word ‘nude’ more than once.”
My eyebrows arched. It was possible they were talking about the Rolling Stone cover, but that wasn’t supposed to be released for another few days, not to mention I wasn’t really nude. Just partially…
“Maybe they have me mixed up with someone else,” I said, waving my free hand dismissively as we stepped into the elevator.
“Hmm,” Emmet said. I thought he would harp on it, but he didn’t. He looked me over again and ran a knuckle up my bare arm, making me shiver. “Did I tell you how awesome you look?”
“No,” I said, biting back my smile. “You said that I looked amazing, but you may tell me how awesome I look.”
He chuckled and said, “You look awesome, Donya.”
“Thank you, Emmet.” I gave him a full blown smile.
His smile not only touched his eyes but filled them. If the elevator doors didn’t open just then, it was possible that I could have stared into his eyes all night in that small box.
“Hello, Miss Stewart,” Rocco, the big beefy man in the suit that followed Felix everywhere greeted me with a smile outside the double doors that lead into Felix’s penthouse.
I smiled at him and introduced him to Emmet before stepping towards the doors. Already we could hear the loud music, laughter, shouts, and what was probably a jolly good time on the other side.
“You complimented Felix well,” Rocco said, pulling open one of the doors.
I looked at him curiously, but then the door was open and the noise filtered out and I was distracted. Emmet and I stepped inside and took a good look around. There were no less than two hundred people inside. Though the penthouse was very spacious, it felt cramped having so many bodies in the space. Instantly I recognized half a dozen celebrities, from local celebs on up to the powerhouse couple whose faces were splashed on some tabloid almost daily.
“Are you okay?” Emmet asked in my ear.
“Sure,” I said absently. “Why?”
“You’re squeezing the hell out of my hand.”
I hadn’t even realized it. I apologized and tried to pull my hand from his, but he held me firmly.
“It’s okay,” he said soothingly.
I sighed and smiled a little. “I don’t know why I’m so nervous. I’ve been hanging around Felix for weeks, and he’s never made me feel nervous.”
“Too much power in one room, maybe,” Emmet suggested.
“You have an incredible pair of eyes,” a woman I recognized from a soap opera said to me and then turned to the other woman at her side. “Doesn’t she have incredible eyes? You take one hell of a picture.”
Emmet and I looked at one another and then back to the women, but they had already moved on. An uneasy feeling began to grow in my gut, and I unconsciously gripped Emmet’s hand in a vice hold again. I only realized it because my hand started to go numb.
We moved through the crowd. I knew a few people from working and through Felix. A very recognizable runway model I had met months ago rolled her eyes at me but couldn’t keep her hands off of Emmet. I felt some satisfaction when he blew her off and wrapped his arm around my waist, drawing me close. The more people we met, the more we heard things like, “Good job” and, “Great photos.” Many of them handed me business cards and asked me to keep in touch or to give them a call.
I was growing increasingly nervous as we slowly moved towards the other side of the room. I felt like everyone was looking at me, though I couldn’t imagine why. I wasn’t a celebrity. I was just Donya and in the grand scheme of things, I ranked about where the servers were.
“Do you know what any of them are talking about?” Emmet asked in my ear.
“No,” I said, but that wasn’t quite true. I had a very strong feeling what it was about, and it was only a matter of moments before we would find out.
“Donya!” Felix shouted my name from a few feet ahead.
He pushed his way through people and ripped me from Emmet’s hold by lifting me off of my feet for an embrace. When he put me back down, I stumbled slightly in my heels, but Felix steadied me even though he was clearly unsteady himself. I couldn’t miss the heavy scent of alcohol on his breath just before he kissed the corner of my mouth.
I glanced quickly at Emmet and nervously forced a smile as I tried to pull away from Felix, but he wasn’t finished with me yet. He went in for another kiss, except next time his lips crushed mine, and he tried to slip his tongue into my mouth.
“Felix!” I forced a laugh and shoved him away. “Stop kidding around.”
I went back to Emmet, ignoring the murderous gaze in his eyes as he looked at my friend. I nudged his hand with mine. Stiffly, he took my hand again.
“Felix Hunter, this is my…this is Emmet Grayne,” I said and cleared my throat nervously.
Felix regarded Emmet coolly and nodded in his direction. He turned his attention back to me and openly ogled my body.
“Spicy,” he said and winked at me.
I smiled and said, “Thank you for the dress. It’s perfect.”
He grinned. “Anything for you. I was expecting you to bring your girlfriend. I was going to push her off onto Dave and sweep you away somewhere private.”
Emmet’s hand gripped mine as if he expected Felix to pick me up and take me away.
Dave Cowell was a year older than Felix and just as successful an actor. The two became good friends while filming the movie that changed Felix’s career.
I peered behind Felix and saw Dave talking to a beautiful blonde.
“I think Dave will be okay,” I said teasingly.
“Come on. You need to see something.”
He took a hold of my wrist and pulled. I held tight to Emmet’s hand as the three of us, linked together, walked through the party goers. When Felix finally stopped and released my wrist, I moved around him to see what he wanted me to see.
I gasped and threw my clutch over my mouth. Emmet cursed beside me. We finally got to see what everyone had been talking about.
“Fucking awesome,” Felix said excitedly.
Displayed as a focal point of the room were three large photographs from the shoot. The first one was the cover. The shot was that first one I had posed for with my fingers on Felix’s hard stomach and his ear between my teeth. It was blatantly obvious that I was topless. Even as my face warmed with embarrassment, I couldn’t deny that the photograph was incredible. Felix and I looked like a great fit in the picture as his arms rested on my legs, and though the other girls’ faces weren't visible, their many hands all over him somehow gave the photo an erotic feel.
In the second photograph, I was standing high on the back of the stool with my hands twisted in Felix’s hair. I had carefully hidden my breasts behind his head and my arms, but the curves of each breast was visible, as well as the curve of my bare torso down to my hip hugging jeans.
The third picture had been taken without my knowledge. I was facing a shirtless Felix and buttoning the shirt he had given me with one hand, but my other hand was in his. We were just officially meeting at that time, but the captured moment appeared more intimate than it was. We looked like a love-struck, lustful couple that just fucked and were in the process of getting dressed. Even the way my knee bent towards him seemed intimate, as if I was about to walk into his arms.
“Oh, shit,” I spat out. I looked at Felix with wide eyes. “How did you get these?”
He pinched my chin between his thumb and forefinger. “Sometimes you’re too damn cute.” He grinned arrogantly. “I’m me. I can get stuff like this. I have smaller proofs in my bedroom for your portfolio too. Glen told me to give them to you.”
Glen was the photographer, and I had just shot with him earlier in the day. Why didn’t he give them to me?
“You want to get your fr
iend a drink and come with me to get them?” Felix asked suggestively.
Emmet began to move, and I was afraid of what he would do. I put my hand on his chest, trying to appear casual. I grinned at Felix as I felt Emmet halt.
“You’re such a flirty bastard. Find a girl who cares. You can give me the proofs over that lunch you owe me next week.”
I nudged him playfully and pulled Emmet away into the crowd.
*~*~*
I sat quietly without objection as Emmet told the limo driver where to take us. Despite the thick tension in the car between us, he still wanted to take me out for coffee and a donut, and honestly, I was relieved that he still wanted to go.
After we had walked away from Felix and my partial nude photographs, Emmet had banded his arm around my waist possessively. I felt the tension in his body and saw the fury in his eyes, but despite that, his social skills never wavered. Samantha had pounded social skills into us at a young age. We had a lot of practice before Fred was retired and he would have business associates over for dinner. As we got older, we were allowed to go to the occasional function that required fine dressing and impeccable social skills. I supposed that being at his fancy elite school only reinforced those skills in Emmet.
We mingled and chatted. He made a couple of new friends with a couple of guys who were also studying prelaw. I networked, reacquainting myself with the few people I already knew and established new friendships and business contacts. I received many compliments on my photographs.
We sipped on non-alcoholic beverages and tried some hor 'd oeuvres. We danced a little and observed a lot. Through all of it, Emmet kept his arm around my waist. If that arm got tired, he would smoothly glide behind me, placing both hands on my waist and move to my other side, always leaving at least one hand on me through the night. If it appeared that I was going to move away from him or if Felix came near, he would hold me closer and tighter. He didn’t have to say it, but it was clear that leaving his side was not permitted.
We left the party a little after two in the morning. I didn’t get to tell Felix I was leaving because once we decided to go, Emmet held me tightly and led me out of the penthouse. In the car, he settled into the seat beside me, but he didn’t make any effort to touch me or my bracelet. There was only silence inside the car. The only noise came from the traffic outside and the soft hum of the engine.
