by Erika Vanzin
Her words shut me up and assuage a little bit of my guilt. I always thought I didn’t have time to be happy; there was always something more urgent and vital than my happiness. Hell, sometimes I had to put aside basic necessities like a meal because I had no choice. I never paused to think for a second about myself. Even the relationships I’ve had never brought me much pleasure because my situation has always been too complicated to have a carefree dating life. All my dreams have ended—I can no longer enjoy life like an ordinary twenty-four-year-old.
The phone rings in my pocket. A message from Ron tells me that Alicia Pinker—the famous Hollywood star—is in one of Manhattan’s most prestigious restaurants with her new flame who’s twenty years younger. Her husband dumped her for a guy he met on set.
“See? I’ve allowed myself to think I have a normal life, and here reality knocks at my door. Ron asked me to go to the Mandalay to photograph Alicia. This is my work, and it will never be compatible with his life. I’m the one he hates and avoids and wears horrible caps to keep from being recognized by. He travels in cars with darkened glass to confuse people like me...to protect himself from people like me. I’ll never have any other job than this. Do you understand why this story is going to end badly?”
“Better to be hurt by an intense love story than to barely survive in a sterile life, don’t you think?” She raises an eyebrow.
I don’t dare answer her question even for myself, let alone utter it out loud. “Can I call you when I get back?” I ask, going to get the camera from under my bed.
“Yes, though I don’t think your cat will let me go. He’s so sweet and cuddly.”
I roll my eyes because Dexter is everything but those things. Sometimes I get the distinct impression he wants to kill me in my sleep. “I’m almost sure he loves you more than me. The only contact we have is in the morning when he puts his paws on my face to be fed,” I admit with some disappointment mixed with humor.
*
There are only five of us here in front of the restaurant. This time Ron got the tip from someone well connected, someone who knows the magazines that will run the story. In most cases, this type of information comes straight from the star’s manager or from his press office, especially when the fame around his client is fading. In Alicia’s case, she had the misfortune of being dumped by her husband for a man. The news was spiced up with a sex scandal that surfaced on the movie’s set they were filming together. It was a nasty blow. She was the victim in that situation, but that was irrelevant compared to the fact that her husband—a two-generation sex symbol—turned out to be a gay man who never came out. Unfortunately, in modern, progressive Hollywood, it’s more scandalous to be gay and come out than to betray the wife you’ve been with for more than fifteen years.
The excuse I give myself for being out here making money off someone else’s misfortune is that most likely that same person is paying me to be here. Our wait doesn’t last long. After not even twenty minutes, Alicia comes out walking hand in hand with Peter Rayan, a young actor who has made more news for his dating life than for his high-profile roles. But he’s only twenty-three years old and has a life ahead of him to prove his worth in Hollywood.
The flashes of five cameras go wild as they try to cover their faces, even if they’re not putting much effort into it, confirming my theory that it was them who called us. The noise is like a round of machine guns. It takes forever to call their driver, who arrives five minutes later, despite coming from the garage of this same place. When they finally get into the car, I wave to my colleagues who are already walking toward the subway. It was a quick, painless job that will earn me a few hundred dollars. It could have been worse.
I put the camera in my bag and walk to the alley behind the restaurant that cuts through the entire block to Fifth Avenue. I’ll have to walk down it to get home. As soon as I turn the corner, my heart stops: Thomas is there, smoking his cigarette, his gaze fixed on the asphalt. He’s within walking distance, and as soon as he hears me, he looks up, and his eyes go wide. Did he see me in front of the restaurant?
“I swear I didn’t follow you this time!” He raises his hands and shakes his head.
I smile, but I’m nervous. If he’d seen me in front of the restaurant, he wouldn’t try to justify himself for our meeting, but I can’t be sure. “I believe it, but what the hell are you doing out here in the dark?”
He shows me the cigarette he’s holding. “I had to walk out the back door because there are jackals with cameras in front of the restaurant.”
It hurts to be called that, but it’s not his fault. That’s who we really are. “Are you here for dinner?” I try to move the topic away from the paparazzi.
“Yes, I’m with Damian, Lilly, and Michael. But what are you doing around here?”
Good question. “I came to see a friend. I’m on my way home.” It feels like the nervousness is palpable in my words.
“Can I walk you home?”
“Aren’t you having dinner with your friends?” I laugh.
Thomas shrugs and puts out the cigarette, stepping on it. “They’ll survive without me.”
“Okay.”
We walk silently side by side until we reach Fifth Avenue, where a cascade of light from a shop window decorated for Christmas showers us. Behind the glass, a sleigh pulled by white horses makes its way through the snow and trees adorned with red ornaments. Every year, the shops compete for the most beautiful and dramatic decorations. Elves, Christmas trees, ice sculptures, and real-looking snowfall take turns showing off during one of the most beautiful seasons of the year. Millions of tourists trample over these sidewalks, filling their eyes and hearts with the magic that these windows, and this city as a whole, manage to convey. And every year at this time, I remember how lonely I am in a place where millions of people gather to celebrate.
“Are you going to spend Christmas with someone?” he asks, as if reading my mind, when we have been walking silently for five minutes.
“With my mother, as usual. You?”
“I think we’ll all be at Lilly and Damian’s house. Since they started living together, those two have become more domestic than a retired old couple.”
I laugh and feel a little honored. It’s not everyone who gets this kind of inside information about their favorite band, which makes me realize how comfortable he is with me. His barriers are slowly collapsing, and mine are starting to creak, too.
We don’t even notice when we arrive at my apartment, alternating moments of silence and small conversations about our daily life.
“I blew your dinner.”
Thomas shrugs and smiles, his hands shoved into his pockets. “It’s not like you get fed enough in that place. It’s the classic upscale restaurant where portions are tiny and cost a ridiculous amount of money. Did you already eat?”
“No. I haven’t had time yet.” And I don’t have much in the fridge to put on the table.
“Shall we order a pizza and have it delivered to your place? Or is that too brazen of a proposal?” His question is almost timid.
My heart goes crazy in my chest, shouting yes, while my brain tells me I should end the evening here. “Okay, but I warn you, I have nothing to offer you upstairs, apart from tap water... I haven’t had time to shop these days.”
“Okay, you go up and order the pizza you like. I’ll go to the store down the street and buy something to drink.”
As I climb the stairs to my apartment, my heart explodes in my chest and agitation grips my stomach. As soon as I enter, I pull out my camera and computer and, before ordering pizza, send the photos to Ron. A sense of unease fills me when I think of Thomas being here in a few minutes, and I’m hiding the real reason I crossed paths with him in that alley.
A slight knock on the door almost makes me drop the camera I’m putting in the closet. Dexter precedes me, and when I open the door to let Thomas in,
my cat rubs between his legs as if he’s known him for a lifetime. Thomas seems pleasantly surprised by the meeting.
“So, you do live with someone,” he says amusedly.
“Yes, his name is Dexter, and he loves everyone but me.” I approach the kitchen cabinet to get two glasses while Thomas picks up that traitor that is my cat. He starts to purr.
“What did you do to make him hate you so much?”
“Nothing! I feed him when he meows, I clean his litter box twice a day, I give him the best space on the bed to sleep in.”
Thomas bursts out laughing, and I scowl at him. “I understand now. He basically considers you his human slave. You’ll never get cuddles from him. You’re just around to give him a comfortable life,” he teases me as he puts the red hairball on the ground and opens the bottle.
I watch him, almost holding my breath. It seems impossible for Thomas of the Jailbirds to be here in my tiny Manhattan apartment. When he offers me the glass and slightly touches my hand, an electric charge runs through me until it explodes inside my stomach. I look up, and I’m sure he felt it too. His eyes, full of desire, don’t lie. I sip from my glass without ever taking my eyes off his. Maybe alcohol isn’t the best choice when I’m in a room alone with a man I’ve dreamed of having since I was a teenager, and who I’m sure reciprocates my attraction. Someone knocking on the door reminds us of reality, breaking our tension and letting me catch my breath.
“Here’s the pizza and the parmesan bread.” The delivery guy rests the two boxes in my hand without glancing at Thomas behind me.
“Thank you. Can you give the box of bread to Charlie down the stairs as usual?”
“No problem.” He takes back one of the two boxes and waves at me.
“Who is Charlie?” my guest asks me, intrigued, when I close the door and place the pizza on the table.
“The homeless man living down the stairs.”
When I look up at Thomas, his eyes glisten, and he’s hiding a smile. He seems to want to say something, but then he closes his mouth. He approaches me slowly, takes my face in his hands, and draws me in for a kiss that makes my knees tremble. He is sweet and, at the same time, intense. His tongue caresses mine with frenzy and desire as if he wants to own everything about me, body and soul. When he walks away, my head is spinning, and it’s not because of the wine.
“The more I’m around you, the more you surprise me. The first time I walked into this building, I thought you needed someone to protect you from the drunk down there. It never entered my mind that you were actually taking care of him.”
“Don’t make me out to be a heroine. I’m a long way from it, trust me.”
Thomas shakes his head and smiles. “You know you’re making it hard for me to keep being a gentleman and not take those clothes you’re wearing off of you, right?” he confesses in a whisper. “Every time you surprise me with something I like about you, you make it impossible for me to stay away.”
“I know. I’m not having much success keeping you away either,” I admit.
Thomas smiles before sinking his fingers into my hair and pulling me in for a new kiss. His tongue caresses mine at a slow, almost hesitant pace. Then it becomes more and more frenetic, full of passion, invigorated by my hands that slip under his sweater and caress his smooth skin. A groan escapes his lips and my reason—the one that tells me to stop and send him away—goes out the window. We forget about the pizza and the wine. Right now, the only thing we both seem to need is skin on skin, and his breath mixed with his kiss makes a shiver of pleasure run along my back.
It’s as if, since the beginning, a force has lured us toward each other with no chance of escaping it. It wasn’t enough to avoid giving him my phone number because, one way or another, we found the way that led us to this moment, with a desire to make love we can no longer control.
His hands follow my hair down my back to my hips and lure me in with a force that leaves no doubt about how much he wants me. His erection presses against my belly, making me surrender and press into his body as if I could merge with him. Thomas pulls back just enough to sit on the bed and draw me to straddle him without ever taking his lips off mine. His fingers slip under the fabric of my shirt, caress the skin of my back, making me groan.
I leave his lips panting, grab the sleeves of his jacket and slip it off. His eyes are full of desire and scrutinize my every movement with lust. His sweater slips on the floor along with the jacket, and my heart leaps into my throat. The toned physique and muscular arms with their raised veins drive me crazy. I want everything about him, every single inch of skin that covers this statuesque physique. I want to kiss his body and caress it with my hands until I memorize every single muscle, tendon, vein I can reach.
For years, I dreamed of how this moment would be, and my imagination did not even remotely conceive of the beauty of the man I am facing. I stop to admire his desire-laden blue eyes, the dark hair that falls across his cheekbones like the first time I met him, his solid arms and sculpted abs. His hands tighten around my hips, pushing me toward his erection, giving me a shiver of pleasure that rises from my lower belly up to my stomach. I close my eyes and moan.
I can’t resist. I go down to taste that inviting skin, deeply inhaling the sweet scent that always seems to accompany him. I can feel him holding his breath when I taste his abs with my tongue and, as I climb back to his chest with light kisses, his hand slips into my hair, clutching it in a light grip at the back of my neck. He’s losing control faster and faster, kiss after kiss, bite after bite, as I approach his neck like it’s all I need to survive for the rest of my life.
I go back to his lips, but Thomas pushes me away gently. He grabs my shirt and lifts it over my head in a quick gesture. With one hand, he unhooks my bra and leaves me naked. He opens his eyes wide, inhales deeply, and holds his breath. When he comes back to look me in the eyes, I know there’s no turning back from here. We’ve crossed the point of no return. I get up, slipping off my pants and panties as I watch him get rid of his clothes and stick a condom on his erection.
I go back to riding him slowly but without stopping. I become one with the man I have dreamed of for a lifetime. His tongue teases my breasts, his firm hands grip my hips and dictate the rhythm of my movements as I sink my fingers into his hair and pull it hard. I moan with an orgasm that makes my legs tremble while he thrusts under me, getting more intense, fast. The guttural sound filling the room when he reaches his peak of pleasure is the sexiest sound I’ve ever heard.
I collapse on him, panting, while his arms wrap me in a heat I haven’t felt in a long time. I hear him giggling, and I look up just enough to meet his gaze. “I think the pizza is cold.”
“Apparently, you’re supposed to skip dinner tonight.” I smile at him without turning away.
“We could always tuck under the blankets and eat it in bed.”
His proposal floors me. It’s the only thing I’d like to do for the rest of my life, and I don’t know if there’s ever going to be anything beyond tonight. However, I decide not to spoil this moment. I get up, move the blankets and slide him between the sheets, then I go grab the bottle of wine and the pizza and return to snuggle up next to him.
“I confess that when I realized you were a fan, I thought you’d have posters of us over your bed,” Thomas chuckles, looking around for the first time since he walked in.
I smile, chewing a piece of pizza I pounced on. “I did. I took them off the walls of the bedroom when I moved into this apartment, but I never hung them again... You know, when you pretend to be an adult and decorate the apartment decently?”
Thomas laughs and sips from the glass of wine. “I’m glad you grew up. But I would have liked peeking into the life of one of our fans. I’ve always wondered if they have posters on their walls, our albums on their shelves...I mean, all those things girls do when they love bands.”
“Like this?”
Thomas watches me curiously as I stretch out and stick my arm under the bed in search of the tin box I guard with my life. I pull it out and watch Thomas smile at the container a little bigger than a shoebox, pink with blue bows. My heart explodes as I open it to reveal its contents. I see him frowning and concentrating as I pull out the newspaper clippings and give them to him.
“I’ve kept all the articles about you that I’ve been able to find in the newspapers,” I say, a little concerned that he’ll consider it childish.
Thomas seems absorbed in his own thoughts as he calmly browses the pages concerning him.
“These articles are years old. Some are from when we weren’t even famous!” He looks at me, surprised and maybe even a little excited.
“I told you I’d been following you for a while.”
“Yes, but this stuff is something you’d find in a museum!”
“Look,” I tell him, rummaging to the bottom of the box where I keep their first flyer. “This is my first historical find regarding the Jailbirds. One day, I was with my dad doing local alcohol deliveries, and we stopped at a place...I think the bar was called ‘Joe’s.’ Anyway, you were playing and I stayed for a few songs while my dad finished unloading the crates. That was the first time I listened to you—my first ever Jailbirds concert. You weren’t famous yet. You became famous maybe nine or ten months later, signing with the record company.” I smile at the memory of that day.
Thomas is staring at me, wide-eyed.
“What?” I ask, almost fearing that my confession makes me look crazy.
“It was you!” He bursts out laughing, but I don’t understand. When he finally calms down, he explains: “We had just started playing around, and there was never anyone to hear us, just a few drunks that hated our music. Joe only let us play there because we stopped after closing time to clean the place. That day, when you walked in, you were the first one to ever to stop and listen to us. We were euphoric. When we finished, we wanted to come and talk to you, but your dad came for you, and we never saw you again. Two days later, Evan randomly entered the venue because he had the wrong address, and it was the day he discovered us. We’ve always seen you as a bit of a lucky charm—as if you started our career.”
