First Touch

by Laurelin Paige

  “I’ll have to open up a new bottle. Give me just a minute.”

  She left and I propped my head up with my elbow and dazed absentmindedly at the wall only a handful of feet away from me. One section of it was covered in framed pictures, a variety of sizes. As I continued to stare, I realized the pictures were of people, sort of like the display found in the home of a grandparent, not a bar. Intrigued, I rose to check it out more closely.

  They were candid shots. From this very restaurant. Reeve was in several of them, wearing a casual button-down shirt and khaki shorts, his hand clapped around the shoulder of someone in one. Raising a bottle of an imported beer in another. He wore the same outfit in each of them, so I guessed they were all from the same event. I just couldn’t tell what the event was or when it took place.

  But if they were recent…

  Though my eyes naturally went to the pictures with Reeve in them, I studied the other faces now looking for Amber, hoping she might be in one. And also the ones with Reeve in them. He was too photogenic not to. Too beautiful. Too captivating.

  “He’s a real looker, isn’t he?”

  I peered over my shoulder to find Lucy, her hand outstretched toward me with my glass of wine. I took it from her, nodding my thanks. “He’s not bad on the eyes,” I conceded, returning my focus to where I’d been looking a moment before. It was in a smaller frame, a white matte surrounding it so that only a three-inch picture showed. Reeve was in it, with two women in bikini tops and long skirts. Several buttons of his shirt were undone as if this was later in the evening. His smile was bright, his eyes sparkling. He seemed to be enjoying himself, and while I was drawn to the serious expression that I’d seen from him most often, this look was awfully appealing too.

  I pointed to the display on the wall. “When were these taken, anyway?”

  Lucy had returned to her place behind the bar, but she answered as she wiped down the counter. “His thirtieth birthday. It was quite a party. Not too big. A hundred or so friends and family. We closed the pool outside and he held the whole thing in here.”

  Reeve was thirty-six now. Amber wouldn’t be in these pictures. I kept looking anyway, fixating on one of the women. She had her head turned away from the camera, her hand covering her mouth as if she was laughing so it was hard to really see her face. “Oh, wow,” I gasped, when I recognized who she was. “That’s Missy Mataya.”

  Missy Mataya was at the center of Reeve’s dangerous reputation. They’d dated for a while. Or fucked. Whatever it was that he did with his female companions. Much like all the women he was seen with, he’d never claimed her as a girlfriend, and if they’d ever demonstrated public displays of affection, they weren’t caught on camera. Also like Reeve’s women, Missy had been gorgeous. She’d been an up-and-coming supermodel. Exotic. Young. Well loved.

  Then – probably soon after the picture I was looking at had been taken – she’d fallen from a cliff edge and died. Or jumped. Or been pushed. No one was ever sure. Some people said she’d probably committed suicide. A few believed it had been an accident. Many pointed the finger at her lover. They’d been at his private island in the Keys, after all, and every other person with them on that trip said the last they’d seen her she’d been with Reeve.

  Reeve had never been one to address rumors or accusations of any kind, and this occasion was no different. He didn’t release a statement. He shared his story with no one. Every reporter that attempted to get an interview was denied. The police claimed they’d questioned him and declared he wasn’t a suspect in the incident, but when no one was charged at all, people weren’t happy. It was Missy’s fans that began the public attacks against Reeve, flocking to social media to proclaim him a murderer and a liar. Soon others joined the cause. There were all sorts of people ready to hate a man like Reeve. Business opponents. Middle-class citizens who felt that the rich were inherently evil. Conspiracy theorists who were sure Reeve had paid off the police. Members of the Christian right who were more than happy to crucify a man who lived such a tawdry life.

  Reeve publicly ignored these accusations as easily as he’d ignored any others in his life. It wasn’t as if the claims would turn into anything. As far as the law was concerned, Reeve Sallis was innocent. A good part of the nation’s people, however, believed he was just another rich man who had used his money and power to get away with his crime.

  I’d never had an opinion on the matter. Even after Amber went missing, I’d refused to take Missy’s death into consideration. There was no proof that it had been anything but an accident. I needed tangibles, not hearsay.

  “Missy’s up there?” Lucy asked. “Huh, I thought I’d gotten all the pictures of her taken down.”

  I turned toward her. “Why? Did he ask you to?” The answer didn’t matter, I realized after I’d asked. It wouldn’t tell me if he’d done it or not.

  Lucy shook her head. “Oh, no. Not him. But there’s too many… you know. Her photos just beg for people to say things and that girl’s had enough of that already. Let the dead rest, I say.”

  “Of course. That’s the right thing to do.” I debated whether or not I should do the same and let the subject go.

  But I couldn’t. I hadn’t been interested in her before, but this was an opportunity to learn more and I might not have it again. “Do people – guests, I mean – ever say anything about him” – I nodded at the picture of Reeve – “and her?”

  “You mean do they call him a murderer? Oh, yes. Not as much as they did. But sometimes.” Unlike Greg, Lucy didn’t seem at all cautious about what she said, which surprised me. Though the cantina wasn’t very crowded, there were still ears that could overhear.

  If she wasn’t worried, neither was I. “Do you think it was really an accident?” It was only slightly more polite than the question I wanted to ask, which was, Do you think he did it?

  She looked as if she might be offended even with my nicer version, but then she said, “Hell, I don’t know. Probably. If anyone could get away with it, he could. But then again, that girl was wild. For that matter, so was he a little back then. More so than now, anyway. They partied a lot. Accidents happen easier when you’re not being responsible, if you know what I mean. I suppose I wouldn’t be surprised if I found out he did or he didn’t. Though he never did really grieve for her. Not around here, anyway.”

  Lucy waved her hand, snapping out of her memories. “But whatever happened, the resort doesn’t need all the talk that could be stirred up with the picture. Would you mind handing that frame to me? I’ll put another picture in its place. I’ve got some other snapshots somewhere around here from that night.”

  I took the frame off the wall and gave it to her as I sat back on my stool. “You’ve been here awhile, then.” As long as Lucy was feeling chatty, I had other questions I wanted to ask. “Did you ever meet his other women? The one he dated last summer, for example? Amber Pries?”

  “Ms. Pries? She came in here a few times.” The bartender peeled the notches back from around the back mat of the frame as she spoke. “I never talked to her much personally except to take her drink order. She was another wild one. Liked to drink. I’m sure she liked doing other things as well. Especially liked to flirt with the boys, even when she was here with Mr. Sallis.”

  “I bet he didn’t like that.” It was typical Amber. The men she’d usually paired up with generally liked how social she was. Enjoyed that she was so willing to be shared.

  But I didn’t need to be told how Reeve felt about it and I hated the part of me that jotted that reason down as a possible motive.

  “No. He didn’t like it at all. They’d fight about it sometimes in here. But he was real fond of that one so I think he would have put up with anything from her. When he came back last fall without her, he definitely seemed more somber. I wouldn’t be surprised if the girl messed around in front of him one too many times, and he finally broke it off.”

  Or worse.

  No, I couldn’t think that. Even if it did
give Reeve reason, it didn’t mean he’d… hurt her. Did it?

  “That’s quite interesting,” I said when Lucy seemed to be looking for an acknowledgment of her statement.

  She gawked at me for a second. “You know, I just figured out who you remind me of. Your voice. You sound just like that computer in that sitcom, NextGen.”

  For a brief moment I considered admitting the truth, considered delivering the “user error” line I knew she was wanting, but ended up delivering my usual response – a smile and, “I get that a lot.” Even without my current dark thoughts, I didn’t love dealing with fans.

  Her expression fell ever so slightly. “Fun to be a celebrity sound-alike though. Such a great show.” Her eye caught on a customer flagging her down at the bar. “Excuse me a minute.” She set down the photo, now out of the frame, and left to attend to the patron.

  I took a sip of my wine and picked up the picture absentmindedly. It had been bigger than the matte. Now, unframed, I saw the whole picture. And in the part outside the three-inch square, the part that had been hidden when it was on the wall, was another familiar face.

  My pulse quickened as I glanced down the counter to make sure the bartender was occupied. Careful to not attract any attention, I dropped the picture into my bag. I left a fifty to cover my tab and slipped out.

  Back at my room, I pulled the picture from my bag and studied it again. Then I compared it to the one I had on my phone that Joe had sent a few weeks before. Without a doubt, the man beside Reeve in both pictures was the same – Michelis Vilanakis. The two together on one occasion was easy to dismiss as coincidence. They were important people at the same function. No big deal. But for them to be together twice, and at an event as personal as Reeve’s birthday party… I had to accept that the two absolutely knew each other.

  So what exactly was Reeve’s connection to the Greek mob boss? They both had a bit of a playboy reputation, but Vilanakis was at least two decades older than Reeve. If they were friends, they made an odd pair. Business associates seemed more likely. And if Reeve was doing business with Vilanakis, it meant Reeve was doing business with the mob.

  I sank down on the edge of my bed and tried to decide how that information made me feel. It should have made me feel scared. Cautious. And it did.

  But also it didn’t. Because it didn’t change anything in regard to Amber’s disappearance. And it didn’t make Reeve someone different than the man I’d already met. A man who was powerful with or without mafia ties. A man who commanded as easily as he charmed. A man who had put his hands on my body, had touched me on his terms, had excited me and turned me on while he’d made a fool of me.

  Dammit, why did I come on so strong?

  I rolled my shoulders, trying to loosen the rocks that had taken residence there, while I lamented my situation. Nothing I’d learned today made up for what I would have learned if I hadn’t fucked up my original plan to get close to Reeve. I was disappointed to the point of heartbreak.

  I fell back on the bed and curled myself into a ball. Tomorrow, I tried to tell myself, but didn’t find it as soothing as I had the night before. At least tomorrow I was getting a massage. That was something to look forward to.

  CHAPTER 6

  The first time I shared a man with Amber had been on my seventeenth birthday.

  She’d been hanging around the neighborhood for the better part of the six months before that, and we’d become friends. We’d had the same taste in food and music and movies and, unlike the other girls we’d known, we both preferred a line of coke to a bowl of weed. “Champagne taste,” Amber would say. “That’s us.”

  Though we were the same age, our lives had been very different. I’d gone to school during the day, trying to pretend that my grades were salvageable as she’d watched the Home Shopping Network and ate Cheetos on the neighbor’s couch. Amber had dropped out of high school, and since she’d also run away from home, no one was pushing her to go, while graduation was the one thing my mother demanded of me.

  I’d hated everything back then. School. My mother. My neighborhood. My body. Everything but Amber. She’d been fun. Sassy. Sexy. She was electric and electrifying and everything I wanted to be. And she cared for me. Maybe even loved me. If I had gone to a shrink they probably would have said that was why I latched on to her – that I thought of her as the mother mine had never been. I knew how screwed up everything seemed. But who could ever know why a person fell for another? I only knew that I had been dull and dim and that Amber made me less so.

  She’d also had things I didn’t. Things that money bought. The clothes she wore were designer, her nails were always done. She’d lowered her panties once to show me her Brazilian. Whenever I’d asked how she paid for things, she’d always answered simply, “My uncle.” Even as we’d grown closer to each other that was all she’d tell me about the mysterious relative.

  “For your birthday,” she’d said two days before, “I’ve got a surprise. Plan to spend the weekend with me.”

  So that Friday, I slipped out of school early and met Amber at the bus station where she purchased two tickets to Santa Monica. Though I couldn’t get her to give me even a hint as to where we were going or what we were doing, I spent the two-hour bus ride buzzing with excitement. Whatever Amber had in mind, I knew without a doubt that this trip would be the beginning of the next phase of my life. I was ready. I was so ready.

  Outside the station in Santa Monica, Amber bummed a smoke off a street musician and I scanned the street, taking in the sights of a place I’d never been. A red convertible parked nearby caught my attention – more specifically, the man leaning against it. He was older, maybe as old as my mother, but attractive. Not because he was all that good-looking, exactly – though his body was definitely fit and trim – but because of what he exuded. Confidence. Assurance. Money. He drew my attention, and in the way that a restless, sexually charged young girl often did, I found myself wondering about him. What it would be like to kiss a man like him. What it would feel like to be beneath him. I’d had plenty of sex before. With boys from school. I’d yet to meet one who knew what he was doing, and though I would never have admitted it out loud, I was dying for it, thoughts of it never far from my mind.

  When Amber followed the line of my sight, she dropped her cigarette with a squeal and exclaimed, “There he is, Em! Come on.”

  “There who is?” I asked as she tugged me toward the very man I’d been staring at.

  “My uncle!” After throwing her duffle bag into the backseat, she jumped into the man’s arms, wrapping her legs around his waist. Then she proceeded to make out with him like I’d done on more than one occasion with the boys under the bleachers at school. Never out on a public street. Never with a man who had to shave every day.

  When they had finished their display and Amber was back on her feet again, she made introductions. “Rob this is Emily. Em, Rob.”

  He may have said something to me. I didn’t really know because I’d been too busy staring at her, my jaw gaping.

  “Oh, Emily, he’s not really my uncle,” she told me as she jumped into the passenger seat. “Get in.”

  She’d misread the cause of my surprise. I grinned – only one of the many times I’d grin that day – and climbed in the backseat. If Amber hadn’t been the coolest person I’d ever met before that moment, she’d certainly proven herself now.

  Rob took us to a fancy restaurant and fed us fancy food and snuck us fancy expensive champagne. Though his hands were never far from Amber’s body, he didn’t leave me out of the conversation, asking me what I thought of the oysters, if I knew that they were an aphrodisiac, if I knew what that word even meant. He was very nice. Interesting and witty. Sexy. The way he touched my friend, the way I caught him looking at me in my baggy T-shirt and loose jeans, as if he could see what they hid. As if he were interested.

  In a bathroom stall, Amber laid out a line of coke on her pocket mirror. “Happy Birthday from Rob,” she’d said, holding up the bag o
f white powder. “He’s married so I only see him when he can get away from her for the weekend. Then we meet here. His other house is in Riverside. He likes you, you know.”

  So many questions I wanted to ask – how had she met him? Why hadn’t she told me? Wasn’t their age difference a problem legally? And did she say wife?

  But all those thoughts were eclipsed by the compliment from a deeply attractive man. “I like him too,” I’d said, wondering if that was weird to say about my friend’s boyfriend, or whatever he was. Wondering more if it was weird that she’d said it to me in the first place.

  Then the coke kicked in and I didn’t wonder much about anything after that.

  Later, he’d taken us back to his house, a gorgeous Mediterranean-style home with floor-to-ceiling windows that gave a panoramic view of the bay. Rob encouraged us to change into something more comfortable so we’d slipped upstairs to the master bathroom where Amber donned a pair of boy shorts and a tank. All I had to wear was another boring T-shirt, so Amber loaned me one of her tanks and then found a pair of boxers from one of Rob’s drawers.

  “He won’t mind?” I asked, already putting them on.

  She laughed. “No. He definitely won’t mind.”

  Back downstairs Rob waited for us with his shirt unbuttoned and his feet bare. Over and over, I found my eyes pulled to skate the naked skin of his chest and the trail of hair that led beneath the band of his jeans. Over and over, I felt his eyes skim the abundant curves of my breasts pressing at the thin material of my shirt.

  He served us more champagne and more coke. When we turned giggly and giddy, he pulled out his video camera. “Get in close together,” he said. Amber moved close to me on the couch, really close, throwing her arm around my shoulder. “Yeah, just like that.” He moved in with the lens, kneeling down on the floor in front of us. “Can you touch each other? Amber, put your hand on Emily’s gorgeous tits.”

  My body zinged from his praise. Amber had tried to encourage me to flaunt the girls before. She had a smaller chest and frequently told me how jealous she was of my DD cups, but all I’d ever felt about my boobs was embarrassed and self-conscious. Until then. Until a man out of my league said that they were gorgeous and my best friend put her hand on one. My nipples hardened as Amber squeezed.