by Holly Rayner
She’d had to research who Matteo was for the show. These people clearly didn’t need that research. It was a different world that she and Matteo were inhabiting now—one where he held even more power than his immense fortune already gave him. She had been realizing it in little ways throughout the evening. But here, where it was quiet, it became all the more obvious.
At the table, there were a few of the same interactions as they’d had during dinner early on in the evening, but Matteo did not seem to enjoy them as much. He draped his arm around her shoulder and pulled her in a little closer, the same way he had in the car. Josie couldn’t help wonder how much of his motivation was wanting her to be closer to him, and how much of it was sending a signal to everyone else in the room they were not to be disturbed. Whichever it was, both things brought her joy.
It also gave her a chance to take in her surroundings. This place was hardly perched on the bleeding edge of trendy. Instead, it felt like a living callback to decades past. There were bits and pieces she could place to previous eras, all blended together harmoniously to give their club a sense of timelessness and class. It was relaxing, and also elevating.
“So,” Matteo asked after they had been there a little while, “does this place make the cut?”
Sitting so close to him as she was now, his voice took on a different quality. So close to her ear, he spoke barely above a whisper. The intimacy of the sound sent goosebumps up her arms.
“So it’s up to me? I’m not sure I approve of you shirking your duties.”
She felt his quiet laughter as much as she heard it.
“Only an idiot doesn’t take advice. Not from people worth listening to, anyway.”
She picked up her drink and sipped it thoughtfully. “Well, it depends. Do you want people who use your app to have a wonderful time drinking delicious cocktails in perfect surroundings?”
“You make a good point,” he said lowly. “But I think that, upon careful reflection, we do want our users to have a good time. I think that just might be a good part of my business plan. Quite the suggestion! You’re wasted in fashion—get yourself into business school immediately!”
For the first time since she was probably in middle school, Josie heard herself giggle. She stopped it almost immediately, but it definitely was there. A giggle. Like she was twelve or something.
Again, another moment when this man seemed determined to make her blush. But if he had noticed her absurd reaction, he didn’t call her out on it. Instead, he just kept speaking to her in that calm, intimate voice, as she enjoyed what she assumed must be their final destination for the evening.
They stayed there for some time. Josie didn’t know how long, because she wasn’t watching the clock, but it was long enough for most of the people in the room to come and go. They saw a few entirely different crowds, and with each exchange Josie felt a little bit more like she belonged there, and they were entering her space.
The owner did come by and speak to Matteo, and the interaction was in many ways very similar to the one he had had with the restaurant owner earlier in the evening. Several drinks in and exhausted, Josie found it even more impressive now than she had back then. It took everything she had not to gush to Matteo about how skilled he was when the man walked away.
But she didn’t. At least she still had that small modicum of control over her reactions.
Matteo seemed hesitant to leave, but eventually it felt as though the time was right, and they had to, to avoid the risk of spoiling the evening by overstaying. They made their way toward the exit hand in hand as they had been for much of the evening now. And, outside, they stood in front of the cab stand.
Chapter 10
Matteo
A complex mixture of drives fought within Matteo. On the one hand, the woman standing in front of him was clearly very taken with him. He wasn’t quite sure what he had done to get her into that state, but she was putty in his hands.
If everything in his adult life made any sense whatsoever, when there was a beautiful woman standing in front of you, hanging on your every word and looking at you with the kind of raw adoration that would have seemed impossible the first time you met, the only possible option is to invite her back to your apartment.
That was a given. That was the right move. And yet, Matteo was torn. She was different. This late in the evening, and with how much closer they had become toward one another with every move, and every conversation, Matteo didn’t mind admitting that to himself.
And that simple realization put him into unfamiliar territory. Any woman he was in this position with who he found attractive he should invite back to his place—sure. But why was it not the right move with her?
This wasn’t something he’d researched. He didn’t have any real sense of how to begin a lasting relationship—which seemed the only option given the way he was feeling now. If he brought her back to his place on their first date, would she assume he wasn’t serious about her? Why did he need her not to make that assumption?
He was hesitating. This was exactly the wrong time to hesitate. He couldn’t sort through all of this now—not when she was standing there in front of him, expectantly.
“Would you like to see a movie?” He heard himself say the words more than he decided to say them.
She seemed unsure. The later it had gotten, and the more they had to drink, he noticed her mask slipping more and more often. Still, she was quick to recover.
“Are the theaters even still showing movies this late?”
“Oh, sure they are. Though I wouldn’t want to share you with an entire theater. This may shock you, but I have an extremely nice entertainment system back at the penthouse.”
Her face went blank. The cipher was back. He was amazed at how quickly she put it on. He had been taking it as a given that she would accept his invitation, what with how close they had gotten and how much she seemed to like him. But now, with this sudden resistance, he wasn’t so sure.
What surprised him even more than her reaction was how nervous it made him. He hadn’t been nervous over a woman in years—not since well before his social network took off. It was something he had mastered early and easily—how to manage his expectations and not get too invested. The less invested he was, the better he was at achieving results. It was a simple formula—one that hadn’t let him down.
Until now, apparently.
He let the silence sit between them for longer than he’d like, mostly because he was too surprised by her reaction and his reaction to it to know what to say. But finally, she spoke.
“I’m not sure I know what extremely nice means in this context. I might have to investigate for myself.”
She said the words with an easy, casual smile. What she said was meant to reassure him, he knew. It didn’t.
But she was coming back with him. That was positive, right? At least with this he was back to what he understood.
He followed the usual routine of catching the small of her back as he ushered her into the car, told the driver to take them home and drew in her body against his. If he were really confident, he would kiss her now. But her reaction back in front of the last club told him that wouldn’t be a good idea. If for no other reason than there being the strange possibility that she might reject him. It would have been unthinkable an hour ago, but now he had to consider it. And, if that happened, he certainly didn’t want an audience.
When they got back to the penthouse, he enjoyed seeing it through her eyes, as he always did when he brought someone new here. Her face was still locked down in an expression of casual enjoyment, though, making him feel cheated somehow. He wanted to see her enthusiasm for his apartment slip past her guard, the way her enthusiasm for the creatures of the aquarium had. If he could have that, then the exorbitant price tag on this place was worth it.
But it seemed he was going to have to content himself with her flirty, off-hand compliments. Yesterday, it would have been all he wanted. That knowledge didn’t help him now.
The first few minutes of the movie where the longest of his life. He didn’t want to make a move too early on; her behavior back in front of the club had stuck with him. He didn’t want her to feel rushed, or for the thin veneer of believability that they were really there to watch a movie to stop, leaving them both hanging.
But about ten minutes in, he let himself draw her closer.
He’d been hoping that her moment of hesitation was a fluke; she had certainly been acting since like it was. But the moment he began to move toward intimacy she froze. The cipher was back.
Josie didn’t speak. She barely breathed. She was astonishingly still, though she didn’t protest or pull away.
He knew what any number of men would do in this situation. Instead, Matteo reached for the remote and stopped the movie. As he did, it gave him an opportunity to move away from her slightly, just enough so he was no longer infringing on her space. They were back to where they had been on their first car ride together: close, but not too close. Not close enough.
“Is something wrong?”
It took a while for her to reply, but Matteo waited. It seemed important for her to speak for herself, without him forcing it out of her.
“No,” she said at last. “Nothing is wrong, not really.”
“But something isn’t right?”
She smiled at him, and it was a smile he felt.
“Not exactly,” she said after thinking for a moment. “It’s not you…”
Matteo leaned back and groaned lightly. “Were you really just about to say ‘it’s not you, it’s me’?”
Josie laughed, louder than the joke deserved. It was like a release valve for the tension that had been building up inside her, Matteo could see that. It came spilling out, and he was glad for it.
“This isn’t a breakup,” she said. “I’m not breaking up with you.”
“Good,” Matteo answered. “I would be very surprised to find out that we were dating!”
“Well,” Josie said, “at least if we were that would explain why I was here…”
Okay, this was something he could understand. She had rules. Rules were understandable. Though, even that explanation didn’t fit quite right. It didn’t quite match what he felt like had been going on between them. What he felt like had been going on within her.
He delved further into the explanation. “So, you don’t sleep with guys on the first date?”
“Yes…” She trailed off. She was pausing as she had before, but this time, at least, she hadn’t shut down.
He waited again, and this time he didn’t have to wait quite as long.
“I don’t sleep with men at all.”
He didn’t know what he had been expecting, but it wasn’t this. “You don’t…”
She shook her head. “That came out wrong. What I mean to say is that…” She hesitated for a moment. “I haven’t.”
He wasn’t as good as she was at hiding his emotions, but even if he had been, he doubted that he would have been able to conceal his surprise.
“That shocks you?” she asked.
“It does,” he replied. And though he didn’t like that those words seem to cause her pain, he was glad that here, now, she was at least willing to show that pain.
“But not in a bad way,” he continued. “It’s just unusual, and you’re beautiful. It amazes me that of all the men in the world who must have tried, none of them were good enough.”
“It’s not that I don’t want to. It’s just…it’s complicated.”
Matteo thought back to his confusion when they were standing in front of the club; the way everything that he had previously known about how to interact with women seemed suddenly useless. He smiled and looked down at his hands, which had somehow ended up clasping hers. They shared a quiet smile.
“I’m not expecting anything, you know,” he said gently.
She smiled and retreated from the still moment that they had shared. But the retreat didn’t feel like a bad thing. It didn’t feel like she was running.
“Well, I’m expecting something. I’m expecting to finish the movie.”
He laughed and enjoyed the way it felt when she settled in against him, his arm around her and her head against his chest. The movie he had seen before was new to his eyes, and the ending was sweeter. When it finished, he felt the tiredness from the day settling into his bones and could only imagine that Josie felt the same way.
They stood and walked to the elevator together. There, she turned to him and tilted her face up toward his expectantly.
Without any hesitation or uncertainty, he leaned down and gave her what she was requesting. It was short, and soft, and sweet. It was like nothing he had been aiming for when the night had begun, and it was perfect.
Chapter 11
Josie
When Josie woke the next morning, it was with a sense that something the day before had changed everything. When she looked around her apartment, however, it was all exactly the same. She was tired and slightly hungover. Somehow, she felt frustrated and completely satisfied at the same time.
Matteo. What in the world was he? Could he really be all of the things that she had imagined he was when she spent the entire day with him yesterday? It was all a haze looking back. All the fuzzy intricacies of memory had taken over, and what she had been so certain of last night no longer seemed clear.
And yet, she couldn’t help but hope that all the things she remembered really were true.
There was an impulse to call her mother, her best friends, and tell them about what had happened. It was an unmistakable pull toward her phone—wanting to go over every detail with them and provide a complete postmortem.
But this impulse was overwhelmed by a contradictory one—the need to keep it to herself. She wanted to treasure it, and everything it felt like it might be, with no one else’s judgments or questions to ruin any little piece of it.
Last night had almost been her first time. With a worse man, it possibly would have been. She was there, she wanted to, but she needed not to. She loved that he understood that, even as she knew that he couldn’t fully place himself in her shoes.
When she had worried about her lack of experience, especially as she got older, it usually came down to worrying that when her first time came around, it would be embarrassing. She figured she would probably have to tell the man, but she might wait until afterward to do it. With Matteo, however, it didn’t feel like it would be embarrassing. It didn’t feel like anything he would rush her into. But it also didn’t feel like he wouldn’t be perfectly willing and able to be everything she needed him to be when she was ready.
And, with him, maybe that wouldn’t be long.
She let herself feel the excitement of that thought. It was the first time she had thought of the prospect of sex with excitement since she had realized that she was getting past an age—certainly in her profession—where it was normal for it not to have happened yet.
She checked her phone for a message from him before remembering that he didn’t text. Remembering that bothered her more than it should have, though at first she couldn’t put a finger on exactly why. As she walked around her apartment washing her face, brushing her teeth, putting together a haphazard smoothie, and doing all the other little morning routines, she ruminated on it.
It didn’t seem to fit, she decided at last. Everything about last night had been consistently wonderful—as had been the whole of the day. But this little detail felt like something very different from the man she thought she was getting to know—something insistent and uncompromising. It felt like all of the worst stereotypes and assumptions that one might make about a man in his position.
She tried to shake it off, but the thought wouldn’t quite leave, no matter how har
d she tried. It was like the little crack in the wall, that was so small, but threatens the structural integrity of the whole thing.
And, worst of all, it made her want to stop thinking about him.
She checked her schedule—nothing for work today. She had a lunch date with a friend (who was more of a frenemy, all told). She figured she would give herself until half an hour before deciding whether she was actually going to go or not. Canceling at the last minute was one of the few advantages of remaining friends with someone you didn’t actually like.
It was an unusually quiet day. It suited Josie just fine, and she could already see it—lounging around her apartment, thinking about the man she was just beginning to get to know. She wouldn’t be grasping at her phone every few minutes, waiting for him to text. After all, he had already told her that he didn’t text.
And neither would she be waiting for him to call. As much as she wanted him to, she knew that men like that didn’t call the day after. She had heard from her friends who dated them to know. He’d wait a couple days, thinking that gave him some kind of advantage or preserved for him some kind of higher ground. It didn’t, but it also didn’t matter. She would have a pleasant day with the thought of him nonetheless.
She hummed and pranced her way around her apartment. She took care of little housekeeping tasks that she had been putting off. It was just a normal day, but better.
And so she might have spent the rest of the day, if her phone hadn’t chirped from where she had left it on the table.
