by Heather Gean
“Should it?” I saw in Van’s eyes that he knew Ashley didn’t love me and that except for a piece of government paper I was no more attached to Ashley than any stranger off the street. That could change a lot.
Within a few more guitar riffs my body was directly against Van’s, his hips were pressing into mine, and our noses were only an inch from touching. His body heat transferred all the way down my body. I looked away to relieve some of the intensity from the connection our eyes were making. “Where are you staying tonight?” I asked.
“Wherever I can. I might get a cheap hotel.”
“Well, you are welcome to stay at my place. After all, I can’t let Piper down.”
“Are you saying I’m a sexy guy?” His chuckle vibrated against my chest.
I was feeling braver. “And if I am?”
“I accept the invitation.”
The song seemed to end as quickly as it had begun. Van’s body reluctantly parted from mine. His hands slid from my waist. Something had started on that dance floor, but, unlike the song, it wasn’t over.
~*~
My apartment was completely quiet with the exception of Ringo. I flipped on a light just in time to see him running towards us. His wagging tail was nothing more than a whir as he licked my shoes before sniffing Van’s ankles. “He won’t attack you,” I said. I always felt the need to reassure my guests that Ringo wasn’t as menacing as he first looked.
“It’s cool. I love dogs.” He playfully tousled Ringo’s ears. Ringo lapped his long, pink tongue across Van’s wrist, provoking a laugh. “What’s his name?”
“Ringo Starr.”
“Like the Beatle.”
“Of course,” I said with a smile as I put my things on the table beside the door. I walked over to my stereo and pressed play, filling the room with the sounds of an indie band. It was less for setting the mood and more for eliminating the awkward silence between the two of us. Piper had stayed behind at the bar to wait for the band to finish up their set, but I had armed her with my address and told her to call if she had any trouble getting back to the apartment. Her spontaneity both amazed and frightened me. “Make yourself at home.”
Van meandered into my living room as I headed into the attached kitchen. I had never brought a guy home. I wasn’t exactly sure how to act, especially with Van and me in our current situation. The signals were as mixed as my emotions. I’m not sure why I began to make a pot of coffee; it would have been to sober up except that I wasn’t drunk. Around the time I pressed the start button I realized that Van was leaned against the doorway. I propped my back against the counter, returning his gaze. “What?” I asked self-consciously.
“I’m just marveling at your attempts to avoid me.” He grinned as I emitted a single laugh. I folded my arms over my chest.
“Why would I be avoiding you?”
Van took a few steps into the kitchen, pausing at the refrigerator to look at a picture of me, Liz, and Sasha under a turtle magnet. He straightened it, keeping his eyes on it and off of me. “For the same reasons I avoid you: to keep from doing something I probably shouldn’t, to stop before starting a relationship with someone I could never legally be with, to avoid interfering with our employee/employer relationship.” I smiled into his last reason though I watched him nervously. “The government is notorious for producing a bunch of shit, but you…” He paused with a shake of his head, his tone growing more serious. “I don’t fall for people. I put all of my emotions out on a canvas or into a sculpture or I play guitar really badly, but I don’t put them on people. And maybe it’s nothing, maybe it’s a phase, but don’t we at least owe it to ourselves to find out? Have you ever stopped thinking and just tried living?” He shifted until he was standing in front of me, respectably keeping a foot of distance. “Don’t you want the chance of kissing someone and knowing that they’re dying to do so much more?”
Van ran his hand across my jawbone and laced his fingers into my hair. I exhaled deeply as if I had been holding my breath throughout his whole confession. I was dizzy with confusion and desire. The temptation was stifling. The guy standing directly in front of me with his eyes locked into mine was perhaps the most intriguing, alluring person I had ever seen. “You aren’t going to say anything?” he asked with a half-grin. It only took a batting closed of eyelids and the disappearance of three inches of space to find my lips pressed against his. Within seconds it was as if I had completely surrendered my mouth to him. A mixture of sucking lips and begging tongues and nibbling teeth, our hungry kisses continued to connect us, blurring until it was difficult to tell where his mouth ended and mine began. We only paused to insert especially heavy inhales or exhales, eventually pulling ourselves back into the warmth of each other again.
When the doorbell rang it severed us at the faces. My head was spinning. It took me an especially long twenty seconds to realize that it was Piper. I panicked, rushed out of the kitchen, and smoothed my appearance as I neared the door. I prayed she wouldn’t suspect anything. Through the peep hole, Piper stood with a hand on her hip.
“You’re alone?” I asked as I opened the door. She flashed me a sly smile.
“The walk-in beer storage cooler was enough for me.” She brushed past with a confident bounce in her step. “He was sexy, but that’s as far as it went. I didn’t want to share a couch with him or wake up beside him in the morning with nothing to say.”
“A walk-in cooler? Wasn’t that cold?” I shut the door behind her and followed her into the living room. Ringo appeared from my bedroom to give her a curious glance then disappeared again. “There’s probably some law against that.”
“I hope so.” She crashed onto my couch instantly. I already had a pillow and blanket neatly folded at one end, but she ignored them as she grew lifeless stomach-down on the cushions. “I’m exhausted.”
“I guess you aren’t up for coffee?” She waved me off, seemingly already on her way to being asleep. I was relieved and slunk back into the kitchen.
Van was pouring himself a cup of coffee. He took a sip before turning to face me. “Do you two want any?”
“Piper crashed on the couch, and I’m fine.” I finally took a deep breath and hoped my heart rate would return to normal. I uncertainly crossed my arms over my chest. My lips still tingled from the encounter. I smiled my way into my next statement. “You’re such a tease.”
Van wore an amused expression. “I wasn’t the one who left to answer the door.” His eyes playfully danced across my face. We were standing dangerously close together again.
“We can’t stay in here,” I whispered. I motioned to the living room where Piper was sleeping. A framed, square, open window in the wall above the sink gave a clear view into the kitchen from the living room. I shrugged away from Van’s attempt to nuzzle my face with his.
“Oh, c’mon. She won’t know.” His voice was lower to avoid being heard, but the effect was intoxicating on me.
“Ringo is in my room.” Van gave me a look. “He gets jealous.”
“The bathroom?” he suggested. I cringed and shook my head. “Where else is there?”
After putting his cup of coffee on the counter, Van followed me quietly into my laundry room. I shut the door behind us. It was dark and tiny, only large enough to comfortably hold the washer and dryer. Light spilling in from the small window cast that immortal glow over us. It smelled refreshingly clean like detergent. The small space was intimate. We were hidden from the world, along with our feelings and forbidden advances.
I cracked the window to soften the intensity of the freshness of the room before hopping up onto the washing machine. Van stood with his back against the opposite wall but was still within reach of me. I nudged his thigh with my shoe, provoking a smile. He propped my foot against his leg and held my ankle as he slid off my shoe and let it thud to the linoleum floor. The soft, deliberateness of his motions gave me chills. He repeated the same, slow process with the other shoe, all the while keeping his eyes teasingly tracing acros
s my face. Sitting atop the washing machine had never seemed so comfortable.
Van stepped up in front of me with my legs on either side of his hips, snaking his arms up the sides of my thighs and around my waist before gently pressing a kiss into my neck. My skin seemed to melt under the warmth of his lips. I guided his lips to mine and attempted to finish what we had started in the kitchen, but the need was insatiable. He brought his hands to my face, pressing trails of kisses into my cheeks, across my forehead, down to the tip of my nose, before landing back at my mouth. Instead of finishing something, we started something else. I found myself unbuttoning Van’s shirt in the process, sliding it off of him with ease. His T-shirt easily followed suit, revealing tattoos inked across his chest: a heart and daggers from what I could tell. I hesitantly lined the edges of it with my fingers, asking his permission with my eyes. A growing pile of shoes and clothes was accumulating on the floor of the laundry room. He put the warm tips of his fingers gingerly around one of the thin straps of my camisole, sliding it only a few inches to the side before returning his hands uncertainly to my waist. My fingers traced down the muscles of chest and stomach, which weren’t obviously visible unless exaggerated in the shadows of a streetlight, and stopped at the top of his jeans. He broke our kiss with a smile. “What are you doing?” I knew what the question meant: how far was I willing to go, trying to go? I tried not to think too hard.
“I’m living.”
Chapter 13
I looked at the outdated carpet in the kitchen of the enormous house and wondered if that was why he had killed himself. I know that it was a ridiculous thing to think, the King of Rock ‘n Roll killing himself over ugly carpet in one room of his gorgeous home, but aside from that everything seemed perfect. I wondered if my life would come to such an end and be put on display considering I married Ashley Schroeder. Unlikely, I hoped, but just in case I would make sure that my kitchen didn’t have ugly flooring.
Piper squealed. “I fucking love Elvis!” she exclaimed. Her loud explicative caught the attention of others in the group, but this didn’t curb her enthusiasm. “This place is incredible. What’s it called again?”
“Graceland,” I said with a laugh.
“Graceland,” she repeated with a dreamy sigh. “When you and Ashley get hitched you should name your mansion.” The first name that came to mind was Hell, but that didn’t seem appropriate to put on a mailbox.
I moved forward with the tour group, and as we came to a stop in the next room Van bumped into my back. His gesture was intentional, and his fingers clasped mine briefly before he put distance between us. The tips of my fingers tingled with a secret. I glanced at Piper, who hadn’t noticed anything, and around at the other tourists in khakis and tall socks who were all staring at a chandelier. My secret was safe. In one sense, the secret I had with Van was exciting. It was only for us; it was special. In the more logical sense, it bothered me to keep it. However, when it danced across my fingers it was anything but a bother. I smiled in spite of myself.
The tour seemed nearly over before it started. Outside, where the early afternoon sun was already melting my face, I paused with my elbows on the white fence that hemmed in the horses. I’m pretty sure by that point they were merely offspring of Elvis’ actual horses, but they were pretty nonetheless. From a few feet away, Van called my name. He was armed with his camera and a goofy grin. I smiled more at him than at the camera, and he snapped a picture before I could protest. He quickly meandered away after the group. Piper dramatically linked her arm in mine and ushered me along with the others, yapping on about desperately wanting to reincarnate Elvis Presley.
After the tour, Piper bought so much Elvis memorabilia that it was necessary to stop by my apartment to drop it off before we went out for lunch. She was literally in love, and it was perhaps the funniest thing I had ever seen. As we headed up the sidewalk, each of us carrying two bags, I saw Liz pounding on my door. “Looking for me?” She spun around and threw her hands up in the air, one of which was holding a phone.
“Why aren’t you answering your phone?” Her irritation was quickly replaced by confusion over the multiple Graceland bags and then overtaken by intrigue at the sight of Van. Her wide eyed expression returned to me with a raised eyebrow.
“It died,” I said. This wasn’t true. I had turned it off earlier that morning. Ashley had tried calling me, and then his secretary had left me a message that I needed to get back to her, and then Monica Radella had sent me two threatening messages asking that I call her. Since all of those things were not of high importance to me and would probably put a huge kink in the smoothness of my day, I had abandoned it in a desk drawer. All of this was too much to explain on the sidewalk.
“Right… What’s with the…?” She motioned to the bags.
Piper quickly jumped in. “Elvis fucking Presley was the greatest man ever to live,” she said, “and if you have a problem with that then you’ll have to answer to my body guard.” Piper motioned to Van with a toss of her fedora-covered head. She winked one of her animated eyes at Liz. “I’m Piper McMahon.”
The glimmer in Liz’s eyes reflected the realization that she had finally met someone with as much of a whirlwind personality as she had. It was as if she had met her doppelganger and was unsure of how to react. She flashed Piper one of her fabulous smiles. “I’m Liz Lattemore.” As she took the bags from my hands so I could unlock the apartment door, she eyed Van. “You must be the pool boy.” I purposely elbowed her as I turned the key in the lock.
An uncertain grin spread across Van’s face. “I’m Van Sherman, and I’m not sure what you mean.”
“If you plan to keep your sanity, ignore everything Liz says if it doesn’t involve fashion tips,” I joked. We filed into the apartment. “What was so important that you had to come bang on my door?”
Liz nearly jumped as she remembered. “According to our dearest Sasha, our presence at her house is required as soon as possible because she needs to perform an exorcism on you or something.”
“What?”
She waved it away with her hand. “Eh, you know Sasha. I dunno exactly. Something about horoscopes and organic cleansing. And she mentioned that Samson is grilling out tonight as a bribe to get us there. You should all come. It’ll be a party.”
“I haven’t heard anything as deliciously insane since I was excommunicated from the Catholic Church,” Piper said with a giant grin on her face. She pulled a pair of Elvis sunglasses out of a bag and put them on. They nearly slid off the tip of her nose.
“Let me feed Ringo and then we can go grab some lunch,” I said. I headed into the kitchen and retrieved the dog food from the cabinet. When Ringo heard the squeak of the cabinet door he came running from my bedroom and slid into the kitchen. Liz swung around the doorway directly after him. I scooped a few cups of kibble into his bowl.
“What’s he doing here?” Liz asked quietly. I listened to make sure Piper was talking Van’s ear off in the living room before I responded.
“It was Artists’ Weekend at the museum. We actually need to stop by after lunch and before we go to Sasha’s and--”
“He’s cute, don’t get me wrong, but are you sure you want to give up millions of dollars for him?” Liz asked. I put the bag of dog food back into the cabinet.
“We… he’s… I shouldn’t have to explain it to you. He makes me insanely happy. When did that stop being good enough?”
“Hey, hey,” she defended, “all I’m asking is that you make sure you know what you’re doing.”
I smiled at her. “I’m living.”
Liz raised an eyebrow at me. “You dirty thing you.”
“What?” I asked innocently.
She waggled a finger at me. “I know that look. I can’t believe you! You’re messing around with your fiancé’s best friend?” She sounded more proud than accusing and paired it with surprised laughter.
“Shhh!” I reprimanded her for having said that so loudly, but Van and Piper’s conversation
was still going along uninterrupted.
“God, I’m so jealous,” she said. We shared a girlish giggle that could only accompany the confidence between friends of a scandalous secret.
The two of us reentered the living room with masked grins. Piper had already paired a long Elvis shirt with bunchy fabric down the seams with the black leggings from her previous outfit. The black heels and fedora whimsically complemented the rhinestones on her shirt. She was excellent at spicing up a moment. “I think I’m ready for lunch, a lad, and a lager. All in favor say aye!”
~*~
I was lying on my back in Sasha’s backyard, surrounded by the smells of grass and steaks on the grill. It was the time of afternoon when nothing was left of the sun but a splash of orangey red light on one end of the sky, which faded into a pinkish purple before it disappeared into dark blue. It was my favorite time of day in the summer, when the afternoon met the night, when the air outside would neither melt nor chill your skin. Two opposites blended together to create a perfect balance. Even nature understood that concept.
“You’re going to get chiggers,” Liz said to me. I stuck my tongue out at her as she ruined my perfect moment. She offered me a hand and pulled me to my feet. I brushed the stray blades of grass off of me. “Sasha is ready to begin oral cleansing.”
“Oral cleansing?” Samson asked as he appeared from the side of the house, his spatula in hand. His male ears had instantly perked up to the sexual-sounding phrase.
“Aura cleansing,” Sasha corrected from the porch. Her legs dangled off the edge of it through the old railings. Samson grinned as he sauntered back up to the grill.
“You wanna cleanse my aura?” he asked teasingly. Sasha removed her flip-flop and threw it at him. His long hair flew about his head as he hopped out of the way. “She knows I like it rough.”
Samson was one of Sasha’s many housemates, and while their relationship was reportedly platonic, I was almost certain that Samson would love to date her if he had the chance. I was also relatively certain that, despite knowing my plight, Sasha had the noble intention of getting married legally. Watching them, I realized how ludicrous it was to hold out for some anonymous match when a perfectly viable option was standing right in front of me. It went against human nature, and since Sasha was all about nature it surprised me that she hadn’t come to that conclusion on her own.
