by Stacy Travis
“Then we have to fix that. I want you to know.”
“I want me to know too.”
My mind scrambled to come up with a plan to get her onto my path. Gone were the scenes I had to shoot in the morning. My only thoughts revolved around when we could see each other in person for as long as it took to convince her to take a chance on me. “Can you come to New York? Two weeks from now? I’ll be there for a week after we wrap the movie. Can you take time off?”
Her eyes looked glassy and tired, but she nodded. “If that’s when you’re free, I’ll try to work that out. But only if you have time to spend with me while I’m there. I only want to do this if we can really be together.”
“I’m all yours, I promise. I’ll bite the head off anyone who suggests I lift a finger unless it’s to bring you breakfast in bed.”
“You don’t have to wait on me. You have to be with me. You have to get to know me.”
The weight that had been sitting on my chest, compressing my breathing and making me miserable for weeks, seemed to shift because for once, I saw a way forward. She lifted the weight away, and I felt only relief.
One week. One week to get her to fall so deeply in love with me that she would never want to leave.
Chapter Twenty-Two
New York City - Two weeks later
Nikki
I rushed out of Eataly with my recycled canvas bag over my shoulder and a paper cup of coffee in my hand. I had Earth guilt for not bringing a reusable cup, but it was not the kind of day that had started with the organized sense of planning and purpose that would have meant knowing I would need a double espresso at three in the afternoon—I’d hopped off the redeye at the crack of dawn.
Leaning down to slurp the hot coffee through the small lid hole, I acknowledged that the cup was just a manifestation of my entire day, which had been a whirlwind of anticipation as I wrapped up my half day of work and met Chris at his apartment.
The door to the upscale grocery closed behind me with a vacuum of air that made my skirt flutter behind me, but not in a good way. Anyone following me out the door would have gotten a nice show of the thong that sliced between my butt cheeks in a way that was not altogether comfortable. I tried to believe no one was behind me and chose not to confirm or deny it by looking back. There was no point.
Walking down Fifth Avenue in the Flatiron District, I marveled at how I’d just spent seventy-three dollars on two panini sandwiches, two wedges of French cheese, a basket of raspberries, and a package of Italian flatbread. Surely, there were grocery stores in New York that charged less money—and had fewer tourists—than the gourmet market once owned by Mario Batali, celebrity chef who’d given up his stake in his restaurant empire after sexual misconduct allegations derailed his career.
“You have to see it. Just the way everything’s displayed… it’s a work of art,” Chris had told me that morning, talking about the market as if it housed the crown jewels. I’d agreed to venture over there after a morning spent at the Met, where I’d looked at the permanent collection for three hours before making my way through Central Park to Eataly in Midtown.
It wasn’t that I wasn’t impressed by the rows of perfect produce, the polished plums displayed by the dozen in wooden crates, or the tiny boxes of perfect berries, which looked like they’d been plucked that morning and driven over in a bike basket from a country farm stand. The cheese display was especially entrancing, rivaling anything I’d ever seen in France and containing cheeses that were hard and semi-soft, ripe, blue, and flecked with herbs, all procured from sheep, goats, and cows of the best breeding. I didn’t dare ask to sample any of them, but I did look carefully at each one, considering what I knew about cheese—not much—and price—anything over five dollars seemed expensive.
“Are you looking for something in particular?” Eataly’s cheesemonger asked. His pale-green eyes looked clairvoyant, as if he was about to tell me about the next ten years of my life after divining my cheese preferences.
He wore a starched white chef’s apron over a faded blue chambray shirt, and his friendly smile made me feel like I belonged there and like I knew what I was looking for as I considered cheese priced at over twenty bucks a pound. “I know I like brie,” I said, aware that I sounded like I had only the most basic cheese knowledge. “And I remember having something called Comté that was good.”
Rather than looking down his nose at me, the man nodded and leaned over the cheese display, picking up a couple different slabs cut from wheels of cheese before carefully slicing the thinnest wafer from the side of one. “This is a thirty-six-month-old Comté. See what you think,” he said, handing me the tiny slice of cheese on a slip of parchment paper.
Even from the small bite, I could taste how delicious it was. “Great. I’ll take that.”
The cheese guy laughed. “You’ve only tried one. I’ve got half a dozen variations you might want to taste.” Before I could object, he handed me another tiny slice.
According to my indelicate palate, it was equally good. I nodded, unsure whether to choose that one or the first, and saw that he was handing me a third. That one tasted a little different, almost acrid and definitely not as good as the other two. I had no idea what that meant in regard to the cheese-making process, but something had gone terribly wrong, as far as I was concerned.
“Okay, that’s not my favorite.”
“See, you do know what you like. That’s why we try them. Care for another one?” He reached for another buttery slab of cheese then sliced it while I debated whether or not to eat my next six meals at the cheese counter. “This one has a little more of a nutty taste.” He handed it to me and waited while I let the flavors gather on my tongue.
“I can see that. I never really thought of cheese as tasting nutty, but I like this one. And I’m officially confused. You probably need to choose for me.” Two other customers stood to the sides of me, but he seemed focused only on the cheese-education course he was conducting for me.
“You’re getting overloaded. Here, this will cleanse your palate,” he said, handing me a slice of cucumber in a small paper cup.
I munched on that and decided on a different approach. There were easily over a hundred different cheeses in the case, and at the rate I was going, I wouldn’t have enough of an appetite left to actually enjoy whatever cheese I ended up buying.
“How about a piece of the first one I tried and a piece of the last one?” I figured I couldn’t go wrong with those.
But the cheese guy didn’t seem satisfied. “You mentioned brie before…”
“That was just a thought. These are good, though.”
“Don’t rush yourself. I have a delicious washed-rind cheese you might like and a smooth sheep’s milk cheese that falls somewhere between a creamy brie and the Comté.”
My head felt stuffed with information. I didn’t know nearly enough about cheese to be having such a detailed conversation. I was only one small step beyond basic cheddar. That was when I looked down into the case and noticed the last Comté I tried was over thirty dollars a pound. Even a tiny slice would have cost me a fortune.
“I don’t know, whatever you think is good,” I said. I looked around at the artfully stacked packages of flatbread and water crackers, trying to distract myself with another set of choices. I reached for a package of artisan cracker crisps while the cheese guy wrestled with what combination of cheeses to send home with me.
“Let’s go with a Brillat-Savarin to hit your brie craving. It’s so creamy, you’ll need to keep it refrigerated until right before you eat it, or it will melt. I’ll pack it in a cooler bag for you. And the last Comté. Come back tomorrow and let me know what you think, and we can add to your repertoire.”
I nodded, willing to do whatever he told me, partly so he could move on and help the other customers, who were still watching what was starting to feel like a cheese courtship between us. Cradling the cellophane-wrapped crackers, I took a step back from the counter, encouraging them to m
ove up and take their turns.
“Enjoy!” the cheesemonger said, handing me two paper-wrapped jewels and an insulated paper bag to preserve them until I could get them into the fridge. I thanked him and browsed around the rest of the store, my faith in humanity ratcheted up a notch.
A few minutes later, with the wind at my back and coffee half empty, I walked up Fifth, trying to determine the time just by looking at the angle of the sun. I guessed it was close to four.
Chris had been in meetings for much of the day. I’d arrived early that morning, after a Thursday-night redeye flight. My boss had agreed to give me a full week off, provided that I put in a half day of work in the firm’s New York office each day.
It was only a week, and we both had to work for part of each day, but it would be our official dry run as a real couple living in the same city, kissing each other goodbye each morning after wake-up sex and coffee over a shared newspaper. It would be free afternoons and every night together, putting in the real work of getting to know each other in the same time zone, in the same city, in the same apartment.
And what an apartment it was.
I should have anticipated as much after seeing his beach house in Antibes, which had five bedrooms, a gym, and a sprawling chef’s kitchen, not to mention a stunning yard with a pool on a huge swath of oceanfront. His apartment was the New York equivalent.
Located in the penthouse of a classic six with views of the Hudson River and the southern tip of Manhattan, it had sweeping views, two terraces, and a keypad elevator that took us from the building’s lobby straight into the foyer. He told me he’d bought the place nine years earlier, which meant he had been all of twenty-seven when he’d spent gazillions on the piece of prime real estate.
He hadn’t furnished it himself—not that he couldn’t. Chris had really good taste. But I knew he had zero hours in the day for anything that didn’t involve some aspect of work.
Even if he hadn’t told me as much, I would have guessed by the fact that every design detail had been thoughtfully executed, including tall draperies framing the windows, which soared to a twelve-foot ceiling, and matching pillows on perfectly overstuffed couches that looked like no one had ever sat on them. It wasn’t that I didn’t think he had an interest in the aesthetics of his home, but I knew he just didn’t have the time to browse in fabric stores or sit on various cushions to decide on the amount of fill he liked. His needs had been well anticipated by the same sort of team of invisible elves that maintained his home in France and ran the parts of his life he didn’t have time for when he was working, which was pretty much all the time.
His dining room had a twelve-foot reclaimed-barnwood table and chairs that looked like he could have bought them in France, if he was the kind of person who had idle time to look at furniture in France. I knew he wasn’t, and he rarely had idle time at all, so I correctly surmised he’d given an interior decorator his credit card and a deadline, and everything had happened from there.
Nevertheless, the end product he’d obviously agreed upon was stunning, especially with the early-morning sun streaming in through the east-facing windows. That was already my favorite time in the apartment, and it had little to do with the Nespresso coffee maker in the kitchen—it took the large pods, so I could make myself a generous cup of coffee on my first day there as I battled exhaustion after my redeye flight.
The one thing that struck me as odd was the lack of anything personal. He had a couple of lithographs on the wall from brand-name artists who regularly showed their work at the Gagosian Gallery. It wouldn’t take much art knowledge to spend a fortune on a few well-regarded pieces that would look perfect on the soaring walls of his apartment, and I felt fairly certain Chris had said yes without looking then nodded appreciatively when the art arrived.
Aside from the lithos, his apartment was devoid of knickknacks or even daily clutter. I saw no magazines, collectibles from his travels, or framed photos of family or vacations. Actually, there was one. It was a painting of me in a cerulean blue dress that I wore when we went to his movie premiere in Cannes. He’d asked his friend Marguerite to paint it, and there was no mistaking the expression on my face—I was staring out the window at Chris, and I was completely smitten.
He’d brought it to me when he met me on my flight back to LA, and I’d insisted he keep it. The idea of a painting of myself on my wall made me uncomfortable. But he’d never mentioned that he had it up in his apartment. Seeing the personal memento of our time in France made me happy.
I didn’t mean to say his apartment lacked warmth. It lacked Chris. I knew he lived there, yet there was no real evidence of who he was. In some ways, I chalked that up to him being a guy with no interest in trivial things. He wouldn’t think to hang baseball hats on nails on his bedroom wall as decoration. He would have put them on a shelf or in a box made especially for storing baseball hats.
The apartment couldn’t have been more beautiful, but it also made me a little sad.
I’d spent time in New York before, so I didn’t feel as if I needed to run all over to see touristy spots. If we spent every free moment on those overstuffed couches, I would be perfectly happy. The point was to connect. And talk. And whatever that led to. But then talk. Because the point was to get to know each other.
Chris was already back when the elevator deposited me in his entryway. “I don’t think I’ll ever not think this is cool,” I said as the elevator doors closed behind me. “You have a direct elevator to your living room.”
“That’s why the keypad entry. I don’t necessarily want my neighbors showing up in my entryway when I’m walking around in a towel.”
“I get that. But can you walk around in a towel now, please?”
He laughed. “I will do whatever you ask me to do this week.” He had his shirtsleeves rolled up, and he was squeezing limes into two glasses for some sort of craft cocktail. Joni Mitchell was playing out of the surround-sound speakers.
“You like Joni Mitchell?”
“I love Joni Mitchell. And Janis Joplin. And Janet Jackson. Pretty much any female artist whose name begins with J.”
“I don’t know if you’re kidding.”
He raised an eyebrow. “But maybe by the end of the week, you will.”
I loved his acquiescence in indulging my getting-to-know-each-other week together. I was also aware of the limitations—we had one week. By my own design, it was supposed to give us more solid ground on which to base a relationship, especially if it would continue to be mostly long distance. I still wasn’t sure how I felt about the distance part.
What I did know was that the towel issue needed urgent attention.
“Okay. I’m asking you to be in a towel.”
“Pre- or post-shower?”
“Hmmm… such good choices.” I walked to where he stood in the kitchen and saw that he’d put together a crudité plate with a small dish of hummus and a bowl of olives. “I have just the decadent cheese to compliment this gorgeousness. But I’m gonna withhold it until I see the towel.”
“Follow me,” he said, beckoning me to a cupboard in the hallway. He opened it, revealing a stack of thick Turkish cotton towels. “Any one in particular strike your fancy?” They were all fluffy and soft, and they were all off-white and looked brand new.
I pulled two towels from the stack and pushed him toward the giant bathroom attached to his even more giant bedroom.
“Not so fast,” he said, taking the towels from my hands and tossing them onto a barnwood console table against the wall. Then he grabbed both of my hands, pinned them to my sides, and walked me slowly backward toward the bed.
“Not interested in the towels?” I asked.
His dark eyes locked on mine, and he shook his head. When we got closer to the bed, Chris scooped me up in his arms and laid me down on the downy duvet. He crawled on top of me and straddled my legs, effectively pinning them. “No towels.”
“What, then?” My head was resting on a nice medium-loft feather pillo
w, and I was looking up at the exceedingly gorgeous face of Chris Conley. Aesthetically, my life felt complete.
“Oh, so many ways I want to have you,” he said, looking smug. His eyes roamed my body as if he was deciding where to begin. I started to push myself up to meet him, but he gently held me down, shaking his head. “No.” He leaned forward, lifted my hands over my head, and held them there with one hand.
I obeyed because I trusted him. He’d given me reason to put all of my faith in him and surrender, so I did.
And because it was hot to have him tell me what to do.
His gaze was hazy as his eyes took a long, slow journey from my eyes to my lips and over my body beneath him. He blinked lazily and met my eyes again. “You are so goddamn beautiful. Every part of you. I want you to know that I spend every waking hour thinking about you.”
“Are you for real?” I asked, dazed by his words and my intense longing for contact.
He nodded but didn’t give me what I needed, instead keeping his grip on my hands so I couldn’t touch him. I was effectively immobilized, and lying there, fixed on the depth of his dark eyes, I felt the want growing the longer I went without satisfying the need to touch him.
With his free hand, he began tracing the contours of my body, over my hip and along my waist, under the swell of my breast. Every nerve ending fired at his touch. The heat of his hand made my skin blaze.
“So, so beautiful. I missed your sexy body. And your gorgeous face.” He edged the bottom of my shirt higher and ran his fingers over the skin of my abdomen. I arched my back in response to the feel of his hand on me, incapable of lying still.
Using the one hand, he dragged the shirt up my torso and over my head, still holding fast to my wrists. Then he wrapped the shirt around my wrists to secure them and brought both hands through my hair at my temples. He fanned my hair out on the pillow, drew it up and away from my neck, and bent to leave a row of wet kisses from my ear to my throat.
