by Alexis Angel
“I mean,” Mike continues, “we’re a bit tired of that my-heart-was-broken bullshit, you know? It sure made us a lot of money, with you writing all those songs and whatnot, but I think it’s time you face your demons.”
“Katherine’s not my demon. I haven’t thought of her for ages now,” I lie, even though my heart has just tightened as her name danced on my lips.
Fuck, I dream of her every single night.
Katherine.
The first time I saw her, I was ten.
It felt as if I was hit by a bolt of lightning.
Pretty, smart, and a laugh that grabbed at your fucking soul and squeezed it tight. For eight years, I pined for her. But what could I do?
I was a nobody, and she was the daughter of a tycoon billionaire. Next thing I knew, she was dating some rich British asshole, and they were planning to go away for college together. That shit fucking tormented my eighteen-year old self, let me tell you that.
But I couldn’t let that happen, could I?
Nah, I might’ve been a nerd, but I wasn't a fucking spineless one. So my eighteen-year-old self decided I’d stop them. I mustered enough courage to walk all the way to her house and tell her I loved her.
Thing is, when I got there, there was a limo parked up-front. Her pretentious boyfriend was wearing a suit, and he was down on one knee; even from the distance, I could see an engagement ring glistening in the box he was holding up.
I turned on my heels as fast as I could, and the rest you already know: twelve years of drinking, fucking, and being a badass motherfucker.
Hey, I did alright.
But still…I never stopped thinking of her.
“Are you gonna do this or what?”
“She’s married, and—”
“You don’t fucking know that, do you? It’s been twelve years, for God’s sake! For all we know, she’s turned into a fucking monster, and you should have a harpoon on your hand. Either way, get in there, take a hard look at her, and move on with your life. It’s been too long, man.”
“Fuck, alright,” I mutter, and only then do I realize that my hands are shaking.
What the fuck’s wrong with me? Feeling as if I’m in a daze, I open the limo door and climb outside. The air’s cold, and there’s a slight breeze. I fasten my jacket and cross the road, still barely believing I’m actually doing this.
Inside the Bradford, I ask the portly doorman for Katherine.
“Not supposed to say,” he confides, “but I can’t say no to Alexander Reeves, can I?”
No, you fucking can’t, I think to myself, although all I do is politely thank the guy and take the elevator upstairs.
My heart feels like a jackhammer inside my chest, and even my vision is blurred. Maybe I’m just drunk. I mean, what the fuck—I can’t be nervous over a girl, right?
Stopping in front of her apartment door, I suck in a deep breath and knock.
I stand there for God knows how long, and then I hear soft footsteps coming from inside the apartment. When the door swings back, my heart stops.
There she is.
Katherine.
Katherine
My first instinct is to reach for a mace.
He smells of whiskey, he has an old leather jacket on, and I can see the tattoos peeking from under the jacket’s sleeves. And even though it’s past nine p.m., he still has his sunglasses on.
If it weren’t for the fact that this man—whoever he is—looks like a sex god, I would’ve probably closed the door by now. As it is, my feet are glued to the floor as I mentally take in every detail of his well-built frame.
Chiseled jaw, stylishly disheveled hair, and lips that seem as if they were designed for nothing more than kissing. And the way his shirt hugs his torso, Jesus…I swear I can see the outline of his abs from here.
Keep your mind out of the gutter, I admonish myself, preventing my gaze from going further down.
If above the waist he looks this good, I don’t even wanna start picturing what he’s hiding below his waistline. Without saying a word, the man reaches for his sunglasses and slowly pushes them down the bridge of his nose, peering at me over the rim of the lenses.
I look him straight in the eyes, cock one eyebrow, and place my hands on my hips, waiting for him to say something.
“Kat…?” he asks me, and my knees suddenly grow weak.
That voice…these eyes. No, it can’t be him.
Without even thinking about what I’m doing, I take one step back and shut the door on his face, the sound of it closing like a gunshot. I stand there, in the middle of my apartment, staring at the closed door as if I had just seen a ghost.
“You’re not real. Go away,” I say, the words bubbling up to my lips before my brain can filter them.
No, this can’t be happening.
Alexander Reeves?
In here?
Just exactly how much wine did I have for dinner?
“It’s me, Kat,” I hear his voice from the other side, and my knees start shaking.
Slowly, I reach for the door’s handle and turn it, my heart feeling like a hand-grenade inside my chest. For half-a-second, I almost expect for the corridor to be deserted, and for the whole thing to be a hallucination. But no—the moment the door swings open, there he is.
Alexander Reeves, in the flesh.
“Alex?”
“That’s me,” he smiles, and I think back to the last time I saw him this close.
We were…what? Eighteen?
We were good friends, and then he vanished. Just like that—one day he was there, the next he had vanished off the face of the Earth. I tried calling, I went to his parent’s place, but no one knew where the hell he had gone.
He just packed his things and left, almost as if he had never existed in the first place.
A few years later, and I finally saw him again—except he was on TV, smashing a guitar onstage in front of a crowd large enough to fill a stadium. In case you’re wondering what my reaction was, I think I can still find the hole my jaw made when it dropped to the floor.
I mean, I didn’t even know what to think at the time. I had this image of Alexander as a sweet boy, and next thing I knew, he was this tattooed rockstar, a God towering over common mortals.
But he never called.
He never showed up.
I just figured that, with his newfound fame, that he had forgotten all about me. I never forgot about him, though; even though the years passed, my mind insisted on running circles around those memories of so long ago.
Oh, how I pined for that boy!
But he was too gentle, too kind, and he never made a move. And then he vanished.
I thought I’d never see him again, that that door had closed for good.
But now…here he is.
“You fucking asshole!” I find myself saying and, before I can stop my body from moving, my hand has closed into a fist, and I punch him in the chest.
He doesn’t even move, and I think that all I managed to do was hurt my wrist.
“Ouch,” he says, feigning some pain and rubbing his chest, “what was that for?”
“Sorry. I didn’t think.”
Well, that’s a lame excuse, even for me.
He cocks one eyebrow.
“I mean…you disappeared for twelve years! Not even a text, Alexander. And now you show up just like this! I thought we were friends.”
“We were friends…” he starts, taking one step forward and placing one hand on the door, preventing me from shutting it again. “But you weren’t just a friend to me, Kat. You were more.”
“More?”
Oh my god, is he saying what I think he’s saying?
My mouth’s turning dry, and I can’t peel my eyes away from his.
Jesus, even my lips are parting of their own accord. I feel as if electricity’s crackling under my skin, making my heart beat faster and my mind work slower.
“More,” he nods without taking his eyes from mine.
&nbs
p; Before I know it, he takes another step forward, his body now almost pressed against mine. One second passes, two seconds pass, and then…he starts leaning in, slowly, and I can’t help but part my lips.
Oh, shit!
“No, stop!” I say, remembering myself.
Lowering my voice, I point with my thumb at the couch in the middle of my living room. There, three-year-old Anna is fast sleep, wrapped tight in a mountain of blankets.
Alexander’s eyes follow the direction my thumb is pointing at, his eyes find little Anna asleep on the couch, and then he just stands straight and runs one hand through his sandy hair.
“Oh, man,” he sighs, “I need a fucking drink.”
Alexander
Note to self: murder Chris and Mike when I get back.
I can’t believe they dragged me all the way here just so I had to face the harsh reality: Katherine’s happily married, and she has a daughter.
Oh, man, this is way beyond fucked up.
For a second there, I almost fucking kissed her.
For a second, I almost…believed.
Turning on my heels, I bolt out of her apartment and walk down the corridor in a daze. Without even bothering to say “goodbye,” I make my way toward the elevator and punch the button over-and-over again.
I just want to get out from this fucking nightmare.
“Slow down, Jesus,” I hear Kat say behind me, and I look back at her over my shoulder. She followed me all the way to the elevator, and now she has her arms folded over her chest, tapping one foot against the floor.
Fuck, she looks even more beautiful than I remember. Flawless skin, high cheekbones, and lips of a violent red. Long, straight blonde hair, almost like a sheet made of the most perfect satin.
And her eyes…still the color of a clear blue sky, just like I remember them.
And don’t even get me started on her body. With a tight black dress hugging her curves, she looks like she just walked out of a Victoria’s Secret’s magazine ad.
To say she’s perfect is almost an insult.
“You’re not gonna disappear again, are you?”
Yeah, you better bet that’s what’s going to happen, I think to myself, but I can’t bring myself to say it.
“I…I just need a drink,” I tell her, and the elevator doors swing open right when I say it.
Shaking her head, she takes one step forward and laces her arm in mine, dragging me inside the elevator.
“Let’s go to the bar downstairs.”
Not a trace of hesitation in her voice. She just tells it like it is, leaving me no room to protest.
Ah, what the fuck. I need a drink anyway. Anything to numb the disappointment.
Downstairs, I follow her all the way toward the dimly lit bar, and we take a seat at the counter. The place is deserted, except for a couple on the far-end of the counter. Chet Baker’s playing on the stereo, the mellow sound of his voice adding a final touch to the scene.
“Whiskey, straight,” I tell the bartender, “and make it double.”
“Same here,” Kat says with a quick nod.
“Your daughter’s asleep upstairs, and you’re drinking whiskey?” I ask her, more curious than anything.
Katherine was always the responsible one, and I don’t see that changing.
But you never know.
“My daughter?”
“Yeah, the little girl on your couch.”
“You’ve always been an idiot, you know that?”
She sighs, rubbing her forehead with one hand as she takes her whiskey glass with the other. Downing the whole thing at once, she turns around in her seat to look at me.
“That was Anna. She’s my niece.”
“You’re…niece?”
“My niece,” she repeats patiently. “My sister and her kid are spending the week with me.”
“So…you don’t have children?”
“No.”
“But…you’re married, right?”
“No.”
“No? But—”
“But what? You heard that Philip proposed, I bet…but so what? I said no. We broke up before I went to college, and I never married.”
Holy fucking shit.
Am I hearing this right? Have I been the King of Idiots for twelve years straight?
That has to be a fucking record.
“Say that again.”
“I don’t have any children. I’m not married. And now…” she lowers her voice, still looking straight into my eyes, and smiles seductively.
“Now I want to know why you came all the way here after all this time.”
Shit, shit, shit.
What do I say?
I can’t exactly tell her I’ve been in love with her since I was ten, can I? And that all the fucking songs I wrote were, in one way or the other, inspired by her? And that all of my fucking life has always been about her, the one fucking woman I couldn’t get out of my head?
Oh, man, what’s happening to me?
“So?” She insists. My heart’s thumping so loudly I can barely hear myself think.
Grabbing my whiskey, I do what Kat did and down the whole thing at once, throwing my head back and allowing the whisky to burn its way down my throat.
There, much better.
“I…I don’t know,” I tell her, allowing my gaze to drift from her.
Fucking coward, I think to myself. Just tell her the truth.
“You don’t know?”
“I don’t…” I say, shaking my head as I ask the bartender for another round.
We sit there in silence, my heart still kicking like a motherfucker, and I look around the bar looking for an emergency exit. I’ve never been good at this shit.
Yeah, don’t tell anyone I told you this but…I’ve never told any woman before that I loved her.
I don’t do feelings—I do whiskey shots, and I do marathon sex sessions. No more, no less.
So, you see, I’m kinda lost here.
That’s when I spot the couple at the other side of the bar. They’re talking in a hushed tone, but I can still hear fragments of their conversation.
“Evan, it’s just that…I don’t know,” the woman says, looking at Evan as if he’s made of pure fucking gold.
He has a nice posture, a tailored suit, and looks like a fucking movie star. If he isn’t made of gold, he’s probably the next best thing.
“Emilia, listen to me,” he says, cutting her short with a wave of his hand.
Reaching for her, he grabs her chin and makes her look straight into his eyes.
“I don’t give two fucks about how different we are. All I know is that I love you.”
The way he said it…it was raw.
Pure fucking intent right there. I sit there, just watching as Emilia’s little mouth opens into a smile, and she mouths these three magic words back at her date.
I don’t hear whatever the guy’s response is, but judging by the hasty way they pay their bill and leave, I’d wager it was something along the lines of “Let’s get out of here and fuck each other’s brains outs.”
Beautifully done.
And it was easy.
“Hey.”
Kat’s voice, again. She snaps her fingers in front of my face.
“Earth to Alex. Are you here?”
“I am,” I whisper, turning to her again.
I take a deep breath, allow my gaze to linger on hers, and then I lean in and kiss her.
Just like that.
Simple, easy…and raw.
“I love you,” I say, feeling that burning raw intent inside of me.
Well, shit, no wonder my intent is raw—this is the fucking truth I’m spouting.
“I’ve always loved you, Kat. Ever since I was a kid…but then I thought you were going to get married, and I simply had to go. I couldn’t stay around for that. But I think of you every day. Not a second goes by that I—”
“Hush,” she whispers, a soft smile on her lips as she places her index finger over
my lips.
With that, she leans into me and presses her strawberry lips on mine.
“I think you’ve said it all.”
Katherine
Grabbing him by the hand, I drag him out of the bar.
I feel as if I’m walking on clouds, my feet lighter than I’ve ever felt them. I can’t believe that, after all these years, Alex made his way back to me.
Is this a fairy-tale I’m living in?
I’ve always loved you, his words come back at me, and I can’t help but smile.
Stopping right before the elevator, I turn to look at him and place both my hands on his chest.
“You’ve always been an idiot, Alex,” I purr, my index finger gently going down from his chest to his stomach.
“Is that so?”
“That’s so,” I nod. “Twelve years you’ve been gone, and all that because of your dumb imagination. We were friends for so long, and I was…I was always waiting for you to do something about it. About us.
“But you never did. When Phillip proposed to me, I said no, and we broke up on the spot…all because I couldn’t stop thinking about you.”
“But then I was gone,” he says, his voice tainted with regret.
“You were gone,” I agree, and I allow my index finger to go further down, over his belt and straight to his crotch. Flattening the palm of my hand there, I feel my heart tightening as something long and hard grows against my fingers.
“Let’s not waste a second more, then,” he whispers, leaning in and brushing his lips against my ear.
At the same moment, the elevator doors swing open, and we almost tumble inside it, his large hands now sitting on my hips.
“Where are we going?” He asks me, his eyes brimming with hunger and desire.
“Nowhere,” I merely say, and punch the Hold button on the elevator, forcing him to stop its climb up the Bradford.
“I like the sound of that,” he whispers again, pushing me back against the closed doors.
I gasp as I feel my back against it, and I throw my head back as his hands slide down the side of my body. Gently, his fingertips go around my waist and down the curve of my ass, and he pulls me to him.
