by Sotia Lazu
“This is all still about Mike, isn’t it?”
The wine was stronger than Bella thought. Her head throbbed, and Cassandra’s eyes swam with stars.
Bella brought a hand to her head. “I shouldn’t drink on a empty stomach.”
“I'll have something brought to us, and then we’ll set about building a new career for Ana Matthews.” Cassandra rubbed her hands together, and Bella’s vision focused again. Cassandra’s excitement reminded Bella of a puppy’s.
Overexcited puppies are unpredictable.
Such a weird thought.
With her head a bit clearer, Bella said, “I wanted to talk to you about changing my name. I go by Bella now.”
“Oh, no. That sounds so... common. You’re Ana. Yes, I think we’ll even drop your last name. Plus, a comeback is easier than a reinvention. I can sell that. We’ll start recording on Monday. I have to make sure you’ve still got it, but I have faith in you. I could book you on a tour. Nothing big. Opening for Justin. He’s making a comeback too. His fifth.”
Cassandra droned on, but Bella only registered parts of her grand plans. She tried to make sense of Cassandra’s eagerness to help her. Was the woman that desperate for a client, or did she see something in Bella that Bella herself couldn’t? Bella didn’t dare hope it was the latter, though Cassandra had made good on all her promises last time they worked together.
Bella had been one of her first clients. Maybe Cassandra liked the challenge of picking up where they left off—and under harder circumstances. Or she wanted to take revenge for Bella leaving her high and dry back then. No. She sounded committed to making things work. She wouldn’t be holding a grudge over something so stupid and after this long.
“I’ll work for my standard commission, of course. Oh, it will be so much fun working with you again,” Cassandra said. “You’ll forget all about Mike in no time.”
Twice.
Huh?
It took Bella a heartbeat to catch up with her subconscious. Cassandra had mentioned Mike by name. Twice.
“You know my ex-husband?” Bella asked.
“I wasn’t hiding under a rock. I know about his restaurant chain. You landed a good one.” Cassandra winked. “Too bad he couldn’t keep it in his pants, but it’s his loss, right?” She tilted her head toward Bella’s glass. “You don't like the wine?”
Bella gulped down the contents of her glass and held it out to Cassandra. “I think I need another taste.” And the years of her marriage wiped from her memory.
Chapter Eleven
Derek slapped his hand on the bench. “Mike. Focus. I’m trying to be understanding here—we’ve all dealt with heartache—but you’re dropping the ball.”
“I’ve got it.” A week without feeling Ana’s flesh against his should have helped Mike forget her, but it only made the ache deeper. Not seeing her, not being with her, felt wrong. Like his life wasn’t supposed to be this way. Like every night without her carved a fresh tear in his heart and led him more astray.
“Like hell, you do,” Grant yelled in his face. He was usually so easy going and eager to help that his outburst threw Mike for a loop.
“What did you say to me?”
“I said you ain’t got shit. This woman’s allergic to nuts, and you put crushed walnuts in her salad. The fuck’s wrong with you?”
Ana. Not-Ana. The lack of Ana was all that was wrong with Mike’s life, and it made his pulse race and throb in his temples. “Watch your fucking mouth.” It was all he could say to Grant. Not like he had a logical argument for why his focus and his cooking had gone to hell in the days since he last saw her.
“Cut it out. People can hear.” Derek snapped his fingers at them.
“Whatever. He’s a liability”—Grant indicated Mike with his thumb—“but it won’t be me dealing with the lawsuits if he keeps it up.” He turned to his workstation, shaking his head in disgust.
Mike ought to redo the fucking salad without fucking walnuts and keep his fucking mouth shut, but he fucking couldn’t. “Yeah, you heard your master. Tuck tail and run away, like the little bitch you are,” he said.
Derek rounded the pass and wedged himself between Mike and a seriously pissed-off Grant. “Grant, you take over the kitchen. Mike, with me.” Derek pulled Mike out the back by his sleeve, and slammed him against the outer before the door closed behind them. “Get your act together. I can’t keep covering for you.”
“Didn’t ask you to.” Mike’s inner voice hollered for him to stand down, accept he’d been acting like an asshole, and ask Derek for time off, but if he didn’t have his job, he had nothing. Cooking was the only thing that took his mind off Ana, however temporarily. If Derek took it away, Mike would be left staring at his walls, wallowing over could-have-beens… instead of doing so in the restaurant kitchen.
Derek leaned close and spoke slowly. “This is my business, Mike. You’re like a brother to me, and family comes first, but I’m still one installment away from paying off the restaurant, and I’m not gonna let you screw us both over because you didn’t get the girl. Sometimes you don’t get the girl, and sometimes the girl is a bitch.”
Mike swung at him. He’d never hurt Derek before, and he didn’t realize when he raised his fist, but a second later, his best friend since childhood was on his ass, looking up at him with a mix of fury and pity.
“You hit me,” Derek said.
“You shouldn’t have called her a bitch.” Mike held out his hand.
Derek took it and climbed to his feet. “I shouldn’t have. I just hate what this is doing to you. Stay home a couple days. Get drunk, punch a wall or ten, and snap out of it. Grant can hold the fort till you’re back, or I’ll find someone else for a while. You can go back to managing.” He chuckled. “Where you can’t poison anyone.”
Mike gave a half-hearted smile. “Two days. Then I’m back in the kitchen.”
“You get back to normal, the kitchen is yours till Nicholas is back on his feet.”
Mike nodded. “Sorry for that.” He pointed at Derek’s cheek.
“Yeah. I’ll take it out of your paycheck. Pray Amanda doesn’t come after you, for messing with perfection.”
* * * *
Mike jumped in the shower. The water was near scalding, the way he liked it. Anything cooler wouldn’t rid him of the kitchen smells—cooked oil and garlic and spices and everything he fried or seared or let simmer throughout his shift—that soaked his body and seemed lodged inside his nostrils.
Ana said she loved how uniquely his the combined scents were.
Thinking of her had an instant effect on his body. He closed his eyes and leaned against the fogged glass. He ached with need for her, but his touch would have to suffice. He closed his hand around the base of his cock and squeezed. He dragged up his fist and slid it back down, twisting his wrist. Water wasn’t the best lubricant, but he didn’t shut it off, relishing the heat on his chest and arms as much as he did the pressure on his shaft.
He tugged at himself again, recalling Ana’s face when she went down on him at the club restroom, heavily made-up eyes turned up at him, her mouth stretched around his girth.
He pulled harder.
The next time, at his place, he’d buried his face between her thighs. He could taste her now, as he stroked faster. He thrust his hips against his hold, barely mindful of the slippery floor of the shower stall. All he cared about was coming, but it seemed just out of his grasp without Ana. He redoubled his efforts, unwilling to accept her absence affected something he’d excelled at since his early teen years.
What finally triggered his release was the memory of her on his couch, smiling that thousand-watt smile at him. The rare one, of pure joy, which held no trace of a hidden sorrow.
Mike opened his eyes, to watch his cum spray the glass in strings. The water was going cold. His insides matched it.
He needed Ana.
Chapter Twelve
“That guy is totally checking you out.” Cassandra nudged Bella with her
elbow and raised her glass to the handsome stranger at the other end of the bar. “You have to unwind once in a while.” She’d taken it upon herself to fix Bella’s love life, but they’d had this conversation at least ten times in the three weeks Bella had been back in the studio.
It grated on Bella’s nerves. “I’m fine. I’m not looking for a man,” Bella said through clenched teeth. She gave the man a polite smile and turned away, hoping it was enough to convey her lack of interest. When she glanced his way again, his appraising stare made her feel exposed in her shiny, low-cut top. She felt like letting him know she wore pants beneath that. This time she shook her head before giving him her back.
San Francisco had kept its timeless appearance, but most bars now were well lit and sterile and served alcohol-free concoctions and bio-something-or-others, that were meant to prolong life but made Bella feel ancient. The bar across the street from the recording studio had character. The lighting was low, the music was loud and from before her time, and the patrons belonged to a decade she was more familiar with.
Cassandra smiled at the man over Bella’s shoulder. “Come on. He’s the millionth guy you turn down. One of them has to be your type.”
“I appreciate your concern, but last time I listened to you and jumped a guy, I ended up here.” Bella softened the words with a small laugh, but Cassandra winced.
“I didn’t tell you to marry the guy. Any guy. Certainly not this one.” She indicated Bella’s would-be suitor with a subtle tilt of her head. “They’re all backstabbing assholes in the end. That’s why you take what you need from them and run.”
Bella wanted to ask if that was what Cassandra did and how it felt being single at fifty, but she took a sip of her white wine instead. A tiny, dark, petty part of her was glad Cassandra was alone too. Guilt clawed up her throat, and Bella drowned it with another swig of her wine. Other than her ill-advised suggestion years ago, Cassandra was the only one Bella knew without a direct link to Mike, and their nightly girls-drink after recording was a soothing new constant in Bella’s life.
Bella rubbed her naked ring finger. “If we’re ever going to finish this album, I don’t want any distractions.”
And she felt dirty at the thought of a man other than Mike touching her. Ironic, considering he’d probably taken things up with his young mistress. He hadn’t called in a week.
It might have something to do with her changing her number, when she moved out of their apartment and into a loft closer to the studio, and warning everyone she knew against giving him the new one.
Fucking Mike, always on her mind. Maybe she should give this guy a chance. She pretended to check her phone, and glanced at him through her eyelashes. Dark hair and eyes. Wide shoulders. Strong jaw. Nice smile. He cradled his drink in palms almost as large as Mike’s.
But he wasn’t Mike.
“I’m tired,” she told Cassandra. “Think I’ll go home.” She stood and reached for her wristlet.
Cassandra frowned. Her midnight-blue eyes darkened to black, and her mouth twisted for a second, before settling into a sad smile. “You okay to walk?”
“It’s not that far, and I’m not the one who’s drunk half a bottle.” Bella gave her a quick hug and walked out, memories weighing down her feet. She hadn’t just lost Mike, but her sense of being. Wiping him from her life left her avoiding those closest to her. She didn’t call her parents, and even Angie had stopped trying to see her after that lunch.
Mike haunted her favorite everything, and Bella had to relearn to exist without him. Were things even a fraction this hard for him? Did he ever lie awake at night, hating himself for fucking up?
God, she wished—
No. Dreaming of him wouldn’t help when she was finding her balance.
But maybe one last night…
Why would it hurt?
He was inconsequential to her now, but he’d be a respite from her loneliness. She yearned to feel whole again. Safe. Loved. Like she belonged.
Seeing the face she loved so devastatingly and those eyes that radiated love before they became another reminder of his deception. Feeling his rough palms, the calloused fingers mapping her skin. Opening herself to him. Having his weight on top of her, pressing her to the mattress as his heat reached her core.
Bella wanted it all, just one more time.
She was on the right track, finally. Pulling her life into shape, and shifting her focus away from Mike and toward building a career. Dreaming of the past—a different past, where she was aware of what came next, instead of giving in to the whirlwind of emotion—posed no threat to her now. She wanted one time. One last breath of him. One more taste, to tide her over.
She pushed her keycard down the slot by her door and let herself into the place she now called home, that felt anything but. The new furniture was supposed to signal a fresh start, it but was too modern, too strange… too not her. Glass and chrome and a tiny kitchen fit only for boiling pasta for one and reheating TV dinners—which oddly survived as an institution through the years.
Mike had no place in here.
Bella crossed the open floor space to her bed and flopped on the mattress. Not too hard, not too soft. Perfect and yet not hers. Her place felt no more familiar than a hotel room. Her clock blinked on the nightstand, bathing the ugly small statue that stood in front of it in an eerie red glow. She’d taken the figure of the little Aztec god with her as a joke. A mock-tribute to the good-luck powers Angie thought it had. Maybe it worked; it was a small miracle that her agent took her back after so many years and worked to put her on the map.
And hadn’t she left the statue on the coffee table? She remembered thinking how out of place it looked there—out of time—and that she liked the inconsistency.
Her eyelids felt heavy. She should change into something more comfortable. Take off her makeup. She was too old to go to bed like this and expect her skin to thank her for it. And she should lose the boots. They’d been a smart purchase. They looked the rock-star—wannabe—part, but were as comfy as trainers on the walk here.
She’d close her eyes for just a second, and then get up and get ready for bed.
God. She wished Mike would be waiting for her when she went to sleep.
She leaned against a cold wall, her naked shoulder pressing into the rough brick. She didn’t remember getting here, which meant she was asleep, and the telltale signs of that kind of dream were there. Her surroundings didn’t have the flimsy quality of worn-out memories. They were drawn in stark relief, punctuating details she was surprised she’d noticed, let alone retained. Bella had her bearings, she was several years younger, and she knew without a doubt that she was waiting for Mike.
That he’d come to her.
As if thinking of him conjured him, Mike rounded the corner. He was lost in thought, his hands deep in the pockets of his jacket, his gaze on the ground his boots ate up. Bella ached to close the distance between them, but took the opportunity to watch him unobstructed.
His hair hid his eyes, but the jaw line she saw was hard set. His jacket was open, and the T-shirt he wore stretched against his sculpted chest. His jeans hugged his long legs.
As she focused on his face, he looked up and met her gaze.
Fuck.
She could still lose herself in those eyes. Always would. She wasn’t over him. She would never be over him. His mouth twitched, and his lips curved into a smile that lit up his face.
Bella’s heart skipped a beat.
He quickened his stride, until he was almost running.
She was disappointed when he stopped in front of her, instead of swooping her up and mashing his mouth to hers.
He studied her face for too long, before he spoke. “You came.”
“I couldn’t stay away.”
The gentleness with which he closed his arms around her surprised her. He didn’t press her body to his, didn’t dominate her with his wide frame, but held her like she might break and scatter in the wind.
He buried hi
s face in her neck and inhaled deeply. “Come home with me,” he whispered.
Here, now, she didn’t have to say no.
Chapter Thirteen
Even as he held her, he couldn’t believe she was there. With him. Holding his hand in the elevator and giggling when he laid kisses all over her face.
“You came,” he said again. He sounded stupid. “I’m glad.”
“I didn’t know if I could. If I should.” A shadow darkened her baby-blue eyes.
“Why?”
“Mike—”
“You’re married.” He didn’t care if she was. Marriages ended every day, and if she was with Mike now, she wasn’t happy with her husband. Mike would show her she was meant for him and him alone. For the first time in almost a month, he didn’t feel the sense of wrongness that permeated everything in her absence.
“No. Not anymore,” she said.
He tangled his fingers in her hair and turned her to him. “Good. I don’t want to share you.” He ached to bury himself inside her, but greater than his desire was his need to know her. To break through her defenses and uncover the mysteries she hid at her core. He wanted to make her his as much as he was hers.
She strained against his hold, so she could slant her lips against him. “There’s no one else. There will never be anyone else for me.”
Her words should make his heart soar, but the finality in her tone scared him. Was he right before, about her being sick? Was life so cruel that it’d throw love in his path only to snatch it away again?
The car came to a stop, and the doors slid open. Ana pulled him outside before he could ask what was wrong. Her laugh echoed fake in the corridor, but he wouldn’t pressure her to open up. She was here, and she’d talk when she was ready. And Mike would listen.
They didn’t get farther than his living room before clothes and pretenses were discarded, and their bodies melded together. Mike felt like a dork for spending more time caressing her face than cupping her ass, but he guessed that was what being in love did to him.
