by Cassie Rocca
“And he’s also very cute,” added Brooke. “Maybe we could use him for the calendar.” She studied Eric for a moment, nodding and pondering. “If he loses the glasses and we muss up his hair a little…”
“…I would look exactly like a scruffy mole,” interrupted Eric, who was starting to feel embarrassed, “and that, I can assure you, wouldn’t cheer anybody up.”
Zoe, who had in the meantime had walked over to stand next to him behind the counter, gave him a kick and then smiled at Brooke and said, “He’s such a shy, self-effacing guy!”
“He’s adorable,” agreed the actress.
Zoe invited Brooke to her office upstairs to discuss the details of what they were going to do, thus saving Eric, who was finally able to breathe normally again. For a moment he had feared they were actually going to drag him into the project, and the idea was just terrifying to him. He didn’t have a particularly good relationship with cameras, and would freeze in embarrassment each time he found himself in front of a lens, which would inevitably lead to disastrous results. Making a fool of himself in front of an actress, a model and Zoe would really have mortified him, but he was even more scared of how angry Liberty would get if he refused to satisfy the request of such an important client.
Suddenly the shop’s front door was flung open violently. For a moment, a pale ray of sunshine illuminated the room until it was blocked out by the silhouette of a well-built man. He Man had made his appearance.
Eric glowered at the new arrival, quickly trying to think of a way of getting rid of him before Zoe could see him.
“Can you get Zoe for me?” said the man, putting a big hairy hand on the counter.
“I’m sorry but she’s busy at the moment.”
“I’m sure that if you tell her that I’m here she’ll find ten minutes for me. My name’s Evan.”
His arrogant tone irritated Eric. “Evan what?”
“Evan Lewis.”
“Hold on a moment.” Eric grabbed the phone and called Liberty’s office’s extension, hoping to interrupt her right in the middle of a moment of pure inspiration. That would annoy her so much that it would give him the perfect excuse not to tell Zoe that her pet troglodyte was looking for her. “Lib, there’s a guy here who would like to see Zoe, but she’s with Brooke at the moment… Should I call her anyway?”
He heard Liberty snort at the other end of the phone line. “How the hell should I know? If it’s someone important you can try and call her – if it isn’t, you can tell him to wait his turn.”
“He says his name is Evan Lewis, but Zoe’s never mentioned a client with that name to me – do you know anything about it?” continued Eric, enjoying the annoyed expression on the man’s face.
“Hey, I’m not a client,” he cut in. “Me and Zoe are dating.”
Liberty heard his reply. “Tell him that he can wait for Zoe to finish or kick him out. And the next time that you interrupt me for something as dumb as that…”
Eric hung up before Liberty could finish her threat. “Zoe can’t come down right now, so I’m afraid you’ll just have to come back later. Or you can wait, if you like, but you might be waiting a long time.”
“I’ll wait then,” mumbled the hulk, before heading off to browse the shelves.
Eric had hoped that the meeting between Zoe and Brooke Samuels would last forever but, unfortunately, Mr Steroids only had to wait twenty minutes before the two women came back down the stairs. Brooke gave Eric a gesture of thanks and then rapidly vanished, since she had noticed that there were a few people in the shop now, while Zoe went over to Eric with an enthusiastic smile on her face.
“It’s going to be so much fun! I’ll have to ask Lib and Clover to get me a present like that the next time some asshole breaks my heart!”
“Yeah, well seeing how smart this guy is, I’m guessing you won’t have to wait for too long,” grumbled Eric as he watched Evan Lewis walking towards them.
Zoe noticed Evan for the first time, and her expression immediately became seductive.
“Hey handsome! I wasn’t expecting to see you today.”
“I’ve been here for half an hour,” he replied, putting his arm around her waist. “I thought I’d just pop in and say ‘hi’, but apparently it’s impossible to distract you when you’re working.”
Zoe gave Eric a perplexed look, and he gestured towards Liberty’s office with his head and ran his thumb across his throat.
“She’s in a really bad mood today,” he explained, absolving himself of any responsibility.
Zoe shrugged and dragged the football player off to a secluded corner at the back of the shop.
Eric quickly dealt with the rest of the clients, as he was anxious to keep an eye on the pair of them. Knowing that they were hidden away behind shelves busy doing who knew what was driving him crazy.
When he was finally free, he grabbed a handful of things that needed sorting out and walked towards the place where the two lovebirds were hiding. He always tried to keep an eye on the situation when she was with a man. The problem wasn’t her, it was the men that she always dated. Zoe had the power to make them completely lose their minds and make them feel like they just had to take her, throw her against the wall and… kiss her passionately while they ran their vulgar hands all over her body… which was exactly what Evan Lewis was doing right now.
Eric’s vision became blurry and he only managed not to throw all the things he was holding at the asshole because he didn’t want to look a complete fool – but, God, how dearly he would have loved to!
From where he was standing he couldn’t see Zoe’s face clearly, but whatever expression she wore, the fact was that she was allowing that caveman to grope her!
He saw her pulling away, mumbling something that he couldn’t hear, but Evan didn’t seem to be particularly interested in what she had said, because he leaned over her again in an attempt to pick up from where he had been interrupted. Zoe took a step backwards and that was enough to convince Eric that she wasn’t particularly eager for Evan to start kissing her again.
He didn’t need to see anything else to realize that the guy was being insistent – though as far as Eric was concerned, just coming to the shop the way he had could have been interpreted as being too pushy.
But then, looking almost resigned, Zoe let him kiss her again…
Consumed with anger, Eric punched a shelf. It broke, sending everything on it crashing to the floor, and leaving his right hand full of splinters of wood. He bit his lip to muffle the swear words but the pain made him want to shout and he rushed away as quickly as he was able to, as he was sure that the couple would come over to see what had happened.
Zoe arrived to find him kneeling down, picking up books and brightly-colored frames from the floor.
“What happened?”
“A shelf broke,” he muttered, without looking at her.
“How the hell did that happen?”
“I don’t know. It’s wood, maybe it got damp and couldn’t take the weight.”
His arms full of objects, Eric stood up, and Zoe noticed that his hand was covered in blood. Her eyes opened wide.
“Evan!” she called, taking some of the books out of Eric’s hands.
The caveman appeared in an instant. “What’s up, babe?”
“Hold these for a moment.” Zoe gave him everything that was in Eric’s hands, then took Eric’s arm. “Come with me, hon, let’s disinfect that cut.”
“Don’t worry about it, it’s just a scratch. I’m not going to pass out over something as stupid as that,” snorted Eric, annoyed at being treated like an infant but at the same time enjoying the perplexed expression of Evan Lewis, who was standing on his own in a corner, his arms full of gifts.
“How the heck did you manage to hurt yourself?” continued Zoe as she stubbornly tried to drag him towards the office.
“I was trying to stop those things from falling,” he answered.
Like a mother hen, Zoe set about medicating
his wound. “I’m so sorry. If I’d been helping you…”
“You were busy.”
Zoe bit her lower lip in mortification. “I told him he could take part in Brooke’s project and… well, he was very happy about it.”
“Too damn happy,” thought Eric, gritting his teeth at the memory of how intensely Evan had been kissing her. Zoe noticed his expression and peered into his eyes.
“Does it hurt?”
“Not much.”
“Stop being a hero! I know you’re not crazy about the sight of blood.”
“I’m sure your friend loves it, though. It’s a good thing that you got me out of his sight or he might have gotten even more excited than he already was.”
Zoe narrowed her eyes. “Were you spying on us?”
“I didn’t have to spy on you, I could hear your moaning from all the way across the shop.”
“Come on, he was only kissing me.”
“Well it sounded more like he was eating you, to be honest. Though, after all, he had been waiting for almost half an hour. I guess his libido had already gone through the roof.”
His tone was starting to annoy her, and she put the band-aid on with an angry gesture. “Well, I’m sorry if we offended your sanctimonious sensitivity. You’ve obviously forgotten what it means to be attracted by a woman, or to kiss one passionately… if you’ve even ever done it, that is!”
“Yeah, well not all women like being shoved against the wall in front of everybody, Zoe.”
Those words hurt her, as Eric realized when he saw her eyes turn dark and her cheeks go pale. Another time he would have apologized, and in fact Zoe was probably waiting to hear him say that he was sorry, but he was so angry that he had no intention of doing anything of the sort.
She said nothing for a few moments then let go of his hand and walked away, her face a mask of cold indifference.
When he was alone Eric had to stop himself from punching something else. He didn’t want to lose any more blood even though punching the shelf had released some of his frustration, and in addition it had stopped Evan Lewis from fondling Zoe.
He shut the door and sat at his desk, Zoe’s words whirling around in his head.
Did she really think he was that pathetic? A loser who didn’t know how to deal with women just because he wasn’t constantly pawing at them in public?
And was that what Zoe wanted from a man? Because in that case he didn’t really have a hope in hell with her. He just wasn’t that type of guy. He knew how to be passionate without feeling the need to put it on show before the entire world. As far as he was concerned, the kind of macho-man public display he’d seen Evan engaged in a few minutes earlier didn’t really mean you desired someone – there were classier ways of demonstrating you were attracted to someone. And the thing the girls he had gone out with had liked most about him had always been how classy he was!
But Zoe was convinced of the opposite, evidently.
His attention was drawn to the yellow post-it he had written Stephanie’s number on. Steffy Parker was the perfect example of what he had just thought: Zoe wasn’t interested in a discreet and well-mannered guy like him, but someone else appreciated him.
“Fuck it,” he muttered as he grabbed his phone.
If Zoe wanted a gorilla as a boyfriend then she would be spoilt for choice. He was aiming for something better, though.
*
“So can I see you this evening?”
“No.” Zoe realized that her reply had sounded too categorical, so she smiled. “I’m sorry, Evan, but I’ve got some work to finish and I think I’m going to have to do it at home. We’ve got a backlog of orders at the moment and I just don’t have time to go out.”
“Whatever you like. It’s a shame though, because you’ve got me thinking about some stuff that…” he said allusively as he moved closer to her.
Zoe slipped out of his hug, praying that some customers would appear to back up the excuse she had just given him. “I really am too busy.”
“OK then. In that case, I’ll see you for the photo shoot with Brooke Samuels.” Evan shook his head, still over the moon at the idea of posing for a calendar. “My buddies are never going to believe me when I tell ‘em that I’m going to be posing with one of the hottest actresses in Hollywood!”
“You’re not actually posing with her,” sighed Zoe. “The calendar is for a friend of hers, who’s a Canadian model.”
“Are you sure that you don’t want to ‘instruct’ me? If we met up tonight you could take some warm-up shots of me. We could hook up at my place, or at yours if you prefer, it’s fine with me either way.”
How slimy could a man be when all his blood was flowing to the area directly beneath his belt buckle? Zoe was starting to regret having suggested that Evan pose for the project. Brooke’s idea had been to photograph her friend Sydney with twelve good looking guys, hoping that it would make her realize that she could have any man she wanted, any time and in any way she desired, in the place of her vile ex-boyfriend. The actress had asked her to find attractive male models and when Zoe had gone back downstairs and seen Evan, she found it natural to ask him to participate. He was blond, sexy and handsome and would be perfect in the role of Cupid for February’s picture.
Evan had reacted to that proposal with just a bit too much enthusiasm, and for some reason it had annoyed her. Wasn’t it women who, according to the stereotype, loved that kind of exhibitionism? How could a guy get so excited at the idea of posing half-naked for a calendar? Over the last few years she’d increasingly had the impression that – both in private life and at work – men and women had switched roles. Nowadays, more and more men seemed to love being photographed half-naked in sensual poses, and some of them had even asked her to use her camera in the bedroom to take even more explicit pictures! At first, the novelty of it had amused her, but then she had gradually grown bored of it and learned how to avoid that type of guy.
Just the idea of spending an evening doing stuff like that with Evan really gave her the creeps.
And it was all Eric’s fault.
He had made her feel awful about herself, as though she was a superficial hussy, just like a lot of people thought she was. He had poured out all his resentment on her in that patronizing, puritan way of his, ridiculing the guys she dated and criticizing her life choices. Well nobody was allowed to tell her what to do with her life, not her father and certainly not Eric!
“Yeah, but your father doesn’t know what you do to feel less alone,” whispered an insistent voice inside her head, “and Eric does.”
Well, even in that case, he still didn’t have the right to judge her!
She got rid of Evan and dealt with a couple of clients, and as soon as she found a quiet moment, she went upstairs to Liberty’s office. She needed to talk to someone.
When she opened the door, Liberty stopped her in her tracks with a hand gesture. “Wait a minute,” she said abruptly, staring at a page on the desk in front of her. Zoe walked over and sat down nearby. When she was writing, Liberty’s face took on a remote expression and it was very dangerous to interrupt her when she felt inspired. She saw her friend’s pen rapidly tracing words on the paper while her computer sat unattended in a corner, and smiled. Liberty loved written words deeply, you could practically see it in her face.
When she finally raised her head, a satisfied expression on her face, Zoe gestured to her notebook. “Why on earth do you keep writing by hand if afterwards you have to copy everything onto your computer anyway?”
“It’s a question of intimacy. A pen and paper are more closely linked to the words that come into my mind,” said Lib, caressing her face and primping her blonde hair into shape. “Did you come all the way up here just to ask me that?”
“No, I came here to avoid bursting into Eric’s office and breaking his other hand!”
Zoe jumped to her feet, suddenly feeling the same irritation she had felt a few minutes earlier.
“Did Eric break his han
d?!”
“No, but he hurt it. A shelf broke and he decided to sacrifice himself and save the objects that were about to fall. What a hero, right? Or maybe he was scared that you would make him stay behind after school,” she said venomously.
“That’s good: I’m pleased to hear that he’s scared of me. But how did the shelf crack?”
“You should ask him! I’m sure he has some interesting theory involving the chemical composition of the wood and how it changes when in contact with atmospheric agents.”
“You two spend way too much together,” snorted Liberty, organising the pieces of paper on her desk. “Sometimes you even talk like him.”
“Exactly – we’ve known each other for a long time and that should have taught him something about me, right? Instead he’s always finger-pointing and judging me, without taking into consideration the possibility that he might actually be hurting the feelings of the person he’s talking to.”
“Can you get to the point, please.”
“Evan came by to see me.”
“I know, Eric told me. And by the way: find somewhere else to meet next time?”
Zoe rolled her eyes. “I didn’t ask him to come, he just decided to turn up here. He waited for me to finish the meeting I was having upstairs with Brooke Samuels and when I went downstairs, I took him off for a couple of minutes to say ‘hi’ and ask him if he wanted to take part in the calendar project. Evan was over the moon about it, so he demonstrated his enthusiasm with a kiss… a passionate one, to be fair.”
Liberty raised her eyes. “Dammit all, Zoe, do you really have to be making out in my shop?”
“It was only a kiss! Hasn’t Justin ever grabbed hold of you and kissed you passionately?”
This time Liberty lifted an eyebrow. “Justin is a reserved, elegant man. He would never dream of necking in a public place, and that’s one of the things I like about him.”
“Yeah, and that’s why Mr Perfect downstairs gets along so well with your boyfriend.”
“Zoe, what’s the problem?”
“Eric made me feel like a slut – like someone who just throws herself at every man she meets.”
