“I’d love to see it sometime,” he said emphatically.
“I’m not much for performing. I prefer to dance for me. I guess that’s changed too because I never knew if I was performing or not before.”
“Shy?” he asked.
“Self-conscious.”
“Reasons?”
“Not sure.”
“Truth?”
I sighed.
“I don’t like being the focus of others’ attention. It makes me horribly uncomfortable.”
“Like now?” he asked.
“Like now.”
In our following silence, the wine was presented and poured. I feigned deep interest in the glass and swirled the wine around and around. He pretended not to realize what I was doing. The silence remained as our dinner was served. And eaten. The check came and went without a sound. We rose to leave in perfect unison and walked out into a chilly Boston evening filled with the sounds of the city. We contributed none.
Inwardly embarrassed that my shortness had once again ruined a perfectly normal and personable conversation, I moped alongside Sean. I was certain that he couldn’t wait to get away from me, the ungrateful and ill mannered ass who not only ruined a perfect day in the city, but also hadn’t thanked him for the dinner he’d just taken me to or for the stellar recommendation of crab cakes. They were amazing.
I opened my mouth to thank him for ending my vegan career with his enticement of crustaceans, but quickly snapped it shut. The only thing I seemed capable of at that moment was further digging a hole. I wasn’t interested in being six feet underground.
12
When Sean turned to enter the gorgeous apartment building downtown, I was thoroughly confused. I’d thought we were heading for the car to go home after a disastrous ending to a perfect day.
“Where are you going?” I blurted out.
“We are going inside to get changed. The day isn’t over yet.”
“It’s ten pm. Doesn’t that inherently make the day over with?” I retorted.
He paused and looked at me sideways, and made an odd snorting sound before continuing on his mission. I chased after him like a child.
“No, seriously…where are we going? And what do I need to get changed for?” I asked with an ounce more decorum than my previous interrogation.
“Out,” he said.
“Out?”
“Yes. Out. It’ll be good for you to be social for once,” he said to me before muttering under his breath, “I’m not sure it’ll be good for everyone else though.”
“I heard that,” I shouted.
“As was expected.”
I crossed my arms over my stomach and stomped through the foyer of the building, which was massive and contemporary with an industrial edge. Everything was stainless and granite with clean lines and angles everywhere. Dwell magazine would have been proud. Decoration was sparse, but there was a line of Dendrobium orchids occupying the shelf along the wall that led to the elevator. We got in and Sean reached over to press the “PH” button.
“Penthouse?” I asked incredulously. “That’s an awfully impressive place to own on a teaching salary.”
“It’s a friend’s place. He lets me borrow it on occasion if I’m in the city.”
“What if he’s around? How do you borrow it then?” I asked.
“He’s never around, so it’s never a problem,” he replied.
I figured it must have been some rich friend’s second or third home, and just dropped the subject altogether. Sean didn’t appear to want to elaborate much, and I’d done enough poking of bears with short sticks in my time to know when to stop. For the most part.
“Wait…you said I have to change. I don’t have any clothes here,” I stated, thinking this would get some information out of him involuntarily.
“Yes, you do. I took the liberty of having Ronnie pick some things out and ship them down here. They’re waiting for you upstairs. She said you’d love them…shoes and all,” he said with an air of satisfaction. He plainly enjoyed torturing me with his secrecy. Sadist.
“Fine. But I’m not going anywhere until you tell me where we’re going.”
With that, the elevator dinged, telling us we’d arrived at the penthouse. We took a brief walk down the hall, which looked remarkably like the foyer, to the black door marked “PH”. Sean took a key out of his pocket and unlocked it. He threw the door open, exposing the most gorgeously decorated apartment I’d ever seen. He waited for me to soak it all in before entering. He had to actually call me in like a dog to keep me from gawking at it from the hall all evening. I guessed that wasn’t what he had planned.
He gestured me towards a bedroom that had a fabulous pair of shoes awaiting me inside of it. The outfit he’d had sent was laid out neatly on the bed. I could tell from afar that Ronnie had outdone herself this time. The skinny jeans were by Paige and the top was clearly a vintage piece. I didn’t recognize it from the shop, so I assumed it was something that had just arrived when Sean put in his odd request. It didn’t matter because it was a fabulous v-neck, no sleeve, tunic-length tank top in a deliciously faded magenta. She’d accessorized for me, pairing it with a chunky, jet black necklace, which also appeared to be vintage. The crowning glory of the outfit was naturally the shoes, or in this case, shooties: blank, ankle-height, suede and straight out of the eighties. I turned to Sean, grinning like a kid on Christmas, only to see that he was clearly amused by the whole situation. In that moment I didn’t care that he found me entertaining, my fashion buzz was way too strong.
I all but ran to the bed to further inspect my garb for the evening. I heard the door close behind me and turned to see that he’d left me alone to get dressed without a word. I walked over to lock it then hurled myself at the clothes. I was in my new outfit in seconds. I loved it. It dawned on me that I’d overlooked a coat draped across a very expensive chair in the corner of the room. She really had planned for everything, and I was glad because I certainly wasn’t throwing my Ibex zip-up over that ensemble.
I admired myself in the full length mirror for awhile before heading out into the living room. I thought I’d changed quickly, but there, on an exquisitely modern and very expensive couch sat Sean, looking every part the GQ cover model. His normally tousled, black-brown waves were managed back into a more structured style. Undoubtedly, he had used a product of some sort to accomplish it. He was wearing a tight black v-neck T-shirt and a pair of Diesel jeans. His shoes were clearly Michael Kors and were a plain black, euro-style slip on. To complete his look, he had a smug, satisfied look on his face as if he’d won the getting-dressed race that I was an unknowing participant in.
He motioned for me to come sit by him on the couch. In my most unobliging fashion, I sauntered over to the uber-expensive coffee table in front of him and planted my ass there instead. His grin spread wider.
“I see that everything fits,” he said, with elevator eyes scanning my new clothes.
“Ronnie knows my size well. I give her a lot of business.”
“Mhmm. Indeed she does and apparently you do,” he said while rising slowly to his feet. His eyes never left me. “Ready for the last stop?”
“Where are we going exactly?” I asked hesitantly. I hated going somewhere unfamiliar, especially not knowing if my attire was appropriate.
“I thought I’d take you somewhere you could dance,” he answered, pausing briefly. “I thought if I chaperoned, you could only get into a minimal amount of trouble.”
“That’s funny. To me it seems that trouble always happens when you’re around,” I said, feeling mildly insulted by his condescension.
“That’s because I’m always the one bailing you out of it. There’s two sides to that coin, Ruby,” he said hovering over me as I sat defiantly on the table. I was proud of myself for not shrinking under the weight of his stature. Instead I slowly peeled myself off of the table and uncurled my five-foot, nine-inch frame to stand only inches from him; toe-to-toe so to speak.
&nb
sp; He stared down at me with an angry curiosity. I wondered if he was used to people cowering away from him when he was like this. I’d never seen this side of him before, but it mattered not at all. I didn’t back down.
His expression lightened after a minute or so of the unspoken duel we were having. I was right, he was wrong, and apparently he caught onto that. He laughed inwardly and asked if I was done with my pissing contest so that we could go. “Yes”, was my only response.
It irritated me to no end that he always looked amused by my anger, frustration, impatience, etc. That occasion was no exception. He turned towards the door and made his way to it with a cocky swagger that only he could pull off. It made me more mad that it was impossible not to stare at his ass while he did it.
“The party isn’t coming to us, Ruby,” he called out over his shoulder as he swung the door open. “It would be such a shame to waste that outfit on this apartment all night.”
I silently walked towards him giving him no response at all other than the obvious. He was right, it would have been a terrible waste of such a great outfit. It annoyed the shit out of me when he was right.
13
“Vain? That’s it? That’s the name of the club?” I asked with very dubious inflection. “Have you even been here before? How do you know it’s any good? This looks way out of my comfort zone.”
The line to get in wrapped around the corner and the inhabitants of it, at least the female ones, were on the near side of naked. I hadn’t known skirts came in that length, if they could be called a length of anything. The undergarment policy appeared to be quite loose as well.
I turned to look at him with my “hell no” face, but was met with a huge shit-eating grin. He’s enjoying this! He knew I was preparing to flee the scene.
“Everything is out of your comfort zone, Ruby. Learn to adapt,” he said, walking towards the massive building.
“I think we should go somewhere else. It’s pretty obvious that we’ll never get in anyways. Look at the line. We’ll be out here all night,” I said, desperately trying to plead my case.
“I know for a fact that we’ll get in right away,” he said before doing something completely unnerving. He leaned in very close to me and whispered right in my ear. “There’s no need to be concerned about your apparel. You look just fine. Amazing, actually.”
What the…
“Why do you think I’m concerned with my clothes? How I look?” I asked, defensively. I wasn’t worried about what I was wearing, but rather the lack of clothing that others were wearing.
“You need to work on your poker face, Ruby. I can read your every thought,” he said matter-of-factly as he proceeded towards the front entrance. He didn’t even pause as he unclipped the velvety red rope and moved it aside. He looked back at me and scoffed at my hesitation, but then gently grabbed my arm and ushered me through without so much as a glance to anyone working the door. They all nodded at him as he passed, but didn’t acknowledge me at all, unless I considered hostile stares acknowledgment, no doubt a statement of disapproval of my wardrobe choice for the evening. In my defense, I hadn’t known that we were going to that type of establishment, but prior knowledge would not have led me to wear anything more appropriate in their eyes. I pinched my eyes shut for a moment and reminded myself that sexy wasn’t about how much skin you flashed. Sexy was about flashing as little as possible to make someone want to see more. At least that’s what my fashion magazines told me.
Guess the girls in line don’t read Cosmo…
I was quickly pulled out of my ruminations when we entered the main club area. It was enormous. Enormous like basketball-arena enormous. I think my jaw actually hung open until Sean’s voice snapped it closed.
“Welcome to the big city,” he said. I didn’t feel very welcome.
I felt assessing eyes looking me over - men to see if I’d meet their sexual desires, and women to see if I was competition for those men. Some of the women actually looked at me in a confused manner though it took me a while to figure out why. I guess it wasn’t every day that you saw an amazingly hot guy bringing a pale, lanky girl to that kind of place.
Are they jealous? Can’t be. They have to know that he’s not with me.
At that moment he reached back and took my hand in his to draw me through the crowd. When their faces scowled I realized that they wanted me dead, and Sean however they could get him. I smiled even if their aggression was misplaced. I was going to live their jealousy up as much as possible. Ruby 1, pretty girls 0.
We slowly made our way over to the bar. The crowd was thick with sweaty bodies gyrating in positions that I was pretty sure wouldn’t have made their parents proud. I must have looked a little shell-shocked when we made it to our destination because Sean laughed and quickly got me a vodka cranberry to take the edge off of my anxiety. He spoke to the bartender as though they were old friends, though he later denied that they were. He wasn’t drinking.
“Are you trying to get me drunk?” I asked nervously. Humor and sarcasm were going to be the order of the night to get me through my growing discomfort. Instead of laughing he looked at me rather heatedly, his eyebrow cocked ever so slightly.
“Would you like me to?” he asked, leaning forward so that I could hear him better.
I took a tiny sip of my cocktail and placed it back on the bar. That made him laugh.
“Point made,” he said, leaning his elbows behind him on the bar-top.
I kept my eyes off of the dance floor while we talked mindlessly about the decor, my drink and the random people surrounding us. Eventually, I did get up the courage to ask how we got in with no difficulties at all, assuming that he would be vague and evasive with his answer. I was surprised when he said that he knew the owner. When I tried to pry a bit and find out more, he suddenly looked very distant. And not very happy.
“I think you have an admirer,” he said, still looking out into the crowd of moving bodies. He actually growled for a split second after he choked the comment out.
“What are you talking about?” I asked, trying to figure out who he had in his line of sight. “And why do you look like you’re going to kick somebody’s ass?”
“I don’t like how he’s looking at you,” he said, voice low and threatening. “He looks like he’s starving and you’re lunch.”
“You don’t even know that he’s looking at me. This place is full…he could be looking at anyone in this direction!” I argued.
“No,” he said convincingly. “It’s you he wants.”
I turned to see who my potential admirer was, hoping I wasn’t going to have a rerun of the “Creeptastic” adventure. I scanned the vast crowd unable to find who Sean was all in a twist about. I was about to turn and tell him how crazy he was when my eyes fell on an elevated section of the dance floor. There were about fifty people up there, but my eyes landed on him instantly. They were drawn to him and I was unable to pry them off.
His honey brown eyes were undressing me from twenty yards away, and I liked it. I wanted to touch the face that so beautifully framed those eyes, along with a few other things. I felt myself start to walk in that direction when Sean grabbed my arm and whipped me around. My head felt funny instantly, but I assumed it was the lingering effects from the centrifugal forces I had just experienced.
He looked angry at me.
“Just what do you think you’re doing?” he asked, his voice rumbling through me.
I cocked my head to the side in an unfamiliar gesture. “I’m going to dance.”
“You have no idea what the guys here can be like. It’s not safe for a girl like you,” he said looking somewhat genuinely concerned under all that rage.
A smile that I’d never smiled before crossed my lips. “I don’t think you have any idea what kind of girl I am.” I watched his eyes flash something right as I pulled away from him and strutted through the crowd to the driving beat of the bass. The mass of club-goers parted before me as I crossed the floor. I felt pulled to him a
s though my body moved through no volition of my own. He was no longer dancing, only standing, staring as I approached.
I couldn’t get there fast enough. When I finally reached him I stopped just inches away, our faces nearly pressed together. His caramel eyes were fierce and burning, and I loved them. He smelled rugged and fresh, like ocean and forest, and I had to work hard not to bury my face in his chest and breathe him in. I looked over his body to enjoy its magnificence. He was all man - strong, lean, tall and he exuded sex and danger. I wanted whatever it was he was selling.
His style was understated: a simple white t-shirt that was practically painted onto him, dark jeans that were tight in all the right places, and bright white Pumas with a lime green arc on the side. The only standout piece was a silver necklace that hung close to his neck with a pendant of some intricate design, all curves and angles woven together. I was fascinated by it, but not enough for my eyes to linger there for too long. His face was the show stopper and his eyes were all for me. They looked beautiful surrounded by his “cafe con leche” skin. There was no hair on his face or head, leaving it completely smooth, and I had an uncontrollable urge to run my hands over both but managed to gain some composure as I saw my hands starting to drift towards him.
The music at the club managed to save me from myself. The next song came thumping through the speakers with an animalistic beat, and before I could think, the two of us moved as one on the floor. I was consumed by him, unaware that anyone else was there. I wanted to be alone with him.
Though our bodies were glued to one another, we managed some semblance of decorum. We weren’t having sex with our clothes on like I’d seen so many others doing that night. It was far more intimate and intense than that; we were one. Music moved through us and played us like we were the same instrument.
Caged Page 6
