Stereo

by Trevion Burns

  A horn honked, reminding Shaun that she was standing in the middle of the street. She faced forward and took in the Sushi Samba sign illuminated before her. Just a few more steps, she told herself. She began to slowly stumble her way towards it and managed to make it to the sidewalk without incident. A triumphant smile spread across her face at her success but it dropped cold when she caught sighed of Adam.

  He was standing on the curb outside of the restaurant alone, all alone, as if he wasn’t one of the biggest stars on the planet. Shaun found this strangely endearing. When he spotted Shaun, Adam took a step toward her, but froze in mid-step, shoving his hands deep in his pockets. The dark washed skinny jeans he had on annoyed Shaun so much that she almost called the whole thing off right then and there, but she was too busy being even more annoyed by the tiny white t-shirt he had on. Her eyes fell to the all-black Converses on his feet and she grew immediately envious. They looked damned comfortable.

  His arms flexed from pushing his hands into his pockets, showcasing the lean muscles that he clearly worked hard for, as his eyes traveled her body.

  Shaun forced herself to stand tall under his obvious scrutiny, and began making her way across the sidewalk until she was standing in front of him. It took everything in her not to adjust the little black dress she had on. It suddenly felt way too short.

  Adam suddenly felt underdressed. “Hey,” he said.

  “Hey.” Shaun’s eyes narrowed.

  “You look nice.”

  Shaun was surprised, so much so that she looked back at him with an openly shocked face. “Thank you.”

  “So I don’t know about you but I need a drink.”

  “I don’t drink,” she said, staring disdainfully at his jeans. Why did men wear skinny jeans?

  Adam was confused. “What do you mean you don’t drink?”

  Shaun squeezed her lips together. “I mean I don’t drink.”

  “A.A.?”

  Shaun shook her head. She could see the judgment on his face and hated that he was making her feel like some weirdo.

  When he shook his head and held an arm out towards the doors of the restaurant, inviting her to walk in front of him, she hesitated. Stepping towards the doors, she held her breath and prayed for gracefulness. Instead she got a crook in the sidewalk which threw off her step, causing her heel to tilt. Her heart stopped as she lost her footing and began to fall forward, her arms splaying manically. It wasn’t the first time she’d tripped tonight, and probably wouldn’t be the last, but this fall was far worse than the first three. Having been distracted by Adam she hadn’t seen this one coming, so she had no time to save herself—or even attempt to save herself. As she went tumbling to the ground, feeling like death was upon her, she gasped when she realized that she hadn’t hit the ground.

  Adam had caught her.

  He kept his arms wrapped around her waist, knees bent, and slowly stood tall, bringing Shaun awkwardly back up with him. It took everything he had to ignore the sensation of her full ass pressed into the zipper of his jeans. It felt so incredible that he found himself gritting his teeth for control.

  She stumbled to a stand and turned to face him, a loose curl falling haphazardly into her wide eyes. Holding his arms in a death grip, she managed to steady herself, gazing curiously down at his biceps as she did. She didn’t know how someone as busy as him could find the time to work out, but he clearly did. As if reading her mind, his arms flexed under her small fingers, making the various beautiful tattoos he had almost come alive. Shaun’s heart stopped at his strength and she found herself yearning to be wrapped up in him, again.

  “I’m such a spaz,” she said, unaware that her hands were absent-mindedly tracing the designs on his tattooed arms.

  Adam’s hands lingered on the delicate, womanly dip at her waist, not missing the soft smell of whatever perfume she was wearing. With effort, he took his hands off of her, and put them back in his pockets. “I was convinced that all models came out of the womb in Louies. I guess you’d be the exception.”

  Shaun was confused. “Louies?”

  “Yeah…” Adam nodded and, upon seeing the perplexed look in her eyes, gave her a side eye. “Louis Vuitton?”

  “Oh right!” Shaun said with a wave of her hand. “Louis Vuitton... Because that’s what the inside of my heels say. Louis Vuitton. Yeah. That is… correct.” She jammed her eyes shut. This was taking a turn.

  Adam’s face grew curious. A Cheshire grin spread across his lips slowly.

  Shaun attempted to play it cool by tilting her head back and poking out her lips. “Yeah. I wear these all the time. Yep, I always spend obscene amounts of money on… horribly painful, stupidly high heels. In fact they give them to me for free… you know, because I’m a model. So, yeah.” She looked away, now well aware that she was floundering right where she stood in those wobbling heels. “Louies. I knew what that meant. I totally knew that because… I’m a model,” she announced, again, before biting her tongue and looking off.

  “Wow.” Adam’s eyes narrowed as he nodded. “You’re kind of a… bizarre girl,” he stated seriously, before a bright smile crossed his face.

  “Yeah… I’ve heard that.” Shaun looked off into the distance. There was no way in hell she was going to pull this off. They hadn’t even made it into the restaurant and he already found her “bizarre.” She was suddenly getting horrible flashbacks from her high school years and how nervous she got around any guy she found even remotely attractive. If she’d been able to deny how good looking Adam was up until that point she no longer could. She forced herself to look at anything but him.

  Adam found himself dreading this dinner a lot less than he had been when the night began. At least this girl was entertaining… if not a little crazy. He liked his people a little crazy though, and found himself taking her hand in his and licking his lips when she looked up at him with wide eyes. She was like a wild animal, curious but suspicious.

  He tugged her hand, steadying himself when the sudden movement panicked her so much that she had to plant both high heeled feet into the sidewalk. He waited for her to look up from where she was staring down at her shoes.

  “I got you.” His green eyes shone under the streetlight as he showed her a set of perfect teeth. “I won’t let you fall.”

  --

  “So I’ve got a question,” Adam said once he’d swallowed down the last of his second beer and taken a monstrous bite of sashimi.

  Shaun raised her eyebrows, unable to speak around the huge bite of sashimi she’d just taken herself.

  Adam wiped his mouth. “I need to know how the hell you’ve managed to make it down any fashion runway alive?”

  Shaun choked on her food.

  Adam motioned to the door of the restaurant. “I mean, you could barely make it inside this restaurant in those heels, and you almost took this entire tablecloth with you when you tripped over that waiter.”

  “He tripped over me.”

  “Okay. He tripped over you. Right,” Adam taunted, tilting his head dubiously.

  Shaun stared down at her plate, refusing eye contact.

  This only made Adam’s smile grow. “I’m just saying… I’ve seen the heels that they make you guys wear. My ex is a Victoria’s Secret model and she can walk in ten inch heels with her eyes closed. But you…”

  Shaun gave him an eye. ‘My ex is a Victoria’s Secret Model.’ She almost chucked her chopsticks at him, and the salmon roll clutched in between them, too. She hated that she was so obviously not a Victoria’s Secret Model to him, that he could already see right through her. Angrily, she checked her watch. “Wow Adam, you made it a whole twenty minutes without mentioning that you’ve dated a Victoria’s Secret model. I’m guessing that’s a new record for you.”

  “I’ve just never met a model who let the shoes wear her. I practically had to carry you in here.”

  “You didn’t carry me.”

  “You had a death grip on my arm.” He held out the arm that she’d clench
ed like the Jaws of Life during their walk to the table. “Pretty sure I’m gonna have a massive bruise in the morning.”

  Shaun made herself think about her job… her future. “If you must know Mr. My-Ex-Is-a-Victoria’s-Secret-Model, I don’t do a lot of runway work. I mostly do… print. Commercial work,” she said with a nod, satisfied with her answer. She was suddenly thankful for all of the America’s Next Top Model re-runs she’d wasted her life watching over the years.

  “Ah…” Adam nodded. “Okay. So who’s your favorite photographer?”

  Shaun opened her mouth to give him an answer, only to panic when she realized she didn’t have one. Clearly she hadn’t been paying quite as much attention to those re-runs as she thought. She was suddenly irrationally angry at him. Did he know that she was lying? Was he going to throw every industry question he could at her until he finally hit her with one she couldn’t answer, leaving her exposed as the callous liar she was? Why couldn’t he just eat his sushi and shut the hell up?

  “I don’t have a favorite,” she said, glowering at him.

  He cocked his head. “How can you not have a favorite?”

  “I’m so sorry. I thought this was a dinner, not an interrogation.” She took in the surprised look on his face and sighed deeply, reaching into Celia’s purse, pulling out the small red notepad she’d been scribbling in all day. “Look, I’ve been making a few notes. You know… guidelines, about this little arrangement of ours.”

  Adam’s mouth hung open, an uneaten piece of ginger sitting on the tip of his tongue. This woman had just said his two least favorite words, ‘notes’ and ‘guidelines’.

  Shaun flipped through the red spirals. “I think this will all run a lot smoother if you and I are both on the same page so I’ve come up with three core rules that I think we should always follow. One…” Shaun held up a finger. “No Real Intimacy. That means we can hug and hold hands, but there will be no kissing of any kind, no grabbing of inappropriate body parts, and no sex. Two: No Families. This is not a real relationship. You don’t meet my family and I don’t meet yours. Friends are okay but at a minimum. And finally, Three…”

  As Adam listened to her he was vaguely reminded of Janelle. He reached across the table and snatched the notepad from her hand.

  Shaun’s eyes widened. “Hey,” she cried, making a swipe for the pad.

  Adam calmly placed it in his back pocket and, without a word, went back to eating his sushi.

  Shaun huffed. “You’re out of your mind if you think we’re going to get through the next month without having a serious discussion about how we’re going to handle ourselves.”

  “And you’re out of your mind if you think I’m going to let you tie a leash around my neck and tell me what to do. Like you said, this isn’t a real relationship. You’re not my girlfriend and, even if you were, that still wouldn’t give you the right to tell me how to live my life.”

  “I’m not trying to tell you how to live your life. I’m just trying to explain to you the very brief and very reasonable list of rules I think we should follow so that this remains professional. Now if you would kindly give me my booklet back so I can finish?”

  Adam dropped his chopsticks and leaned his elbows on the table. “You know, if I’d had any idea that it was possible for a model to be this tense I would have given you an IQ test before I agreed that you were the right girl for this job.”

  “Are you calling me stupid?”

  “Exactly the opposite.”

  “So you have a problem with smart women?”

  “No. I have a problem with crazy women.”

  “So now I’m crazy? Just because I’m trying to bring a little order into this mess?”

  “I saw that look on your face when I brought up my ex. Did Victoria’s Secret spit on your shoes and throw you out the door when you auditioned for them or something? Because you’ve been acting completely antagonistic to me since the moment I brought it up. Clearly you have some sort of problem with them or me.”

  “Well, now that you mention it, the second I saw those skinny jeans you have on I definitely had a problem, so maybe my aversion to Victoria’s Secret is just residual annoyance from thinking about how ridiculous you look.”

  “Never met a model who could pronounce the word ‘residual’, let alone put it in a sentence.”

  Shaun cursed softly. Note to self, she thought, sound more stupid.

  “No wonder you can’t walk in those shoes,” Adam said. “Try thinking a little less, walking a little more and maybe you’ll book a runway gig or two. You’ve only got so much time you know, a model has a very, very short shelf-life. No room for ten dollar words like ‘residual’.”

  “With that ‘short model shelf-life’ I guess I’d better hold on to my ten dollar words with an iron fist. They’ll eventually be all I have left.”

  “Yeah I guess so,” Adam agreed. They sat frowning at each other for a ridiculous amount of time, food on the table forgotten. Shaun was the first to smile, the tiniest little lift in the corner of her mouth, which brought something alive in Adam that he couldn’t help but smile back. “Are we having our first fight?” he asked.

  Shaun laughed softly, covering her face with her hands.

  Adam leaned in closer and took in the sight. She had a beautiful smile. “What the hell are we even arguing about?”

  “I have no idea,” she said, leaning back in her chair and wiping her mouth with a shake of her head. “But we better learn to like each other quick if we’re ever going to convince anyone that we’re…” Her words slowed to a complete stop when she turned to look out of the restaurant window and saw swarms and swarms of cameramen on the other side snapping their picture.

  The restaurant’s wall to wall windows were teeming with flashing lights. Even the unlucky cameramen who’d shown up late and ended up stuck in the background weren’t taking no for an answer, opting instead to hold their camera’s high up in the air, snapping blindly. Some were even sitting on the roofs of their cars, parked along the street.

  “Holy shit,” Shaun gasped softly, realizing for the first time that night that not only were they being photographed to death but also stared at by nearly every person in that restaurant, including most of the staff. She suddenly felt deeply invaded, alarmed, and she wanted to get out of there as quickly as humanly possible.

  “Ignore them,” Adam said. His soft voice was far too relaxed for the thunderous panic Shaun was suddenly feeling inside.

  She looked to him, her eyes wide. “How long have they been there?”

  “I’m guessing since right around the time you tripped over the waiter.”

  “How in the world do you deal with this?”

  “I think the more appropriate question is how in the world do we deal with this?” His eyes burned into her, attempting to catch her eye. “We come in a set now. Remember? You and me.”

  “You and me?” she asked, her eyes still riveted to the hectic scene outside the window.

  “Hey.” Adam reached across the table and covered her hand with his. He waited for her to look at him, then whispered, “you and me, Shaun.”

  Shaun pulled her hand back. “What did you do?”

  He blinked. “What did I do?”

  She nodded. “Yeah, what did you do? What in the world did you do that you have to drag me all around town like some kind of pawn in your weird rock star game?”

  Adam leaned even closer to her. “You mean you don’t know?”

  “I know this may come as a shock to a man who performs for arenas that are wall to wall with blind worshipers, but not everybody has their nose planted that far up your ass. I have my own life to live, so no, I don’t know what you did. That’s why I’m asking you.”

  Adam was officially fascinated by her. Or possibly fascinated by how wrong he’d been about her. Though he’d never been close to a black woman in his life, he felt like he could potentially be close to Shaun. Not as a real girlfriend, but definitely as a buddy to kick it with
every once in a while. She was smart, sharp, and she wasn’t afraid to call him on his shit.

  “It was nothing, just a stupid interview.” The moment he said those words he knew that he already cared more than he’d ever imagined he would. He cared about her opinion, what she thought of him. At this stage in his career honesty was so rare, but she was just overflowing with it. That wasn’t something he was prepared to let go of.

  “You’re a bad liar,” Shaun told him. “Just tell me.” When he still didn’t answer her, Shaun sighed and reached into her purse, pulling out her phone. “Fine, I’ll just have to look it up myself—“

  “Wait, no.” Adam stood halfway from his chair and tried to take her phone from over the table, but she pulled it out of his reach. As she pitter-pattered away Adam knew that he couldn’t cause a scene in the middle of that restaurant with all of those eyes and cameras on them. Janelle would kill him. So he sat back down, on the edge of his seat, his heart pounding. The smile on her face gave him the worst kind of anxiety because he knew it wouldn’t be there for much longer.

  Shaun’s eyes scanned the screen of her phone, reading hungrily, and Adam was sure he saw it the second it happened--the very moment when she read the words that had gotten him into this whole mess to begin with.

  “Oh my god,” she whispered, her eyes rising to his, then back down to her phone. “Oh my god.”

  “I know. But just hear me out--”

  She didn’t even let him speak. Without another word she gathered her things and jumped out of her seat, hurrying towards the front doors of the restaurant.

  Adam watched her go in shock. When he saw a busboy catch her arm as she tripped and nearly fell on the way out, he fingered a hundred out of his pocket and dropped it on the table.

  “Shaun,” he called out to her as discreetly as he could, crossing the crowded restaurant just as she disappeared out the doors. All conversation had stopped as Adam bounded out the doors after her. Once outside he looked down the sidewalk and saw her wobbling down the street with dozens of cameramen on her heel.