Kissing Veronica Sawyer was positively stupendous, stupefyingly amazing, ridiculously awesome.
Kissing Veronica Sawyer, in fact, deserves its own chapter, so let us move on to:
Chapter Fourteen, in which I go on a date with Veronica Sawyer
I would say we made out like teenagers, but that would be a lie; there was no dry humping, no awkward fumbling at bra straps and belt buckles. This was partly because it was too confident, too comfortable, but also because it never quite got that far; at some point, my cell phone went off in my bedroom, blasting “Sweet Child o’Mine” through the paper-thin walls. I didn’t leap to get it, because, hey, priorities, but I paused.
“Do you need to get that?”
I laughed. “Nothing in the world could convince me to leave this couch right now.”
She laughed. “Be serious.”
“I was.”
“We can’t spend the whole day making out on your couch.”
“Really? Why not?”
“If nothing else, we’re going to have to eat.”
“Fair point.”
“Go see who called. Might’ve been your agency.”
So I stood and went into the bedroom to get my phone, which I flipped open and dialed to my voicemail. “Hey, it’s Jo from Force One. Listen, call me back as soon as you can.”
“You were right,” I called to Veronica.
“So what’d they say?”
“To call them back.”
“And you’re waiting for what, exactly?”
“Nothing,” I told her, because the phone was already ringing at my ear, and I greeted Jo.
“Just wanted to find out if you’re available for tomorrow.”
“Worth getting out of bed for?”
“That depends on whether you want to work for Harvey Weinstein.”
“Harvey Weinstein? Seriously?”
“I told you we might get an assignment from the Weinstein Company, and you’re the first one we’re offering it to. You want it?”
“That’s not a gig I can turn down.”
“So don’t! Take it. Ready for the address?” she asked, and I jotted it down. “Ten tomorrow morning. Day of training before regular office hours next week. Sound good?”
“I’m seven different kinds of there.”
“Awesome. I’ll let them know. Rock on!” she said, disconnecting the call. I shut my phone as I returned to the living room.
“Well, there’s that problem down,” I said. I was still smiling, and it was still sinking in.
“Interview?”
I sat down, shook my head. “No. Job.”
“Oh, great. Whereabouts this time? Still in publishing?”
I smiled. “The Weinstein Company.”
“Weinstein? Why do I know that name?”
“Bob and Harvey. Two of the most powerful guys in Hollywood.”
“So you’re moving?”
“No, their offices are here.”
“And they’re the most popular guys in Hollywood? That’s pretty far away. They must be pretty powerful.”
“Very.”
“And wait, they’re a movie studio? And you’re going to work for them? Seriously?”
“I know, right?”
“What’re you going to be doing?”
I shrugged. “Probably just admin stuff for now, but that’s where it always starts. Even Harvey himself probably started in a mailroom or something. Regardless of what the actual function or title of the position will be, it will be at the Weinstein Company, which any way you look at it must be a step up from selling ads for the New Yorker.”
“So that’s pretty terrific then.”
“I think it’s safe to say today is pretty definitely coming up me,” I laughed. I was, by that point, positively giddy.
“We should celebrate.”
“We should totally celebrate. We should, in fact, do something the sort of special that would make other people say, wow, they must have had a good day. And I think that the only way this day could possibly get any better is if I took you out on a date. A real date. What do you say, Veronica? Will you go out with me?” I asked her, and even as I did so, I was planning potential destination, secret spots in the secluded places, or at least the closest you can come to secluded in a city like Manhattan, which is really not so secluded at all. It’s the illusion of seclusion, the happy myth that maybe, just maybe, everything’s all yours.
“Sounds like fun.”
“And we’ll catch the proverbial picture show, and then—,” I paused, because I realized I already knew where I wanted to take her. A place called Candela, my favorite in the City, just off Union Square . . .
“We’re going to do this up right,” I told her.
***
I remembered Angus’ offer and our appointment as I showered, but calling to cancel sank immediately to the bottom of my list of priorities. With Veronica Sawyer in the living room, I figured it could wait, and so wait it would, while I shaved and got ready to go, casual-dressy, jeans and a decent shirt and my leather jacket, and then I left my apartment, arm in arm with Veronica Sawyer. January nights fall early on Manhattan and promise their presence hours before, lending to the late afternoon into which we descended a surreal, golden quality like halos around new pennies, ready to be spent.
PATH to 23rd Street and then a quick jaunt to Chelsea Cinemas, where we had a difficult time deciding what to see once we saw the marquee, full as it was of flicks studios had crammed into the final weeks of December for Oscar contention. We knew to avoid Bloodrayne because, though medieval vampires are probably a lot of fun, it was not the movie I wanted to take Veronica to on our first date.
Which was a little weird. We’d been to movies before, probably dozens of them. Perhaps it was the formality that made this one different . . .
No, we’re being honest, and I’ll tell you what made this outing in particular different: the potential. The sudden crackle of tension between us, charged as static electricity and with its own field of depth and intensity. I don’t think it was merely that we had kissed, though I’m sure that small fact didn’t hurt; I think it was rather the acknowledgement of something big and powerful and exciting between us, our own personal storm with lightning-lust and thunder-attraction and a slow, constant rain of happiness.
Of all the choices on the marquee that weekend, we chose Little Miss Sunshine, which was probably the perfect combination of funny and poignant for a first date. We left that theater grinning, and I’m not sure anything really counts for more than that.
A handful of blocks south, to Union Square, awash in neon and street lights, a wintered park an island between the downtown Virgin Megastore and the Barnes & Noble Union Square where I had twice seen Neil Gaiman read and once heard David Sedaris do his Billie Holiday. Cut down 16th toward Irving Plaza—
I am always at a loss to know how much to believe of my own stories.—
around the corner from the W Hotel, where I led Veronica to a simple, wooden door that belongs in medieval Europe, clean and unassuming and the sort of heavy that you can’t open by accident. Candela wears sincerely its romance and sensuality; it’s like stepping away from the City and into old anywhere else, not just a different century but a different age in which things might be both simpler and more luxurious—part of its magic is that it reminds you that simple and luxury are not mutually exclusive.
Look: deep tones like mocha and cappuccino, lit by candle chandeliers. Booths to the right, soft leather with dark curtains hung to the high, high ceiling. Behind the booths were mirrors, in front of each a cluster centerpiece of white roses, as well as artfully arranged twigs and leaves, Autumn all the year round. Their menu was both comprehensive and indulgent but neither overly so, with a steak worth doing time for and a crème brulee best when shared.
Eating there with Veronica . . . a quick-rush of patter about restaurants and plans and comments about the menu and the City and the evening. We talked about the movie and
her upcoming semester and my upcoming gig, about what we hoped to do wherever we hoped to go. We drank the whole bottle of cabernet sauvignon, then sipped Sicilian coffee, complete with Amaretto Di’Sarrono and Kahlua, when we best-shared our crème brulee, and by the time we left that restaurant, still arm-in-arm, we shared the intimate warmth of a happy buzz. It was already dark, though not exactly what one might call late.
As we walked, I felt her head on my shoulder. I could feel her contentment. I liked it. I know I’ve wished for you many moments already, but to those I add a moment like walking through Union Square Park, blissfully inebriated and arm in arm with someone you love. There’s nothing quite like it.
The day had begun so surreally, continued with such conviction, and hovered all its hours in a magical balance. The kind of day that seemed to have existed solely for us, like the whole rest of the world had been cast with extras and lit solely for our habitation. So magical was it, in fact, that I hesitated to intrude upon it with questions of practicality and pragmatism . . .
“Do you—you don’t need to go back tonight, do you?” Even as I asked it, I clenched my stomach in the same sort of tension that fills your body when you wish on a star, or when you pray to a higher power: the kind of moment you want to say “Please.”
“Don’t you have to work tomorrow?”
“Not until ten. So I have to get up early, but I’ll be taking the train in anyway . . .”
“And so you can say goodbye to me then.”
“If I have to.”
“I have to go back eventually. Degree to finish and all.”
“Right. There’s that.”
“Still, I’m having a wonderful time. And I’d hate for the evening to end now.”
“So let’s not let it, then. Not until tomorrow. Let’s keep it for ourselves.”
“Let’s,” she said, and though I’d drunk a half a bottle of wine and then strongly liquered coffee on top, still that single word in the golden darkness cut through my inebriation and made me instantly sober, so cold and quick it took my breath away. I kissed her there, on the corner of Union Square Park, right across from Virgin Megastore, a flush of neon in a City like motion, while stories above us a display of numbers counted down on one end and up on the other with no seeming meaning to either.
***
How to describe that evening? If kissing Veronica got its own chapter, loving her would be a novel, and of course it quite literally is, but even still there’s more. Knowing her would require a lifetime.
Then again, some experiences are a lifetime. Some you wait for all your life because you know Heaven would be incomplete without them. Some you hope for knowing that your memory will seem too empty when you look back on your life.
Some last all your life because they are too powerful to be constrained by time or space. Some experiences are so tactile, so intense, they pierce your skin and your body and your heart and your soul and become, immediately, part of who you are. Part of your DNA, part of your being.
That evening, Veronica and I rode the PATH back home, and I don’t know, can’t know, what she felt, how sharply or strongly or sweetly, but I wonder . . . I wonder if she was as aware of that train ride as I was, if she noticed the cracks in the seat, if every new event etched into her memory because she knew they would all become important later, after it was already over, when we wanted to revisit it again. I don’t know if she was giddy, if she was nervous, if she was excited or timid or anxious, if she ached for me as I ached for her, to hold her.
Just the idea of the evening loomed at me in a way I’d never expected it to, and I realized I had idealized my love for Veronica Sawyer as I had idealized Veronica Sawyer herself. Though I had hoped for and dreamt for and maybe even wished and prayed for that very evening, I had done so in a generalized sort of way; riding that train through the darkness, I realized I had only ever wanted Veronica Sawyer to love me, without ever really considering what that love would mean. Not in the sense of consequences, but rather in the sense of actions. I had always wanted Veronica to hold my hand without considering her fingers and her palms and her grasp. I had always wanted to kiss Veronica without ever considering her lips and her mouth and her tongue.
I had, I realized, always wanted to love Veronica without actually considering the girl and her body and her heart and her soul.
If her saying “Let’s,” had sobered me, the possibility, the potential, of what was to come—or even what might come, because who knew? I’ve never been one to presume such things—made me self-conscious. Not anxious or nervous, exactly, though those, too, were present in ways, but rather conscious of the evening and aware of what it might bring.
We’d gotten off the train and passed a CVS and a few blocks of Washington, headed back toward my apartment, when Veronica spoke. “You’re nervous.”
I chuckled. “That obvious?”
“You shouldn’t be.”
“You’re not?”
“I trust you.”
I remember our footsteps up the stairs of the stoop, the sound and feel of the key in the lock, the darkness of the outer vestibule before we got into my apartment. The dim nightlight cast our amber way to my bedroom, where we closed the door, where I locked it behind me, where I put my iPod in its dock to play a list I had made to listen to while I’d written the more romantic scenes in my novel.
Our arms were around each other, our bodies close and our lips together, her fingers through the hair just at the back of my neck. Sensation everywhere—everywhere—arms and hands and lips and tongues, so many it didn’t feel like more than two bodies so much as it felt like that was all there was, just Veronica and me. I gave up, I gave away, I let go, and she became my world. She had already been all I’d ever wanted, so it didn’t feel like so far a leap.
Sink into the bed with Veronica Sawyer. Sink into it—sinking with her, this girl I wasn’t sure I had ever expected to be there, in that moment, with. For all the being in love with her I had ever mustered I had neglected the visceral lust she could stir in me in favor of the way my heart had longed for her. I had romanticized her as I had romanticized my feelings for her, and that Platonic love had concealed my own primal desire for her. I felt her on me and around me, and as I disrobed her I reveled in quiet revelation like falling in love all over again, because that’s very much what it was. First her sweater, to reveal her dark bra over her firm, white skin, and I realized I couldn’t get over the fact that I had just removed Veronica’s sweater.
It wasn’t self-conscious so much as realization. This is Veronica Sawyer. This is her skin beneath my lips. This is her belly contracting beneath my fingertips. Those are her arms around me, her hands holding me and clutching me; this is her body arching toward me as her back lifts from my bed, her fingers slipping the buttons on my shirt as my own slipped the clasp of her bra, which loosened like a sigh. The warmth of her neck under my mouth, the sharp gasps and rush of hot breath next to my ear as I slid her bra from her.
Her breasts full and round, her nipples tight beneath my fingers and then beneath my mouth and my tongue. I caught one between my teeth as I sucked, gently, flickering my tongue back and forth over it even as my hands moved downdowndown—Veronica Sawyer’s stomach, flat, tight—to the seam of her jeans, the snap and the zip of denim in the darkness . . .
If there is such a thing as divine revelation, it can be no more wondrous than Veronica’s body in the darkness. I realized, as I unbuttoned that denim waistband, as I slid my hand down and in, cotton beneath my fingertips and hard zipper against my knuckles, that never had I fantasized about slipping my hand into Veronica Sawyer’s pants.
Never had I imagined pulling those jeans down, and never had I considered nibbling her thighs. Never had I imagined the elastic of her panties beneath my teeth. Her quick hips, brief and angular, and then the softness of her, the give of her beneath my lips as I pressed my face to her, her firm scent in my nostrils. The lift of her bottom, the epiphany of Veronica nude, the sight of
Veronica open, the image of her knees and legs and thighs and then that glorious swipe of hair to which I pressed my lips to taste her, to taste Veronica Sawyer, to feel her beneath my tongue, her texture and movement and arousal. Her gasp as my lips found her, as my fingers sought her nipples, her excited exhalations as I realized her, as a person, as a woman, as a lover.
Her reality. Veronica Sawyer was not a fantasy, not an idealization. She was not just a girl I had fallen in love with as a child and grown to love all my life. She was a girl; a solid, tangible girl in my bed; a girl whose pleasure I sought and whose support I cherished; a girl I didn’t love in the way of poetry and musing and romance but rather in the way of life and the world.
And when her body clenched to mine, when her thighs tightened, when she moaned as I slid between her legs first one finger and then another, when she cried out my name into the darkness, it was like an answered prayer. When she whispered how good it felt, and then when her breathless utterances sidestepped speech in favor of approval, when she shuddered and groaned and called the name of God like rapture . . . I’m not sure I’ve lived a greater moment than that.
When she had relaxed, when her muscles had let go, when her body had ceased shuddering to tremble instead, I kissed her thighs and hips, her navel and then her chest, her collarbone and her neck, and then her lips met mine.
Without words, almost without pause, she was rolling, her mouth and her lips and her tongue and breath just totally fucking everywhere, like she was hungry, on my neck and my chest even as I felt her hands on my waist, her fingers uncatching my button and zipper, for which I was grateful; I was aroused enough to strain painfully against the denim, which came down, along with my boxers, in the brief rush that was Veronica releasing me into the darkness and freedom, and all I could feel were her hands and her fingertips, the fullness of her breasts against my thighs, the whisp of her hair against my hips and then her mouth, her lips—
Meets Girl: A Novel Page 16
