by Lucy Lambert
I’d told my roommates about leaving last night. They weren’t too worried, there was always someone looking for a room. They’d taken the news well. Or so I thought.
Sam came in, looking cute with her freckles and an airy blouse. Her eyes roved over the mess of my room, the open suitcase, the piles of clothes on the floor, the spray of papers across the desk and dresser.
“You’re really going through with it, aren’t you?” she said.
“Yes,” I replied.
“Have you been keeping up with the news?”
“Been kinda busy, actually.”
“Then you haven’t seen it,” she said.
It was the verbal form of clickbait. She wanted me to ask. Probably wanted me to give her some reason to show me, or tell me.
“I’ve made up my mind, Sam,” I said. “By the way, do you want this skirt? I don’t think there’s room for it.” I pulled the skirt out from behind my back and held it out to her.
Her eyes skipped over it. “You’re not leaving without seeing it. Call it compensation for breaking the lease early.”
“Fine. Do your worst,” I said, sitting on the bed, the printed skirt draped over my thighs.
“You know,” Sam said when she sat down in front of my laptop, minimizing my dropout forms, “You really do have a flair for the dramatic. Maybe you should consider acting.”
Her fingers tapped across the keyboard. I saw YouTube pop up.
“I prefer being behind the camera to being in front,” I said, thinking less about movies and more about gossip sites and photographers and arranged marriages. Those only happened in front of the camera, where I should have stayed.
Sam opened a video, paused it so it could buffer for a few seconds, brought it up so that it filled the whole screen. “Just watch.”
“I’m watching.”
She hit play and moved to the side to avoid obstructing my view.
Vance sat on one of those ubiquitous leather couches found on all talk shows. He wore a dark suit. For once, he wasn’t grinning his trademark grin.
“Thanks for giving me this opportunity,” Vance said. “Because there are some things I need to set straight.”
“What is this?” I asked. Whatever it was already had over a million views.
“Shh! Just watch,” Sam replied.
I watched.
Vance turned to the audience and the cameras. Then he came clean about what happened between him and Sandra, spilling the whole business about arranged relationships.
Then he told them about me. About us. How it started and how it ended.
He looked right into one of the cameras and the shot zoomed in on his face, “It was wrong, but it could have been so right. It should have been, but now it isn’t. It’s my fault, and I’m sorry.”
The audience was quiet, except for a few murmurs. No one knew whether to applaud. No one knew how to react.
Especially not me.
Looking at his close-up like that felt like he was looking right into my eyes. I blinked at the pressure building up behind my eyes and looked away.
“I can’t believe he said all that,” I said.
“Are you really going to leave after he bared his soul like that?” Sam said, “I bet if you called him this could all be smoothed over in a heartbeat.”
“Some things that can be smoothed over shouldn’t be,” I retorted. “Now, thanks for showing me that, but I still have a bunch of packing to do.”
Sam looked at me, but finally left.
I made sure she wasn’t standing behind the door, then I went and reloaded the video. I set the volume low so that only I could hear.
I doubted.
Why am I here? I thought.
I was downtown, standing in front of the door to Vance’s hideaway apartment, the key card to said door heavy and warm against my palm.
I’d gotten the urge to come and see it one last time. Maybe spend some time completely alone with my thoughts.
I associated it with him, with us. I thought that maybe it would let me say goodbye, maybe finally move on.
I unlocked the door and went inside. I wandered the brightly lit halls, went in and out of the living room, the bedroom, the kitchen. They all had associations, all recalled something in my mind.
The touch of Vance’s body against mine. The smell of the breakfast he cooked me. The city skyline and how we held each other looking out over it.
I chewed on my bottom lip while sitting on the plush leather couch, staring blankly at my dim reflection in the TV screen mounted to wall opposite me.
Just do it. Say what you need to say and go, I goaded myself. I couldn’t, though.
Instead, I slumped back against the couch and blinked at the wetness in my eyes. I thought about using up some of the bandwidth on my phone to bring that confession interview up again.
I thought maybe I could pause it with that close-up of his face again. That way he could sort of be there with me.
I couldn’t do that either. So I got up to go.
But then the door opened and then clicked shut.
I went rigid, my heart shooting up into my throat. My mind blanked in sudden panic.
Then Vance rounded the corner. He saw me and stopped.
“Erin,” he said.
“I… I just came back to give you back your key. I’m going now.”
I pulled the key out of my pocket and set it down on the coffee table. It took more effort than I thought.
“Don’t. Not yet,” he said when I started leaving. “Did you see it?”
“Of course I did,” I said.
“And?”
“It doesn’t make any difference.”
He nodded as though he figured as much. “I fired him, you know. Rudy, my agent. Former agent.”
“Good for you,” I said, meaning it. “Why did you come here?”
He smiled. “Well, it is my apartment…”
“You know what I mean.”
“Yes, I do. I came to clear my head. And I know you came to do the same. Are you really leaving?”
“I’m almost all packed. Just a few other things to take care of.”
“I’ll miss you. A lot.”
I sniffled. Why is he doing this to me? Didn’t he know it was already hard enough?
“I know,” I said.
“You shouldn’t go. Not on account of me. Not out of spite,” he said.
“It isn’t.”
“Yes, it is! You know we still have something, you can still feel it just like I can. But rather than face it, you’re just going to run. I thought you were different, Erin.”
My eyebrows shot up my forehead at that. “You thought I was different? Rich, coming from you.”
“I did. I thought you knew what you wanted and that you wouldn’t back down until you got it. I thought other people didn’t scare you, no matter how famous they were. I still laugh every time I think of Linda’s face when you caught her wrist to keep her from braining me with that beer.”
In spite of everything, I recalled that image and smiled, too. “That was pretty funny, now that I think about it. But you’re wrong about me.”
“And you’re wrong about us, about giving up. And you’re not letting yourself see. That’s why you really came here. That’s why I’m here now. Come on, this is too much to be simple coincidence.”
“Coincidence is all it is,” I said. The words were hollow in my ears, because I was thinking something similar.
All I knew was that I had to get out of there.
Why? Afraid you’ll change your mind?
I shrugged the question off.
“I have to go now. You have your key back.”
I went for the door, giving him a wide berth as I slipped around him. I made it to the door.
But when I grabbed the latch his hand fell on my shoulder and turned me around.
He kissed me and I kissed him back. I tasted salt, felt the wetness of tears on my cheeks.
He pulled back and
saw my tears. He brushed them away with the pads of his thumbs.
“I want to start over. For real this time. No agents, no photographers. We owe it to ourselves.”
I wanted to look away from him, but I couldn’t. I noticed how his eyes looked wet, too. There was no cocked grin on his lips, no acting.
I saw the truth in his face.
“Okay,” I said.
“Yes?” He said, blinking as though he thought he heard what he wanted to hear rather than what I really said.
“Yes,” I repeated. Then I grabbed his face and pulled him down for another kiss.
Because I liked the woman he thought I was. I wanted to be her.
I would be her. With him.
Epilogue
Warhawk opened in usual blockbuster style the following spring.
There was a red carpet event, and I went with him. I wanted to see my name in those credits.
“I thought you said no photographers,” I teased while we pulled up in the limo.
“I thought you hated being in front of the camera, but you dressed so sexy,” he shot back.
I blushed. It made my cheeks almost match the shade of my dress.
The long car came up in front of the Chinese Theater in downtown LA. I looked at the neon lights.
“You know,” Vance said, “Star Wars premiered here back in ’77.”
“I didn’t know you were such a nerd,” I said.
“There’s a lot you don’t know about me. And there’s a lot I don’t know about you. But I look forward to finding it all out,” Vance said.
Someone opened the limo door. Flashing light and the clamor of mingled applause and conversation flooded into the cabin.
Vance stepped out first. He leaned back in and offered me his hand.
I took it and stepped out onto the red carpet.
I didn’t mind the cameras so much anymore. Not with Vance holding my hand.
We went into the theater, and at the end, I watched my name scroll past in the credits.
THE END
Thank you!
I hope you enjoyed “VANCE!” Please read on for another of my books, “Italian Kisses”!
Italian Kisses
There I was, in the most beautiful city on Earth, surrounded by gorgeous buildings and the history of centuries of the Roman Empire, and I hadn't left my apartment in months. I was in a rut, one that seemed impossible to break out of. Even worse, my lecherous professor threatened to end my education in Rome if I didn't sleep with him.
That's when my knight in shining armor appeared. The only American I had seen in weeks, he swept me off my feet. In a night of tumultuous passion, I was broken from my rut. I never thought I'd see him again, but he showed up again at just the right moment. When I poured my heart out about my situation as I bathed, he jumped in with me, expensive pants and all, eager to listen.
I never even recognized that he was Liam Montgomery, billionaire CEO and playboy.
But there was something different about him. Something that his wealth couldn't hide. An honesty that shone through. And when he told me time and time again that he thought I was different, I began to believe him. I began to believe in myself. I began to believe I could find happiness here in Rome...
Chapter 1
As soon as I arrived at the party, I wanted to leave. I smiled politely at the slick-haired doorman as he waved me in with one white-gloved hand contrasting so sharply with his olive-skinned face. The skirt of my red dress swished around my legs while I shuffled in.
At the same time, a cool ball of anxiety started somewhere in the area of my lungs and began rising up through my chest and throat like some slow, agonizing elevator.
I hadn’t been this far away from the university since… I tried to think of such a time, frowning while a waiter conveying a tray of champagne flutes weaved around me.
Two months, I thought. It had been two months since I’d done more than go from my flat to the campus and from the campus to my flat.
You’ve fallen into a rut, came an admonishing voice. My voice.
An older man wearing a tuxedo jacket on his shoulders and a severe-faced Italian matriarch on his arm cleared his throat behind me.
“Pardon me,” I said, stepping out of the way. I’d been standing just a few steps from the doorway, apparently unable to keep myself from sliding back into said rut and drifting away in a daydream.
The man smiled at my use of English and led the severe-faced woman down through the front foyer in which we stood. As he passed, I found I could see myself in the reflection cast by his shiny head, which was lined with the white horseshoe of his remaining hair.
Just go inside, I thought, mentally prodding myself. He’s in there, waiting. But then again, maybe he was why I didn’t want to go inside.
He, you ask? One of my professors of art history at the Sapienza University here in Rome. Giuseppe Aretino. My escort by night and my teacher by day. Or at least that’s how he’d like to style himself.
I wonder if he knew I was seriously considering leaving Rome.
Stuck in a rut, I thought again. And apparently in more ways than one. From the large set of ornate doors that, by their iconography, appeared to have originated sometime in the 16th Century, the sound of a string quartet wafted to my spot.
I couldn’t recognize the particular piece, but then again, my interest lay more in art than in classical music.
There was also the soft murmur of dozens of conversations. Dozens of people. Dozens of strangers. And one particular black-haired (which he always kept slicked back with shiny oil) Italian professor with the power to make or break my grades this semester.
I looked down at the floor, the action of bending my neck forward like that jamming the elevator car of anxiety somewhere just below my larynx. The floor was marble, so perfectly polished and smooth I could easily make out the individuals ringlets of my hair as they shifted on my bare shoulders.
A head of curly blonde hair in a sea of shaggy black (in the case of younger Italians) or thinning grey-white (in the case of older Italians).
Professor Aretino… Giuseppe, as he always asked me to call him, liked to call me Golden Girl (Ragazza D’oro in Italiono) because of my hair. It had been cute at first, almost endearingly so when I made a Betty White joke about it and he didn’t get it, but now it grated on me.
In fact, I almost left right then and there, an angry pressure building behind my eyes while I stared down at the floor that looked like it might have been preserved since Antiquity but had probably been installed by one of Mussolini’s cronies back in the 1930s in an attempt to return Rome to some of its former Imperial splendor (God, even at times like that I couldn’t get my head out of the textbooks).
I even turned toward the door, which happened to open at the same time, sending a burst of sweet-smelling evening air into that glossy marble foyer.
I couldn’t leave, I knew then. If I left without putting in some sort of token appearance with Dr. Aretino, he’d corner me after our next lecture and he’d flail his arms about in that animated Italian way and I’d be roped into attending another function at another time.
That was it, I realized. I could put in my appearance and then go catch a taxi back to my flat and start looking into flights back to the States.
That thought really twisted in my stomach, the pressure forcing that elevator car jammed in my throat up another few inches. If I left now, my grades would be incomplete. In essence, thousands of dollars wasted. Thousands of dollars I’d promised not to waste.
I guess it goes to show that nothing turns out like you expect. Not even Rome. The place that wasn’t built in a day. All the roads may have lead here, but maybe an airplane could take me away.
So I swallowed against the cold lump and turned back. Rather, I turned my face right back into an expensive suit. I got a whiff of tastefully expensive cologne and a sense of hard muscle beneath the tailored jacket before rebounding.
“Oh!” I said, my reflexes m
aking me stumble back, my shoes unable to find purchase on that slick marble floor. A cold, hard marble floor that definitely wasn’t going to be kind to my behind. My teeth clicked together and my eyes squeezed shut in anticipation of the jarring pain about to shoot up my spine.
Except it didn’t. Instead, two hands grabbed my out flung wrists and steadied me.
“Are you all right?” the man asked, his Italian flawless if accented. It was an American accent.
That startled me. Normally I wasn’t one to fall prey to stereotypes, but I’d definitely seen my fair share of American tourists speaking slowly and loudly in English or fumbling their way through an English-Italian dictionary to start believing there was some truth to it.
“Fine. Clumsy, but fine,” I said, giving my head a shake that sent those blonde curls of mine tumbling back and forth against my skin. Those hands of his still held my wrists, and I could feel the heat from his palms radiating against my skin.
“You speak English!”
“So do you, apparently…” I had a witty remark on the tip of my tongue, but it died there when I lifted my eyes to get a look at the face of my savior.
Dark hair, like an Italian. Black and glossy and so soft looking my fingers curled even as my stomach tightened with the desire to feel just how soft. It was tousled just enough to give that bed-head look without actually being bed-head.
Below that hairline, two baby-blues twinkled back at me with amusement. The barest hint of a five-o’clock-shadow graced sculpted cheeks and a dimpled chin. He wore a perfectly tailored suit that tapered to show his build without being flamboyant.
It was an Armani suit, too. Which brought to mind yet another old saw: When in Rome…
But what caught my eyes the most was the smile. The barest uptick at the corners of his thin lips, which parted just enough to offer a glimpse of the pearly-whites they curtained, confirmed the amusement I’d detected in those baby-blues.
“Are you sure you’re okay?” he said, giving my wrists a squeeze and glancing down in a gesture meant to draw my attention.
