Exposure_A Love Story

by Tracy Ewens

  Meg wasn’t facing them, which was good. It was a clever strategy to lose the stunned expression first. There was a hint of pain in her eyes and one more time, West stood in unfamiliar territory. He was jealous.

  Meg pivoted back to them, her lips almost lifting into a smile, and shook hands. West moved to her side and admired the raw acting ability.

  “This is Candace. She’s an assistant editor for the New Yorker.”

  “Part-time assistant editor soon.” She touched her belly and beamed.

  “Good to see the New Yorker caters to work-life balance,” Meg said, obviously trying to move the conversation to a speedy end.

  Asshole leaned over and kissed his wife’s neck. Another whiskey and poor Candace would be sharing a cab home with a blithering idiot still hung up on his ex. Lucky girl.

  “It was a pleasure meeting you, Candace. Thank you for coming and congratulations to you both.” Her eyes locked on David. “I am happy for you.”

  West had a feeling she was happy for him, which was incredibly generous considering he had stopped by for the sole purpose of pissing on her parade.

  “Yeah, we were married off the coast of—”

  “Would you… I’m sorry to interrupt, but I need to get back to my show. It was good to see you, David.” She shook the wife’s hand again. “A pleasure. Best of luck to you both.”

  She left and rounded the corner near the caterer. West followed but kept his distance. She was leaning down, hands on her knees and clearly trying to get it together.

  “He’s gone,” West said.

  She nodded and took in a deep breath. No tears, which was a relief. He only dealt in fake tears, and what had gone on over there was not fake.

  “This is probably not the time to offer acting notes, but that was a genuine performance. Polish firmly in place when you shook the little wife’s hand. Twice, I might add. Well done.”

  A laugh teased her lips as she stood and gently rested her head back on the panel separating them from the rest of the gallery.

  “Thank you.”

  “For what?”

  “Being you.”

  He went next to her. The panel was wobbly, so he took a step forward as the servers flew by them with more drinks.

  “You’re welcome. I’m guessing things didn’t end well with you two?”

  When she didn’t answer, West supposed he should leave her and head back out to the crowd exclaiming, “Oh, this is so lush,” every time they moved to another photograph. He thought he might puke out there, but Meg probably needed space. Again.

  “He wanted to get married. Correction, he wanted me to quit my job and start a family. I hurt him, so now he’s bitter,” she said quietly right as West shifted his weight to leave.

  “Did you love him?” He moved back, lately never missing an opportunity to know more about her. He did take a quick look around to make sure there were no bees buzzing in the vicinity.

  “No.”

  “Ouch. Good thing the poor bastard left. Ruthless, Poncho. Completely ruthless.”

  She laughed, grabbed another glass of wine, and looped her arm under his. West should have made a joke and created distance. Instead, he kissed her hand and returned it to his arm as they walked back out to the crowd together. This was her night, and there were not enough photographers to keep him from being there for her.

  Chapter Fourteen

  After the gallery had sold the last print and West had posed for what Meg hoped was his last selfie of the night, she was exhausted. She had no idea how he kept up a sense of humor about the constant attention.

  Thanking the gallery owners, Meg slid into her coat and walked past West as he held the door open for her. Meg looked around for Vince as West pulled up the collar of his coat, took her hand, and began walking. She was struck by how far they’d come and that their time together was almost over.

  “I never told him I loved him,” Meg said. “It was a bad situation in the end, but I never lied to him. I don’t lie,” she added as he swerved them past a puddle.

  “We all lie.”

  “Correction. I don’t lie to people I care about. I have lied about paying a bill online or when Amy asked me to join her bridge group, but other than that, I don’t lie. I’m good at the truth.”

  “You don’t like bridge?”

  “Everyone in my family plays bridge. My sister, Sage, teaches it at the community center. Our grandmother taught us all when we were little. I’ve played enough bridge for one lifetime.”

  “Who tells someone that?” he asked as they stood on the corner with a few other people. West’s eyes flicked almost imperceptibly at the group and back to her. She supposed he was constantly assessing.

  “That I don’t like bridge?” she asked.

  “No, that you don’t lie. That you are good at the truth.”

  Meg shrugged, and the wind picked up as they crossed the street. She was old enough to know that honesty was a rare commodity, but West seemed downright shocked at the idea of being told the truth. She wasn’t trying to sound noble. Ever since her second-grade bake sale, she’d made a vow never to lie.

  She didn’t have many rules for herself. They were stifling, but she held fast to the truth. Even as a little girl she’d wanted to tell her mom that her corn bread was awful, but when she’d offered Meg a piece to try after she walked home from the bus stop, the kitchen was covered in canisters, a mixer, and almost every wooden spoon they owned.

  The entire scene was dusted in a film of flour, as if it had started snowing inside their house. To Meg’s almost eight-year-old eyes, her mom looked sad, so she swallowed down the glop of bread and even with it sticking to the top of her mouth, she nodded and told her mom it was delicious. Despite her mother’s initial beaming and humming around the kitchen for the rest of the night, Meg hated that she’d lied.

  She had no way of knowing at the time the impression a bake sale would have on her, but seeing her mom among the other moms had hurt her heart. That was how she would forever remember it, and that night she made the rule.

  No one bought a piece of the corn bread, not one. Meg had heard some of her classmates and even a couple of moms whispering.

  “First, who brings corn bread to a bake sale,” the mom that looked like a mouse said to the mom wearing the red lipstick.

  “Correction, who brings awful corn bread to a bake sale,” Red Lipstick had cackled back. Meg wanted to say something, defend her mom, but she was only eight so she quietly helped pack up.

  They sang along to the radio just the same as always on the way home. Once Meg was older, she realized her mother probably never cared if anyone bought her bread. She might have been relieved the whole thing was over. If the Whispering Pines Elementary School bake sale had hurt her mother’s feelings, she never said a word.

  The following year, her mom took baking classes and started making cakes from scratch. She even presented their father with a crème brûlée for his forty-fifth birthday a couple years after that. Their mother was a master baker now, but that bake sale had changed Meg. She never again wanted to send someone she loved out into a sea of strangers on a lie. There was no way she would have understood it fully as a little girl, but the night after the bake sale, she wrote in her diary, the one with the unicorn and the heart-shaped lock—I don’t want to be a liar. She’d cried, wiped her eyes, and had been pissing people off ever since. She wasn’t cruel, merely honest. She owed that to the people she cared about.

  Obviously, not everyone in her life saw honesty as a virtue. When David proposed to her almost three years ago, Meg would have given anything to go back and erase her diary entry. In the grown-up world, Meg learned quickly, there was no way to be honest with a man who looked at her as if she was the moon without hurting him as she had. She cared about David. They’d shared some incredible adventures together, but it wasn’t love for her, and it certainly wasn’t something that would hold them together after he stood up from one knee.

  They were di
fferent people. He wanted a wife, someone who was going to quit her job and raise a family while he continued taking pictures all over the world. Meg was not that woman. But David, too, had changed her. He had said some things in anger the last time she saw him that all but knocked her over.

  “You’re a hider.” That’s what he’d said. “Someone who runs from real human contact.” He’d raised his voice, thrown his duffel bag in the truck, and finished with, “It’s not normal, Meg. You’re not normal.”

  There was no point in arguing with a wounded man, but those words, similar her mother’s corn bread, were tucked into her being. She supposed, looking at West now, his gorgeous face lit by the street lights and still waiting for an answer to his question, every person she met had shaped her. Her relationship with West, if that’s what this was, would leave its mark too.

  “Animals are drawn to the truth. I think they can sense fake. They don’t like it, so I guess that’s why we get along. They’re okay with my honesty.”

  “And they can’t talk.” West smiled, and Meg was struck by how imperfect and wonderful his face could be when he wasn’t trying. “Truth telling is not advised here in the human world.”

  “I don’t know. I think we could all benefit from honesty.”

  West considered her answer. “Does that mean I can ask you anything I want and you’ll give me a straight answer?”

  They stopped, and he pulled her out of the way as a group of people approached from behind. She was up against the building and West had subtly kept his face hidden. He was inches from her face, their puffs of breath mingling in the evening.

  “Does it?” he said quietly. “Can I ask you anything, Meg?”

  A shiver traveled the length of her body and she pulled on her coat, knowing full well the weather was not the problem.

  “Are you hungry?” she asked.

  He laughed and stepped back now that they were alone again. Meg decided his laugh was one of his best features, which was saying something since the man had an abundance of best features.

  “I could eat.” He offered his hand, gloved in leather.

  “Let’s do that, let’s eat.” She put her hand in his, and that felt even more intimate than his arm. Another puff of air escaped her lips.

  “Are you asking me on a date?”

  “Sure. I’ll buy,” she said.

  “Oh, I’m there. Mexican?” West took out his phone.

  “Do you eat falafels?”

  “Are the little fried things they put in them fresh?”

  “Those are the falafels.”

  “Huh, what’s the rest of the stuff?”

  “It’s a falafel sandwich, or you can get a plate.”

  “It’s the sandwich on the pita. That’s what I want.”

  “I know the perfect place. Are you calling that car again? We could grab a cable car. The place is right on Market.”

  He typed a quick message and returned the phone to his coat pocket. “Why do you need to give me a hard time? I ride the cable cars, but only during weekdays after lunch.”

  “What?”

  “Not a lot of traffic then, and the people on the public transportation during that time couldn’t care less who I am. They’re my kind of people.”

  Meg smiled.

  “Don’t worry, Poncho. I’m not missing out on life. I simply have to plan more than the average person. It’s ten thirty on a Friday night. Take me on a cable car and it will be a drunken selfie freak show. You’ll never get your falafel.”

  There was no way this was an act. She’d watched one of his movies when she couldn’t sleep the other night, and he wasn’t that good of an actor.

  This was real. He was asking her to like him back.

  Meg faced him and smoothed her hands up the front of his soft and probably expensive coat. As if she’d already done it hundreds of times, she rose on her tiptoes and kissed him softly on the lips.

  West had gone to St. Barts one year after Christmas. It was the year the first Full Throttle came out and he foolishly went home without a plan. Photographers followed him and his family to the edge of where they’d cut down their Christmas tree and then hid out in his mother’s oleanders. It had scared the shit out of him and when he called Hannah, her advice was to leave.

  “This isn’t dying down anytime soon, hon,” she’d said.

  As much as West desperately needed to be home and grounded, his dad couldn’t even pull his truck out of the driveway to get more firewood. So Hannah sent him his first of many cars and he left before Christmas. That was the last time West did anything without a plan.

  There was an upside, though. St. Barts was warm and gorgeous. As his tongue slid past Meg’s cold and delicious lips, he was reminded of sinking into the warm ocean, safe and removed from a world he didn’t understand. Kissing her had the same effect and as he wrapped his arms around her and pulled them from sight, he wanted her with a force that was unfamiliar.

  The lights of Vince’s car cut through the dark, damp alleyway and idled on the street. West slowly pulled back from her mouth and was aware of nothing but her peaceful face and the rhythmic dripping of water from somewhere farther down the alley. Meg’s eyes slowly opened and her hands rested on his arms.

  She held on and put her forehead to his chest before whispering, “I think you might need to find a new best friend.”

  “Nah, in the movies, this is what we call a plot twist. If I’d known alleyways were your thing, I would never have tried to put the moves on you at your apartment,” he said over the top of her head, which promptly fell back in laughter.

  West wanted that sound in his life, but when the car flashed its lights, he was reminded that they were not two people stumbling over their feelings after a night out on the town. He was a puppet and her heart was happiest in faraway places. Before reality could sneak between them, she squeezed his arms.

  “Exactly what kind of gym work goes into these arms, Westin Drake? Professional inquiry, of course.”

  He wrapped an arm around her waist, lifted her off the ground, and moved toward the waiting car. Rewarded with more laughter, he set her on her feet and they climbed into the backseat.

  “So, you do notice the arms. I need clarification since so far, you’ve appeared completely immune to my body. Truth please, Poncho.”

  “Okay. Yes, your body is… it’s impressive. That’s all you’re getting.”

  “I’ll take it,” he said.

  “What’s the secret?”

  “Work. And falafels only on special occasions.” He wanted to kiss her again.

  “That’s a shame. But I suppose you need restraint if you’re going to be the sweaty guy driving fast cars.”

  “You watched?”

  “You’re sweaty in the pictures on Google, but I confess I did watch one.”

  “My arms were sweaty too, eh?” Mocking his image somehow felt like a game now that she’d let him know she saw past his shine.

  “They were. I swooned a little.”

  “I’m sure.”

  “Oh God,” she said. “The ego on this one. Vince, could you please take us to the Falafel House on Market Street?” She leaned back in his arms as if she too felt the comfort of seclusion. Or she cared about him enough to give it a try.

  “How did you know his name?” West wondered what other details she was picking up along the way.

  “I pay attention.” She shrugged against his chest.

  “Yeah? Can I get some more attention?” He pulled her onto his lap.

  Meg huffed dramatically. “Damn, celebrities.” And then she took his mouth in another kiss, and West slipped right back into the crystal-blue water of her again.

  A short car ride later, Meg stood in line while he waited in the car. Every now and then she would make a camera with her hands and he shook his head. He’d forgotten how fun sneaking around could be. She was so alive and the only thing he cared about was being near her. He asked Vince to wait and joined her in line.

 
; Leaning slightly into her back, he wrapped his arms around her and when someone took their picture with a phone, he ignored it. They were next in line and if anything got out of hand, Vince was right there. West mentally planned, and then dropped his mouth to the curve of her neck.

  She wasn’t the kind of woman who handed everything over to anyone. He knew that, and even if she did, his life would suffocate her. Meg thrived in fresh air and a life with her family and friends. His world provided him with opportunities and an obscene amount of money, but that didn’t mean he could have her under the glass bowl. That was fine too. She was merely passing through anyway. But before she left and ruined him for all other women, he wanted all in.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Spices filled the car as they sat across the street from the Fairmont San Francisco.

  “Side entrance?” Vince asked.

  “Yes. Wait until the last group of cars leave the roundabout. I’ve texted Towner.”

  “I thought we were going to your place,” Meg said.

  “We are.” West seemed distracted.

  “Wait, you live in a hotel?” She turned his face to meet hers as Vince pulled into traffic and made a quick U-turn.

  “I don’t live in a hotel. I’m staying in a hotel.”

  “For how long?”

  “Until September, when I go back to LA. Can we discuss this later? I need to get you inside.”

  Meg wished she was an actor. Her feelings were all over her face and she knew he saw them.

  “I’ll be back and forth,” he clarified.

  “I don’t… it’s none of my business. I’m not sure why I asked.”

  The next thing she knew, West was out of the car and grabbing the take-out bags from her. The other door opened and the largest man Meg had ever seen looked in on her. Even his watch was huge.

  “Good evening, Ms. Jeffries. Welcome to the Fairmont.” His voice was deep. “My name is Clay. Mr. Drake will meet you in the suite if you’ll come with me.”

  Meg’s mouth must have fallen open for a moment during what resembled a movie scene. She was waiting for someone to yell “cut” when the tall guy in all black offered her his hand and she slid from the backseat. Clay had one of those Secret Service hearing-aid-looking things in his ear. Glancing at Vince, who seemed to be scanning the alley as if they were on a tactical mission, she noticed the gun holstered inside his jacket. It all felt like a Bond movie.