by Anne Calhoun
“He said he’s really good with general knowledge questions.”
“Is he, now?” His voice was lower, rougher.
“Kaitlin really wants that T-shirt.”
“She’s not going to get it tonight,” Charlie said. “I sent Billy, his cousin and his girlfriend in our place.”
She bumped her bike over the curb and stopped in front of him. “Bad luck for Kaitlin,” she said. Then she reached up and tucked her fingers into the notch at the base of his throat, exposed by the stretched neck of his work T-shirt. He smelled of heat and chemicals, a slightly acrid scent she associated with Charlie at the end of the day. “I really should do laundry and start packing for my trip. I leave in a couple of days.”
“I know,” he said. “But come out with me instead.”
Her eyes widened ever so slightly. Friends didn’t do thing separately. People who were dating paired off, went out for dinner or drinks, cooked meals together, without everyone else around. “Go out with you?”
“Yeah.” Soft. Certain. Not saying anything that indicated he knew this wasn’t their routine, not saying anything at all.
“Sounds great,” she said.
Maybe she wouldn’t have to speak the words that would make them lovers as well as friends. If she did, there would be plenty of time later. For tonight, she’d have this new Charlie, the one who wanted to go on a date with her.
“Did you have something in mind?”
“Let’s go to a club.”
She thought about the few pictures she’d seen of Charlie with Chelsea, coming out of clubs, the smudged eyeliner, the reckless eyes. She wanted that Charlie, the one Chelsea had all but destroyed. He looked at her, his expression flashing like quicksilver from the automatic denial to a flare of interest. Someone had taught him to say no, to doubt and mistrust and hang back when he obviously used to fling himself at life.
Silence. She stared right back at him. Bring your wild, bring your dangerous, bring your doubts and your fears, your ungovernable passion. Bring yourself, your then and your now. Bring it all, because I can take it.
“Sounds great. I need to change,” she said. “Meet me downstairs in ten.”
She stowed her bike and hurried into the flat, leaving the door cracked for Charlie to follow. In her bedroom she shimmied out of the basic black she’d worn to work and into a short, stretchy skirt, a tunic in a shimmery gray and a pair of flat-heeled over-the-knee boots. In the bathroom she started to glam up her makeup, going for smoky eyes with a bright pewter gleam, blusher on her cheeks and a glimmery pink lipstick. She brushed her hair loose and shook her bangs into her eyes. Perfect.
The door opened. “Hello?”
“In the bathroom,” she called.
Charlie appeared in the doorway. He wore a pair of jeans that clung to the curve of his thighs and rear, tucked into lace-up boots left loose at the top, and a tight gray shirt with the sleeves pushed to his elbows, exposing his scarred hands and arms. The shirt was haphazardly tucked into his jeans, showing off a wide black belt. A black leather jacket dangled from his fingers.
Be still, my beating heart.
She shifted her weight to one hip and tilted her head at him. “Will you do something for me?”
“Depends on what it is, love.”
The uncertainty was back, just a bit of it. Wordlessly, she held out her makeup bag containing her eye shadows, eyebrow pencils, eyeliners.
He looked into the case, then back at her, and didn’t even pretend to not know what she meant. “Everything that was in those stories and you remember pictures of me in my goth phase,” he said.
That wasn’t a no. “I’m visual. And I don’t care what she said, what they said. I care about you,” she said. “Show me what you were like, before.”
It was a night for challenges. He took the bag and dug through it until he found a charcoal-gray pencil soft enough to give him a smudged line. Without hesitating he leaned forward and drew the color along his upper, then lower lids, using a couple of applications and his finger to rub the lines into a messy smear. She found she wasn’t very surprised when he used her mascara to ever so slightly thicken his lashes. Another dab with his thumb and the effect was perfect.
He turned to face her. Milla was one breath away from telling him to skip the club and go straight to bed when he reached out and yanked her full force against his body. Then he bent his head and kissed her, all rubbing lips and teasing tongue.
When he drew back he wore just a hint of her lip color, and his eyes gleamed with a dangerous mixture of dare, desire and defiance.
“You are, hands down, the hottest thing I’ve ever seen,” she breathed.
“We’re just getting started,” he said.
* * *
He’d forgotten how direly mascara itched.
Charlie stifled the urge to rub his eyes or to feel self-conscious about how much he knew about applying makeup. Back in his goth phase, his body had been as much of a canvas as his sketchbook. He’d pierced, tattooed, dyed, shaved, worn stacked-heel boots and leather vests, dangling chains and studded cuffs. He went places, did things, met people, because his life was a work in progress, on its way to becoming a work of art.
Until Chelsea happened.
He’d let the holes in his ears, eyebrow and nipples close. He’d had his tattoo of Chelsea’s name altered to an explosion of color and line, taught himself discipline, day by painful day, until getting up and doing the work was as much a habit as the cigs, drinking, recreational drugs and Chelsea were before. He’d created a life as a working artist. He wasn’t setting the art world on fire, but he paid his bills with the pretty things he made.
And maybe the latest work would open new possibilities for him. When he was ready. For the time being, he wanted to keep it close.
But seeing himself like this reminded him how much he used to want, how intensely he used to feel. He was different in it, and he knew it. Masks, makeup—even a girl as together as Milla changed from her usual ‘50s glam girl style into clubbing girl when she changed her clothes. Charlie had seen her in skirts and blouses, in tight pedal pushers and prim sweaters, but he’d never seen her like this. It was a particular section of her legs, he decided as they hailed a minicab. The boots covered her to the point where her toned muscle curved out from her knee, and the skirt covered her to the top of her thigh, but in between was a complex play of skin and muscle he couldn’t keep his eyes from.
Especially when she crossed her legs, as she did after sliding into the minicab. The stretched fabric created a little tent, a dark, tempting shadow underneath. The old Charlie would have had his hand up her skirt by the time the cab pulled away from the curb. The new Charlie rubbed his flattened palms against denim to drown out the itch in his fingertips and looked out the window at London passing by.
“Where are we going?” Milla said.
“Collective,” Charlie said. “In SoHo.” In the past he’d have known all the trendiest spots. Tonight he didn’t want trendy. He wanted anonymous, edgy, somewhere without photographers, where the only things that mattered were the music and the size of the dance floor. He’d texted a cousin for a couple of recommendations and found even after a few years out of the scene, the same places were still known for good music, no celebrities and no photographers.
Milla’s boot nudged his knee. He looked at her, felt that fist squeeze his heart. “Why are you on the other side of the cab?” she whispered, her mouth curved into a wicked little smile.
They were as alone as they’d ever been together, not in the house they shared with their friends, not at the pub, not meeting on Commercial Street. He slid across the backseat and kissed her as purposefully as he claimed her knee, sliding his tongue into her mouth as his palm glided up her thigh. From there it was impossibly easy to brush his thumb over her mound.
She nipped at his lower lip and kept her legs crossed, her boot swinging slowly in time to the music drifting from the cabbie’s radio. Stay with me...’cause y
ou’re all I need...
When the cab braked in front of the club, he wore as much of her lipstick as she did. All the barriers he’d erected in the last four years, the methods he’d developed to keep himself under control, to rebuild his life, his career, his fucking pride, were slipping away as easily as a sailor untied a knot. If his mouth looked anything like hers, damp and well kissed, then the sexual tension between them could power the club for the night, and everyone would be able to see it.
The bass line vibrated up through the sidewalk, into his feet. Milla, thank God, had worn flat boots and looked like she could close down the club.
He paid their cover and took her hand to lead her inside. “Want a drink?” he bawled in her ear.
She shook her head and pointed at the dance floor. For a moment he hesitated, not sure he remembered how to do this, how to lose himself in the beat, in the moment, in a noise so powerful it vibrated in his cells. Then Milla raised her arms over her head, closed her eyes and swiveled in a tight, sexy circle, the lines flowing from the beat through her feet, through her hips, shoulders, hair.
There was a moment when glass became workable, hot and fluid, when the pipe turned in his hands and the shape coalesced out of heat and sand and chemicals. Charlie did exactly that, became pliable in the noise and chaos. When Milla circled again, he stepped into her body and felt her hair and skin against his as she turned in his arms.
The music crashed at them, waves of noise buffeting them until all they could do was surrender to the music. Milla danced like she lived, flowing, buoyant, joyously, and he slipped back into the man he used to be when everything fed his creative process—dancing, clothes, London’s ancient heartbeat. The music became color and shape and movement, pouring into the well inside him, overflowing into his heart. And when they staggered out of the club, the bouncer locking the door behind them, his ears rang with its absence.
His entire body felt raw, exposed, and all he wanted to do with Milla was tuck her into the curve of his body and sleep until noon. Maybe then he’d understand what was happening to him, this inexplicable blend of tenderness and desire.
Milla’s hair was damp with sweat, her cheeks flushed, her top clinging to her torso. “I haven’t done that in ages,” she said, too loudly for the quiet, dark street, but barely audible to him.
“Hush, love,” he said.
“Feed me,” she said in return.
“Right,” he said, looking around. If he remembered correctly there was an all-night café a couple of blocks over. He looped his arm around her waist and escorted her down the street. The sun was rising by the time they finished eating. They were both lingering over their food, sharing smiles and glances, not really talking until Milla wrapped her fingers around her coffee mug and braced her feet on the seat by his legs.
“Much later, and they’re going to know,” she said, her gaze alert over the rim of her coffee cup.
He shrugged with a nonchalance he hadn’t felt even a couple of weeks earlier. “So what if they do?”
Her smile was as warm as the steam rising from her coffee.
But no one was awake when they tiptoed through the house’s front door, Milla giggling as Charlie bumped into the bike rack. The street and house were so silent she could hear the slow beep of Charlie’s answering machine upstairs.
“Shh,” she said, her finger to her lips.
He kissed her, slow and hot and deep, and oh, she liked the way he kept her quiet. He backed her into the wall with a thump and kissed her. With a soft purr, she luxuriated in his lengthening beard, not caring if she added to the circles under her eyes or the flush in her cheeks.
“I can’t come upstairs today,” she said with a yawn. “I need to pack. Do laundry. Pack.”
“Sleep,” he said.
“That, too. Yes. I’ll do that first, or I’ll end up with my parka and snow boots when I want lots of trim little cardis and pencil skirts.”
“I see your mouth moving, and I hear your voice, but all I understand is this,” he said, and kissed her again. The languid rhythm of his tongue against hers sent heat trickling through her veins.
She pushed him back a little. “Sleep. Stop down this afternoon. Elsa’s trying out dessert bar recipes today, and if I’m a very good girl, I’ll treat myself to a stolen afternoon in bed with you.”
* * *
She took a fast shower then slept until after noon, when the scent of sugar and nuts and melting chocolate woke her. Kaitlin and Elsa eyed her curiously when she emerged.
“That must have been one hell of a date,” Kaitlin said.
“It was,” she replied with a yawn on her way to the coffeemaker. “Has Charlie been down? I told him you were making bars today.”
“Not yet,” Elsa said as she rinsed a mixing bowl. “He got home super late last night.”
“Or super early this morning,” Kaitlin said, cup of coffee in one hand and her phone in the other. “Who’s Jared and why is he texting me?”
“IT Guy. My date from last night. He has his own business. I recommended you for design work.”
“He’s checked out my site and wants to meet,” Kaitlin said. “He says he doesn’t like the design side, just the coding. Seems decent?”
Milla shrugged and slumped into a chair at the kitchen table. “Very. He also says he’d sub for me at the pub quiz while I’m gone. Apparently general knowledge is his specialty.”
“Better and better,” Kaitlin said. “Have you started packing?”
“Not a single pair of pants,” Milla admitted. “Coffee. Then packing.”
She’d taken her first sip of coffee when a sharp bam-bam-bam came at their door. Kaitlin unfolded from the sofa to open it.
“Hey, Char—”
“Where’s Milla?”
She knew. As soon as she heard his voice, before she even saw his face, she knew exactly what had happened and woke right up. No caffeine necessary. Adrenaline surged in her veins, sending her heart rate through the roof and her stomach to the floor.
Then she did see his face, and all her hopes and dreams shattered like chunked glass. He’d showered the evidence from last night from his face. Gone was the mysterious kohl-eyed bad boy who could dance down the stars. In his place was Charlie, hollow eyed, betrayed.
It was the look she’d never wanted to see on his face.
“Why?” he demanded. “I didn’t tell you not to show the video to anyone. I thought I didn’t have to tell you!”
Oh God. “I asked her not to approach you,” Milla started. Her stomach churned sickeningly.
“You knew she knew and you didn’t tell me?”
“It was an accident,” she said, scrambling, because she’d thought Charlie couldn’t look worse than he had when he opened the door. “I didn’t do it on purpose. I swear. Nina and the rest of the staff were out for lunch. I was eating at my desk and watching the video. I didn’t hear them come back.”
Kaitlin stood by the door, wide-eyed and unmoving. Suds dripped from Elsa’s elbow to the floor. “What video?” Kaitlin said into the silence.
“Why were you watching it at the Darmayne Gallery?” His voice was stunned with disbelief.
“Because,” she said. Her voice trailed off. Because I care. A lot.
She couldn’t say that now, not with Charlie looking like the scorched earth left after a war, not when it would sound manipulative. She’d had her chances to speak lover’s words the way Charlie would want them spoken: in private. She’d blown those chances. Now it was too late.
As the seconds passed, shame crawled up her spine, shrinking her as he stared at her. She knew exactly what kind of hell Charlie had gone through with Chelsea, the public humiliation, the loss of control over his reputation and art. The master of all things internet, Kaitlin blithely called Milla. But she’d forgotten that you didn’t need social media to hurt someone. Carelessness could happen in real time, in real life.
She firmed up her voice, determined to stand tall while her world crashed
down around her. “Because I couldn’t stop watching it. Because you were talking about your new pieces and your process and how you felt about the East End, and you looked so alive. I wanted to see that again. Charlie, I’m—
“I don’t want anyone to see me.”
Milla stifled a flinch. Some men got louder when they were angry. Charlie got quiet, the kind of stillness that reminded her of the wild, unpredictable young man he’d been, and how much pain and suffering it took to build that self-control.
“I don’t want anyone to see me, and I really don’t want anyone to sell me. Not Nina Darmayne. Not you. Those pieces are mine! I made them for me, to learn the process, to figure out what I thought about the East End. Not for a chance at fame or money or a showing at some gallery for all those people who believed what Chelsea said about me and looked at me like I was dirt!”
“I’m sorry, Charlie,” she said. “I never, ever would have done that on purpose. You don’t need what little I could do for you. Your work speaks for itself. But Nina didn’t care about Chelsea. All she cared about was your work. You deserve everything she could do for you, and more!”
“You really don’t get it, do you? We’re not all trying to sell ourselves.”
You did not just say that to me.
Pain and shock stopped her breath in her throat. For a brief moment Charlie looked as if he wished he could take the words back, but then that look disappeared under the film of betrayal and anger.
“So say no,” she said, fighting to keep her voice steady. “If all you want is all you have, no one’s going to force you to sell your work anywhere. And things can keep going on exactly the way they are.”
The scent of charred sugar drifted into the air. “Something’s burning,” Kaitlin said.
“Shit,” Elsa said, and whirled to open the oven door. Milla automatically looked over her shoulder, into the kitchen.
By the time she turned around, Charlie was gone. His footsteps pattered against the stairs, two at a time, by Milla’s estimate, then his door closed with a barely audible snick. Elsa and Kaitlin stared at her over a pan of smoking, blackened dessert bars.
