The Beginning of Always

by Sophia Mae Todd

  And then Alistair sat down close. Too close.

  Too damn close. I was practically smashed up between his casually splayed legs.

  I wanted to tell him to back up, but a part of me hushed my nervous voice, told me to allow it. It was nighttime, we were in a dark, gilded space. Reality didn’t exist beyond the sign that proclaimed “Private Party” and all worries, yes, could be forgotten. That the past could even be forgiven.

  If only for a little while.

  A middle-aged bald man played quiet jazz on a piano situated in the middle of the room.

  Everything about this place was atmospheric and inviting. My body physically relaxed. All my worries and fears settled down for a nap, forgotten for the moment.

  The bartender slipped over and asked us what we’d like to order. Alistair deferred to me, and after a moment’s consideration, I ordered an old-fashioned. Alistair got a scotch on the rocks.

  Alistair asked, “Do you want something to eat?”

  “No.” I hesitated, then added. “One drink, that’s it.”

  “Like I promised.”

  While we waited for the drinks to be made, I worked hard to avoid eye contact. I looked everywhere but at him, which wasn’t hard with all the murals around us. Ludwig Bemelmans had drawn an amazing assortment of wonder and it stretched all around us. The walls were painted a shimmering gold and scenes from around New York City and Central Park played. Rabbits in suits. Nannies with their charges in strollers. Dogs having tea.

  A smile grew on my lips.

  So beautiful.

  “This feels so incredibly New York,” I said when the drinks were slid in front of us. Finally, I twisted around to face Alistair. His gaze bored into mine, and it was then I became aware of how large and how manly he was. His shoulders dominated the space in front of me, and without his tie, the fabric strained over his tense muscles. He was lean but packed with power. His Adam’s apple shifted as he brought his drink to his lips and took a swig.

  His eyes never left mine.

  “You can’t get this back home, huh, Al?”

  Alistair gave a low chuckle while lowering his glass. “No one has called me that for a long time.”

  “Only Bill ever called you that. Sandra called you Allie.”

  Alistair groaned. “She always wanted a daughter.”

  “I’m surprised I never found you in dresses at some point,” I laughed.

  Alistair didn’t answer but his eyes crinkled up at my words. This was nice. This was easy. Our banter was smooth; this reminiscing was sweet. I could get used to this.

  “Do you remember how I used to drag you out in the forests to look for fireflies?”

  The memory of that time clung to me, those warm, wet summer evenings crawling through tall grass, damp earth dirtying my knees. Some of my happiest times were those innocent hunts, where all I worried about was finding the newest batch of lightning bugs.

  Alistair was just Alistair, and I didn’t worry about him as a man. I didn’t have those same thoughts or feelings about him. I just accepted him for him.

  There was such simplicity with youth.

  Yellow lights pulsated above us, casting a warm glow everywhere. Alistair’s face was in shadows, but the exposed skin took on a golden tinge. Just like the nights we’d crouched down in tall grass, staring up into the black sky, yellow lights blinking in circles.

  Like stars.

  “Yes, I remember,” Alistair answered.

  “You crushed one once because you wanted to see what made them light up.”

  Alistair gave me an exasperated look. “You really have to let that go.”

  I laughed. The sound pleased him and he chuckled with me.

  I picked up my drink and sipped. The clinking of the ice mingled with the pop of burning candles was the only sound around us. Piano music faded up from the background.

  “So how are you going to move forward with Solomon?” I asked, lowering the glass and resting it in my palm.

  “Let’s not talk about work.” Alistair swept a big palm through his hair, combing those gorgeous strands. I itched to follow suit. “Tell me a story. Tell me about a place you went to, something that happened.” Alistair reached over and took my clutch from my lap. I twitched a bit at the action. I had forgotten about my purse.

  “My life is nothing but work. I’m sure you’re the same.” My attention followed the path of my clutch as Alistair placed it on the bar.

  “Then something good that’s happened to you. Something that made you happy since.” He didn’t elaborate since when. Since we parted ways. Since everything.

  Good was subjective. There was a lot of good in my life and a lot that should have made me happy. I couldn’t say I was very happy or unhappy. Life had just been. I did what I needed to do, went where I needed to go, got the job done, moved on.

  I definitely existed. I lived an enviable life, the life I had always dreamed about. I had finally constructed that for myself and I should have been more than elated at how things had turned out.

  So why did I still feel so empty inside?

  I traced the edge of my glass, my attention absorbed in the condensation beading on the sides.

  “I’m not sure, I don’t know what to talk about.”

  “Anything,” came his gentle nudge. “I just want to hear you speak.”

  I ignored his last sentence.

  “It’s strange, I don’t normally talk about myself. I listen to other people talk about themselves.”

  Alistair was insistent. “Where were you living before New York?”

  “Nowhere. And everywhere. I hadn’t really been in the States for years,” I said. My thumb drew patterns in the dew. “I spent a lot of time overseas. First as an overseas correspondent, then profiling various figures around the Pacific region.” I raised my thumb and bit it slightly, the damp coolness spreading across my lips. Alistair’s breaths blew evenly next to me. His heat radiated and everything, the scents of the room, the energy swirling around us, they all originated from him.

  “I spent a lot of time in airports and hotels.” Alistair was giving me his full attention, watching me with such intensity that my body thrummed in response. He leaned one broad forearm against the bar and braced the other against his knee.

  That special connection, that old feeling of belonging, settled in between us. The link that had crumbled years ago and which I hadn’t been able to find since, it simmered now in the present.

  The memory flowed from my lips.

  “The longest I’ve ever stayed in one place was Thailand. This was around a year and a half ago. I wasn’t supposed to stay longer than two weeks, but when I was in Bangkok, there was talk of a military coup and things got out of hand pretty quickly. Riots started and I found myself stuck in the country. My initial job was interviewing a Buddhist leader for a piece on radicalism. I had just finished that story and sent it in when the coup occurred. I couldn’t get out of the country and all our activities ended up getting stalled because everyone was preoccupied with what was going on. I actually got sucked into the opposition groups and did a piece on the riots.”

  Memories flashed. The angry cries, the heat of the fire as mobs torched the beautiful city. The smell of incense in the temples, the flash of gilded Buddhas dotting dirty alleys.

  “Thailand is gorgeous,” I said, fingering a loose strand of hair. “You should go there sometime.”

  “I will,” Alistair said.

  Was it just my imagination or had he suddenly gotten closer? Larger? Hotter?

  I continued talking, words easily slipping away. “I ended up staying for three months straight, the longest I’d ever spent in one city. After things cooled down with the coup, I figured since I’d been in the country long enough, I might as well take a vacation. Some of my Thai contacts told me of an island near the city that was a two-hour drive away, so I hired a taxi to take me to the dock and I went. I was scheduled to leave for Russia in three days, so it was planned as a short t
rip. Reset me, you know.

  “I got a bungalow on the beach and just tried to enjoy the ocean. The water was so clear there, so beautiful. Great snorkeling. Lots of fish.” I waved my free hand in the air. “You know, normal stuff normal people ask for on vacation. But I couldn’t concentrate. I couldn’t read the books I brought with me and I could barely appreciate the surroundings.”

  This was because I wasn’t normal. I was never normal. I couldn’t even enjoy a beach.

  “The second night I was there, I decided to take a walk. It was pretty stupid. That island is notorious for armed robbery, and I was by myself. But maybe just being in foreign countries by myself for so long had made me reckless. So I put on a jacket and began walking along the beaches. I climbed up small cliffs, heading north, then I forked over east. I ended up getting lost. I probably shouldn’t have gone on wandering through the night, but I couldn’t sleep. It seemed like the most natural thing to do.”

  I tilted my head to the side, basking in the memory, dredging it up like hidden treasure. “The island isn’t very wide, so I got to the other side within an hour or two. I realized I was along the northeastern edge, on top of this huge cliff jutting over the ocean. There was no one there and no big resorts. I sat on that cliff for hours, watching the stars move in the sky. And then the sun came up. God, that sunrise. I swear, Alistair, it was the most beautiful thing I’d ever experienced. It was one of those moments where you just think all this crap in the world is worth it. All the madness, all the craziness … all the horrible things people do and all the horrible things done to us as individuals. I’d seen a lot of messed-up shit. The months in Bangkok weren’t easy. The years in Asia hadn’t been easy. It was tough and isolating, but nowhere near as tough as hearing those stories. There’s so much pain in the world. But it was all tempered by a silent dawn on the beach.

  “There were rocks in the water. They were black and covered with seaweed strands floating in the water, half in and half out. I recalled a book I read as a kid that told of seaweed being mermaid hair. Everything seemed magical. Reality slipped away. That exhaustion you feel as an adult when things become too real, that just disappeared.”

  Fairies lived and mermaids were swimming below me.

  An effusive longing overtook me. “I was happy to be alive. I still have to think back to that feeling from time to time. I need to. Whenever I get discouraged or pessimistic, I think about that beach. I have to preserve that feeling of magic and joy and innocence. Like fireflies.”

  Silence fell at my last word. Alistair regarded me with an expression I couldn’t place … an expression I didn’t want to read. He scrutinized me with an intense … tenderness?

  I gave an uneasy laugh. “I’m sorry, that’s a horribly boring story. Nothing happened in it.”

  Alistair shook his head. “No,” he said quietly.

  “I should have made it more exciting, that I got mauled by a tiger while stumbling through the forests, beat it off with a stick.”

  Alistair’s lips quirked up slightly at the corners. “I doubt tigers are indigenous to that island.”

  “I guess that’s what excitement was while abroad. I was working so much, traveling so often, after a while everything just blended together. A job was a job, a hotel was a hotel, a profile was a profile, a city was just another city. You’d think I’d appreciate it more, but all I could think about was …”

  My voice caught and the sentence trailed off. I didn’t finish. The truth was, I’d left America because it was too painful to stay around. I wanted to make fresh memories. Needed to. My mother dying, Alistair leaving, my father and Nicolas and their pain … I had run like a coward.

  “I told myself I’d see the world. I made a promise to myself that I’d live life as she didn’t …” My eyes dipped to stare at the smooth wooden edge of the bar, my heart constricting as it leaned towards memories of my mom.

  “I never made it to Florence,” I whispered down into my drink.

  My mother had named me after her favorite city, where apparently she’d spent her year after college. She never talked about it in detail, but I always caught the wistful way she’d mention it, the longing in her sad eyes. The need she had, that inexplicable hole in her heart that no one could fill. That her life, her children, her marriage, we were never enough.

  She’d died with that look in her eyes.

  I shook my head, the words almost strangling my throat. “I just couldn’t.”

  Alistair nodded and I didn’t elaborate. I didn’t need to. Perhaps this was that time where I’d truly appreciate what we shared. The unspoken truth, that knowledge and past that we both had, it provided a soft, comfortable landing for moments like these.

  Alistair leaned in until our foreheads almost touched. “She would have been proud of you.” His breath, his essence, swirled around me, an intoxicating blend that reminded me of the forests back home.

  The smell of night and grassy hunts.

  I nodded, my gaze still on the glossy wood beneath my fingertips.

  “The past never stops hurting,” I murmured almost to myself.

  “No, it doesn’t. But you can leave it behind,” Alistair said.

  I looked up questioningly and our gaze locked. “Have you?”

  Intensity simmered between that insignificant distance. Unspoken truths we shared, but ignored.

  Alistair didn’t answer. Instead, he reached over and gripped the base of my stool, then pulled it towards him. My hands flew up to grip his shoulders as my balance went out from under me.

  “What are you doing?”

  “I can’t hear you.”

  “Alistair.” I willed my voice to have a sharp scolding edge, but all I could muster up was a soft plea.

  “It’s just me, Florence. I’m just me and you’re just Florence. Don’t worry too much about later.”

  That was easy; it was completely instinctual for me to do. It was always just him and just me. Even when we were younger, it was the most natural thing for us to be together, as if we were inevitable. It was frustrating to have my resolve fluctuate and be manipulated so easily, but here, in the gilded room surrounded by all manners of nonsensical fantastical illustrations … everything seemed simpler.

  As if we weren’t part of the city, part of reality, and all we were was two people living in a fantasyland, to a soundtrack of jazz and piano. We were hidden away from all the strife and turmoil deep within the rabbit hole of wonder.

  We were deep in our forest, under moving, breathing, living lights, sharing promises and magic between our private souls.

  Because of that, it was easier to do this with Alistair, to speak with him and to touch him. We didn’t exist, this moment didn’t exist, and therefore I was allowed to be weak; I could give in.

  Fantasy supplanted the lives waiting outside the turnstile doors.

  So I gave in, at least for now. I softened my body and allowed Alistair to wrap his arm around my shoulders to pull me closer. I allowed myself to lean onto him. And I allowed Alistair to press his cheek against the side of my head and to rest his fingers in my hair.

  His arm was so strong around me, all hard muscle. It felt good to be held. I couldn’t remember the last time someone had held me like this. Or really, the last time I’d allowed someone to.

  Alistair slowly combed his fingers through my tangled strands, and my throat seized with the familiarity of this moment. How gently he played with my hair.

  We remained like this for several moments, neither of us talking as both of us were processing the moment. Enjoying it. Allowing it.

  Finally, I made a comment.

  “I love Billy Strayhorn,” I said. The pianist was playing a mournful ballad.

  “‘Lush Life,’” Alistair said.

  “‘Lush Life,’” I answered in turn.

  We listened the pianist croon about Paris and his desire to forget.

  “Been to Paris?”

  I turned my face to smile lightly at him. “Yes, but never s
tayed a week.”

  “Pity,” he answered with a small grin.

  “Tell me,” I asked, “where have you traveled to?”

  A slight furrow formed on Alistair’s brow. “I haven’t really traveled much. I fly to California a couple times a year since we’re setting up a West Coast outpost. Been around the country for meetings at various company headquarters, but I mostly see the inside of conference rooms instead of landmarks.”

  A finger trailed down from my ear to trace my jawline. I stopped breathing.

  “But Thailand is definitely on the list now,” he added in a husky undertone. That rough scratch of his callused palm contrasted with the soft pliable give of my throat. His fingers lingered, reading the curves of my neck.

  I was floating. I wasn’t of this world. This moment didn’t exist; it never happened, all was a dream.

  Couldn’t a girl be allowed to dream?

  My fingers began caressing Alistair’s thigh, my hand moving of its own accord. Alistair’s muscles were hard and unyielding beneath that smooth, rich fabric. His body tightened slightly. I dug my nails into his flesh.

  He felt so good.

  “This is nice.” I leaned my head fully against him, completely at his mercy.

  “Yeah?” His answer shook beneath me, that deep timbre that emerged from his chest.

  “Yeah, I haven’t felt like I’ve been able to talk to you normally.”

  “What’s normal?”

  “You know, normal like before. I was getting … I was thinking we wouldn’t ever be able to speak …”

  “Florence, there’s nothing normal about any of this, of us.”

  My fingers stilled on his leg. My attention slipped around and took in the eerie emptiness of the bar, the single pianist playing jazz tunes, the solitude that Alistair’s money had bought and that his reputation had demanded. We had just come from a meeting discussion concerning nearly a half-billion-dollar buyout of a key Manhattan building. Out in the city, Alistair’s name sat atop some of the highest property values in the world.