by Sunniva Dee
“Whoa, sounds like we’ll have a slumber party in a minute,” Ciro chuckles out. “Let me return the favor.” He pours of Mom’s sleep concoction into a tea strainer and holds up one of her good mugs in question. “This mug good for you? It’s got a heart on it.”
Mom giggles. “Yeah, looks good to me. Slumber party, huh?”
“Good idea,” I say. “I got up too early too.” Thanks to you. “I’m up for it.”
Ciro adds honey and a dash of heavy cream to the tea. Mom takes a sip, but only after Ciro clinks her cup playfully with his own and I join in. “Cheers. To an awesome slumber party.”
Mom’s eyes darken. “The door to the basement. What if he forgot to lock?”
“What? You mean Paul?”
“Hold on.” Ciro picks up my phone. He faux-dials. Paul faux-picks up. “Mr. Gallagher? Hey.
“Right, yes, all’s good over here.
“No, no. We just wanted to check if you had locked the doors so the robots can’t get out?
“Oh double bolts?
“Three locks?” He lifts a happy thumb at us, and I lift mine back.
He faux-hangs up. “Yep, he’s all set. There will be no robots on the loose.”
“What’s he going to do with them?” Mom asks, brows sinking again. “They need to be neutralized.”
Okay, this is too much. I open my mouth. In one single sentence, I’ll ruin all the work Ciro has done so far. The man is fast though.
“Yeah, the FBI, it sounded like?” he replies before me. “Anyway, cheers to a twenty-four-hour hibernation. I’ll just lock our doors to be on the safe side, and bam, lights out.”
She did it like a good girl. Mom drank her sweet concoction, and Ciro refilled it whenever he could without being noticed. Despite the situation, it made me want to laugh; to watch your friend-with-benefits get your mother drunk on tea is pretty interesting.
She hadn’t eaten in a while either, so I made us breakfast, scrambled eggs on Ezekiel bread. I counted, and she was on her fourth cup of herbal sleeping aid by the time she’d downed her food and her eyelids started drooping.
“Don’t go outside. You never know,” she whispered. “They’re strong and could break through the locks.”
“Don’t worry, Mrs. Nichols. I’ll be on the lookout.”
Now we’re here, seated in the living room and watching the morning sun fill the room with gold. Ciro has never been more beautiful, and I have never been more thankful.
“You’re amazing,” I whisper. He steadies my face between his thumbs and the pads of his palms and kisses me softly. Light snores come from my mom’s bedroom. “I’m sorry I dug into your day. I know you have shit to do.”
“Naw, it’s a late day for me. Most of today’s scene is shot starring other people. I don’t go in until four. Did you have any tea?”
I shake my head, smiling against his mouth. “Probably, like, four sips. I’m still sleepy though. It was an early morning.”
“Yeah, I’m ready for our slumber party.”
I settle into the curve of his body, and he slides down on the couch with me. When Ciro nuzzles my neck with his nose, the dread of having a mother who lost her shit decreases with the length of his exhales.
24. GAME
He did it.
No one but him picks up his phone on my first ring at ungodly hours. No one runs to my rescue like he does. No one insists on us being it, the big thing that matters, the way Ciro does. I’m ready to accept it all, deal with my jealousy and stay the hell away from social media just so I can be his one-and-only after hours.
We’ve danced around each other for four months, and he has finally convinced me. Stubborn, steady, and being an amazing person has finally outweighed the wrong with his life, and here I am on my way to surprise him.
He’s still at work. It’s Wednesday, early afternoon. He hasn’t changed the code to the funkis bunker, so I’m going to sneak in, prepare sushi from scratch, and chill a bottle of champagne. What’s great with sushi is that no matter when he comes home, the food will be ready to serve.
I can’t wait to see his face when I tell him!
I went to my favorite store and bought a short dress in Ciro’s favorite color, the deep red of passion, energy, love, and everything good. The mannequin wore matching red heels in a shiny material, and the sales girl pointed me across the lane to a boutiqy shoe store where they had them in my size. I already imagine his face brightening with an intoxicating blend of heat and bliss.
Oh I’ll make my man happy tonight.
I shouldn’t be dressed like this already, but I was feeling too good. I wanted to bask in it first, and then I’ll change so I can cook before I spruce myself back up again.
I grin, taking right on his dirt road. I talked to Mom this morning too. She slept fifteen hours straight, and Paul is with her, helping her plant tomatoes. There was no mention of robots during the entire conversation. Life is good!
I press in the code, and the gate glides open to the soundtrack of an old Madonna song on my radio. Sunshine outside. Sunshine inside.
There’s a gleaming red convertible in the driveway. Did he get a new car? It looks new. Oh wow, he’s home! My heart hammers happily.
Instead of pulling up all the way, I park at the far corner of the guesthouse. I’m so excited I leave the raw fish in the car and don’t remember until I’m at the front door. It’s ajar. Strange.
I hear Princess’ happy panting upstairs and light footsteps. He’s murmuring something to her. For a moment, I think I hear a woman reply quietly. The thought is all I need for my jealousy to surge again, and I need all of my brainpower to flush it off. He has never given me any reason to doubt his intentions. Me, me alone. Plus, he never brings work home.
Then again, we’re not actually together, which means—why would we be exclusive?
The wooden steps don’t sound under me. Only because I want to surprise him, of course. Oh I’ll surprise him. Either way.
There’s a sob up there. A small sob. That’s not the sound of him. Neither is it Princess. God. Is he pleasing another other girl?
Princess barrels to the gate as soon as my head peaks over the last step. I stare past her as she wiggles, whimpering with glee over my arrival.
In the middle of the room stands the man who was supposed to become my boyfriend today. He’s a silhouette against the light outside. He holds a woman in his arms. She’s tall, slender, her neck ballerina-like as she leans against his shoulder as if they’re dancing.
They’re instinctive together. Oh they’ve been like this before. Long, elegant fingers thread into his hair as she pulls him toward her, every inch of her body pressed against him.
He murmurs to her, against her ear the way lovers do, and this is not the place for work and it is not, not work.
I gasp. His head jerks up, and he drops her so all that long, white hair flows down her back from the recoil.
“Savannah!”
“No,” I say and turn on the stairs. I’ve always known he’s fast. I’m halfway down when he catches me by the arm.
“Please, you need to meet my ex.”
“That’s Silk?”
“Yeah.”
“What the fuck!”
Her eyes are a sea green, a deeper shade than his. Her face is absolute perfection, with a small nose, the smoothest skin you’ll ever see, and her mouth is formed like a semi-open rose. She’s every man’s dream.
Silk doesn’t look like someone who’s been through a lot in life. No, Silk looks like one man would catch her and keep her with him forever because he’d know she was the rarest prize, the best thing that could happen to him.
The shape of her body, the slightest hourglass, made to be drawn or touched by someone like him. She’s a goddess sprouting from a seashell in the Mediterranean, Venus personified, damn the two
of them, right there.
“I don’t know what I was thinking,” I say, not wanting to shake her hand. Her eyes are glossy with pain and love. She loves him so much, still. I see it. “I shouldn’t have come here unannounced.”
“No, I gave you the code for a reason. You’re welcome whenever you want.”
Even “welcome” enforces distance.
“Silk, this is Savannah. My...” He sends me a glance, hesitating. “A friend.”
And he’s right! We’re nothing but friends. He wouldn’t say “with benefits,” now would he? As tacky as it sounds, I almost wish he had.
Silk swallows, a subtle bump on her throat forcing her pain down. She’s so lovely even I feel like comforting her. “I thought you lived in Europe,” I say.
“Yeah. I just...” She floats a look up at Ciro, dark eyelashes covering half of the seagreen. It only makes her more alluring. “I needed to see Ciro. He’s sort of my harbor.” She lets out a breathy laugh and lifts in a dainty shrug. “I guess that’s what having a history does to you.”
Ciro’s hasn’t let go of me, and it’s bittersweet that he doesn’t want me to leave.
“Well, I better get goin’. Got stuff to do, and you guys were busy.”
“Actually, Silk was just leaving,” Ciro says.
Surprised, she peers at him. “I don’t have a hotel or anything. I figured you’d let me crash...” She trails off, her voice the purr of a cat. “I don’t want to be of any bother, of course.” I hate her loveliness. I hate her charm. I hate every ounce of her.
“Silk, I think it’s best you leave.”
Her eyes fill with tears, and I want them to be fake. But there’s that pain again, the deep type of despair that can’t be faked. “I don’t know what to do.” Her pitch breaks, and I jerk free and walk toward the stairs.
“Savannah!” He’s got me again. He pushes me against the wall and kisses me hard on the mouth in front of this goddess. Why? It’s going to make her feel worse. Wait, no, because she’s in the business. This is just business for them.
I’m so confused. My lip wobbles. I can’t hold back my own tears. “You don’t know why I came today,” I whisper.
“No, tell me,” he whispers back, and I hear Silk move softly in the background. She’s not moving toward the stairs.
“No. It doesn’t matter anymore.”
“It does to me. Why did you come today? You look so gorgeous.” He kisses me again, not letting me breathe. When he stops, I’m panting, and he’s crucifying me to the wall, arms and legs chained by him.
“Ha, gorgeous?” This conversation is too private for her. “Gorgeous means nothing with her around.” My voice is so low he tilts his ear to me.
“Shiny hoods can’t hide faulty motors for long. You’re what’s gorgeous to me. Tell me what you came here for.”
I don’t tell him what I came for. Numb, I accept a glass of wine with them. I don’t even think Silk has mascara on those eyelashes.
She’s been banished to one side of the L-shape in his sunroom, and he has me pulled down next to him. Silk holds out her glass for a refill, and Ciro has to detangle from me to oblige.
Whenever I’m not looking, I feel her scrutinize me, moving from my legs and up my body to my face and hair. I bet she wonders what he sees in me when he has someone like her.
We speak shallowness after the initial explosion. There’s so much tension I pour myself another glass too. Ciro massages the stress in my back. It’s not working. We keep hitting pauses in the forced conversation. I keep saying, I’ll better get going. Each time, he pulls me back down into his embrace.
“Silk. Please tell Savannah why you’re here.”
The sea of her irises darken with insecurity. “Ciro...”
“She knows your story. I told her what happened to you.”
Even the unconscious flutter of her lashes is achingly beautiful. Just—how could he leave this woman? That is what she is, a woman through and through. I feel like a school girl in comparison, a kindergartner against Marilyn Monroe.
“She does?”
“Yes. Silk, I need you to do this for me. Tell her.”
Her eyes arch, wide with grief. Her fingers tremble when she covers her mouth. “I can’t.”
“You want me to?”
She nods rapidly, a section of hair sliding over the side of her face in a sensual arabesque.
“Silk has been working for Angels Visual, a Dutch film studio. For the last three years, she’s been the girlfriend of the owner, and she never told anyone about the bruises he gave her.”
She stares into her wineglass. “Ronny knew.”
“Your makeup artist?”
“Yeah, Ronny used to be security only, but Brahim trusted him with me too after a while. He took care of the general cover-up before I got in the chair for regular makeup. That wasn’t necessary for BDSM shoots, of course, which I’ve done a lot of since Brahim began losing his patience with me.”
“He hit you?”
“Physically abused her. She didn’t even tell me.”
“Because what could you have done, Ciro?” Her cadence is the female version of his. There’s so much music around me.
“Did you love him... I mean, once?”
Silk shakes her head. “It was more about how good he was to me in the beginning. He was really nice the first year. He’d stand up for me if one of the guys were too hard on me, and he’d make sure everyone knew I was his number one girl.
“I used to be treated better than everyone else, actually. Brahim liked having me around, and he liked how I pulled viewers to his films. But Ciro is the only one who has ever loved me.”
“Silk, stop.” He’s admonishing. Loving. My brain understands that you’ll always care deeply for someone you once loved. My heart has no sympathy.
“Back then, you and I were good for each other. We had something to give each other.”
“We did.” She lets out a hiccough, and I see why he lets go of me to hug her.
“You’ll be okay. You’ve left him. You’re in America. He can’t catch you here. That beating was the last one. Just don’t let yourself be owned again, you know? That’s what he did. He owned your ass, just like before. You see that, right?”
My hands twist in my lap as she melts into his body, face deep against his throat and shoulders hunched inward. With delicate fingers, she grasps his biceps, slides upward until her arms are around his neck, and he rocks her.
“Shh. I’ll get you set up. I know plenty of film studios here who’ll be happy to have you.”
“I don’t want to do BDSM anymore,” she sobs out. The sound cuts my heart in two, as does his, Shhh, you’ll never have to do that again, ever. I’ll make sure of it.
25. NOT GAME
Silk sleeps over.
I do not.
Is this the universe’s way of pressing all my buttons at once to see what I can accept just to have love? Well, that’s where my limit goes. Poor Silk. Poor, beautiful, made-for-sin Silk, who’s sleeping in Ciro’s house and needs him more than me.
There are more men out there for me. I know it.
I read somewhere that on average, there are six other people in the world who looks exactly like you. It also said that you have a nine percent chance of meeting one of them in your lifetime. I wonder if the statistics count for men you meet too. Like, what are the chances that I meet a replica of Ciro, and if I did, would he be as superb on the inside as he is too?
“Hey, are we on for tonight?” Ana squawks on the phone. “Remember, the latest installment of Firefox Renegades is out? We could go ape and get two buckets of popcorn and have the guys sneak in tiny bottles of champagne. To celebrate, you know.”
It’s Ana’s thing now. Since we celebrated Ciro and her film, she’s wanted to celebrate everything with champagne. We have, howev
er, stepped down to cheaper brands since then.
“Naw, I don’t think so.”
“What, are you working after all?”
I can’t even lie. “No... not exactly.”
She quiets, but then she asks, “What’s wrong? Is it you and Ciro? Please tell me it isn’t now that Aaron and I have finally found you.”
I groan and close my eyes.
“His ex is in town.”
“What? Silk is back?”
“Yeah.”
“But why? They’re not together, though, right? They were so over.”
“I don’t know.”
“Listen. Can we meet up? Have coffee or something? Are you walking the dogs this morning?”
“Yeah.”
“’Kay. I’ll see you at the dog park.”
I pull my fingers through my hair. It needs a wash, but I’ve forgotten the last two days. I wonder when I showered last. I think I did yesterday, but I might have forgotten my hair.
“Wow, baby. You don’t look so good,” Ana says. “What is going on between you two? I don’t understand. Is this because Silk is in town? Does she have a project here?”
“She fled an abusive relationship and right into Ciro’s arms.” I’m not exaggerating. I left the house right when he was hugging her and letting her nuzzle his neck. I can’t. No way I can deal with that.
“Wow. I think she was with that Moroccan studio owner, Brahim Kantari. So he smacked her around? He’s big as a bear and furry like one too. I remember thinking I’d never work for him just by his eyes. They’re like black, evil pieces of coal.” She chuckles, and I do too, because that does sound horrifying.
“When we saw them at film festivals and conferences, Silk was the beauty and he was the beast. It’s unbelievable that she stuck with him for that long. What’s she doing now, then? Licking her wounds, I’m guessing?”
“I don’t know. You should’ve seen them. He still loves her.”
