You Don’t Know Me: A Stand Alone Romance

by Faleena Hopkins

  I feel a poke in the arm and open my eyes to see Jessica standing close. She jogs her chin to my right. “I think you’ve got an admirer.”

  “What?” Confused and pulled out of my reverie, I peek over my shoulder and lock eyes with a Brazilian guy staring at me with bedroom eyes. He looks like he wants to talk to me. Or drag me to the nearest bed. He’s over six feet tall, broad shouldered, and his skin is honey brown chiseled flesh so masculine I want to bite it. “Wow.”

  “What’s your name?” he asks, his accent thick and confident.

  A slow smile steals across my lips. I glance to see if Jenna’s back. She is, and she’s watching with interest. Her eyes tell me to go for it. I turn back to the handsome beast and catch my breath as he steps closer into my personal space. “What’s my name?” I touch his chest; feel the muscles rigid with no give at all. God help me. “Does it matter?”

  He smirks and takes hold of my hand, wrapping his fingers around it, about to pull me away from the others. Realizing this is really happening, I get nervous and turn to my friend, my hand still held captive. “Wait! Jenna!” Whisper-yelling, I ask, “What if Alec sees us?”

  She makes a face that I’m being ridiculous. “He’s in Los Angeles. He’ll never know!” Glancing quickly to the trio of women we’ve just befriended, she clears the air before they have a chance to think we’re horrible people. “Alec’s not her boyfriend or anything. It’s just a guy she likes. Should she worry about it? I mean, come on.” She throws a hand at the sexual creature holding my hand prisoner.

  Nicole leans in with amusement, assuring me, “If this Alec guy is not your boyfriend, you are free and clear to do anything you want. Trust me.”

  Jessica laughs, “Take it from the pro.”

  “Hey!” Nicole objects, but doesn’t really mean it. Amber laughs and continues boogying with her hands snapping in the air to the beat.

  Excited and intoxicated, I turn dramatically and announce, “Take me wherever you want, Hercules.”

  “My name’s not Hercules.”

  “Can I call you Hercules?” I smile.

  He laughs. “Fuck yeah. Come here.”

  Right where we stand, he kisses me, opening my mouth with his like a pro, and coaxing my tongue out of hiding. It feels so good that I have no choice but to climb up on him and latch my legs around his hips, my dress a cascade of blue. Jenna whoops loudly, making me smile through the kiss. He holds me up by my ass, massaging it while the music bounces a beat into our skin. Totally into it, we careen over to a wall, running into people. Making out is so incredible, the way my mouth moves with another person’s, how his tongue feels, how it tastes. The way it sends erotic sensations coursing through my body. We’re supposed to do this, human beings. We’re supposed to kiss each other and combine energy and feel the separateness collapsing until we become one. God, I’ve had a lot to drink. “Seriously, what’s your name?” the guy says thickly against my lips.

  “Who cares!!” I kiss him hard and he responds, working my ass with his masterful hands, sending tingles pooling in between my thighs. Who needs names when we have this? Life is amazing. I’m alive! So alive and free and…

  Two strong hands yank me off him. “Hey!” I yell, opening my eyes, feeling dizzy now. Someone I can’t see is carrying me away! With hands up like he’s saying he’s not going to fight, my Brazilian lover vanishes, devoured by the crowd as I’m pulled away from him against my will. “No!! I want to kiss! All I want to do is kissssssss. Noooooooooooo!”

  “I bet you do,” a deep, familiar voice snaps.

  Jenna appears in front of me, keeping up with us, her face very worried. “Jenna! You’re so pretty!” Shaking her head, she adjusts the coats in her arms and looks over to a mirage joining her. The mirage looks a lot like one of my new brothers. “You look like Sean! Come party with us! Look! I’m flying!!!” I wave to a camera-phone a shorthaired girl is pointing at me as I pass her. “Hi friend!! Hi new friend!” She waves back, her hand leaving a trail of peach behind it. “Whoa!” Almost-Sean shares a look with someone a couple people over. Bouncing over some guy’s shoulder, I follow his look and call out to Jenna, “Doesn’t that look like Alec?!”

  “That is Alec, Rue!” she laughs back to me.

  Alec and I lock eyes as I bounce in the arms of the only person left in their little circle. Jack. Jack must be carrying me. Jack must have seen me kissing Hercules. Absolutely mortified, I glance back to Alec and see golden embers of anger glow from his eyes, his jaw tight, his lips flattened. He looks away, unable to look at me anymore, and suddenly I feel sick to my stomach. “Uh-oh. Uh-OH!!!”

  “She’s going to throw up,” Jenna yells over the music, pointing to my hands over my mouth.

  It can’t be Alec.

  It can’t be Sean.

  And it certainly can’t be Jack.

  It’s not possible!

  The room swivels. I’m going to puke. It’s too late. It’s coming. A door is slammed open and a bathroom sink magically appears in front of me. I lean over it and hurl. “Ugh! So gross.” Another round comes up and Jenna holds my hair as Susan turns on the sink to wash it down. “You guys are real friends,” I murmur into the porcelain. Wiping my mouth, I look up at the mirror. Jack, Alec, Sean, Jenna, and Susan, plus a couple strangers, are all in the reflection. “Oh no.”

  “Oh yes,” Jenna says, dryly. “Oh yes, girl.”

  Sean mutters to Jack. “See? You are related.”

  “Shut it,” Jack growls.

  During this mysterious brotherly exchange, Jenna has produced from her purse a travel toothbrush with a glob of fresh toothpaste on it, wrapped in plastic wrap.

  I stare at the miracle. “I love you.”

  “I love you, too.”

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Rue

  “There’s a mob.” “We have to get out of here now.” “I told you she would do something like this.”

  Sean and Jack are on my left side and Alec on my right, with Jenna and Susan right behind us. I’m physically better now that I got rid of most of the poison, but I’m completely embarrassed. As we approach the exit of the Hyatt, I see what’s waiting for us outside on East 42nd Street. “Holy crap!”

  Security guards are holding fans back outside, behind insufficiently skinny, black ropes. There’s a limo waiting for us, but he’s surrounded. The second we’re spotted, the fans break through the ropes like a swarm of bees set free from a jar. “Oh my God! What are we gonna do?!”

  My brothers and Alec tighten in around me, their faces numbed blank from experience. Together, we push through the crowd, assaulted by screams. Each of their names is yelled over and over. SEAN! JACK! ALEC! Again and again and again. Cell phones are held high, recording everything, and the awareness hits me that all of this will be on the Internet in a matter of minutes. Every grimace I make. Every smile I don’t give. But how do you smile when people are grabbing at you? So many hands. So many bodies slamming us together and all we want to do is get to the car where it’s safe.

  “Jenna!” I scream, craning my head to see if she’s okay.

  She and Susan are pushing through. “We’re okay! Keep going!”

  I shut down, my face going dead. I disappear inside myself. We all have the same self-protect shield up now. I hear someone scream my name and reflexively I look, locking eyes with a young girl who can’t be older than fifteen. She’s dressed to the nines, Latisse eyelashes and all, and she reaches out for me.

  I reach out, too, and we touch fingers.

  “Thank you!” she mouths, tears forming in her eyes.

  Disturbed I deeply frown and the guys propel me forward. We’re a locomotive of six driving through the crowd.

  “Hey!” Jenna yells as I feel myself grabbed from behind, and my body tugged backward, hard, and lurching from force. Alec whacks the guy’s feverish fingers off my hips as I stumble. “Stand close, Rue. Stand close to me.” Alec’s arm goes around me. I lean into him, trying not to hyperventilate. Sean gla
nces back to see if I’m okay. Jack is still to my left, his face like his last name. He signals to the limo driver who nods and opens the door, ushering us in.

  Alec helps me in first, then my girlfriends, with Jack and Sean facing the crowd and posing in their famous stances to satisfy the masses with a good photo. Sean waves to the crowd and throws them a smirk; his angelic face exactly like I’ve seen it so many times in the magazines. I now know he’s rehearsed that face.

  This insanity – never being able to go anywhere like normal people without fear of being caught on film, or assaulted, the complete lack of privacy – is the price you have to pay for the freedom their money gives them. My money, now, too, I guess.

  Is this what my life is going to be like now?

  “Everything has a price,” I mumble, taking Jenna’s hand. “How’re you doing Susan? Bet you didn’t expect this when you locked up the store, did you?”

  She grins. “I’ve never had so much fun!”

  The guys climb in, and the driver shuts the door. Sean locks it immediately and we all exhale, except Susan, who’s staring out at the faces squished against the windows like she’s enjoying this.

  “How many of them are there?” I ask, taking off my coat.

  “Well over five hundred. They’re wrapped around the block. Tony warned us.” Sean answers, looking forward dully as Tony yells through the window for people to get out of the way as he tries to pull the limo away from the curb. The divider goes up so we don’t have to listen.

  Jack challenges me, his lashing expression calling me out as responsible for what just happened, “You want to get into trouble? Let’s get into trouble.”

  I raise my eyebrows; feel the familiar fire of rebellion light up my veins. “Bring it, Jack.”

  “No, we’re taking you home,” Alec mutters, looking out the window. He must have seen me kissing the guy, because he won’t look at me.

  Struggling against my own embarrassment, I lean back and tuck myself against Jenna’s arm. “It’s not my fault what just happened. If you guys didn’t show up, there wouldn’t have been a mob.”

  Even Sean’s eyes flash. Alec’s jaw tightens further, which I didn’t think was possible, and he still won’t look away from the window.

  Jack hasn’t stopped staring green hatred at me. At my denial of responsibility, he blows up. “Have you checked the news, dipwit? You’re trending on Twitter.”

  I blink, glancing over to my friends to exchange surprised looks. Turning dubious eyes back to him, I ask slowly, “What do you mean, I’m trending?”

  “Look.” He raises his ass off the seat, grabs his phone out of his pocket and shoves it in my face.

  Staring at the small screen, I see rows and rows of tweets about me. Where we were. What I was drinking. Pictures of us at the airport. Checking into the hotel. Buying a larger suitcase to fit all of our new stuff. Dancing on 5th Avenue with our new friend right after she locked up early. There’s even one with Hercules. My jaw slackens. It takes me a few stunned moments to speak. “#SisterStone? But… my last name isn’t Stone.”

  “It may as well be,” Sean mumbles, gravely. Both he and Jack look at their phones, swiping through the tweets, their faces somber.

  Silenced, I lean back again in the leather seat, adjusting blue fabric over my breasts so they stay covered. Alec glances to me and I meet his eyes with a challenge to say something, anything. He looks away.

  That’s the last straw. I can only take so much in this luxury pressure cooker before I lose my shit.

  “This is ridiculous. I didn’t know about that. Stop acting like I’m a burden, when I’m just learning about all of this stuff!” They say nothing. “And you’re taking me home? What, like I’m on a time-out and I’m five years old?! I’m an adult and I get to make my own decisions. You guys know I’m twenty-one. The whole world knows it. So that means I’m old enough that I don’t need you three telling me what to do.”

  “Rue,” Jenna mutters, shifting uncomfortably.

  But this train won’t stop until it collides. “I don’t have to do what you guys say. I don’t have to take orders from anyone, ever! I didn’t even know you a week ago, so why don’t you get off my case and stop acting like we’re family. We aren’t family until you earn the right to call me family.” I can feel Jenna and Susan tensed up beside me, but I’m too busy winning a staring contest with Jack Stone to give a crap.

  Jack counters coolly, “Who said I want to call you family?”

  A knife presses into my heart, but I act like that didn’t hurt. “Nobody would dare say such a lie, Jack. So if you’re not my family, then who are you to take me anywhere or tell me to do ANYTHING!!! PULL OVER!”

  “Rue,” Jenna murmurs, “Calm down.”

  Susan’s got her lips sucked into her mouth, her knuckles white on her lap.

  “No! I want out. PULL OVER! Where’s the window thingy? The thingy to make the window go down for the driver? Where is it?”

  Even Sean loses it and snaps, “Calm down, Rue!”

  “Yeah! Because people always calm down when they’re told to! Let’s get real guys. Do you like being told what to do? Because I’m pretty sure no one, and I mean NO ONE,” I slice my finger through the air at all three of them, “tells the royals what to do. God forbid someone say no to you. Well, NO. There, I said it.”

  “She’s still drunk,” Jack growls.

  Susan leans in and breaks girlfriend-code. “She drank a lot. I was trying to get her to stop.”

  “Susan!” Jenna warns her.

  “Oh my God! Let me out of this car!” I stand up, back bent under the low ceiling, heading for the door even though we’re still moving at quite a clip toward downtown.

  Alec reaches over and hits a button that makes the divider roll down. “Can you please stop the car, Tony?’

  “Alec.” Sean cuts his eyes to him.

  “Don’t worry. She just needs to walk it off. You guys go ahead. I’ll catch us a cab after she’s sobered up and meet you guys later.” He holds Sean’s stare, his voice growing deeper with anger. “Sean, get over yourself. I’m not going to touch her.” Sean registers surprise at being called out, but he says nothing.

  The car stops and I head for the door again, but Jack stops me. “Wait for the driver to open the damn door, heathen.”

  I glare at him, hiding the fact that I’m mortified at my inexperience. “I was going to wait for him, standing up.”

  “Sure you were.”

  The door opens and Jenna starts to come, too. Susan reluctantly grabs her purse.

  Alec stops them both. “You ladies go on with them. I’ve got this. It’s okay.” Jenna hands him my coat.

  The driver helps me out and Alec emerges behind me. I turn and watch him effortlessly rising, his eyes on me. He’s got an amused smile on his face as he slides my coat on my arms. The driver closes the door and walks around to get back in and drive away.

  Does Alec think I’m a child, too? After my tantrum, he probably does, and right now I’m staring at him a little too long, to find out. Being alone with him, it should make me excited, but after everything that’s happened tonight, I wish it had been Sean and not Alec who had known I needed fresh air before I strangled Jack with my own hands.

  As I’m blinking at Alec, he watches me gravely, his fingers deftly buttoning up a pea coat over his navy blue suit. How do I behave now that we’re alone after what he’s just seen, and how I feel about him? Struggling with my insecurities, I tuck a lock of hair behind my ear and look to the sidewalk for answers. “Thank you.”

  He regards me for a moment without saying anything. “For what?”

  “For knowing what I needed. I was going to lose it in there.”

  He smirks, thinking I did lose it, but he doesn’t drive the nail in deeper. We both know I could have handled myself a little better. “I needed some air, too. Let’s walk.”

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Rue

  To my shock, he takes my hand, claspin
g it loosely and comfortably as though he’d done it a million times. I glance up to a street sign on our right that reads: Houston Street. Biting my lip now that I’m alone with Alec, I look around the small scatters of people walking home around us. Some are just hanging out, talking after a late night. It feels like it’s around one o’clock or something, but that can’t be right.

  “What time is it?”

  “Half past three.” He glances down to hold my eyes for a heated second. A flutter in my chest quiets me and we walk in silence. A part of me is still hoping he didn’t see me kiss that guy… that only Jack saw, when he came and yanked me away. Maybe he yanked me so hard because he didn’t want Alec to see. Yeah, right.

  Glancing up at Alec’s profile, I’m gratified to find the cloud has left him, now that we’re alone. Maybe he wasn’t looking at me in the limo because the crowd had upset him, or he didn’t like how Jack was acting. I open my mouth to ask him, but shut it again before I kick up dust that’s finally settling. With our hands lightly held together, I allow a calm to overtake me, letting go of any need to do anything but just be here with him. This is what I wanted when we were driving here from the airport. I’d wished Alec was here with me, and now he’s here. Just enjoy it.

  Occasionally someone recognizes Alec as we wordlessly make our way west, but most of the people we pass don’t even look at us. There’s a peaceful anonymity to this stroll that we’re both enjoying after the chaos.

  Alec squeezes my hand and informs me, “The bigger cities are better, usually, because people see more celebrities here. They’re used to it.”

  “Then what happened back there at the club?” I ask, looking up at him.

  “Mob mentality. People in the club tweeted you were buying drinks for everyone. News had already spread online about you from the reporters at your house. Didn’t you see the news?” I shake my head. “Well, it’s not as big a story as what’s happening in Israel, but it’s up there.” He smiles at me, but I’m not able to return it. His eyes get serious and he continues, “When it hit twitter about you buying drinks, and where, that was all it took to ignite the blaze. It was a very cool thing of you to do, by the way. I was impressed.”