“Rand.” Her voice is hoarse with need.
I put the bottle of oil on the bedside table and almost miss it altogether because I can’t take my eyes off her. Grabbing her by the hips, I pull her toward me. She’s slick and slippery and when I lower myself on top of her, there is almost no friction between her back and my chest. My pelvis presses against her ass and I am harder than steel.
I grab her by the jaw, and Dani turns her head toward me. We kiss, with open mouths, our tongues entangled, and frenzied. I’m sliding against her, pressed between the cheeks of her ass. Slipping a hand beneath her, I cup her breast then go lower still. Dani pushes her butt up a little more, lifting her pelvis further off the towel, making way for me. She is wet, and jerks when my fingers touch her sensitive core. I muffle her moans with an even deeper kiss.
I want to be inside her, but know that once I am, I may not last very long. Dani doesn’t care. She reaches awkwardly behind her and tries to grab me in her fist. As much as I want to prolong it, I don’t have the will to deny her. Pulling back a little, I arch forward and slide deep inside her. She is incredibly hot, and yeah, tight.
I gulp large mouthfuls of air, and my breath is ragged and uneven. Dani turns toward me, and our lips meet again, but both of us lose our place in the kiss so we’re fumbling our way through it. I have both arms wrapped tightly around her waist now as I slide back and forth, in and out of, and against her.
But soon, as good as that feels, I want more.
I want to see her.
Her eyes.
The rounded ‘o’ of her mouth.
The extended, almost pained arch of her neck when she comes.
I pull out and hear her gasp, so I waste no time in flipping her onto her back and sinking between her knees again.
This time, face to face, I can easily cup her face in my hands. I crush my mouth against hers, then move to her neck and shoulder. We’re both slick with perspiration and oil now, and I can’t keep my hands still. They move from her face, to her neck, waist, hips, and thighs. She tastes sweeter than sweet, and when I look into her eyes, they are wet with tears, and my chest tightens.
This is what I’ve been needing. All week, surrounded by the ghosts of the life I used to have, I felt ill at ease and off-kilter, the way you feel when it’s two days after you’ve had the flu, and your doctor finally says, ‘you’re fine now, you can resume your normal activities.’ The fever is gone but you don’t feel quite right. I knew that once I saw Dani, held her, was with her like this, I’d feel solid again.
I feel her release, and mine follows close on its heels. We do what we almost always do, we both pull back a little and our eyes, open wide, are locked in a steady, soul-baring gaze.
“Why’d you take so long to get here?” I breathe into her ear when I collapse against her again.
I kiss the corner of her mouth, and bury my face in the side of her neck. My chest is still heaving, and my eyes are almost at half-mast. It’s like I was awake for every moment of the past week, but now that she’s here, I can finally let myself rest.
“Randall. Rand!”
“What?” I moan, rolling over and batting Dani’s hand from shaking my shoulder. “Go back to sleep.”
“I can’t. I just wanted to let you know I’m headed out, so that …”
At that, I open my eyes fully. Or try to. She is standing next to the bed, and no longer naked. I force myself to a sitting position and blink, finally focusing. Dani is completely dressed, sneakers, and all. She has pulled her bangs back with a headband and the get-up she has on is the same stuff she wears when she’s running back home, a sheer tank over a sports bra and running tights that are capri length, showing off her shapely calves, and behind.
“Where you headed to?”
“To have a run.”
“Where?” I yawn.
“On Hollywood Boulevard. I need to …”
I am shaking my head before she even finishes her sentence. “Nah. You’re not even from here. You crazy?”
“Rand, we’re literally in Hollywood. I’m sure it’s …”
“I’m not letting you go running out into the night in a city that you …”
“First of all, it’s morning …”
“Barely.”
“And second of all, I need to run. My body clock is telling me it’s eight a.m. which is around the time I sometimes run at home, so I have to get out there, or I’ll lose my rhythm.”
“No,” I say again. “Not happenin’.” I fall back into bed again and close my eyes.
There is silence for a few beats and then I hear the door open, and then shut.
Sitting up, I mutter a curse and grab my sweats, pulling them on and just remembering to grab a key card before jogging barefoot down the hall after her. I catch up with her at the elevators.
She already has her ear buds in, and her face is set in a stubborn scowl, her arms folded. She sees me approach just as the elevator arrives, and is about to step inside when I grab her arm and stop her.
“Danielle,” I say, tugging the ear buds out of her ears. “It isn’t safe for you to just run out into the night in a city you’re not used to. With headphones on, too? C’mon, don’t be stupid.”
She stares at me, but says nothing. Her nostrils flare slightly.
“Okay, so you want me to just let you go running down the street? And if something happened …”
“So, you’re worried about my safety. Say that. Don’t just …”
“I did say it.”
“It’s the way you said it, Rand. ‘Nah, I ain’t lettin’ you do that!’” she mimics my voice, making it almost comically deep. “I’m not Little Rocket. Could you have maybe instead said something responsive to my concern about not missing my workout? Instead of making some kind of … pronouncement?”
“I’m worried about you getting robbed, or worse, and you’re hung up on my tone?”
She looks at the ceiling, and folds her arms again, taking a deep breath.
I take a breath myself and summon all my patience, then speak very slowly. “I don’t want you to run at this hour because it would worry the crap out of me knowing you’re out there.”
At that she looks at me, and I can sense from her expression that I’m on the right track.
“And I’m wondering if maybe, it might be a better idea for you to run on the treadmill in the gym downstairs.”
“It isn’t the same workout,” Dani says, her voice cool. “You know that. I’ve only told you that a million times when you try to get me to use your treadmill when I stay over.”
Okay, so I need to revise my approach. Because she has told me that a million times.
Since most of the nights she stays at my place are weeknights—I head to Bristol on Friday or Saturday to prepare for Sunday’s show—Dani often gets up before I do, to go running with her partner, Eric. Which is, of course, something I’m not crazy about. As supportive as I am of her fitness goals, her leaving my bed to go meet some other dude, for any reason whatsoever, just doesn’t work for me.
But still, I swallow that shit and play it cool when she goes, just so long as she comes back right after. When she returns, it’s usually with coffee and breakfast, which we eat alone together because Freya stops by to take Little Rocket to daycare on her way to work. These breakfasts, with just me and her, are when we have some of our best conversations. For some couples, it’s pillow talk that matters, but for us, it’s breakfast talk.
On the pillow, we don’t do a whole lot of talking. At least not much that’s coherent.
“How about I run with you?” I offer.
It’s the last thing in the world I want to do, but in stacking up the chits, she’s in the lead. She flew out here, missing a couple of days of client sessions, which I know she’s worried about. And when she got here, she had to be tired, but still hung out at that stupid reception for a few hours, then came back and let me wear her out while I relieved my backed-up sexual appetite. There’s nothing I as
k her for that she doesn’t try to give me.
Dani looks at me again and this time she’s trying to suppress a smile. She’s trying so hard at it that she can’t even speak. Instead she nods.
I roll my eyes. “C’mon,” I say. “Lemme go put some clothes on so we can do this.”
She is meek as a lamb as we head back to the room, and while I’m yawning my head off as I get dressed, she doesn’t say a word. And she doesn’t say—as was my hope—that since I’m so tired, we can just go together later. It’s just past six a.m., and soon there’ll be traffic, and even more of that LA smog, making running outside a very, very bad idea.
But I don’t say any of that. I just get my gear on and we leave the hotel. I don’t even comment when Dani puts her ear buds back in as we hit the pavement. Because I figure I’ll be running with her, and will make sure she’s safe.
We go a good distance, south on Vine and after a while, we fall into step with each other. Dani runs with grace, hitting the surface on the balls of her feet, the impact low, her strides wide. She doesn’t look at me while she runs, but I can tell she has as strong an awareness of me being there, as I do of her. I feel as her body temperature rises because she is running close alongside me; and she begins to perspire a little sooner than I do.
From both of us, emanates the vague scent of sex.
And soon, though she doesn’t hear it because she has the buds in, our breaths are coming in sync, we are moving in like rhythm. And I would bet anything that our hearts are beating at an identical, strong, sure, and steady pace.
~7~
I’m not a big fan of Los Angeles. First of all … where is it? It doesn’t feel like there’s a center to it, or a downtown. There’s no natural nucleus to the city. None that I’ve been able to identify, anyway. And the other thing is, I don’t like the jarring contrast between the haves and have nots.
For example, there’s the almost aggressive bling of some parts of Rodeo Drive, like a consumer culture’s wet-dream; but it’s juxtaposed against scores and scores of young, homeless people. On the West Coast, they always seem younger than in other places.
But after only eighteen hours here, I’ve already become adept at turning a blind eye. As I step out of the third boutique I’ve visited, in search of something to wear tonight, I avert my eyes from the young woman sitting on the sidewalk, who is picking determinedly at a scab in the crook of her elbow. Her sandy-blonde hair is filthy and almost matted in some places. She wears overalls, and a tank underneath, with Chucks that were once black but are now faded to grey. She isn’t even bothering to actively panhandle, but just sits cross-legged with a plastic container near her feet. Her entire attitude seems to be: ‘Give, or not. It’s all the same to me.’
I am alone for my shopping trip because Rand has to work. Before I left home, I considered going to Nordstrom’s in the mall to find something to wear at the awards, but the time got away from me. And also, I hate shopping. I know it’s a throwback from the days when nothing ever fit the way I wanted it to; and those trips when I picked something off the rack, sure that it would look great on me only to leave the dressing room in tears.
Now, I am a size 8-10, and while I’m proud of the progress I’ve made toward fitness, I still don’t love looking at down at my naked body. Rand, on the other hand, can’t seem to get enough of it. He complains if I try to turn the lights off before lovemaking, and sometimes if the room is already dark, makes a point of turning them on.
He keeps his eyes open the entire time, and likes nothing more than to watch as he enters and leaves my body. That is how I know for sure what I only suspected before—my hang-ups are my own, and have very little to do with how others perceive me. It’s all in my head.
That’s what I repeat to myself as I enter the boutique on Melrose. The window boasts jeweled dresses that are probably better suited for the Oscars or Emmys, but I go in anyway, hoping to find a cute little black number. Over breakfast with Rand in the hotel suite, after we came back from the run, I pored over his iPad, looking at pictures of what women wore in previous years.
It’s a mixed bag. Some are in gowns, others in cute cocktail dresses. There were even a few glittery jumpsuits.
‘Wear whatever you want,’ Rand told me, as he chewed through his steel-cut oatmeal. ‘Whatever makes you comfortable.’
Only a guy would say something like that. He’s wearing an evening suit in chocolate-brown and a tie in cardinal with gold pinstripes, which I guess is a nod to USC. This morning, before we went our separate ways, he handed me his credit card and said I should get whatever I wanted, on him. That’s the kind of non-guidance that is probably going to drive me nuts when I see something I want.
I know Rand is untroubled by money. Untroubled enough to have turned down what I later found out was a nine-hundred-and-seventy-thousand-dollar one-year deal to play with his old team. Though he never talked about it except to say in passing, when they first made the offer that it was a lot of money, the sum made the papers. I know he doesn’t make as much in his ESPN gig, but has a lot saved, and some sound investments, but that doesn’t relieve my uncertainty about how much is okay to spend, and how much might have me spilling over into gold-digger territory.
The boutique is small and stylish, and its inventory is almost sparse, but there are three women attending to shoppers. In all, there are only about eight of us perusing the choices. I gravitate toward the black, because that seems like what a person should wear for a sort of formal event. But when I reach for a simple sheath, I hear someone clear their throat.
“Are you sure that’s the direction you want to go in?” a voice asks.
I freeze before I turn, because the voice sounds so familiar. Not in the sense of having heard it before, but in the sense of them using a tone like they know me, and like I should know them.
The voice belongs to a slender—almost too slender—woman who is wearing denim overalls with black stilettos and a black tank top underneath. She looks like a sexy farmer’s daughter, especially because she is in full makeup and could easily be on her way to a photo-shoot.
“Hi,” I say. “I don’t …”
I am about to apologize for not knowing who she is, when she smiles and extends a hand.
“Melanie,” she says.
I shake her hand briefly, but still must look perplexed because she laughs.
“I saw you last night with Rocket at the reception?” she says. “I was trying to get over to him to catch up, but you guys seemed … busy.”
I think back to the reception, and how after a while, Rand and I were preoccupied only with each other. He helped me eat about twenty Asian-style chicken wings and then we were leaning in close to each other, doing some of what they describe in tabloids as “canoodling.” Later on, as soon as he opened the door to the suite, he backed me up against the door, and with his lips on my neck, told me I’d probably gotten him in trouble with his bosses because once I got there, he had no interest in working the room.
I want to ask Melanie how she knows Rand, but think that will probably come across as a little like a possessive and insecure girlfriend. I know Rand knows lots of women. And I know that more than a few of them were more than friends at one time or another. If Melanie is one of those women, I don’t need to know that.
“So, the dress you’re looking at …” Melanie comes closer and fingers the fabric. “It’s not … fierce enough. Not for a woman with your curves.”
I shake my head. “I’m not trying to be Beyoncé.”
Melanie laughs. “This is for the ceremony later, right?”
“Yes,” I say. And then, “I know. I should have shopped sooner, but ...”
Melanie laughs. “Oh please. I still haven’t gotten mine either. And your name is?”
“Danielle,” I say, embarrassed that I literally forgot to introduce myself, even after she had.
“You’re not from LA, are you?” she asks. She does a quick once-over.
“Is it my fashi
onable jeans and t-shirt get-up that’s clueing you in?” I ask, lifting one eyebrow.
Melanie laughs again. “No. Just never seen you around.”
Why she would have expected to see me ‘around’ in a city of almost four million people is beyond me. And also, if I’m with Rand, doesn’t it stand to reason that I would live close to where he lives?
“Want to try to figure this out together?” she asks. “This whole ‘what-to-wear’ thing?”
I consider, but only for about ten seconds. I’m not from LA, and not exactly an old hand at trying to figure out what to wear to awards shows. So, if this incredibly well put-together woman wants to help me, who am I to object?
It takes Melanie about twenty minutes to whizz through the inventory in the boutique before she insists we go someplace else. And I fall in line with that suggestion right away. I only hesitate when she leads me to a Porsche Cayenne parked about two blocks away.
She sees my hesitation and gives that tinkle of a laugh again.
“I’m not going to kidnap you or anything,” she says. “I can even show you my drivers’ license if you want.”
And then I feel silly.
She takes me to the Beverly Center, where we wind up in Gucci. The dresses are what I would call overworked. Lots of pleating and folds and excess frou-frou nonsense that on a woman as lithe as Melanie would look like high-fashion, but on me will look like I stole something from my grandmother. Not to mention, the lower-end pieces are around four thousand dollars.
Melanie and I wander around for a while, until she picks up on my lack of enthusiasm, and then leads me to White House Black Market.
“More your style?” she asks.
I nod, and quickly hone in on a white strapless evening jumpsuit. It is made of organza and is both structured and loose, with boning at the bodice, and has a wrapped waist and split pant legs. I am both excited and terrified to wear something like this. But they have it in my size and I can’t resist trying it on.
Melanie waits outside my dressing room and when I step out, immediately lifts a hand for a high-five.
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