Eye Candy

by Tera Lynn Childs

  "Oh good," she sighed. "I wanted to ask you about the things in your room."

  I frowned, but the action brought my headache front and center so I forced the grimace away. "What things?"

  "Your room at home, dear. All your girlhood belongings. I've boxed everything up already. Would you rather I sent them directly to you or put them in storage? Your father and I have rented a small space that will hold our mementos and not much else, but we might be able to fit your things in."

  My brain struggled to make a connection, any connection. Ooh, it found one—my parents were selling the house.

  The bedroom my mother had kept exactly as it was when I went away to college—teen heartthrob posters and all—was finally a thing of the past. Boxed up and ready to be sent away.

  I started to tell her to pitch it all. What did I need with boxes of high school memorabilia? But something stopped me. Instead I found myself saying, "Go ahead and send it here, Mom."

  "Okay, dear."

  "Bye, Mom."

  "Be safe."

  I clicked off the phone, ready to drift peacefully back to sleep. But as I set the receiver back on the nightstand I saw the blinking red light. A message.

  Quickly dialing my number and passcode, I listened as the computer told me I had four new messages.

  Message one, Friday, 5:44 p.m.: "Lydia, dear, it's your mother. It's Friday at 5:45. Shouldn't you be home by now? Call me when you get in ... David, she's not home. I left a message asking her to call—" Press 3 to delete.

  Message two, Friday, 5:49 p.m.: "Hey gumdrop, Mom's worried about you. Give us a call as soon as you get this." Press 3 to delete.

  Message three, Friday, 7:07 p.m.: "Hi, Lydia." Holy Hot Tamales. I jolted upright in bed. "It's Gavin. We need to talk. I know this is out of the blue, but can we get together this week? Call me, I can make time whenever you're available." Press 1 to hear this message again.

  "Hi, Lydia. It's Gavin. We need to talk." What could we possibly have to talk about after two years of communication blackout? "I know this is out of the blue—" No, I totally expected this. "But can we get together this week?" Gee, my week was pretty full... "Call me, I can make time whenever you're available." Well that's different. He never had time for me when we were engaged.

  As I recalled, he only had time for a certain redheaded secretary named Rhonda who wore high heels and short skirts—not that I noticed, but a girl is bound to retain a few details about the woman she finds her significant other of six years balling on his desk when she shows up to surprise him with Chinese food.

  Delete or save? Delete or save? Hmmm... I jabbed the 3 button with an exuberance usually reserved for a candy spree.

  Message four, Saturday, 8:19 a.m.: "Lydia, this is Janice." Jawbreaker is calling me on a Saturday morning? "I'm calling to let you know I e-mailed you directions to the Summer Sail Away. Remember, it's a weekend retreat so pack your jammies and your bikini. And make sure that new hunk of yours packs his too, unless he sleeps in the buff and skinny dips." Yesterday's farce—blissfully forgotten in vodka-rendered memory loss—came crashing back into my aching brain. "Oh, one more thing." I could hear Jawbreaker's smirk. The hair rose on the back of my neck. "Do you have Gavin's email address? I need to zap him the directions, as well. He can't make it Friday, so he's meeting Kelly there on Saturday. Ta ta, see you Monday."

  I sat there, blinking like a hummingbird on Pixie Stix, for seven cycles of the voicemail menu. I finally found the capacity to press 3 before clicking off the phone and letting it fall to the floor.

  If my brain worked, I would probably have tried to figure out how my life had swirled around the bowl so quickly. Everything that possibly could go wrong, had. Work. Family. Relationships.

  All I had left was my health, and I fully expected the doctor to call any minute to say, "Miss Vanderwalk, we have some bad news." Even though I was given the thumbs up six months ago at my last check-up and gyno visit.

  With my string of bad luck, I wasn't taking any chances.

  I unplugged the phone from the wall. And reached for the bag of Swedish Fish in my nightstand drawer.

  An hour later I managed to drag myself, clothed in my candy hearts-covered pajamas, into my workroom. Closing the door behind me, secure in the knowledge that there was no phone, no internet, and no outside distraction in this room, I crossed to the workbench and climbed onto the stool.

  I chewed passively on some Swedish Fish.

  The workroom was my sanctuary, where I leave the outside world and turn inward. No one has ever been allowed in this room for fear that someone else's vibes will collide with my creativity.

  I need a pure, unadulterated, undiluted environment. Creating jewelry requires my undiluted concentration.

  To me, designing jewelry is like designing a building. Start with some rough sketches. Develop into a polished rendering. Draft detailed blueprints. Build to spec. It begins as an intensely creative process and develops into a technical construction.

  And it must work, because LIV Jewelry is selling like penny candy in Bethany's SoHo boutique. For much more than a penny.

  Beth kept pushing me to hire an assistant, but that would mean taking my hobby seriously and that might stifle my creativity. For now I just enjoyed working on pieces when the inspiration strikes. Like today.

  I had a feeling today's sketches would result in some very scary jewelry.

  Mentally checking my frustrations at the door, I pulled out a sketch pad and went to work. Dark swirling shapes decorated with spiked starbursts. Heavy lines. Black, midnight blue, and tarnished silver.

  The doodles developed into a fine swirl of silver wire with dark sapphire beads and black onyx stars. I proudly titled the sketch, "Midnight sky."

  Setting down my pencil, I pronounced the sketch finished. I glanced up at the clock on the wall to find I had been working for almost two hours.

  I produced one sketch and came to one conclusion.

  If Gavin was gracing us with his presence at the Summer Sail Away, I was definitely not going singular. Even if it meant a degrading humiliation.

  After safely closing all my creativity behind the workroom door, I headed for my purse on the kitchen counter and retrieved my cell. Punching speed dial #2, I waited for her to pick up.

  "Yo," she greeted.

  This was the moment of no return. I knew I could still back out. And I knew I wouldn't.

  "Alright, Fi," I said, twirling a candy necklace around my finger, "set me up."

  3

  Q: What do you call a car that can go up cliffs?

  A: A convertical.

  — Laffy Taffy Joke #93

  I eased my silver Passat into a parking spot and pulled the post-it from my purse. 500 Van Brunt Street, Red Hook, Brooklyn. Yep, this was the right place.

  When Fiona called to tell me her guy was booked solid all week, but I could pick him up from a Friday afternoon shoot, I had doubts. How could I drive a guy out to the Hamptons, on the pretense of being my long-term boyfriend, without having ever met him before?

  What had she gotten me into?

  What had I gotten me into?

  This place was a dump, D-U-M-P. Once it might have been a thriving pier-side warehouse, but all that remained was a weathered shell. Of the twenty windows in the crumbling red brick façade, three had glass in them. The remaining seventeen were either boarded up or broken out. The kind of place where nightmares were born.

  Desperate for a sugar fix, I popped open the glove box and dug around for a Jolly Rancher. Pulling it out, I inspected it. Watermelon. Exactly what I needed.

  Never underestimate the therapeutic sounds of crinkling cellophane.

  I had just popped the block of heaven into my mouth when someone tapped on my passenger side window. I screamed—like a horror movie heroine—and spat my Jolly Rancher onto the dashboard.

  My heart pounded in sugar-rush-heavy thumps. A breathtaking Dylan McDermott look-alike peered in at me. Short black hair, tanned olive
skin, and bright blue eyes that shone like a blue raspberry Dum-Dum after it's been sucked on for a while. He motioned with his hand to roll down the window. A lifetime of New York-learned safety melted away like wet cotton candy, and I complied.

  "You Lydia?" he asked when the window lowered enough for his head to fit through.

  "Y-yes," I replied. Freeing the sticky pink block from the charcoal gray dashboard, I eyed it carefully before deeming it too grubby to eat.

  "I'm Phelps." He smiled—a broad, white-toothed smile that belonged in toothpaste commercials. And before I could remember that he was a model and might very well have been in countless toothpaste commercials, he lifted the handle and opened the passenger door. He settled into the leather seat and pulled the door shut, dropping a well-worn duffle bag on the floor.

  I got my first look beyond his beautiful, chiseled face. While he might be beyond reproach above the neck, the rest of him was another story. Clothed in some space age silver bodysuit, he looked like a Star Wars reject.

  "What are you wearing?" I demanded.

  Not the picture perfect boyfriend date I had paid for. He belonged at a Trekkie convention, not a Southampton soiree.

  My Jolly Rancher and my career, both ruined.

  "What?" He looked confused and glanced down at himself. "Oh yeah, I was working."

  "On what? A remake of Lost in Space?" I was beginning to think Fiona had overestimated his intellect.

  "A cologne shoot," he laughed, the kind that slipped in beneath your skin to tickle every feminine nerve ending. The kind that almost made me grin stupidly in return, despite the fact that Captain Kirk was my escort to the most important business function of my career.

  I scowled. Men should not be allowed to use that kind of laugh on unsuspecting women.

  "Don't worry." Phelps unzipped the duffel and produced a rolled up shirt. "I have plenty of time to get changed."

  "Get ch—" Managing to drive between the lines, I caught sight of him tugging the silver spandex wonder over his head, revealing a chest as chiseled as his face. Holy Hot Tamales, this guy should be a Calvin Klein undies hottie. Which in no way explained why he was getting naked in my car. "What are you doing?"

  "Getting dressed," he answered, buttoning the sedate blue Armani shirt over his impressive chest. "You might want to look the other way for a minute. In this getup I had to go commando."

  I felt my cheeks erupt in flames. Surely this man was not about to— A zipper roared and I kept my eyes glued to the road.

  Suppressing my feminine curiosity, I remembered my interrupted sugar fix. Maybe that explained my weak thoughts. Withdrawal.

  With Phelps' current state of undress the glove box was out. Instead, I groped behind the seat, blindly rummaging through the seat pocket until I found my open package of Sugar Babies.

  I tore into that tiny caramel ball like it was my first drop of water after a week in the desert.

  "Hey, got another one of those?" Phelps held out his hand.

  "No," I lied. No one shares my candy stash, least of all a Clone Wars reject sure to earn me a demotion.

  Clearly he did not understand the gravity of the situation.

  "I don't know how much Fiona explai—"

  "You need a token boyfriend to impress your hard-ass boss."

  He arched forward in the seat and I caught a glimpse of tan line free, naked flesh from the corner of my eye. Fiona's comment about his basement came rushing back as I saw exactly what she meant. My breath caught, and I concentrated on navigating my way onto the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway.

  "Right," I answered. "I accidentally told her I had a boyfriend, and—"

  "How do you accidentally tell someone you have a boyfriend?" Another rasp of a zipper and Phelps was fully clothed.

  Was I relieved or disappointed? Relieved, I told myself.

  "It's a long, long story, but the bottom line is she thinks we've been dating for six months and we need to make her believe that this weekend."

  "No worries." He folded his arms behind his head and relaxed back into the seat. "With Friday afternoon traffic, we have three hours to make up for six months of intimacy."

  Steering the Passat onto the Long Island Expressway, I swallowed my retort to his smart comment. "My job dep—"

  "Wait, we have been intimate, haven't we?"

  My fingers tightened around the steering wheel.

  "Listen, this may be just a game to you. A way to make some easy cash," I bit out through clenched teeth. "But my future rides on this weekend, and if you can't help that happen then I'll just drop you at the next train station."

  "Relax, Lyd. I can play the part." He turned in his seat, facing me. "Tell me everything I need to know about you."

  "I need a rest stop," I announced as we drove through Massapequa.

  More than a bathroom, I needed a minute out of the confined space with Phelps. That man had a personality that would try the forgiving patience of a monk.

  I pulled into a Shell station and shut off the engine.

  "Want me to pump?" he asked.

  Did I ever. Holy Hot Tamales, where did that thought come from? Sugar. I needed sugar.

  "Sure," I said, anything to get away from him sooner. "I'll just pop inside."

  "Grab me a Fiji water, will ya?"

  He smiled that cocky smile I had fast become familiar with during the past hour, and I fled the scene. I didn't really have to use the restroom, but I thought I had better go for appearance's sake. In the cramped but thankfully clean ladies room I splashed cold water on my face and touched up my flagging makeup. I needed more than some eyeliner and lip gloss to boost my flagging spirit.

  My problem was more than just his overbearing attitude. In the car—my baby—he had to control the radio, the a/c, and even the driving. I was tempted to let him drive, just to stop his incessant directions. You'd think I'd asked the man to pilot the U.S.S. Enterprise into the Delta Quadrant, not navigate the Passat to Southampton.

  "Speed up, it's sixty-five here," I mimicked. "Get in the fast lane. Pass that wagon."

  We weren't even out of Brooklyn before I wanted to gag the man.

  Sure, he was attractive—okay, he could make a girl drop her panties with a single wink—but that didn't mean he would get his way every time.

  "Could ya find a radio station not playing Enya or Yanni?" he had asked. What's wrong with Enya and Yanni?

  Okay, maybe I don't understand the appeal of Yanni, but I like Enya well enough.

  I walked out of the ladies' room mimicking his complaints. "Damn, it's cold in here," he had said. "What are you, a penguin?"

  Yep, that's me. Lydia "the Penguin" Vanderwalk.

  Sugar, my mind called.

  Like a piglet sniffing out truffles, I followed my nose to the candy section. So many choices. I was instantly soothed. I grabbed a Bit-o-Honey and a bag of Peach Os—and an Oh Henry, just to complete the "O" theme and just in case I needed the extra pick-me-up.

  Glancing out the plate glass windows to see Phelps gyrating around my car in a dance frighteningly reminiscent of the Macarena, I grab a Rolo, too.

  I embarked on the longest weekend of my life.

  By the time we got to the first exit for Westhampton—only thirty miles left to go—I knew more about Phelps Elliot than I ever cared to. As the dense urbanization of the city gave way to the more natural landscape of the far reaches of the island, his inhibitions—if he had any to begin with—melted away. The man did not have a problem with sharing.

  "And this scar," he boasted, indicating the back of his right elbow, "I got mountaineering in Patagonia. The Andes can be a bitch."

  I stared blankly down the road, concentrating on the car in front of me so I didn't give in to the temptation to drive my baby into a ditch and end it right there.

  "And this one," he continued, scooting forward in the seat and reaching for his waistband, "I got—"

  "Enough!" I shouted.

  Phelps froze, thumbs tucked into the waist
band of his black trousers, mouth open, about to detail yet another dangerous adventure. The man was a walking wonder of Emergency Room medicine.

  "I think," I said more calmly, toning down my voice from the hysteria that threatened, "I know about enough scars. No one is going to ask me for a detailed accounting of your physical flaws."

  "Hey, these aren't flaws, babe." He smiled that smile that made me cringe. "They're character."

  The man leaned back into the corner between the seat and the door. I hit the door locks. As much as I might relish Phelps being splattered across the Route 27, there would be a lot of questions and police reports and paperwork if he fell out of my car doing sixty-five—as I'd been told several times was the speed limit.

  On second thought... I hit the locks again, smiling smugly at the unlocking click.

  With a casual grace, he stretched his legs out and folded his arms behind his head. He was the picture of relaxed elegance. Like an old-time movie star. Rock Hudson. Without the disappointing homosexuality.

  Or maybe not.

  I eyed him carefully. Neat hair and appearance. Nice taste in clothes. He had yet to mention show tunes or Liza Minnelli or a roommate named Kyle, but still...

  "Are you gay?" I asked.

  I expected him to be insulted, or to get defensive, or to say yes. Instead, he waggled his brows. "Wanna find out?"

  His bright blue eyes raked over my three-hours-in-a-car wrinkled self in appraisal. I don't know what he imagined he saw beneath my Ralph Lauren khaki slacks and navy and white striped boatneck tee—let me tell you, there were no curves to ogle—but the sexy look he gave me was undeniable.

  My mouth dropped open and I gasped for breath.

  Before I could answer vehemently in the negative, he added, "Thought not." He rested his head in the pillow of his folded arms and closed his eyes. "Wake me when we get there."

  "We're almost there," I announced, giving him a sharp poke in the belly.

  I could have enjoyed the sight of him jerking awake in surprise if I hadn't felt his firm, muscular chest beneath my finger. That single touch sent a shiver of sensation up my arm in a wave of goose bumps.