by Renee Ahdieh
“You’re welcome,” I said unwaveringly. “Now . . . let’s figure out what we’re doing for dinner!”
He hesitated a moment. “We can go out someplace,” he suggested as he released me. The look on his face made me think that this was not his first choice.
“We can cook something, too,” I suggested.
“No. If I cook something you’ll likely never want to see me again . . . and I didn’t ask you to come visit so that you would cook for me.”
I laughed. “Takeout or delivery?”
“Delivery.” He smiled to himself and walked over to the kitchen to collect a bunch of takeout menus.
“Uh, Thomas . . . you have no table,” I stated wryly as I took a closer look around.
“Christ!” he said in mock frustration as he handed me the menus. “I’ll get a table before you come next time. I promise. Chairs, too.”
Unable to control the giddy child within at the thought of him already planning a future visit, I stuck out my tongue petulantly in his direction.
“God, that’s sexy,” he teased.
This was how I spent my first evening in Los Angeles with a movie star . . . eating Chinese food on the floor in pajamas and laughing until my sides hurt. Blissful and unpretentious . . . not at all what I would have expected. Tom never failed to surprise me.
After we finished eating, I walked over to one of the only things that took up space in the living room—a full keyboard that had been pushed up against the wall near the large flat screen TV sitting forlornly on the floor amidst a jumble of cords.
I switched on the keyboard and began running my fingers quickly across the keys in a scale and then transitioned into a series of arpeggios.
“I didn’t know you played piano,” Tom murmured as he pulled the rickety metal stool towards me.
“If I get tetanus from that thing, you’re in a lot of trouble,” I joked as I sat down carefully on the stool. He chuckled in response.
Feeling particularly confident, I launched into a movement of my father’s favorite piano work: Franz Liszt’s Piano Sonata in B Minor. Soon, I was absorbed as I remembered the way my father loved to sit on the sofa and listen to me play. He would close his eyes and nod in affirmation as the lyrical lines rose from the strings within our piano at my persistent prodding. I had never been a ridiculously good performer, but watching my Dad as he listened to me play would have caused the casual observer to believe that Emanuel Ax himself was the one eliciting music from the cold ivory keys. I had not played the piano since the day I held my father’s hand in the hospital and watched as he fell peacefully into a forever sleep. For some reason, I felt as though he would have found my choice to play at this moment appropriate.
As I finished the last series of soft, repetitive notes, I glanced up and smiled at Tom. He was sitting amongst the cushions thrown haphazardly on the floor with his mouth agape and his eyes unblinking.
“Oh, come on!” I said as I tried to hide the flush creeping into my skin. “I made tons of mistakes! Don’t stare at me like you’re amazed!”
He cleared his throat. “I can’t believe you never told me you played that well,” he muttered.
“It wasn’t important.”
“It’s important to me. How long have you been playing?” he asked.
“Since I was five. When I was in high school, I played fairly well . . . but I squandered the ability when I stopped practicing regularly. Now, I can only play slow pieces . . . I don’t have the technical aptitude to play anything seriously demanding. That’s why I chose the Andante Sostenuto.”
“I’m sorry. I don’t know what that means,” he said kindly.
“It’s my father’s favorite piece by Liszt. The movement is known as the Andante Sostenuto . . . it means . . . um . . . slow and sustained? I guess that’s the best translation I can come up with!” I giggled nervously. Tom still stared at me with glowing admiration.
“He must have loved you so much,” Tom replied with a smile.
“I loved him . . . so much,” I whispered as I grazed my hands slowly over the black keys. The tenor of their tones rising into the air was intentionally melancholy.
I stood up to walk over to the cluster of cushions where Tom was sitting and plopped down gracelessly into the hodgepodge. He stared reflectively at my face.
“I didn’t mean to go melancholy on you,” I said with a sad smile.
“You didn’t. I was just thinking about how unfair life can be.”
“How so?” I asked.
“You shamed me just now. I can see how much you love your father, and he was taken from you. My father is alive and well . . . and I haven’t spoken to him properly in over a year.”
I looked at him questioningly.
He sighed and ran his fingers through his hair while choosing his words. “I’ve always been really close to my sister Anne and my Mum. They’ve been really supportive of me. My father . . . is really critical. He thinks I have some kind of complex or something . . . like I need a crazy amount of attention just to be happy. It’s so far from the truth. I really feel passionate about acting. Whenever I see him, we argue constantly.” He exhaled in frustration. “I don’t know what to do about it . . . so I gave up about a year ago.”
I reached over and took his hand. “Not talking to him won’t help the situation,” I said as gently as possible.
He squeezed my hand and nodded simultaneously. “It’s not easy.”
“I hate to sound insensitive, but life in general is not easy. There was a lot about my father that ticked me off, but at the end of the day I always felt he knew how much I loved him. That’s all you can really do. Love earnestly . . . love fully . . . or not at all. ”
He leaned towards me and put his hand on my cheek. “Do you ever feel surprised that you still believe in the importance of love?”
I thought for a second. “No. Not at all. Love was never absent in my life . . . even in the darkest moments I never doubted its presence.” I smiled at the comparison forming in my mind. “One bad wine doesn’t mean all future wines are destined to taste awful.”
“That’s a terrible metaphor,” he teased huskily. I noticed that he was moving in closer as he positioned himself to sit crossed-legged in front of me.
My breath caught as he cautiously brushed my hair behind my shoulders and ran his fingertips down the side of my neck. I felt his thumb graze my chin with a feather-light caress. He inhaled as he leaned closer. A lock of his unruly hair fell onto his forehead, causing me to feel this involuntary desire to brush it back. I looked for a place on his head to put it, but the chaos there didn’t lend itself to this gesture, so I tried to ignore it.
“God, you smell fabulous,” he whispered.
I smiled as calmly as possible. “You do, too.” The air was growing warmer around us, and my senses shifted ostensibly to place all emphasis on the man sitting before me. His eyes narrowed slightly and a look of determination filled their grey depths as his hands rose once more to my face. “I want to kiss you.”
My heart leapt into my throat, and the panicked musings of my brain tried in vain to stop the yearning from coursing through my body. Enough was enough.
I reached up and took hold of the errant lock to put it back where I thought it might belong. The vision of me tangling my fingers in his soft hair caused my heart to palpitate erratically. I took a deep, steadying breath and softened my expression with the calming salve of resolute awareness.
“Then kiss me.”
He grinned in triumph before closing the gap between us. Stopping a hair’s breadth from my lips, he held my gaze with his piercing grey eyes. I could see that they were flecked with bits of green and gold, and the way they thoughtfully searched my face for any sign of resistance destroyed the last remaining doubt in my mind.
Without hesitation, I closed my eyes and pressed my lips to his. He was caught off guard by my kiss, and it took him a moment to regain his bearings. Tom’s lips were soft and careful as they bega
n to move against mine with slow deliberation. He placed my lower lip between his, and his tongue brushed against it tentatively. His hands slid from my face to my neck, and my palms moved instinctively to his shoulders. When I parted my lips as the kisses grew more fervent, I felt him rise to his knees and clutch me against him. My arms clasped behind his neck as he lowered our forms onto the cushions surrounding us. My mind told me to stop this insanity before it progressed beyond the realm of reason, but his scent assailing my nostrils and his taste lingering on my lips would not allow it.
We kissed for a solid ten minutes. His hands never strayed, and I never felt for a moment as though he was trying to test my limits. The fervor died down as he reverted back to kissing me tenderly and cautiously. He smiled through a final kiss. “I’d rather not push my luck,” he whispered as he pulled away.
I pouted in jest at him as relief flooded through my tingling form.
“Don’t even look at me like that. You have no idea how hard it is for me to actually stop, and when you stick out your lower lip at me . . . you drive me mad,” he said in a low voice as he pulled me into his arms and held me.
“Thank you for caring,” I whispered as I hugged him back.
“Of course. Andante sostenuto,” he murmured with a grin. Slow and sustained.
I sighed contentedly.
Chapter Ten
“So, where are we going exactly?” I demanded for the fourth time.
“I didn’t tell you the first thousand times you asked me, so what makes you think I would tell you now?”
“What if I opened the window and stuck my head out to tell the whole world who was driving this car? Would you tell me then?” I teased.
“I seriously doubt the whole world waits to hear what you have to say.” The grin on his face caused the corner of his eyes to crinkle in an absurdly cute way.
“You’re right. I think I’ll leave the gigantic ego to the movie star,” I jeered.
“I guess I deserved that.”
The combination of our laughter mixed in with the sounds emitting from the old CD player in Tom’s car. His beat-up copy of Metallica’s Black Album was definitely worse for the wear. Many of the songs skipped intermittently, and the damage to one track in particular was so severe that it refused to be heard at all. This was clearly a loved CD.
“You look beautiful, by the way,” Tom said as he glanced over at me appreciatively.
I couldn’t stop my girlish smile of response.
Earlier this afternoon, he had announced that he was taking me out tonight. When I asked where we were going, he merely told me that I should dress festively. I donned a sleeveless, fuchsia-colored jersey dress with a skirt that flared at the knee. Copper heels and accessories completed the ensemble, and my unmanageable hair fell in torturously coaxed curls to my shoulders.
Tom looked quite sexy in his slate grey button-down shirt and dark blue jeans. Both were a bit wrinkled, but I didn’t think we were at the point where I could force him to iron his clothes (hah!). It was funny to me that I found him so attractive now; when I first met him, I had not been that impressed. He was good-looking for sure, but not drop-dead gorgeous. His personality and charm made him look far more appealing than his mere physical attributes, which already gave him a decidedly unfair advantage to begin with. Damn, I was hooked.
I bit my lower lip as I studied his face in a scouting attempt to glean our destination from him one last time.
“No,” he stated firmly when he noticed my expression and added, “You’re truly incapable of relinquishing control, aren’t you?”
“It’s not one of my stronger character points.”
“Relax. Let go of the reins. It might not be as awful as you think.”
“Ugh. We’ll see.”
Nothing could have prepared me for the sight I was about to behold. My jaw dropped to the floorboard of the white Mercedes at the music pounding from the two-story tan building he pulled up to. The bright neon lights and rolling sounds of Spanish dialogue filling my ears only enhanced the effect. I sat in the car completely speechless.
Tom the Movie Star . . . had taken me to a Latin dance club in LA—a real Latin dance club.
“Wha—how . . . are you freakin’ serious?” I whispered.
He laughed heartily. “Hana told me you loved to dance.”
“But, you’re a white guy . . . a British white guy!”
The laughter continued. “Yes, I’m white. Yes, I’m British. Sometimes, British people like to dance.”
“Whether they can dance remains to be seen,” I muttered skeptically as I glanced over at his impish expression of triumph at being able to render me momentarily at a loss of words.
“You can teach me. I’m sure you’d love to have that control anyway.”
He pulled on dark sunglasses and placed a black-knit cap hastily onto his head. The overall effect reminded me of a cross between Boho and Euro chic.
“Are you sure this won’t be a problem?” I asked as I glanced around at all of the smiling faces raucously laughing and carrying on in the queue forming by the entrance of the club.
“No. But I don’t intend to let it rule all our decisions.”
I took a deep breath, swung myself out of the car, and marched over to the end of the line. Tom followed swiftly behind me. His hand held lightly onto my elbow as we took our place in front of the club and waited patiently to gain admittance.
As we stepped into the pulsing nightclub, the stress that had induced the rapid beat of my heart began to subside. It was dark, and many of the people were slightly inebriated. I kept hoping we would escape any undue notice. Thankfully, this would be one of the last places anyone would expect Tom to be on a Saturday night. No one around us paid a great deal of attention to the tiny Puerto Rican girl and the tall Inglés trying to make their way through the throng of mulling people.
A particularly bass-laden tune thudded from the speakers, and a resonating cheer arose from the masses. I listened carefully to the lyrics of the reggaeton song . . . invariably, the artist was sure to pompously announce himself. I smiled as the name echoed off the walls. Pitbull—a Cuban, like my father.
“Do you want to dance?” Tom shouted above the music and into my ear.
I grinned humorously. “I always want to dance . . . but it’s okay if you want to wait.” I stood on my tiptoes to speak by his ear.
He tugged playfully on my elbow to pull me even closer. “Stop thinking I’d rather slit my wrists than dance. Who knows, I may dance better than you do.” He wagged his eyebrows and pursed his lips with a smug certainty that begged to be soundly trounced.
“Riiiight.” I snatched his hand and pulled him onto the dance floor.
The music thumped all around us as though it had taken possession of the walls and the floors down to the very studs of the building. I could feel the reverberations jostle my nerve-endings. The beat rose from the ground into my frame, and soon my feet and hips developed minds of their own. Tom watched approvingly as I shook what God and country had given me.
In my past, I had been granted numerous opportunities to witness the horror of an uncoordinated white man trying to dance to music not of the “Cotton-Eyed Joe” or “Journey” persuasion. There were several styles I had stored in my psyche for reference. The first was undoubtedly the most horrific: “The Pelvic Thrust of No.” In essence, aforementioned white boy would pantomime the act of intercourse in full view of the public and wonder indubitably why he wound up going home alone that night. The second was “The Stupor Shuffle.” In this more pitiable routine, the feet would drag listlessly across the dance floor from side to side while the hands remained at chest level desperately trying to ascertain the beat. The eyes would dart around in a panicked fashion wondering what moron thought going to the club was a good idea. The final one was the most fun, but still not praiseworthy: “The I Can’t Dance and Who the Hell Cares.” In this scenario, body parts were all over the place, and the joyful semi-awareness of the in
dividual almost overrode the visual onslaught of gracelessness. Essentially . . . it was a disaster of gleeful proportions.
Men like Justin Timberlake were genetic aberrations. Mutants . . . like the X-Men. It was just that simple.
You can imagine my shock and dismay when I discovered that Tom might actually necessitate a fourth category: “The I Can Dance . . . Sorta.”
Seriously, he moved better than I ever would have imagined possible given my preconceived notions. No awkwardness, just a reasonably on-target demonstration of semi-prowess. He tried to imitate my motions, and soon we were laughing uproariously at his slightly modified take on my dancing. The unabashed smile on his face as he turned my hand in mid-air to spin me in place made me feel a joyful abandon I had almost forgotten existed.
A couple nearby proceeded to get down on the dance floor as the girl leaned her backside into the guy and slowly rotated to the ground with their hips gyrating in synchronization.
Momentarily distracted by the pseudo-sex act occurring to our right, I hadn’t noticed the girl behind me moving towards me in an attempt to create more space for herself. A sharp elbow poked at my lower back with clear intent to usurp my position. I exhaled and tried to ignore it as I took a step to stand even closer to Tom.
One could imagine my growing irritation when the errant elbow steamed full ahead once more with even more force behind it. I turned to glare momentarily at its conductor before I planted my feet on the dance floor in a silent protest that refused to cede any further ground. Tom chuckled at the look on my face.
“I swear,” I muttered in his ear with a warning note to my voice.
As if she heard my hidden threat and wanted to call my bluff, she pushed her elbow jaggedly into my shoulder for the third and final time. I nearly lost balance as I was pitched forward into Tom’s waiting embrace. I spun around and tried to maintain a jovial attitude in spite of the impending flare of my temper hovering behind my smile. I decided to opt for a teasing comment that would hopefully impress upon the girl that I was neither amused nor willing to take any more of her shit.