by Mae, Amelia
His eyes are kind. Crystal clear and peaceful.
I have this strange desire to take his face in my hands and look into them even more. Like I want to see how deep they are.
Instead, I pick up my pencil and start sketching. His square jaw. The little dimple on his cheek that peeks out when he smiles. His magnificently long eyelashes.
When I look up from my sketchbook, he grins back.
“Please try and keep the face neutral, Dylan,” Nadine says.
Dylan nods slightly in understanding, never breaking eye contact with me. I laugh, and he fights hard not to.
“Final pose of the evening,” Nadine announces.
She nods to Dylan, and he lies down, practically naked, on the sofa. Just lounging about without a care in the world.
My mouth goes dry and I think I make a little whiny noise that I’m pretty sure no one notices but me.
There’s something about the fact that he can just lie there totally comfortable an unashamed of himself while people draw him that’s so… hot. His confidence borders on cockiness, but it’s still sexy. It makes you want to lose your own clothes and climb up on that couch with him.
He looks so inviting and it makes me ache to touch him.
My breath is shaky and I’m sure my own skin is berry pink, but I don’t move. I need to keep my eyes on Dylan.
“Time is up for today,” Nadine announces, snapping me out of my Dylan-induced trance.
Dylan sits up suddenly and pulls his bathrobe back on.
“Right,” I whisper to myself.
And he’s gone.
Dylan heads into the other room to get dressed without saying anything, I can’t help feeling like I did after a one-night stand left without saying a real goodbye.
Even though I wasn’t the one with my body on display, I still feel a little used.
I take longer than usual to break down my station and gather my things. I figure Dylan will come out of the back room sooner or later, but he doesn’t. Did he leave already? That’s strange. Kelvin said that he was coming to see me.
I gather my courage and approach Nadine.
“Did he, um, Dylan I mean… Did he leave?” I ask.
“Did you want to talk to him about something?”
She sounds curious.
“He’s actually a friend of mine,” I tell her. “Sort of.”
“Oh. Well he slipped out the side exit. I think he was parked somewhere he shouldn’t have been.”
So he just… left? Just showed up at my class, let me stare at him for ninety minutes and left. Weird.
Whatever. I step outside and am relieved that it has cooled off a bit. The night air is refreshing. I didn’t realize how much my head was swimming in there. Maybe I’ll settle down on the walk home.
Just then, a sort-of-familiar black car passes in front of the building and stops. The passenger side window slides down, and I see Dylan.
“I had to park a block away,” he explains.
“I almost left without you,” I shoot back.
He smirks. No, you didn’t.
“Are you getting in?” he asks, playfully.
“Depends. Where are we going?”
“Anywhere you want.”
I almost tell him to take me back to his place, but we really do need to talk. Plus… coffee. The plan was coffee.
I give him directions to Joe’s, the place nearby that’s open twenty-four hours. The girl who takes our order at the counter recognizes Dylan and asks him for an autograph, which he signs happily along with the credit card receipt.
I take my decaf latte and lead Dylan to the table near the window.
“So…” I start.
“So.”
“So… you got mostly naked for my art class tonight,” I blurt out. I immediately regret it, but my awkwardness makes Dylan laugh.
“Had to get your attention somehow.”
“You could have just called,” I tell him.
“I don’t have your number.”
“Kelvin does,” I remind him. “You could have asked Dean to ask him.”
“I asked Kelvin for your number myself. He wouldn’t give it to me without your permission. But he did tell me where I might run into you.”
“Oh.”
“But modeling for your class was all my idea,” he says, grinning.
I sip my latte, wanting to change the subject away from nearly naked Dylan and horny Jane.
“Why did you come find me?” I ask.
“Why did you run out the other night?” he counters.
“Are you kidding me?” I squeak. “I was mortified. I figured I should save us both rehashing what happened and just… go.”
“Jane, I know what happened wasn’t you at your best, but seriously, you wouldn’t believe some of the dumb shit the guys and I did while drunk,” he says, “Makes passing out after kissing me look like nothing.”
“I don’t know if I should find that reassuring or not.”
He laughs. “I just mean that I’m not going to hold it against you.”
“Oh,” I say, relieved. “Okay.”
My eyes hit the floor again and I take another sip of my coffee. When I glance up again, Dylan is looking at me strangely.
“What?”
“Just something that Kelvin said earlier,” he answers. I narrow my eyes, curious, and I urge him silently to elaborate. “Something about how you had been wronged by a lot of people.”
“That’s not how he said it. I’m sure.”
He chuckles and concedes. “He said you’d been fucked over by a lot of people.”
“That sounds more like Kelvin,” I say, playfully. “Using the f-word whenever possible.”
But, clearly Dylan doesn’t want to talk about Kelvin. His voice is serious. “So tell me.”
“You really want to know why sad, lonely Jane is so sad and lonely?” I ask. “You want my origin story.”
“I do, Jane,” he says, completely without humor. “I know you don’t believe this, but I like you, and I want to know about you.”
I sigh out loudly. “Okay…”
14
Dylan
“I don’t really know where to start,” she says.
“Start anywhere,” I encourage her. “Tell me about your family.”
She shrugs.
“My parents are both from Cork. My father lives in Barbados now with his fourth or fifth wife. We haven’t spoken since I was about eight.”
“That’s terrible.”
She shrugs again.
“Maybe if either of us wanted anything to do with each other. But, as it is…”
Interesting.
“My mother remarried when I was about twelve.”
“So you had a father figure in your life?”
Jane half-laughs. Is there something I’m not getting. Maybe some Irish sense of humor that isn’t translating.
“My step-father never wanted kids, but since I was already born, there wasn’t much he could do about it,” she says. “I remember on the eve of their wedding, my mother sitting me down and telling me that I’d better behave when we moved in with Glen because if she had to pick between Glen or me, she’d choose Glen.”
She’s still laughing sort of strangely.
“That’s horrible, Jane,” I tell her.
Another shrug. How is she this apathetic about her horrible parents?
“It’s what happened,” she says. “Then in high school I went to live with my grandparents. They were wonderful.”
“Oh, well that’s good.”
“Well, then they died. Grandpa of cancer and Grandma of Alzheimers several years later,” she continues. “But by then, I was in college and I’d met Alastair. Ally, I called him And he wanted to take this job in America, so we moved to Los Angeles. I thought my life was about to finally begin.”
“How so?”
She looks embarrassed.
“I thought I’d be this fabulous jet-setting artist, seeing the world a
nd soaking it in. Throwing parties in my posh apartment in Hollywood with my famous friends,” she admits. “God I was such a child.”
“Don’t say that,” I tell her. “It’s your dream. It’s allowed to be ridiculous.”
“It wasn’t exactly that, but it was good, though,” she says. “Ally was working for some of his family. I was in school. I had some friends. Life was all right.”
Jane is fascinating. Even when she’s reminiscing about good times, she’s suspicious. Like even then, she knew they wouldn’t last long.
“Then one day I came home, and Ally was in bed with my friend Allie, which was hilarious, but also heartbreaking. So we were done and I moved out. Ally was paying for my school, so naturally, he stopped doing that,” she says. “I had to get a job.”
“What about your friends?”
“He spun them some kind of ‘Jane was secretly crazy’ story, and they all sided with him,” she answers, “Plus, I moved all the way up to the valley. I wasn’t going to see them too often anyway.”
“And you never finished your degree?”
“Didn’t have the money. I was supposed to get an inheritance from my grandparents when they died, but my mother and Glen contested their wills.”
I clench my fists under the table.
“I guess the courts ruled in their favor.”
“You didn’t fight in person?” I ask.
“I couldn’t afford to keep going back and forth to Ireland,” she says. “And eventually it felt like I was tarnishing their memory by making it all about money. Even if it meant that I’ll never get my trip.”
“What trip?”
I think back to that map in her living room with only Ireland and America colored in.
She sighs.
“My grandmother wanted me to see the world. She thought it would help me grow as an artist,” she explains, “and as a person. That it would make me braver somehow.”
“Yeah?”
“We had a map, just like the one in my living room, all color coded with where I was to go, what I was to see there, and how long I was going to stay,” she says.
“Where is that map now?”
“No idea. Probably thrown out. My mother and Glen sold the house and got rid of everything they couldn’t auction off.”
She sits back and sips her coffee.
I’m still a little stunned. “How can you tell me this so… apathetically?” I wonder. I look at Jane’s face, and she doesn’t look like she’s about to cry or anything. “I mean… fuck. Anyone I know who would’ve gone through that would be wrecked just talking about it.”
Yet another shrug. I’m starting to get mildly annoyed with the shrugging.
“Well, it’s kind of an Irish thing,” she says. “Talking about bad shit that happens. I mean, you should hear some of our drinking songs.”
She waits for a laugh, but I can’t deliver one.
“Secondly, it’s just what’s happened to me,” she says. “People don’t want me anymore, so…”
“The people who threw you away are assholes,” I assure her.
Maybe I’ve overstepped at calling her parents, her ex and her friends all assholes, but I don’t think so. She doesn’t react.
“But doesn’t it hurt?”
She narrows her eyes. “Of course it hurts, Dylan,” she says, “and it doesn’t stop hurting. But I have to carry on with the rest of my life.”
“What happened after you moved to the valley?”
“Well, Kelvin eventually moved out here and I helped him get squared away with a job,” she say, “and he forced me to get out of my apartment every now and again. Actually, he was the one who signed me up for the art classes.”
“That’s good.”
“Yeah. I’m grateful for Kelvin,” she says.
“So Kelvin joined you in LA. Then what?”
“Then nothing. I worked at that bar. And then one day, you walked in and flirted with me.”
“And you took me home.”
“Yeah,” she says on a sigh.
“Why?” I ask. “Why after being so cloistered for so long do you take a chance on a stranger?”
“Well… um…” she says, blushing. “You were really hot.”
I have to laugh.
“So that was it? I didn’t win you over with my personality or anything?”
“You were nice too,” she admits. “But mostly I was just kind of wondering what would make someone like you want to sleep with me.”
“Well, Jane, you’re kind of hot too, you know.”
She laughs and shakes her head. She doesn’t believe me.
“And you were nice,” I add.
“Now I know you’re bullshitting me because I wasn’t nice to you that night at all,” she counters. “I was kind of a bitch at first.”
“See, that’s how I knew I liked you. You didn’t make it easy for me,” I say, thinking about the first time I met Jane. The first conversation we had. “That night was…”
“Yeah…”
“And then I went and left you too,” I say softly. “I shouldn’t have done that.”
“No, you did exactly right,” she whispers. “I knew it was a one-night stand. You did nothing wrong.”
“Maybe.”
“But it didn’t make waking up to an empty bed hurt any less,” she admits.
Fuck. I hate that leaving her that morning makes me just one more person who up and left Jane. Sure, it was unintentional. But I hate that our night together made it just a little bit harder and a little bit less likely that she’d let someone in again.
“It’s interesting,” I say after a long moment of silence. “I have nearly the opposite experience. I’m one of seven kids.”
“Seven?” Her eyes widen.
“Yeah. And I’m the oldest.”
“No offense, but you don’t strike me as the big brother type.”
“I’m not. Not in the way people think. We’re all so close in age that I never really had to look out for them and protect them, you know? Because they weren’t that much younger.”
“I get that.”
“But what I was getting at was that I’ve always been surrounded by people,” I tell her. “For me, being alone is a luxury.”
“Are you close with your family?” she asks.
“Not exactly.”
I think back to that text message from Viv. I haven’t replied.
“Dylan,” she starts, “you don’t get to hear my story without offering up your own.”
I take a fortifying sip of coffee and try to deliver the short version.
“My family is kind of like… dead weight on me.”
“What?” she asks, shocked.
“Okay, I know that’s a terrible thing to say about your family…”
“I’ll say.”
“But, they kind of are,” I continue. “It’s hard to go anywhere and do anything when you’ve got to move as a unit of nine people. It’s hard to do your own thing. To stand out.”
She nods. I think she understands but doesn’t see it as enough of a reason to stop talking to family.
“Let’s just say that my family had certain expectations of me that weren’t met. Well, for awhile anyway,” I tell her. “And now that I’m worth a bit more, financially speaking, I’m suddenly welcome back into their lives.”
Jane fidgets in her chair.
“So you keep them away out of spite?” she asks.
“No, I… It’s not spite.”
“The way I see it, they’re extending an olive branch. But you’re refusing to take it. You should be the bigger man and get your family back.”
“Hmm…”
We finish our coffees in a comfortable silence, and I want nothing more than to take her home. Not just for sex, though that’s part of it. I’d love for her to let me step in and take care of her tonight.
Seriously. Like, draw her a bath and make her tea kind of stuff.
I guess I want to prove to her that the
re are people in this world who won’t screw her over and leave her.
I’m not the guy to do it, though.
“Do you want me to drive you home?” I ask.
“Do you want another coffee?” she asks simultaneously.
“Um, no… Did you? If you want another, you should go for it,” I tell her.
“No. It’s fine. Home is good.”
“Really?”
“I guess so,” she says, getting up.
“Okay, then.”
I lead her back out to my car and open the passenger door for her. We’re silent, and my head is spinning in disbelief of what this woman has been through I feel so helpless.
Jane whispers her goodnight and scurries out of the car before I can even offer to walk her to her door.
“Goodnight,” I call after her.
I watch her let herself inside and close the door. I watch as her lights turn on. I let out a long sigh, relieved that she’s inside.
It takes a while before I can force myself to drive away from her. I don’t want this to be the last time that I see Jane. I feel like after all these years, finding each other again took so many stars aligning that it would spit in the face of fate to walk away from her.
But it might be the best thing for her.
15
Jane
“Stupid, stupid Jane,” I whine to myself, throwing my body onto my bed dramatically.
I thought Dylan would at least try to invite himself up to my apartment. Maybe even into my bed.
But instead, finally deciding that he could handle knowing my story and telling him everything has just sent him running.
I sigh heavily and figure I may as well get ready for bed. I change into pajama shorts and a tee shirt, brush my teeth and climb under the thin covers.
I close my eyes.
I’m hours from sleep.
I close my eyes and all I can do is replay this evening with Dylan lying there on that sofa, radiating sex, and keeping his eyes on mine the whole time.
It was maddening, having him close enough to touch and not being able to.
And right now, I’d give anything to get underneath him and feel his weight over me. Kiss his lips and suck on his tongue.
I flip over onto my back and toy lightly with my right nipple piercing, loving the sharp pain in combination with the pleasure. Kind of like Dylan tugging them with his teeth.