by Stacy Travis
Nikki was sipping champagne to calm her jitters and laughing about some crazy idea her wedding planner had tried to include for the reception. “She told me we had to have a vodka tasting room made of ice,” Nikki said, shaking her head. Chris, who had gazillions of dollars thanks to the many, many superhero action films he’d starred in, insisted on hiring the planner because he thought it would take some of the pressure off of Nikki, but the plan had backfired. “So she had this idea that we’d have a rack of fur coats and before each person went into the tasting room, which was going to be like twenty below zero, they’d put on the coat and pose with a live seal.”
“Is Chris a big vodka drinker?”
“No. Not even. It was just a thing. She was seeing his wide open checkbook and pulling out every trick she could. She figured the whole reception would end up in a magazine spread of something with her name all over it.”
“She sounds like a nightmare. You told her no to the ice room?”
“I told her she was fired. I planned the whole thing myself.”
That sounded more like Nikki. She was never one to suffer fools, especially the sort that came along with the trappings of Chris’s celebrity life. They were about as un-celebrity a couple as you could get.
The wedding had been beautiful. The way she and Chris looked at each other made it clear they didn’t see anyone else in the room. That was how it had always been with them.
I thought about this, sitting with my dress wrapped over my shoulder and an expression staring back at me that I knew well. It was resignation. I could live in LA and do my job like no one else was in the room.
And with that thought, the fog of uncertainty lifted. Like I’d flipped a switch.
Now I saw the look of a person ready to celebrate her best friend’s wedding, a person who needed to have some tequila, some stupid fun on the dance floor, and maybe an even more stupid hookup. Preferably in the form of one of Chris’s hot fellow actors who had to be roaming around the reception someplace and would leave on the next plane to film a movie overseas.
I hadn’t gotten a chance to check out my fellow guests earlier because I’d been held captive in the bridal suite with Nikki’s other two bridesmaids and her mom, but there was at least one groomsman who I was pretty sure I’d seen without his shirt, playing an air force captain in a movie. I wasn’t picky. Any actor/model/whatever would do. I just wanted to forget about work and this strange city for a while. That was tomorrow’s problem.
Tonight’s problem was easily solved at the bar and the singles table.
***
Nikki had described the game of Tetris that went into fitting everyone into a seating chart and she assured me that my table was “the most fun.” But I never actually made it to Table Ten.
The line to get drinks in the outdoor reception area near the Swan Lake garden had morphed into a medusa of four or five sprawling lines that converged on a single immovable point.
“You know, there’s another bar,” said someone with a deep, quiet voice behind me. He spoke so quietly, I felt fairly certain he had to be talking to someone else, but he’d spoken so near to my ear, it felt intimate. I turned around, expecting to see a man whispering to a woman close to me.
I didn’t care about the intrusion on my space, but I wanted to see if I could follow his journey to this other bar because the one where I stood was going nowhere fast. When I turned, I met a pair of deep green eyes that immediately felt familiar. In a strange firing of synapses, my mind went straight to my favorite marble in the set I used to play with as a kid. I hadn’t seen the marble set in two decades but I was certain his eyes were the exact same color. I was struck by the idea that a memory could be so instantly triggered by a color.
I stared longer than I should have at his eyes and immediately realized my mistake when his lips started moving and I didn’t hear anything he said.
“I’m sorry, what?” I asked, finally pulling my focus away from his eyes and noticing that the rest of his face was equally arresting, but not because he was trying to smolder in some model perfect way. He just had a really gorgeous, angular face, dark hair that was combed and gelled nicely, and crinkle lines around his eyes which indicated he either smiled a lot or had spent many hours in the sun. He wasn’t smiling at the moment but it didn’t dim the wattage of his bulb.
“I said there’s another bar. No one seems to have noticed.” He pointed to the opposite corner of the lawn where we stood. Sure enough, there was a second bar with no more than four people standing around it.
“Works for me.” I tilted my head to indicate we should go and wove my way out of the crowd and walked through the verdant space toward the other bar. The man walked behind me, saying nothing. After a few moments, I turned to see I he was still with me and saw he was a few paces back, looking at his phone. He’d put on a pair of nerdy-looking reading glasses which made him look a little like Clark Kent. When he saw me stop, he stowed the glasses and walked faster to catch up.
“Sorry. I’m on a short leash,” he said, his voice still low. He seemed serious about whatever was going on in his world.
“Hopefully your leash is long enough for one drink,” I said, wondering a little about who had him tied down. My initial thoughts ranged from girlfriend to serious corporate job. Or, if he was an actor, manager or agent were a possibility. But I didn’t know him well enough to ask.
We sidled up to the bar, where the bartender was looking across the lawn in sympathy. “People just follow people,” my new companion said, indicating the other bar. I put his height at over six feet tall, which meant I had to stand back a bit so I wasn’t looking straight up at him. It just over five six with my tall stiletto heels, I was used to looking up, but I didn’t want to kink my neck in the process.
The bartender nodded. “Yeah, it happens all the time. Most people don’t look around. They look for the crowd.”
“Lucky us. What are you drinking?” he asked me.
“Nothing yet, but I’d love a tequila and soda with a lime.”
“Sure thing,” the bartender said. “How about you, sir?”
“Dry martini, please. One olive.”
I raised an eyebrow. “Only one olive?”
He returned my skeptical gaze. “You think I’m making an olive faux pas?”
“I mean, it’s your call, but I thought the whole point of drinking a martini was as a vehicle for eating olives.”
He turned back to the bartender. “Make it two olives.”
The bartender nodded went about making our drinks and the man extended his hand. “I’m Finn. And I’m quite interested in your olive theory.”
I shook it and took the opportunity to look again at his eyes. Yup, exact color of my marble. He was definitely handsome. I laid odds he was probably an actor, though I couldn’t place him in anything I’d seen. “Annie. What would you like to know?”
“Well, by your logic, your drink should contain as many limes as possible but you only asked for a single lime.”
I held up a finger. I liked that he was parsing condiments, but he was wrong. “The lime in my drink is for seasoning. The olive in yours is actually a snack.”
“Ah, now I see. So really, to you, a martini is just a soaking bowl for olives.”
“Yes, but I don’t actually drink martinis so it’s really just academic.”
He nodded and it seemed like he was assessing me, but he didn’t say anything else.
“So… are you a friend of Chris’s?” It was just a guess because I was new to LA and didn’t know all of Nikki’s friends.
“Nikki’s. We knew each other at USC and stayed friends.” Nikki had gotten a Master’s degree in communications. He certainly could have studied at the film school there and gone on to an acting career. I realized I was willing him to be an actor, mainly with the idea that actors were sluttier than regular people. I had no evidence to prove that assumption; just hope.
“Ah, so do you work in a similar field as Nikki?” I aske
d. I hated small talk, but I liked finding out the interesting bits about people. And asking mundane questions was the only quick way to get to know a person.
“Eh, it’s a party. I don’t really want to talk about work,” he said, scooping our drinks off the bar and handing me mine. He held his glass up for a toast. “To new friends.”
I couldn’t help smiling because he was speaking my language. The last thing I wanted to talk about was work. “To new friends.”
I sipped my drink. It was strong. I was thirsty. In under a minute, I’d already downed most of it, and I already felt a little tipsy. I smiled at Finn. He smiled back.
“Maybe we shouldn’t wander too far from the bar,” he said, leaning his elbow on a tall cocktail table and looking slowly over my face. He didn’t seem inclined to wander anywhere, which was just fine with me.
***
Finn and I stood next to each other when Nikki and Chris had their first dance, and he obliged as my dance partner when the wedding party was invited to join them on the floor. He was a good dancer. He moved with ease and knew how to lead. Holy crap, he was a really good dancer.
“I like your dress,” he said, his and moving down my arm to where he rested it on my hip. “Doesn’t look like the usual bridesmaid fare.”
“Spoken like a man who’s danced with a lot of bridesmaids.” I draped both hands around his neck. It seemed appropriate and not overly familiar, though the feel of his hand on my hip elicited all kinds of other desires that I needed to keep at bay.
“I’ve danced with a few.” He didn’t elaborate. I wasn’t used to men of few words. Most of the people I worked with at my now-former law firm couldn’t get enough of hearing themselves talk. Finn was a relief.
The song was slow and romantic and he wrapped one hand around my waist and held my hand in the other. I had to look up to see his face. What I saw was a mask of stoic good looks which he seemed to wear when he looked around the room, but his gaze immediately softened when he looked at me. I liked the way it felt.
The way his expression shifted reminded me of the way I sometimes felt when I was in court arguing a case. I knew I was good at that part of my job because I became a different person. I felt myself putting on a mask to keep my inner self safe from the hard-edged litigator who made enemies if necessary to argue a case. Starting over at a new firm added even more reasons to wear that mask until I found my comfort zone.
“What’re you thinking about?” Finn asked, rubbing his hand lightly up my back and combing his fingers down through my hair. Then he did it again and I felt the heat rise in my cheeks and a clenching in my stomach. His touch was intimate for a dance floor full of people when we’d just met a half hour earlier, but I didn’t want him to stop. I edged my body a little closer to his and ran a fingernail through the hair at the nape of his neck.
“Oh, just the real world creeping in for a moment. I had an unwelcome thought about the work I have to do tomorrow.”
“What do you do?” he asked.
“No, you were right. Let’s not talk about work. I’d just as soon avoid thinking about it as long as possible.”
“Fine by me.”
We danced until the song ended and the band kicked into a set of pop cover songs. I pulled my hand back from around his neck and we each took a step back, but he didn’t let go of my hand. We looked at each other, assessing whether the other wanted to stick around. I shook my head and he led me off the dance floor and back out to the garden where we’d been before. It felt like we didn’t have to talk to know that we both wanted to leave the crush of people and the loud music.
The sudden quiet on the lawn immediately calmed me. I was no longer thinking about work or trials or whether my drink needed refilling because I’d already finished three and I knew my limits.
Finn wordlessly dropped my hand and took off his suit jacket, which he draped around my shoulders. “You’ll freeze out here,” he said, explaining the gesture.
“I was okay, but thanks.” I wasn’t used to kind gestures from men. I was good at taking care of myself, so I didn’t look hard for people to lighten my load. But it was sweet and I liked that he did it without asking.
“Come.” He led me through the garden and down some winding pathways between bungalows, some of which were larger than my San Francisco apartment. Finally, we arrived at what seemed to be our destination—the pool.
No one was sitting on the lounge chairs at that hour, but the tiny twinkling lights made the setting look like it had been designed for a midnight tryst nonetheless. Finn grabbed a stack of plush towels and spread them out on the plush cushion of a lounge chair and tilted it to full recline.
“Wow, you get right to it,” I said, sort of impressed that he was moving right to writhe around on a lounge chair and make out mode. He looked at me quizzically and proceeded to put towels on the lounge next to it and tilt that one back as well. He gestured for me to sit on one of the chaises and he took the other one. Then he picked up my hand again.
He lay all the way back and after some momentary hesitation, I did the same, still confused because I’d thought we were on the same page. Didn’t most normal single people hook up at weddings? Wasn’t that where he was leading with his sultry stroking of my back and all the hand holding? And now we appeared to be gearing up to take naps at a great distance.
The thick cushions were comfortable, and I supposed I could think of worse ideas.
“So, I take it from your comment, you were expecting me to have my hand up your skirt by now?” he said.
“Oh. I mean, not really, but I guess… well, yeah.”
He laughed. “Noted. And then, by corollary, I guess you wouldn’t object.”
“Um, yeah, sure. And who says, ‘by corollary’ in ordinary conversation? Are you on the debate team or something?”
“Or something,” he said.
“Right. No talking about work. Fine.”
“You seem disappointed in how this is going,” he said, an amused smirk on his lips.
“No, not at all. I was hoping for a nap outside during my best friend’s wedding reception.”
“Good. Just want to make sure you’re not disappointed.”
“Absolutely not. And, I guess we’re not making out, then. Just to be clear.”
He turned toward me and those green eyes burned into mine. “I’m not ruling it out.” He yanked hard on my lounge chair and pulled it right up against his. The movement made a scraping noise on the patio and added to the brute strength of the gesture. “But first I wanted to do this.” He rolled away and onto his back and looked straight up at the sky. With the promise of a potential hookup still on the table, reluctantly looked up as well.
“Oh, wow. We had an unobstructed view of the sky and it was a perfect, clear night. The moon was full and hung directly above us like a big, smiling grandpa face. And around it, I actually saw stars.
“I didn’t think it was possible to see a real night sky in LA,” I said.
“Have you seen this kind of sky elsewhere?”
“Well sure, on camping trips in the mountains. But this is… it’s pretty magnificent.” I stared up until the brightness of the moon started to hurt my eyes and I had to close them.
When I turned my head to look at Finn, I saw his eyes studying me. I wondered how long he’d been doing that. He pulled me a little closer and I scooted toward the edge of my chaise. He did the same until we were pressed up against each other.
Neither one of us spoke. We just lay there, side by side, holding hands under the blazing white moon, for a long time.
That’s why I wasn’t expecting it when he brought my hand to his lips and kissed it. And when he turned on his side to face me, I wasn’t expecting him to do anything more than talk more about the sky or propose another arcane activity that no one did at a wedding reception ever.
And I was good with that. I’d begun thinking of him in a completely different way than I had been a few hours earlier. I actually liked him. He
was different. And interesting. And definitely not the kind of guy who was just looking for a hookup. But he was still so reticent, I wasn’t sure what he was looking for exactly.
“You’d be crazy to think I haven’t been wanting to do this for the past two hours,” he said, pressing closer to me, which had the effect of scooting me over so both of us were facing each other on my lounge chair and the distance between us had disappeared. Then his lips swept across mine, just hinting at more but withholding it. He licked my bottom lips and sucked it gently before backing away. “I just didn’t want you to think it was all I wanted.”
“What else do you want?” I asked, surprised at how breathless I sounded after one kiss.
“Ah babe, the list is long.” He kissed me again, deeper this time and I felt every part of body shudder at his touch. I tugged his dress shirt free from his pants and ran my hands over his abs, which felt like they were carved from marble.
His tongue tangled with mine and his hands were in my hair, brushing it away from my face. But there was nothing frantic or hurried about his pace. He wasn’t trying to get to a finish line. He was the frustrating sort who wanted to admire the view.
That had never been my priority. I was all about the accomplishment, the checking of a box, even when it came to sex.
“Hey,” he said, pulling away and focusing his eyes on mine. “Relax.”
“I am relaxed.”
He laughed and rolled his eyes. “You’re not relaxed. The question I have,” he said, running a finger over the contours of my cheek until the skin tingled with goosebumps. “Is what it will take to get you there.” He followed the path of his finger with a row of kisses which ended at my neck. He followed that with his tongue.
“I… I could maybe get there,” I mumbled, my brains scrambling and willing to agree with whatever he proposed. His breath was hot on my skin. Then his lips followed. He held my cheek in his palm and kissed my forehead, my nose, my chin. Finally, my lips.
And I was gone.
***
Then I was back.
“Shit.” Finn pulled away from me and shoved a hand in his pocket. I assumed it was a panicked attempt to check for condoms.