Since I moved to the city over a decade ago, I’m always getting weird questions about my hair, like whether it’s all my own or where I get it done. My senior year of high school, I was voted best hair. And smile. And biggest flirt. The last one surprised me. I never intended to flirt, but I liked to make girls smile. Growing up, I appreciated when a simple compliment could reverse my mom’s mood.
Liz is smiling now, even though I’ve hardly said a word.
She has me take photos of the kitchen and living areas from every angle. The apartment is a new development in West Chelsea that boasts views of both The Highline and the Hudson. The kind of place I might’ve come to meet a client when I worked on Wall Street. And here I am, meeting a client.
Eventually, we end up in the master. “Make sure to get the bed,” she says, hovering behind me. “They did a good job on it, don’t you think?”
“Sure.” She sounds excited, so I spend extra time on it.
“People are very particular about where they sleep. I once showed an apartment for two months without so much as a nibble. I change the bedding and bam—got an offer the next day.”
“Let’s get the balcony,” I suggest.
“We aren’t done in here.” She sits on the edge of the mattress, running a manicured hand over the comforter. “Come.”
I wipe my temple on my sleeve. It’s stuffy in here and reeks of fresh paint. “I’m working.”
She undoes a button at her throat. “Then take my picture.”
I’ve taken many photos the last year, none of which have amounted to anything. I might’ve lost the ability when I lost Sadie. I remember her eyes, richly purple, when I stepped into the hallway of my new apartment building and met her eyes. The gaze of a woman who’d become much more than a neighbor. Our first night together, we’d gotten caught in the rain. I’d photographed her in my apartment. Her back arched against my then-wife’s green velvet couch. Sadie’s wet hair stuck to the cushion as her tits pointed to the ceiling. My lens had loved all of her. I haven’t looked at the photos since. She’s not mine to look at. That intimacy is reserved for her husband.
Like bullets, the words hurtle through me.
Give me your fuck. Split me down the middle with it.
“I can’t,” I tell Liz.
She frowns, those lines deepening in her face, signaling her disappointment. Turning her down’ll probably cost me future jobs. It’s been a while since I’ve been with anyone, but I crave intimacy over casual sex, I’ve always needed that with a partner.
I want the weight of those words in my hand again, the stick of good leather.
* * *
Back at my apartment, I hang my jacket on a hook by the door without bothering with the entryway light. I drop my camera bag in its usual spot by the couch. Leftovers go in the microwave. Almost thirteen months after moving in here, I’m better at being single. I clean up after myself more, eat vegetables, change the sheets regularly. I at least have to try harder twice a month when I have Marissa. Kendra, my perceptive ex, would find out if I fed our daughter too much junk or had her sleeping in dirty sheets.
After today’s job, I blew off steam at the gym, then regrouped on a park bench. Did some holiday shopping. Even though the journal’s been burning a hole in my bag all day, I haven’t opened it again. It’s not right to read a stranger that way, on the fly, out in public. But as I sit in front of the TV, shoveling dry chicken in my mouth, my mind wanders. I only read two pages. The journal’s huge.
I bring it to the couch and flip through her pages. She shifts abruptly between love and sex, pain and euphoria. It’s jarring, no matter how many times she rips me out of one emotion to drown me in another. She’s wise, emotional, observant of the human condition, and yet also erratic. Angry. Indecisive. Unreliable. Her drawings are as provocative as they are messy. The beginning of one of the poems makes me stop.
Make me a woman.
Let me be your girl.
It’s simple, but I think I get it. I never feel more like a man than when I’m taking care of my girl. This one wants to be adored, to feel worthy. I can see us now, a perfect pair, her arms around my middle as she fits into my side, burrowed against me. Trusting me to read her, let me in, ease her pain. Things I never got to do with Sadie, who kept me at a distance. Or even Kendra. Our intimacy didn’t reach that kind of level.
I turn the page.
You throb and throb inside me,
until I’m nothing but a heartbeat.
a bursting beat of heart, coming apart on your cock.
My mouth goes dry. I throw the book aside, shove my hand down my pants, and make myself come in two minutes flat.
Fuck me.
I need to throb so hard inside this woman that she comes apart.
I need to find her, make her mine, and feed her her words until she’s swollen with them.
2
I have to return it.
I take the journal to the no-pistachio, no-chocolate coffee shop the next day, sit at my usual table, and wait. I set it by my coffee, not too close so I don’t spill on it. A safe distance from my cherry Danish so I don’t get it sticky.
If the owner doesn’t come looking for it, I’ll leave it at the counter. It doesn’t matter that I feel as though I’ve opened a window and let some fresh air into my life. It’s not mine to keep.
An hour passes while I wonder who she is and how she fucks. If she likes to be slow on top, in control, or if she’d prefer to be put into any position that strikes me. I wonder if she’s written something on every page of that fat journal and why I can’t stop trying to guess what I’ll find next.
I open it—after I’ve washed my hands—and this time, I begin at the end.
And there it is. A calendar.
This is more than just a journal; it has an agenda in the back. Bare bones—there’s only one thing written down for December—but not completely blank.
On the back of the previous page is a drawing of a man and a woman. She’s in a chair by an open window, wrapped in blankets. Her feet are propped on the sill, backdropped by a fire escape and falling snow. New York in winter. Behind her, a man lies in bed, watching her stare outside.
I study the drawing. His hair is colored in, but hers isn’t. Aside from her feet and face, just one hand sticks out from the blankets, a cigarette dangling between her fingers.
Written next to the bed is a two-sentence love letter.
In my sheets.
In my head.
“Jesus,” I murmur.
The only engagement on the calendar is next week.
December 1st—City Still Life, 8 P.M.
There she is, clear as day. I don’t know what City Still Life is, but several Google searches later, I’ve figured it out. I’ve found her.
Fate has given me this one chance.
* * *
Today was the warmest day of the week, but tonight, my breath fogs like the rainclouds overhead. Exposure Art Gallery has windows all along the front so I can scan the lit room without ever stepping foot in it. Is she dark and sultry or does she look deceptively innocent? Will I recognize her by the poetry in her eyes? By the slender fingers that lend her thoughts a voice?
City Still Life is a photograph exhibit, a collection of work across several artists. The pictures are bland: cityscapes, an empty post office, a fire hydrant nobody ever found worthy of commemorating until now. I prefer people. Every person is worthy. Every person has a story, and even if they won’t share it, you can sometimes read it in their eyes.
Especially with a camera.
My attention snags on a white paper cup left on a covered table. Printed on the side is Lait Noir’s black logo, the café where I found the journal. It isn’t far from here, but it’s not the closest café to this gallery.
Someone picks it up. White-blonde, nude-lipped, and dressed in head-to-toe black, her fingers wrap around the thick middle of the cup. She has short, dark nails and milk-white skin. I study her as she studies on
e of the photographs.
She’s put together. Classy. Not the torn-up soul I’d pictured with dark hair and eyebrows to hang over her frown. There’s no stoop in her posture from carrying the weight of the world on her shoulders. Maybe it isn’t her. I step closer to the window and try to get a better look at her eyes just as she turns them down from the exhibit. She balances her coffee in the crook of her arm and scribbles on a notepad.
She’s writing.
My body warms, a conditioned response to her pen on paper. I salivate for her words. What about the photograph in front of her is worth noting? Was I wrong to call it bland? I want to know what she thinks.
She travels along the wall, squints, scratches behind her ear. She sips her coffee. People stop her to say something that makes her smile. I don’t want to look at her body—it was her words that got me here—but I can’t help myself. As she talks, she gestures, and her breasts bounce. They’d be big enough for my hands, and I’ve been told I have some serious paws. She’s got a small waist, great legs, blonde hair that hangs long and layered down her back. I lick my lips.
She flips the notebook shut and shoves it in her purse while nodding at the person speaking. When she shifts, I shift. A man shakes her hand, and she excuses herself. She heads outside, toward me, and before I even know what’s happening, she’s pushing out the gallery door and standing two feet away. Inhaling deeply, she leans back against a patch of brick wall between the window and the door, just enough to shade her. She turns her eyes to the stars.
“I already checked,” I say. “It’s too light out.”
She flinches, barely glancing over. “You mean too dark?”
“Mmm, no,” I say. “If it were pitch dark, you’d be able to see them—the stars. But all this light . . .” I nod through the nearby window. “Enjoying the show?”
She doesn’t respond at first, then says, “Yes. Very much. Which one’s yours?”
“I’m not one of the artists. Thankfully.”
“Oh. I saw your camera and assumed . . .” She finally stands up straight and squints at me. “What do you mean ‘thankfully’?”
“I haven’t been inside, but they’re crap from what I can see.”
“Crap? That’s somebody art in there.”
It could easily be my work on those white walls, but if this is my poetess standing in front of me, she writes to move people, and these photos wouldn’t budge a feather. “It’s just my opinion.”
She steps a little closer. “And who are you?”
“Just a passerby,” I murmur, feasting on this hard-earned moment of intimacy. She’s younger than I thought. All that black clothing and studied posture made her look around my age, thirty-three, from a distance, but she’s not even thirty. I try to see her eyes again, but again, she’s not looking at me.
“I should get back inside,” she says.
“No.”
“What?”
Shit. I didn’t mean it to come out like that. Trying to cover up my command, I sniff. “I mean, weren’t you leaving?”
She shakes her head.
“So why’d you come out here?” I ask, hoping conversation is a better tactic for getting her to stay than blurting things out.
“I needed a cigarette.”
I remember the December sketch. Colorless hair. Smoker. I’m getting warmer. She makes no move to get a pack out, so I say, “I’m sorry. I don’t smoke.”
“Me neither.”
A smoker without a cigarette, a seemingly nice girl without her naughty journal. Now that I’m closer, I see her better. Her brand of blonde is stark. It almost matches the color of her eyes, a steely shade of gray that might even be ice blue. It’s hard to tell in the absence of light. In the shadow she’s under, they’re just smooth like glass, the calm before a storm.
I’ve found her. It’s her journal I have, her words I possess. I’m the current owner of her thoughts. But what to do with this information?
“So, you’re obviously a photographer,” she says, glancing at the camera around my neck, which I’ve taken to keeping close like a security blanket. “Have I seen your work?”
“No. I’ve never shown anywhere.”
“Is it any good?”
I don’t know what to say. If you want to be a successful artist, especially in this city, you’d better believe your shit is good. I spent ten months after graduating from NYU trying to make it before my father-in-law shipped me off to business school. That, plus this past year, is the whole of my struggling-artist experience. I haven’t managed even a rejection letter from the major galleries. So far, it’s been jobs like senior class photos, real estate listings, and Upper East Side dog photography.
Yes, I took headshots of a poodle.
I shrug. “It’s my work.”
She hands me her coffee and sets her purse on the ground with a thump. When she bends over to rummage through it, I look right down her blouse. Her bra is fire-engine red, and a siren call to my dick. That’s more what I expected to find in her, some attitude.
It hits me that she’s getting out a business card. Good. That’s a socially acceptable way to learn more about her.
But when she stands back up, she just has her notepad in hand again. She hoists her bag over her shoulder. “Nice to meet you.”
I’m not ready for goodbye—I haven’t even said hello. “Wait,” I say, but she hasn’t made a move to leave. “Can we exchange cards?”
She scratches her elbow. “Um.”
No response? I’ll take that as a yes. I pull out my card, a little miffed I haven’t updated it as I’ve been meaning to. I don’t care about finding work right now, I just want her to reciprocate. I hold it out. “Finn Cohen.”
She glances at it before sliding it from my hand. In the next few seconds, she studies my face. “Thanks. I left mine at home. On purpose. Sorry.”
Damn. I rub my chin. “How come?”
“People are always trying to use me at these things. Maybe that’s what you’re doing—”
Use her? I don’t even know her. “I’m not.”
She pauses. “I believe you. Anyway.”
“I didn’t catch your name.”
“I didn’t throw it.”
I try to figure out if she’s joking or serious. We smile at the same moment. She opens her mouth, but I never get to hear what she says.
“There you are,” a man says from the doorway.
She glances over. He’s shadowed, but he wears a suit and looks around our age.
“I have to go,” she says without looking at me. “Good luck with your stuff.”
I go to call her back. With the kind of heart she poured into the pages of her journal, she must miss it. The journal, maybe the heart too. But the man puts his arm around her and takes her back inside.
Forget her, she’s not yours, you’re not enough.
She isn’t who I’d pictured. She’s too put together—composed, without scars or mascara streaks or coal-colored hair. I expected storm clouds overhead, fidgeting fingers, lyrics in her movements.
Then again, what the fuck do I know?
I once expected an audible click when fate kicked in.
Sparks.
Ignition.
Fireworks.
Like the time I stepped out of my apartment, met eyes with 6B across the hall, and lost my heart to my stomach.
But I’d been wrong about Sadie.
Am I wrong now?
Could I be misreading this girl? On the outside, she’s clean lines and smooth curves. But then, the calm before the storm can be more unnerving than the storm itself. Is that who she is?
Or is she red lingerie, ice-gray eyes and fake cigarettes?
I walk away, and she’s all I think about on my way home. Whether I was supposed to find her . . . or if fate is warning me to leave it alone. I should listen. Maybe it’s best this spark doesn’t ignite. Because fireworks can explode in your face—and it fucking hurts.
Even if you’re expecting it.
3
Six simple words.
Did anyone turn in a journal?
I repeat them to myself as I cross the busy street to Lait Noir. I should’ve stopped for coffee on my way to get coffee. Situations that make a heart beat this hard should not be tackled without caffeine. Through the café window, I see a woman at the exact table where the book fell out of my bag. I’ve been back every morning since I lost it, and it isn’t there. Which means it’s most likely behind the counter. I just have to ask.
Inside the café, I remove my mittens and get in line. There are enough people in front of me to give me time to prepare.
I wasn’t going to ask. Once I realized it was gone, I convinced myself it was a good thing. The girl in the journal is dark, depraved, a fraud. She’s someone I’ve worked hard to bury, but for some reason, she continues to come out through my words. Why can’t I let this one piece of my former self go?
I move forward in line. Pete throws me a wave from behind the register, and my throat dries. Last night, after the City Still Life show, I was restless. Rich noticed, asked if I needed anything.
It might’ve been my encounter with the handsome, quiet photographer—Finn. He looked at me like he was trying to read my thoughts through my eyes. I’m not used to being seen that way; I wasn’t sure how to feel about it. I wanted to stay and find out, but that desire alone made me wary.
Or maybe it finally hit me that my journal was somewhere out there by itself, and that I’d never see years’ worth of work again. Bad work, in more ways than one, but still mine. As Rich and I rode away from the show, all I wanted to do was go home, put my feelings on the page as I normally would, and close the book on them.
The customer in front of me steps aside, and suddenly, it’s just me and Pete. And the five people in line behind me. And the female barista who only scowls.
“One coffee, black as my heart, coming right up,” Pete says with a grin.
I hand him exact change. “Thanks.”
“How’s your morning, Halston?” he asks, popping open the register.
Tempt Me: A First Class Romance Collection Page 2