by S. Ann Cole
Things were a sordid mess, and I was to be blamed for most of it, but I had no apologies, because I had no regrets.
I loved Xavier, and I loved Davian, and if Davian hadn’t left me behind, I wouldn’t have come chasing after him and experienced the sheer bliss and the raw, intense feeling of being with Xavier.
And boy, Xavier was an experience.
At times I would question myself: Did I truly come to L.A. to chase Davian? Or did I come because seeing Xavier sitting across from me in Union Square Starbucks that evening had sparked something in me. I mean, he’d made me laugh, lust, and long for, in a matter of minutes.
But then I would remember all those sweet moments, words, and kisses shared with Davian…and then I’d just get confused.
Davian’s jubilee was irrepressible when he heard what happened with Xavier at Beach Rock. That’s because he had no idea how I felt about Xavier. He wasn’t aware he was sharing my heart with Xavier in the same way I was sharing his heart with Jessica. He hadn’t realized that each time he refused to choose me, my heart loved him a little less, and loved Xavier a little more.
I phoned Xena everyday, twice a day, seeking updates on whether she heard from her brother. And each night I would alternate between sleeping in Davian’s sweater I stole that night at the hotel, and Xavier’s basketball jersey from that event at the gymnasium.
Sometimes I went two consecutive nights in Davian’s sweater; sometimes I went three in Xavier’s jersey.
I had late-night conversations with Davian, and then fall asleep and dream about Xavier.
But at the end of the day, I had neither of them. I was still alone.
Lion had decided on high fashion modeling for me. Based upon demands from some of the most prestigious brands since the leaked photos and brouhaha around my name, he concluded that high fashion, exclusive to no one, was where I’d make a fortune—translate, where he would make a fortune.
Already he had me booked up, and so far I’d done three all-day shoots in New York, and returned to L.A. for another shoot and cologne commercial.
As of yesterday, I had a full two weeks of freedom before I had to make another trip to New York.
“You’re still off alcohol, right, Alina?” Danni called from my kitchen.
“Yep,” I replied around a mouthful of granola bar, while snickering with Leo at the absurdities from the television series Californication.
Leo and Danni had been using my apartment as their meet-up spot for the past two weeks. Glad to have found someone non-judgmental of his sexual preference to talk to, Leo blushingly opened up and told me Danni was his first foray into men. He’d been aware of his sexuality since adolescence, but always fought against acting on it. And after years of successful suppression, one look at Danni was all it took to break his restraint.
After I walked in on him that day, he no longer felt comfortable at Danni’s studio apartment, and he was even more paranoid about hotels. So, he decided to shop for a new, more secure apartment for Danni. In the interim, I allowed them to use my place—the definition of secure. The penthouse was big enough, and the guest bedroom was all the way on the other side of the apartment, far from mine, easier for us to keep out of each other’s way.
On some nights, however, like tonight, we watched television together, laughed and chatted for a few hours before we turned in.
“How is it possible that Hank’s dick hasn’t withered and fallen off yet?” Danni said as he returned from the kitchen with a bottle of sparkling water for me, a beer for Leo. “That man screws anything, anything that comes on to him. I don’t even get why women literally throw themselves at him, because he’s not all that hot, and he’s a douchecanoe.”
Pausing my granola bar mid-bite, I gave Danni a look. “Boy, check yourself. Hank Moody gives me a serious case of the swoons. Hottest douchebag man-child ever! If you don’t get a boner just hearing that man speak, then your dick needs to wither and fall off. Am I right, Leo?”
I glanced over at Leo who was sitting in an armchair, grinning, the mouth of his beer bottle pressed to his lower lip as he watched Danni from beneath his lashes.
That smile on his face, was one of the main reasons I loved having them over. When Leo was around Danni, he was a completely different person than when he was around the band. Virtually unidentifiable.
Around his band-mates he was a serious, rugged, badass rocker—almost like he was holding his breath to hide his true self, because when Danni was around, he grinned a lot, talked a lot, and breathed normal.
Maybe one day he would come out to the world. Maybe he never will. But either way, I believed everyone, gay or straight, deserved to grin that wide without ever being judged.
Danni glared, tapping two fingers against the neck of his beer bottle, daring Leo to agree with me.
“Who’s Hank again?” Leo cleverly evaded. “Is he the bald guy who looks like a giant penis, or the alcoholic writer who tucked his cock and made a mangina?”
I busted out laughing, pointing at Leo. “Nice saving your ass!”
Smirking, Danni kicked his feet up on the coffee table—the same coffee table Davian bent me over and screwed me like a madman on a couple weeks ago. “He’d better. Or I sure as shit wouldn’t be kissing it tonight.”
As Danni went on about whorebag Hank Moody, my cellphone hummed in my lap. I glanced down at the screen, and my laughter died on my lips.
An email. From…oh God…Xavier.
I stared down at the screen for God knows how long before I felt Danni’s hand on my shoulder. “You okay, chica?”
I nodded. Or verbally answered. I don’t know. Don’t remember how I responded.
All I knew was in the next minute I was moving. Toward my bedroom. Closing the door. Turning the lock.
Xavier had emailed me.
After three weeks of disappearing out of my life, he’d emailed me. And I was nervous as hell to open it.
Clutching the phone tight in my hand, I walked over to my bed, peeled back the covers, climbed in, fluffed up the pillows behind me to get comfortable, pulled the covers up to my chest, then took a deep breath and opened the email.
If you think there is still hope for us, come see me.
Attached, was an electronic ticket to France with a departure date for tomorrow, Friday, and a return date for Monday.
And that was it. Nothing more.
Over and over, I reread those eleven words, wishing they would magically double, triple, and say more. Just one more sentence.
But they didn’t, and I eventually set the phone down, shimmied lower under the covers, and stared up at the ceiling.
France. That’s where he’d been all this time. At his father’s. How had Xena not thought to check there? Or maybe she knew and was keeping tight-lipped about it?
If I’d paid attention to him half as much as he paid attention to me, I would’ve known right off the bat that’s where he ran to. I was the shittiest girlfriend ever. I deserved to be alone.
Yet, I couldn’t help the orgasmic prospect of seeing him in France. I sorely missed him. My big, tall wall of blond waves and steel-gray eyes.
Heart swelling and releasing elatedly in my chest, I wasn’t sure how long I laid there gazing up at the ceiling, before Massive Attack’s Angel tugged me from my trance.
Davian’s ring tone.
Gaze still transfixed on the boring white ceiling, I picked up the phone and answered, “Davi…”
“No one says my name the way you do.”
“How’s that?”
“Like it’s yours. Like you own it. Like you gave it to me and can take it back whenever you feel like it.”
“Last I checked, your name was promised to her, not me.”
He sighed. Heavily. “Didn’t call you to have a dustup about this, alright?”
Before I could rejoin, he dropped his voice to a huskier whisper and went on, “I was out by the pool listening to our song, mind
lessly scribbling words onto my pad. Later I went back into the house, showered and ate, then picked up the pad and came down into the den to vibe a song. I just flipped through and reread what I wrote out by the pool, realizing I signed your name backwards at the end of it.”
The point? “So?”
“Wanna hear what I wrote?”
I didn’t answer, but he went ahead anyway. “She’s snowflakes dancing on flickering tongues of flames. Colder, hotter, sharper than a chip of an iceberg. Don’t dare try to touch, lest you get burned, like open skin to dry ice. She loves with a chill. She hates with tender warmth. To heal her own, she breaks helpless hearts. She’s a dream while he’s awake. She’s the sun glaring while it rains. She’s the ocean spiraling into the plane. She’s ice in a jar overflowing with fire. She’s the ice, or she’s the steam. No, she’s the ice and the steam. She’s Ice Steam…Ice Steam is her. Anila.”
I said nothing. Just listened to him breathing down the line.
“Ally?”
“I hope you don’t plan on turning that into a song, because it kinda sucks. Royally.”
He laughed, nice, smooth, easy, and so very Davian. “No. I told you, I didn’t even know what I was scribbling. My mind was in another world. But this just proves to me that even when I’m not thinking about you, I’m still thinking about you.”
I was tired of this frickin game Davian was playing with me. Sick. And tired. Of it. “Is that why you called? To tell me about some shitty lines? Or to get hard from the sound of my voice, as usual, then climb into bed and screw your fiancée while pretending she’s me?”
“Ally…” was all he said, and I waited for him say more, but nothing came.
“I’m getting back with Xavi,” I told him. “And I’m ending this…whatever this is between us right now.”
This felt a lot like when I was in a telephone relationship with Xavier, except that was because Xavier was living in a different city, not because he was engaged to another woman and wanted me to be his dirty secret.
“What?” I heard rustling in the background, then a crash. “You heard from him?”
“Of course. I’m his g—”
“NO. You’re not his girl! You’re mine, goddammit!”
Was he serious?
“Davi—”
A knocking sounded in the background, then I heard Jessica’s twangy voice murmuring something. “Yes, I’m alright, it’s just the whiskey glass. Gimme a minute. I’m on a call.” More murmurs from Jessica. “Not now, we’ll talk later…” More murmurs. “I said not now, alright?! Now can you please get the hell out and gimme one damn second of privacy?”
A loud slam! sounded, then Davian was back on the line. “You mean to tell me the piece of shit’s still alive and not stabbed to death by a Chucky doll?”
“You’re working alongside them. You’re living in their villa. You might wanna start being a little nicer to the people who’ve been nothing but kind to you, Davi”
“At this point, I don’t give a shit. Screw all this,” he bit out. “He touched you. He’s been where I’ve been. I don’t believe you’re a coincidence. He went after you. On purpose. He dug, found out who you were, and went after you. Do you know we used to be tight? Did he tell you that?”
Davian was beginning to sound like a man going mad. “What are you talking about?”
“When we first joined their tour, he was the only one cool with us from the get go. Me and him, we clicked. We became thick as thieves. I used to go on about you, and after I was taken by your cousin, it got worse. We would get blind drunk every night, and I’d slur on and on about you. He would listen. The asshole’s good at that. Listening.
“But after Jess showed up and we began messing around, he started acting strange toward me. Distant. Went out of his way to avoid me. Sometimes I would walk in on them fighting, at each other’s throats, her crying, him angry. Whenever I butted in, she would say he’s like a big brother to her and was just being overprotective. I knew it was all bullshit, because whenever she saw him with anyone else she would lose color, space out. But I still continued with her because she was fun and made me forget about my own shit.
“They think I’m stupid. Think I don’t know. But I figured it out. At some point, she fell out of love with him and in love with me. And I’ve been waiting for her to come clean, but she hasn’t. Now all of a sudden Xavi’s with you? My ex? The girl I used to go on about?
“Get this: he was at Eye Spy one afternoon in some dustup with Jess. I left them and went out by the pool, surfing the web to kill time, came across a gossip blog that had some photos of you and Saskia posted. The photos caught me off-guard. It was the first glimpse of you since I left. I wanted them. I wanted them all. So I hit print.
“After Xavi left and I went back inside to get the pics, the printer read ‘completed’ but there were no pics in the tray. Someone stole them. I figured it was Jess, but never bothered asking her, because then I’d have to explain to her why I was printing shit from gossip sites. Now I know it wasn’t Jess. It was Xavi. He saw them, he took them. No one can make me believe you’re a coincidence, Ally. Don’t know if you’ve noticed, but we don’t talk to each other unless we have to. He hates me as much as I hate him.”
“Ahhhhh, now I get it,” I said, sitting up in bed. “This is still a competition for you. Not just over me, but also over Jess. So, Xavi used to screw your soon-to-be wife, and now he’s screwing your ex, and you can’t stand the thought of it. So you come to the bullshit conclusion he hunted me down, to what? Get back at you? For ‘stealing’ Jess? Well, he treats me damn good. Eats me damn great. Screws me damn hard. So if he really did hunt me down, I’m glad he did. ‘Cause you know what, I love him.”
“Alina,” he dragged in an agonizing growl. “I know you’re just saying that to piss me off. But don’t do it. Don’t go back to him.”
He was such an arrogant douchehole! Had his head so far up his ass that he wouldn’t even acknowledge the truth.
“And do what instead, huh? Continue to be your midnight bitch? The voice you get off to every night before you curl up next to your real woman?”
His voice dropped to an even lower whisper, and the reception sounded like the phone was placed directly to his mouth. “Hey, Jess is going outta town tomorrow until Sunday. Can we make a drive down to Santa Barbara for the weekend and talk about this?”
“Oh, so now I’m being upgraded to the girl you screw whenever your bona-fide girl is outta town”
“No!” he snapped. “That’s not it. I’ve been thinking about it, alright? Day and night. Drinking a lot. Going crazy. I’ve been waiting for you to call me and tell me I knocked you up from that last night. A reason to make her leave me. ‘Cause I’m this close…I want to leave her. I want you. But I want us to talk about it first. That’s what I really called you about. To ask you to spend the weekend with me so we can plan this out before we start a shitstorm.”
I relaxed back on my headboard. “Really?”
“Yeah, baby,” he whispered. “It’s you. It’s always been you.”
Was I foolish to be buying this? It all seemed so sudden, out of the blue. Had he really been thinking about this? Had he really chosen me? Or was he merely trying to get me alone with him again so he could use hot sex, warm cuddles and sweet verses to mess with my head and keep me in his corner?
“So?” he prompted. “Should I book us a place?”
“Davi, I’ll have to think about this. I’m—”
“What? What’s there to think about?” He sounded irritated. “I…isn’t this what you’ve been asking for all along? Why do you suddenly need to think about it?”
“No, it’s not you that I need to think about. I love you. It’s—”
“Ally, I’m booking us a place right now. I’ll pick you up at noon after Jess leaves. Me and you, we’re spending the weekend in Santa Barbara. Cool?”
I said nothing.
“Cool?” he
pressed.
Nothing.
“Ally, ple—ase.” His voice broke in a raspy mess. “Choose me.”
Taking a deep, shaky breath, I agreed, “Okay.”
“Okay?”
“Yeah. Okay.”
“Okay.” He cleared his throat. “Okay. I’m getting somewhere secluded, on the beach. Be ready for noon, okay?”
I hung up without saying okay.
I had traveled to France twice before, with my parents. Once to Bordeaux, and once to Paris.
But those times, because I had no insight into the future, I had been annoyed, preferring to be doing anything else but vacationing with the oldies. If I had known what I knew now, where I would be and where they would be, I would’ve made every single second of those family vacations count.
Tipping my head back, I inhaled with a hum, the air of a different language, a different culture, a different life. After obtaining a satisfying lungful, I glanced around the airport, wondering who would be picking me up, or if I would be stood up and laughed at.
Last night’s rest, or lack thereof, was fitful, constant tossing and turning and crying and smiling. Thinking, Xavi? Davi? Xavi? Davi? Xavi? Davi?
The two held equal halves of my heart. And they both wanted me for the weekend, squeezing me into a tight spot, forcing me to choose too soon.
The minute the sun began arching its eyebrows over the top of L.A.’s high-rises, I was out of bed. And uneasily, painfully, heart-achingly, I made a decision.
It wasn’t a final decision, no. It wasn’t an “I choose Xavi over Davi”. It was more like…stealing just a little bit more from the one whom I was more likely to disappoint.
Yes, yes, I knew what his email said, and I knew I shouldn’t have made the trip if I was positive there was no hope for us. But I was greedy. Maybe even a little selfish and insensitive. A bitch. But I couldn’t help wanting him and I couldn’t help loving him, and I had to seize this last moment before breaking the truth to him.
Xavier made me happy, being his girl made me aware of my heart in my chest, aware of the blood pumping in my veins, it made me believe I could be better, it made me want more, it made me dream dreams.