“Oh dear, I’m so sorry,” she starts, feigning contrition. Then her tone turns dismissive. “Whatever your name is.”
“It’s Jill, and you just spilled your beer all over me,” I say, annoyed.
She narrows her eyes and looks down her nose at me. “I said I was sorry. You don’t have to be snotty.”
I hold up my hands. “I wasn’t snotty. I’m just covered in hops now.”
Patrick hands me a napkin, ever the knight in shining armor. I try to blot up the mess, but it’s all over me.
“Excuse me,” I say, and head for the bathroom because I’d rather not paw at my skirt in front of everyone. I rub the cloth napkin against my clothes, but I’m fighting a losing battle. Even my tights are wet. “This sucks,” I mutter.
Someone opens the door. I look up to see Alexis stumble into the bathroom, her crystal blue eyes steely and cold. “You.” She points a finger at me, and I want to smack her, and I want to smack Davis too for telling her she was the only one. “Whatever your name is. This isn’t going to be some All About Eve situation here.” I can smell the beer on her breath.
“I never implied it would be.”
She snorts. “Oh right. Oh sure. I know your type. You want my part. I’ll be watching you, and I won’t be the only one. If I even think for one second that you’re trying to pull something on me, your career will be over like that.”
She snaps a finger. The gesture is so over-the-top. Oh, that’s it. That does it. The gloves are off. “You’ve got to be kidding me, Alexis. I’m not sure if you got the memo, but take a look around. There aren’t any hidden cameras and we’re not actually on a reality show where you need to say and do annoying things like that.” I lean in a bit closer so she knows I’m serious. “So why don’t you stop focusing on me, and focus on the job you were hired to do instead?”
I give her a wink, turn on my heel and leave her standing there with her mouth open while I enjoy a small victory from getting the last word in. A victory that feels entirely Pyrrhic when I have to say goodbye to Patrick and Shelby since my clothes are wet.
CHAPTER 10
Davis
My sister takes a sip of the white wine she’s ordered. She nods approvingly at the waiter holding the bottle. He pours more into her glass and then tips the bottle towards me. I decline with a curt wave. I’m not in the mood tonight.
He bows and walks off.
Michele stares hard then imitates me, adopting a frown and then a standoffish little shrug that mirrors mine.
“Are we going there again?”
“Well, you’ve barely said a word.”
“We just got here five minutes ago.”
“Well, that’s five minutes of talking we could have done.”
“You talk all day long for your job. Don’t you ever want to not talk?”
“Surprisingly, I actually like talking. And I thought you talked too? Oh wait, you tell people what to do,” she says, then flashes me the biggest just kidding smile in the world, that makes it nearly impossible for me to stay annoyed with her. Because, honestly, how can I stay annoyed with my little sister?
“But isn’t that what you do, too, with all the little pills you prescribe?” I joke, giving it right back to her since this is what Michele and I do. We needle each other, poke, prod and get under the other’s skin.
“Touché.”
I take a drink of my water as Michele savors another swallow of her wine. She rolls her eyes in that appreciative way TV chefs have when they taste something delicious. “This is divine,” she says as she holds up the glass. “So what’s with the whole enigmatic, broody thing you have going on today? Crap day at rehearsal?”
I shrug, but I don’t want to get into the details of what happened in the stairwell this morning. Details I can’t get out of my mind. “It was fine.”
We’re at a too-cool-for-words restaurant on Canal Street, not far from my loft. This place is called The Cutlery Drawer and there’s not a matching utensil in the place. The tables are all black lacquer, the floor is charcoal gray tile and the utensils are a strange mixed-up mess. My sister picked it. I think it’s more fitting for a nightclub, but this is her hobby. She spends her days prescribing pharmaceuticals for all sorts of mental health issues and her nights researching the newest eateries in Manhattan for us to check out.
She narrows her dark brown eyes and leans across the table. “I don’t believe you, Davis.”
“You don’t believe that I had a fine day at rehearsal?”
“I know you. When you say fine it means shitty. Something’s bothering you.”
“I swear, some days I wish you weren’t a genius shrink at such a young age.”
She raises an eyebrow. “I was right then.”
I say nothing.
She softens her tone. “C’mon, Davis. What is it? I hate to see you all wound up.”
“It’s nothing,” I huff out, but we’re past the point of her believing me. “I don’t want to talk about me. Is Robert still giving you trouble?”
She waves a hand in the air dismissively at the mention of the jerk she went out with last year that cheated on her and then tried to grovel his way back into her heart. He kept showing up on the stoop of her building night after night, bearing gifts of apology: boxes of chocolate and red roses that all lined the trash can the next day. When she finally told me what he’d been doing, I was there the next night on the stoop to greet him, and make it clear he was never to come around again. “It’s over. It’s totally over. I told you. I haven’t even heard from him in ages.”
“He’d better not be calling, either.”
“He’s not.”
“I don’t even want you to respond to any texts from him.”
“He doesn’t text me anymore,” she says, raising her voice.
“Good. If he tries to get in touch with you, you need to let me know.”
“What, so you can hit him?”
“If I have to, I will.”
“I know,” she says, with a sigh. “I’m fine. You have to stop worrying about me.”
“What else would I do, then? I just want you to be happy.”
“I could say the same for you.”
“I am happy,” I say, even though there’s a hollow ring to the words.
“What about you? Are you being careful with your new show?”
I pick up a fork and twirl it between my thumb and forefinger, looking away. “Yes,” I mutter, because now she’s back to seeing right through me.
She presses her palms together, almost as if she’s praying. “Please tell me you’re not falling for some captivating young actress who’ll break your heart again?”
I drop the fork.
“Oh, Davis,” she says, worry etched in her features.
“Michele, I’m fine,” I tell her, because it’s up to me to look out for her, not the other way around. I look down at the menu, so she can’t read the expression on my face that clearly says I’ve been busted.
“I don’t believe you. I don’t want to see you get hurt again. I hate what Madeline did to you.”
“She just left, that’s all. Okay? Please, let’s stop investing this and her with so much monumentality. Besides, it was a few years ago now.” I don’t want to dwell on Madeline Blaine. I don’t want to revisit all the promises we made, all the things we said to each other. Most of all I don’t want to be reminded of how much it hurt when she walked away soon after the play we worked on together ended. You gave me my first big break and for that I will be forever grateful, but I don’t have time in my life for love. I need to focus on my career and only on my career. Then she went to LA and did just that.
It’s not like I expected a fucking plaque for having cast her, for having plucked her out of the pile of young hopefuls. That’s my job, that’s what I do. I would never expect her to owe me anything as her director.
As the man she fell in love with though, I had hoped for a lot more than a cold goodbye after the curtains fell. But
that’s how it goes with actors. They fall in love with their roles, they fall in love with the show, they fall in love with you. Then it ends and they move on, because they know how to turn emotions on and off.
“I read she was in talks to do that new Steve Martin play. I’m totally not going to see it, even though I love his work,” she says, as if she’s making a solidarity statement by boycotting this show preemptively.
“Let’s talk about something else. Health care reform or the impasse in Congress,” I say sharply, because I need to shut this topic down. My sister is the only person who really knows me. Sometimes I hate being known. Sometimes I prefer the appearance I’ve carefully crafted with my work.
My sister is insistent though. She reaches her hand across the table to wrap it around mine. “I know you worry about me, but I worry about you too. Just let me, okay? You’re all I have.”
The waiter appears with a plate of bread.
“Thank you,” I say to him.
“But of course, sir.”
He leaves.
I grab a piece of bread and bite into it. When I finish, I point to the bread. “You should have some,” I say, reminding her to eat. She always forgets to when she’s sad, and the last thing I want is for her to be sad for me. I’m fine, I’ll always be fine. But even though I like to think I’m the one who looks out for her, as I have since that snowy day our parents died in a car crash when I was only seventeen, the truth is we look out for each other. “I promise I won’t do something as abysmally stupid as fall for an actress again.”
“Good,” she says, and takes some bread. “There are plenty of wonderful women in the world who won’t use you to get ahead.”
I want to believe that Jill wouldn’t do that. I want to believe that she’s different from Madeline.
As soon as I realize that, I know too that I don’t really care if Madeline will be in town. What I do care about—maybe too much for my own good—is the sweet, sexy, vulnerable woman who’s already gotten me hooked. But that’s a different problem, a far bigger problem, and that’s precisely why I’m going to have to resist her with everything I have.
Jill
Now that my beer-soaked skirt and tights are in the hamper, I wash my face, brush my teeth, and pick a long t-shirt to sleep in. I slide under the covers and grab my eReader, because I want to return to a Patrick state of mind. Between the messed up morning in the stairwell and the buzzkill of Alexis in the bar, I need to get back into the groove with the main man of my fantasies. The one who makes me feel again.
I click on the title Kat gifted me. She got me into her steamy romance novels, and now I’m a junkie. I started with the lovey-dovey stuff but I’ve moved well past her now, and am all about the out-of-the-gate heat.
Especially on nights when I’m alone. When I can say his name out loud.
I open the novel and skip straight to the good stuff. The hero’s a rock star, and he has a filthy mouth, and I could never imagine liking that in real life. I’m sure Patrick whispers only sweet nothings about love and beauty and how I’m the only one for him, but somehow this dirty-talking rocker who’s telling his woman that he wants to bend her over the bar at the hotel where they’re staying is doing something for me tonight.
“I’m going to take you and it’s going to be hard, and it’s going to be fast. I’m not going to be gentle, and I’m not going to apologize, but you’re going to fucking love it,” he said, his voice rough against her ear.
“Yeah? Why don’t we see if I love it?”
“For doubting me, I’ll make you come harder.”
“Can you though? Can you make me come harder?”
He slid a hand between her legs, spread wide open for him. “You are the perfect kind of wet for the way I’m going to fuck you right now.”
Who talks like this in real life? Does anyone say this stuff? But it works on the heroine because she’s spiraling off into another stratosphere right now, and it starts to work on me, because soon I’m hot and bothered and breathing harder. Little moans are coming out of my lips, and it’s nice to have the place to myself from time to time because I don’t have to stay silent. I know how to bring myself there without noise. I can achieve soundless orgasms without even moving my hips either. I know, such a talent. Enter me in the Guinness Book of World Records for most quiet orgasms, which will tell you something about my completely pretend sex life for the last several years. I’m quiet because I have to be, and I’m quiet because I do this a lot. I do this because I haven’t been touched in so long that I’m a pinball machine, full of restless desire.
I focus on my main attraction. I picture Patrick taking his clothes off, Patrick climbing over me, Patrick telling me I’m the one. And now I’m moaning and I’m nearing the edge, but then it’s no longer Patrick on me. Because Patrick would never talk like that, or move like that. He’s disappeared and I’m with someone else, someone nameless. I don’t even know who he is, but he’s doing all sorts of things to me, and saying all kinds of dirty words.
Spread my legs for him.
Touch myself for him.
Show him how I make myself come.
And maybe it’s the rocker hero making me feel this way, but Nameless has a way with his hands and his body and his voice, and I’m almost there, I’m almost over the edge.
But then I stop.
Sit up straight in bed.
Turn on the light.
Look around.
As if I’ve been caught.
But no one’s here, the apartment is quiet, and the only noise is in my head. It sounds like a radio tuned slightly wrong, static mixing with the song I used to know well.
Because something is wrong. Something is wrong with me.
I’ve only ever pictured Patrick. I don’t understand why he’s not coming out to play tonight, and yet I still feel this itch inside my bones to be touched, to be held, to be savored.
I throw off the covers, pace down the hall and check my phone that I left on the coffee table.
But there are no new messages and, honestly, I don’t even know who I’m waiting to hear from.
When I finally fall asleep, everything is still wrong, because I dream of the letters in the locked box by my bed. Letters living, breathing, creepily alive. Letters making demands. Letters being opened on the streets, and I try to grab them, and stuff them back inside, but they’re rippling away in the wind, and I can’t reach them anymore to hide them.
* * *
The next morning, I skip my run. I shower quickly, get dressed and take one of the letters from the wooden box. Then I catch a train to Brooklyn and head for Prospect Park.
I clutch the piece of notebook paper in my right hand, my fingers digging into the faded words, now smudged from all the times I’ve read this one, the first of the handful of letters Aaron sent me after we split. I walk deeper into the park, following the path by memory from having explored every inch of this place while growing up nearby. I spent so many days here with my brothers, riding bikes, climbing trees, playing hide and seek. When I was a teenager, I relearned all the corners of this oasis in Brooklyn that were perfect for stolen kisses, for first tastes of beers, for moonlit make out sessions far away from parental eyes. But I haven’t set foot in Prospect Park since Aaron. Not since the last time I saw him under Terrace Bridge.
Now I have to because I can’t keep holding onto the pieces of the past. I can’t keep carrying all this blame with me. My life is changing, it’s unfurling before me, and if I don’t free myself from the past it’ll keep haunting me. I weave down the path that leads under the bridge, remembering how green and lush the trees were the last time I was here.
Thick emerald bushes and branches hang low and burst with life as the sun casts warm golden rays. My heart pounds loudly against my chest, drowning out the lone squawk of a hardy crow circling overhead, scanning for crumbs on the barren ground.
The cobblestones curve under the rusted green bridge, and my feet nearly stop when I see the bench
with its wooden slats. He waited for me at the bench, looking so sad, but so determined, too. Memories flood me, like a dam breaking.
“Please don’t do this to me.”
“It’s the only way.”
“No, we can try again. We can start over. I promise to be everything you want me to be.”
“I have to go. Please let me go.”
But he didn’t. He didn’t really let me go, and so I went from being a happy carefree seventeen-year-old to being completely fucked in the head. I realized I could break someone, and someone could break me. But then, I also clawed my way out. I threw myself into my acting, letting go of myself and all the emotions I hated being crushed with, and that’s when I fell for Patrick, for the opposite of all those cruel memories.
Now, I need to let them go so I can be free. I start with this one note.
My fingers are gripped so tightly around the paper that it feels as if they have to be pried off. But instead, I open my fist, one finger at a time, and it’s as if a piece of me is moving on. Then I stand in front of the garbage can and I tear up his words.
They flutter down into the metal can, unreadable, unknowable.
I don’t know what I have to do for you to love me again…
I wipe my hand against my cheek, and then inhale deeply. “It’s done.”
And I walk away.
CHAPTER 11
Davis
One week.
Seven days.
One hundred and sixty-eight hours.
That’s how long my detox from Jill has lasted. No more stairwell encounters. No more meetings alone in my office. Nothing but the necessary interaction at rehearsals, and for the last week the assistant director has been working with the chorus on some of their numbers so I’ve rarely seen her.
Now, we’re blocking one of the dance numbers with Patrick, Alexis and some of the featured actors. I lean against the wall and watch the choreographer guide the actors through the bare-bones motions of what’s shaping up to be a sensuous number as Paolo and Ava dance on stage.
Then Alexis stops in the middle of a step. She raises a hand and waggles her fingers at me, sweetly, or feigned sweetly. Damn, that woman can act. Because I almost believe she’s about to ask some sort of thoughtful, curious question.
Playing With Her Heart Page 8