Quirks & Kinks

by Laurel Ulen Curtis

  “What’s your number?” he called after me. “I’ll text you mine.”

  Right. A number. That’d be helpful.

  As I walked back toward him to avoid yelling my number across the beach, I moaned. Giving into my desire to be close to him felt too satisfying, and I didn’t like not being in control of it. Something about him sucked me in. I hadn’t figured out which part it was, but I was pretty sure he was hiding magnets in those bumps he was pretending were abs. When I launched my formal investigation, I planned to start there.

  “Sorry,” I mumbled when I got back within range. “I forgot.”

  He smiled and shrugged, but neither one of us said anything.

  Of course, I was the one who was supposed to be saying something.

  “And?” he prompted when I didn’t snap out of it fast enough.

  Fuck. Stop thinking about abs, Easie. Like, for real.

  “It’s 213–418–8487.”

  “Eight, four, eight, seven?” he asked, reciting the last four digits to confirm.

  “Yep.”

  “Was it by any chance a guy who assigned your number to you when you got it?”

  “Assigned my number?”

  “Yeah. When you first got the phone, did a guy help you?”

  Thinking back more than five years into the past was seriously not my strong suit. “Um, yeah. I mean, I think. It was a while ago. Why?”

  “Because the last four digits of your number spell tits.”

  Flicking my cigarette to the sand below, I stepped back again, turning to leave and refusing to look back. Knowing his mind had picked something like that up on the fly had too many conflicting thoughts fighting for supremacy in my brain, and the chaos that ensued had it threatening to explode. The only logical thing to do was ignore him.

  He chuckled behind me, calling out, “I’ll see you tomorrow,” and at the sound of his voice, my resolve to avoid looking back crumbled.

  Leaning casually into his board stuck standing in the sand, a smirk lit his face and my discarded butt graced his hand. Twirling it mindlessly, he watched as I walked away.

  By the time I climbed into my Honda and slumped into the seat with fatigue, the screen of my phone lit up with a message from an unknown number.

  Don’t worry, Litterbug. I’ll clean up after you . . . this time. See you tomorrow.

  BY THE TIME ASHLEY and I walked into the studio the next morning, my system was experiencing caffeine and nicotine overload. Fidgeting, rolling bouts of nausea, and the occasional stench permeation from the pores of my saturated skin.

  Sleep had proven elusive, the threat of the day to come shining like a spotlight directly into my brain.

  For the first two hours, I tossed and turned and worried about how I would get along with Anderson. Namely, if I would get along with him too well.

  But when two hours of lying awake turned into three, I realized that the previous two hours of nerves had been wasted. Anderson hadn’t even agreed to do the fucking show yet. So, for an entire hour, I nagged myself about my needless nagging.

  By the time I’d been awake for a full three hours, I gave up on the prospect of bed and channeled all of my energy into smoking. The night air of my balcony had a chill, but instead of taking that as a sign that I should ease up on my lungs, I strapped on a coat and slippers and lit up again.

  Chain smoking, for as bad as it was for my health and odor, did its job as intended and allowed my brain to rest from three o’clock to four.

  Four o’clock seemed too late for sleeping. So, I didn’t.

  I did manage a lingering, hot shower and about fifty cups of coffee though. So there was that.

  “Good morning,” Larry greeted cheerfully as he busted into my dressing room without a knock.

  “Good morning,” Ashley recited back at the same time that I complained, “Thanks for the warning. What if I had been naked?”

  “I guess I would have lost my eyesight,” Larry quipped, smiling at Ashley instead of looking at me.

  A small laugh bubbled in my throat, but I forced it back down with a rough swallow.

  What was happening? Was I actually starting to like Larry?

  Not like him, like him. Tolerate him. Find amusement in his arrogance.

  His phone chirped in his hand and he dragged his eyes away from my sister so he could look at it. “Excellent.” Ashley and I looked on in question until he filled us in. “That was Bill out at the gate. Anderson Evans has arrived and should be on scene shortly.”

  Evans. His last name was Evans.

  Butterfly wings skimmed the inside of my stomach as Larry focused on me.

  “Quick, Easie! Cover your horns.”

  This time the humor hit me harder, and a laugh escaped before I could stop it.

  Shit! I was. I was starting to like Larry.

  God. This was the beginning of the end.

  “Come on, we’ll meet in the empty dressing room,” Larry instructed, waving me out of my chair from a distance and helping my sister up from hers with a hand.

  Instinctually, I wanted to argue and tell him I needed a smoke break first, but after last night, even I couldn’t stomach it.

  The three of us filed across the hall, with Ashley in front and Larry bringing up the rear. While I slumped down into a chair at the table and Ashley found a seat on the couch, Larry stood sentry in the open door and waited. His toe tapped in opposition to the calm line of his body.

  We were all on edge and would be a lot better off when all of this was over. With a shooting schedule of one episode a week, and only the same amount of downtime before it aired, that didn’t leave us much room for problems.

  And we were already swimming in them.

  I’d imagine other shows shot a bunch of episodes at a time, but we didn’t have the budget nor the guarantee. We lived or died by each episode, and wasting time on something that would never see the light of day wasn’t in the network’s plan.

  With the second and final episode starring Ryder scheduled to air tomorrow night, we needed to be filming for next week today. Editing would have to be done, and it was always ideal to leave time for reshoots. If the cutting room floor was left empty and uncluttered, sometimes a second attempt or additional shot was necessary.

  When Larry straightened to full height from leaning, I knew Anderson had entered the hall and was making what was surely an attractive approach.

  I thanked the attraction gods for the fact that I couldn’t see him. All that would bring was a meltdown, and as far as I knew, a pile of goo didn’t really do well in a conference type of situation.

  “Anderson,” I heard as a tan hand came into view. Larry reached out and clasped it, giving it a professional yet welcoming shake.

  I’d gotten no shake at my meeting. I’d gotten dissed.

  Maybe I didn’t like Larry.

  “Come in, come in,” Larry cooed. “Have a seat.”

  Green eyes caught mine and smiled, the lush, dark lashes around them plumping with the slight squeezing of each corner.

  “You know—” Larry started in an attempt to perform some sort of formal reintroduction.

  Anderson didn’t let him finish.

  “Easie.” The sound of my name on his tongue seemed sensual, and as soon as the second and final syllable rolled off of his tongue, his smiling eyes seeped all the way down to his lips.

  Scooting the chair out beside me and settling into it gracefully, Anderson pulled a stylish black ball cap off of his head and a pair of gold-rimmed aviator sunglasses out of the front of his shirt and tossed them gently to the worn surface of the old kitchen table.

  I mentioned that the show was low budget. Accordingly, furniture in our dressing rooms was the thrift store variety.

  “Ashley,” he said in greeting, squishing his nose in a way I feared would ruin me forever. It was honestly the most endearingly adorable thing I’d ever seen. Not necessarily the most masculine of descriptions, my words did the unique, intensely male action no just
ice. But I didn’t mind. Anderson’s nose scrunch was the kind of trait that God purposely made indescribable, because if I couldn’t describe it to anyone else, that made it easier to keep it all my own.

  Shutting the door softly, Larry made his way over to us and took a seat on the other side of the table while I signaled Ashley to join us. I had kind of thought that Howie would be attending the meeting as well, but so far there hadn’t been any sign of him.

  As if she was reading everyone’s minds, Ashley waved me off with a shake of her head and flipped a hand out to indicate I should turn my attention to the now closed door.

  Almost immediately it opened, revealing a t-shirt wearing Howie carrying a doughnut in his teeth, a bag in one hand, and a folder in the other.

  Okay, I was officially impressed.

  And frightened. Really and truly frightened.

  “How did you do that?” I mouthed to Ashley, curious as to exactly when she’d become clairvoyant.

  She shook her head and giggled, a soft tinkly noise that had Larry turning into the back of his chair to witness it. Oh yeah, there was definitely something going on there.

  When I brought my attention back to the table, weighty eyes bored holes into the side of my face. Unable to resist the call of his scrutiny, I flicked my eyes to the side and brought Anderson into view.

  Warm and watchful, the features of his face transformed into a mere venue for his eyes. I could see everything there, but an intense sense of longing shined the brightest. Open as they were, they lacked the whole story, thus I was at loss for the cause of such a desperate emotion.

  “Sorry I’m late,” Howie apologized as soon as he set his belongings on the table and freed the doughnut from his mouth.

  I shrugged and smiled, earning a wink from Howie that had Anderson looking curiously between us. I could see how a wink from a guy who looked like Howie, in a power position like Howie, might look weird. But it wasn’t. After what had happened yesterday, it was just his way of telling me that he’d look out for me with Anderson.

  I sighed to myself.

  If only my problems with Anderson could be solved by protective intervention.

  Wiping glaze crumbs off of his hand with the leg of his pants, Howie outstretched his hand to Anderson and shook. “Nice to meet you, Anderson. Howie Plenson.”

  “Plenson?” Anderson asked with interest, doing a good job of ignoring the fact that his director had just given him the crumb hand. “Any relation to Ansel Plenson?”

  Howie smiled proudly. “He’s my father.”

  “Wow!” Anderson breathed excitedly. “He’s one of the greatest directors who’s ever lived.”

  “I’m sure he’d appreciate your opinion,” Howie chuckled good-naturedly.

  I had no idea who Ansel Plenson was. Obviously, I was slacking in my research.

  Read: I hadn’t done any.

  I wondered if I could pull up Google on my phone under the table without anyone noticing.

  Probably not.

  Anderson’s eyes slid to me momentarily, took in my face, and then snapped back over to Howie.

  “Gypsy’s Myth. The Promise of Paxton. They’re pop culture classics. I’m sure I’m not the only one with a favorable opinion,” he prompted, intentionally feeding me not only the titles of Ansel’s better known films, but an opportunity to contribute.

  My brain immediately jumped into a fantasy reel of ways to pay him back, but due to their extremely sexual nature, I was forced to rate them all NS-WT. Not safe—wishful thinking. My very own version of NC-17.

  “Definitely not. Everybody knows he’s the best,” I chirped, smiling slightly when Howie’s amused look told me he knew I was full of shit—and didn’t care.

  Larry didn’t coddle me quite as much, rolling his eyes at my obvious ignorance.

  “Okay, Anderson. Let’s get down the facts. None of us are here to bullshit you. We need to cast this role, and we need to do it quick. But,” he emphasized, “after an incident involving Easie yesterday, we need to make sure to do it right.”

  Halfway through his speech, I started threatening to slit his throat. Or gave him the universal sign for shut the hell up. One or the other.

  Maybe both.

  But he didn’t listen, and as soon as my name and the word incident came together, all hope of moving forward was delayed once again.

  “What incident?” Anderson asked, his face a stony mask, completely devoid of all traces of happy. I just knew he would be the type of guy to go all crazy in the face of any sign of female mistreatment.

  Not that this was a bad thing, obviously. I just didn’t have the normal time or energy to deal with it.

  “Seriously, it was no big deal.”

  Howie, Larry, and Ashley all piped up with some version of, “Um, yeah it was.”

  “Gahhh,” I whined, losing all pretense of propriety and timing and blurting it all out. “Ryder was an asshole, okay? From the moment I met him until the time he got dragged out of here yesterday, he was all over me. Saying fucked up shit and touching me without my permission. After he got fired, he pretty much assumed I’d ratted him out.”

  “You fucking should have,” Larry barked, enormously angry now that he had all of indelicately delivered facts.

  “Yeah, well, whatever. It’s over now.”

  “Damn right it is,” Anderson declared.

  “Oh come on. Stop. All of you stop. Put away all of your protective penises before you start a party.” Three surprised faces jumped away from me slightly as their chins jerked back, and Ashley laughed in the background. “It’s done because he’s gone. Let’s leave it at that and move the hell on. We have a show to shoot. Am I the only one who seems to remember that?”

  “Anderson, did you have questions—” Howie started to ask as soon as he recovered from my one woman show.

  “I did. I don’t anymore.”

  My eyes narrowed, but I didn’t get a chance to say anything.

  “Great! I’ve got your contract right here,” Larry offered, practically pulling the paper out of thin air and sliding it across the table for Anderson to sign.

  Mysterious green eyes flicked to mine once, ever so briefly, before grabbing Larry’s pen and signing his life away to a messed up show and endless hours at my side.

  He’d seemed like he needed to be wooed on the beach, and the change of tune and easy concession of this morning was completely disconcerting.

  “That was fast,” I accused, pulling his eyes from the paper and over to mine once more.

  “Sometimes . . . you just know.”

  Powerful and foreboding, his words swirled and swooped through my chest, squeezing my heart when they got to it and forcing it to pump faster.

  “I’ll go rally the troops,” Howie offered, scooting his chair back from the table quickly and shoving the entire last half of his doughnut in his mouth.

  I tried not to smile at how ridiculous he was, but for all my effort, I still failed. He was just so lovable.

  Anderson watched me watch him, a smile of his own lengthening the line of his nose and enlarging the volume of his cheeks.

  “He seems like a good guy,” he noted as Ashley and Larry quietly followed him.

  Apparently, nobody was actually that protective of me. They’d all left me alone in a room with a strange man.

  I shrugged, answering honestly. “I wouldn’t know. Not really anyway. But I do know that he’s been good to me, and he’s taken an otherwise mockery of a show pretty seriously.”

  Intrigued, his head tilted to the side in question. “What do you mean ‘mockery of a show’?”

  Sensitive to his tone, I tried to defend myself and my meaning. “It’s a show about people’s fetishes and idiosyncrasies. It exploits people’s quirks as a means to entertain the masses.”

  “Huh,” Anderson hummed thoughtfully, pursing his lips and nodding to himself.

  “Huh? What are you huh-ing?”

  “Nothing.”

  “No, not
nothing, that huh meant something,” I demanded, poking a finger in the direction of his chest.

  “Fine,” he chuckled, raising his hands in surrender. “I was just surprised to hear you harboring such a judgmental point of view is all.”

  “Judgmental?” I shrieked, alerting all of the stray cats in the neighborhood that a party was about to commence. “How on earth is what I said judgmental?”

  A smirk settled onto his face as he spoke, but I couldn’t see it. All I could hear were his words. “It’s not what you said, it’s how you said it.”

  Christ.

  Unable to resist mocking him, I patted my crotch explicitly, rooting around and searching for something I knew I wouldn’t actually find.

  “What are you doing?” he asked, his eyes drawn unavoidably to my hands.

  “Checking to see if I have a penis,” I explained.

  His eyes squinted with amusement and his chin jerked back.

  “What?”

  “I thought we’d pulled a Freaky Friday moment back there with your extreme chick logic. If you were so obviously inhabiting a female body, I figured I must have become a man.”

  Rolling his eyes, he stepped toward me dramatically, grabbing my hand and squeezing.

  And officially touching me for the very first time.

  Okayyy, holy shit. There was a moment happening, people. Sparks were definitely involved.

  “We should hug,” he blurted out, completely changing the subject and staring at me in a way that scrambled my mind.

  No, no we shouldn’t. My mind was an absolute minefield of muck, but I knew one thing with absolute certainty. Hugging was one of the last things we should be doing.

  Of course, I didn’t tell him that. Instead, I asked, “We should?” and mentally slapped myself as I felt my eyes going all doe-like with female stupidity.

  He gave me a self-assured nod, hypnotizing me even further with his eyes and good looks and gentle voice and generally comforting disposition. Damn him. “Definitely.”

  “Okay.”

  He stepped toward me even closer, imposing chest and arms closing in on me steadily, ready to commence, when my anxiety spoke up again. “Um, just as a, like, reminder and stuff, why is it that we should hug again?”