by Mimi Strong
“It’s not underwear modeling if the underwear’s on the floor.”
“Right. That would be porn, I suppose.”
He purred and licked my ear again, which made my eyes roll up into my head with pleasure.
When I finally caught my breath again, I said, “Have you ever done any… nude stuff?”
“Not on film,” he replied with a chuckle. “Why? Do you want to make a sex tape with me and leak it on the internet?”
“Not tonight,” I said jokingly. “My hair’s a bit messy.”
“I wouldn’t make that video,” he said. “If I ever got lucky enough to be with you, it would be very private and very personal.”
I looked down at his forearms, covered by his blazer jacket, wrapped around me and framing my breasts. The jacket was pushed up enough I could see the dark hair on his arms. The hair was very short, like it had been trimmed, which seemed probable.
He continued, “As for tonight, though, all I want is a kiss.”
“That’s all you want?”
“All I want for tonight.”
In the silence that followed, I had a little argument with myself. He’s lying, and he wants to brag about having you as a conquest, howled the suspicious detective part of me. He’s lying, and he’s a filthy sex addict, said the part of me who wears librarian glasses and her hair in a bun. Then my randy tongue jumped into the argument and started yelling incoherently: MOUTH! KISS! TONGUE-KISS! TONGUE WANT MOUTH!
I have never been in the situation of being involved with two men at once, but I was keenly aware of the wrongness of my desires. Sure, I had broken up with Dalton in my heart, but I hadn’t uttered the magic words, so I technically wasn’t a free agent. I wasn’t free to drill my tongue into a sexy model’s face like I was trying to get the last of the Nutella out of a jar.
But then, despite my reservations, I was turning, turning clockwise, turning in Keith’s arms, away from the glowing Hollywood sign and toward his glowing Hollywood face.
CHAPTER 4
His mouth came down and met my lips hesitantly. His skin smelled like sunshine, even in the dark.
I didn’t know if it was an act, or what, but he kissed me exactly like someone who doesn’t kiss someone new very often. He paused, waiting for me to move before he parted his lips. My tongue charged ahead, into his mouth. He moaned in surprise, but then inhaled deeply and relaxed his jaw, his mouth welcoming.
His saliva was sweet and clean, and I wanted to crawl inside his gorgeous mouth, decorate it with throw pillows, and live there forever.
Then his hands were on my back, rubbing up and down as we kissed, keeping me from floating away. I reached down and did something I’d wanted to do since the minute I’d seen him—I slipped my hands into the back pockets of his jeans and clutched his remarkable ass.
Oh, what an ass it was. Not skinny, but pleasant and round. I dug my fingertips in, pulling my body in tighter to his.
To my surprise, Keith’s hands didn’t stray from my back. We stood and kissed under the night sky, both of us fully clothed, for what must have been close to an hour. My body ached for more, but I was also relieved to be enjoying this moment, this kissing.
I didn’t want to compare, but Keith was one of the better kissers I’d experienced, if not the very best. He mostly kept his eyes closed, except he seemed to sense when I opened mine, and then he opened his and gave me a shy look before going back to kissing.
His face had been closely shaved earlier that day, and his chin was only faintly raspy against mine. He kissed his way down my cheek and onto my neck. His touch was gentle and maddening, because I wanted more. Or did I? Being kissed gently on the neck was less overwhelming than having my neck sucked on, but the sensation still tingled all through my body.
I wanted to stay there and kiss him until the sun came up, but the day caught up to me, and one of my kisses turned into a yawn.
He pulled back and looked at me sideways. “I’m boring you?”
“Not at all.” With his eyes on me, my tiredness disappeared instantly. “I didn’t sleep last night. I was nervous about the shoot.” That last part was only part of the truth, but it was all I wanted to think about.
“You’re probably at some sad hotel, right? Do you want to stay over at my place tonight? My sister just moved out, but she left her bed, so I have a spare room. We both have the day off tomorrow, so I can be your tour guide.”
“I don’t know.”
“I live not far from here. I swear, there’s an entire bedroom for you. You can even lock the door if you’re worried.”
I poked him in the chest. “You’d better lock your door, mister.”
His eyebrow quirked up. “Or what?”
“Or I’ll find the drawer where you keep your felt pens and I’ll draw boobs on your forehead while you’re sleeping.”
“I’ve never known a girl from Washington before. Are they all as fun as you?”
“Don’t be silly. I’m not that fun. My roommate is the fun one.” I yawned again. “See?” I pointed to my mouth. “It’s not even that late, and I’m ready for my tuck-in.”
He started toward the path leading to the van, his elbow out again like a gentleman. “Come on, then. I’ll fold down the blankets and give you your tuck-in.”
As we drove to Keith’s apartment, I savored the sensation of stepping into someone else’s life, like a tourist.
Something occurred to me.
As I smelled the soil bags in the van and looked around at Keith’s neighborhood, I realized this was how Dalton must have felt when he saw me working in the bookstore, and then tagged along to my cousin Marita’s wedding. Like a tourist. There to take some photos and make some memories. But wasn’t that also the whole point of life?
My thoughts circled and bit their own tails.
I don’t know about you, but I get terribly philosophical when I’m overly tired to the point of hallucinating.
The underwear model driving the van turned to smile at me. Maybe I was hallucinating? That would certainly explain a few things.
We pulled up to Keith’s apartment building, which was the color of my terra cotta pots back home, and cheerily accented by landscape lighting. Great curb appeal.
The building had a central courtyard, with a shimmering pool, and not another soul in sight. Everything looked about sixty years old and worn from use, but taken care of.
Keith was all apologies as he opened the door of his apartment, explaining that he’d been meaning to clean and decorate, but wasn’t sure how long he’d be staying.
Besides a few dirty dishes in the kitchen, the place looked fine to me.
I stumbled around, feeling clumsy and bleary-eyed.
Keith loaned me a shirt to sleep in, I used the toiletries I’d taken with me to the shoot in my purse, and I crashed hard on the comfortable spare room bed, face down. I jerked awake five seconds after falling asleep—one of those feeling-like-you’re-falling sensations—and opened my eyes to see a photograph on the nightstand of two beautiful, dark-haired girls staring down at me.
“Never you mind,” I muttered, flipping the photo over and then myself. Sleep came to me, as welcome as buttered muffins, hot from the oven, only to be interrupted by…
The sound of my telephone ringing.
Brightness. Morning already?
“Hi Dad,” I grumbled sleepily, because I knew his ring—or at least I thought I did.
The room was bright, but if there was an alarm clock, it was hiding from me.
“That’s kinky,” came the voice on the other line.
“Who’s this?”
“Your pony, Lionheart.”
Shit. Not my father. Dalton Deangelo, that lying devil.
“You remember Lionheart,” he said.
I grunted, unsure of how to inform him I wasn’t speaking to him, now that he had me on the phone.
He continued, “You didn’t sleep at my house last night, and I got worried. Did you go to a hotel close to the pho
tographer’s studio?”
“Who wants to know?”
“Where are you?” he replied.
“Wait. How do you know I’m not at your house? Do you have creepy spy cams all over that place?”
“Not spy cams, but I can log in remotely to the security system. I can tell that everything’s armed now and the house has been empty all night.”
“You’re not wrong.”
A pause. “Something’s wrong with you, though.”
“I’ll say.”
“What did you hear?” he asked, sounding less than innocent.
“I didn’t hear anything, unless you count the stuff I heard in my head—the stuff I can’t get out of my head. I read your script, Dalton. Your little game is up, because I know all about you now. I know what a lying, deceiving twatweasel you are.”
“Did you just call me a twatweasel?”
“Don’t change the subject. Just level with me, one adult to another. Admit you were stringing me along using lines from the script for your movie with the dumb name, We’re all Stardust or whatever.”
“We are Made of Stardust. That’s the title.”
“Is that all you have to say? No explanation? Well, I hope you got in a lot of awesome research about what it’s like to nail a chubbo, because the next one you get won’t be me.”
“Peaches.”
“Furthermore, I hope the next chubbo you bang for sport is really big and smothers you past the point of enjoyment, until you’re gasping for breath and afraid for your life.”
“What are you talking about?” Heavy sigh. “Okay, I’m remembering some lines that may have bothered you. You do realize that was a movie script you read? It’s not exactly a true account of how I feel. Plus whatever copy was lying around my house is an older one. It’s not even the current version.”
“Oh, really? So when you said that line to me, Join me in the darkness, walk through my dreams, and hold my hand in the morning light, did you mean that?”
“Sure. Who wouldn’t? It’s a great line.”
I held the phone away from my head and shook it. The door to the bedroom was closed, but I had no sense of where in the apartment Keith was at the moment, or how thin the walls were.
Slowly and calmly, so I wasn’t yelling, I asked Dalton what I really wanted to know: “When you ran into me at the bookstore and asked me out on a date, was that research for your role?”
I heard a smacking sound in the silence, like the sound of someone’s mouth opening and closing because they’re nervous.
Finally, he said, “I really like you. Everything I said to you, I meant.”
“That doesn’t sound like an apology, or the answer I wanted to hear.”
“I’ll be in LA in two days. Let’s talk then, and I promise I’ll make it up to you.”
“There were some very hurtful things in that script.”
Sounding annoyed now, he said, “Don’t be ridiculous. A script is just words on a page. There’s no nuance. It’s bare bones without the actor giving it life.”
“I don’t want anything to do with actors, and I don’t want anything to do with you, Dalton Deangelo. We are over.”
“I don’t get any say in the matter?”
“Sure. Let’s take a vote. I vote we’re broken up. What’s your opinion?”
And then I ended the call before he started talking. That wasn’t quite enough, though, so I threw the phone on the bed a couple of times, just to really show him.
What would he have said? That he’d started off dating me as an experiment, then found out I was an actual human being? Ugh. Where do you go from there? A relationship built on lies is like a bra with no underwire. Fucking useless to me.
The floor creaked on the other side of the door, then Keith said, “I wasn’t listening in. Not at first, but then it got interesting.”
I jumped out of the bed and flung open the door.
Keith flinched, his arms up over his head for protection. “Not the face,” he howled, grinning wildly. “Not the abs either. Those are my payday. Just kick me in the shins.”
“Listening in is rude.”
“So’s yelling so loud you wake up your host and rouse his curiosity.”
Still holding his hands up protectively, he said, “You look really cute in my jersey.”
I stared at him, standing in his burgundy bath robe, looking just like a regular person in a regular apartment.
He breathed.
I breathed.
After a few seconds, I managed to get my bitch dialed down from eleven to about five.
“I’m sorry* I woke you up,” I said. “I’m sorry I’m not being a very good house guest.”
*See? I can apologize. It’s very easy. You just say one little word, and mean it. Why is it so hard for some guys to do the same?
He said, “I’m sorry I was eavesdropping, and I’m sorry that you broke up with some guy.”
“Not just some guy. Dalton Deangelo. You knew that. Everyone knows that. But we’re through now.”
“Oh.” His thick, black eyebrows rose and stayed quite high for a while, as he moved into the corner of the apartment with the kitchen and started moving things around. “There’s been a huge misunderstanding on my part. I’m just a dumb model. I thought you and Dalton were just pretending to be dating, for the publicity. Wow.” He stared down at his fancy coffee maker like he’d forgotten where to put the water. “Wow,” he repeated.
“I’m glad we’re through,” I said, taking a seat on one of the stools next to the counter. The chrome chair was more comfortable than it looked, thank goodness. “It was only a few weeks, but I was already sick of the disbelief on everyone’s faces when they found out their perfect hero was dating a chubby commoner.”
Keith ran his hand through his near-black hair, looking embarrassed. “I meant that… I wouldn’t have kissed you last night if I’d known you were actually with someone else. I don’t approve of cheating.”
“Me, neither! Keith, you have to know… I was really pissed at Dalton. In my heart, it was over.”
“Okay,” he murmured.
“We’re cool, right?”
He rummaged through the cupboards and pulled down a silver container and a measuring spoon.
I put my face in my hands and rubbed my eyes. I felt horrible. Keith had been so kind to me, and I’d violated his mouth with my cheating mouth, and now he hated me.
I held up my hands and tried to find the words to apologize again, but nothing came to me.
Keith measured out the coffee grounds, the smell a pleasant distraction.
The kitchen looked renovated, much newer than the building itself, with cabinets in a light-hued wood, and unusual, oval-shaped handles. My mother used to have oval-shaped handles in her kitchen, and they drove her nuts. She’s not OCD or anything, but they wiggled around and she could never get them straight. Even when they were straight, they felt crooked to the fingers during casual use. She wasn’t crazy; I felt the wrongness, too.
The oval handles in Keith’s little kitchen filled me with a sad, desperate feeling—homesickness. I would see my mother again, but I would never live with her again, never hear her day-to-day run-downs of things she couldn’t get quite straight. Every time I saw Kyle, he’d be noticeably bigger, because I didn’t see him every day. My father rarely got to see me do some casually stupid thing and mention that I was “prone to whimsy.” Okay, I didn’t miss that last thing.
Keith got the coffee perking, and finally said, “Yeah, I guess we’re cool. I wish I hadn’t made such a jackass out of myself last night.”
“Don’t say that. I really enjoyed kissing you.”
“Stolen kisses,” he said, giving me a hungry look with his dark brown eyes.
“You do look a bit like a raven,” I said. “Your last name that you upgraded from your middle name is perfect.”
“And you, my fair maiden, look like a peach.”
I glowered at him, crossing my arms over my chest, still
wearing nothing but his jersey and my underwear, yet strangely comfortable.
“Thanks a lot,” I said, my voice flat with sarcasm. “I’m round and fuzzy to you?”
He laughed. “I meant sweet and delicious. Your round parts are nice, as well, but I haven’t seen anything that’s fuzzy.”
“My mother says I’ll get the family chin-fuzz when I turn forty.”
“And you’re how old now?”
“Over half-way there.”
He put his elbows on the counter—tiles, light brown—and leaned in close to me, examining my chin. “Nothing yet.” He put his hands on either side of my jaw, gently tilting my face up. His touch was warm and reassuring, and I didn’t want him to stop holding my face, so I rested my hands on top of his.
His voice low and quiet, he murmured, “How many more days are you in LA?”
I swallowed. “Nine days,” I whispered.
He leaned in closer, nearly touching his lips to mine.
“I just got out of a relationship,” he said.
“What a coincidence. Me, too.”
“My wounds are nearly as fresh as yours. Do you know what animals do in the wild when they’re wounded?”
“They die.”
He smirked, then relaxed his mouth into a solemn expression.
“I have a proposition for you.”
“Does it include coffee?”
“I’m suggesting that you and I make like wild animals and lick each other’s… emotional wounds.”
“Interesting.” I gazed up into his model-pretty eyes, rimmed with thick, black eyelashes. No wonder he was in demand as an underwear model. That face could sell seawater to sailors.
“The next nine days could be very interesting,” he said.
“Keith, what you need to know about me is I’m a very smart girl. Top of my class when I make the effort. When I put together furniture, there are never any leftover pieces.”
He was still holding my face, and staring at me with an amused expression.
“Are you trying to let me down easy? I can handle the truth. At casting calls, they don’t mince words. I’ve been told to my face I’m not attractive enough. That hurts. Also, too old, too young, too tall, too short. I’ve heard everything. So, lay it on me. Are you turning me down because I drive a crappy green van, live in a run-down apartment, and I’m not as rich and famous as your last boyfriend?”