Okay, so I wasn’t going to get a meal, but maybe I could still get a place to stay if I played my cards right and promised not to come back until tomorrow afternoon.
“So,” I began, as I folded the napkins and tucked them next to the plates. “I’ve been apartment hunting today.”
“Apartment hunting? What’s wrong with the apartment you live in?”
“Uh, Kevin doesn’t want me to live in it anymore.”
Chris raised one dark eyebrow at me.
“Long story.” I waved my hand dismissively. “Suffice it to say, I need to move out.”
“What about your apartment?”
“Yeah, well, Mary Ballard is about to pop out a kid any day, and I don’t feel right throwing them out. I’ve pretty much used up all my other options. Kat and Adair are remodeling and the health inspector is probably going to show up on Rob’s doorstep any day now, so they’re out for places to crash.”
“That bites,” Chris commented absently, as he added the pasta to the now boiling water.
“You have a time limit?”
I leaned my hip against the kitchen counter, watching him work, and tried not to salivate. Maybe his date would call off sick, and I could pick up the pieces of his broken heart for the price of a free meal.
“Yeah. Tomorrow.”
Chris glanced up from his cooking. “What are you going to do?”
I plastered on my biggest, brightest smile and shrugged innocently. “Well, I was kind of wondering if, since I’ll be leaving for vacation in a week, I could, you know, crash here.”
Chris blinked. “I have a date. Don’t you think that would cramp my style a bit? ‘Oh, Julie, this is my best friend, Margo. Don’t mind her. She’s homeless right now. But, please, let’s carry on with our screwing. She’ll plug her ears.’”
I cringed, but I couldn’t let him deter me. I needed a place to stay. “I won’t come back until tomorrow. Surely you’ll be done by then. Won’t you?”
“Not if I can help it.” Chris frowned. “I don’t know. I’m so used to being able to…”
“Fuck on demand?”
He laughed. “Well. Yeah.”
“I won’t get in your way. I promise.” I moved closer, prepared to beg. “Please, Chris. We could be like Will and Grace.”
Chris grimaced. “Except that I’m not gay, and you’re not…” He gave me the same once-over I’d seen him give a potential date in a bar a million times.
“Hot?” I taunted.
“A redhead.”
I raised my brows.
“It’ll work. Your dates won’t find me threatening. I swear. I’ll stay out late if you have a date. It’s only for a week. Please.” I frowned. “I’m begging you, and you know I hate to beg. But my only choices are begging you for your couch or begging Kevin to let me stay another week, and I’m not giving that jerk the upper hand.”
Chris glanced at his watch. “Okay, fine. Come back tomorrow afternoon.”
I practically leaped at him, pecking him on the cheek. “I’ll behave, I promise.”
“Yeah, well, call first. Julie’s a live one, and I have the day off, so we may not get out of bed until late.”
From the other room, the doorbell sounded, and we both jumped—Chris in anticipation and me with guilt. No need to screw up his first date by having her find a woman in his apartment right off the bat.
“Crap. I’ll sneak out while you distract her.”
“Geez.” Chris frowned, heading for the door. “I’m a grown man. If I want ten women in my apartment at the same time, I can.” He threw the front door open, grinning broadly at the lithe blonde on the other side. “Hey, Julie.”
She moved forward, head ducked coquettishly and planted a big one on Chris’s mouth. I could only guess from his reaction that Julie hadn’t had much problem passing the Kiss Test. When the kiss threatened to supersede dinner, I cleared my throat, since they blocked the door, making escape impossible. They broke apart and Julie gasped at the sight of me.
“Oh, uh, Julie,” Chris stuttered, wiping the back of his hand across his lips which were now a lovely shade of pink. “This is Margo. She was just leaving.”
I pasted a smile on my face and squeezed past Julie, backing toward the stairs. “Nice to meet you. Have a good dinner, you two. Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do.”
“Wait, Chris. Why is there a woman in your apartment?” Julie asked, in that vaguely breathless kind of voice that indicated a vast expanse of free air between her ears.
“I’m not a woman,” I assured her, reaching behind me for the railing. “I’m just—”
“My sister,” Chris interjected quickly.
“Yeah. Sister.” I nodded. “Bye-bye, brother dear.”
Julie turned to glare at him. “But, you said you didn’t have any brothers or sisters, Chris.”
Smooth move, genius, I thought, and turned quickly toward the stairs. Unfortunately, in the half hour since I arrived, someone had placed a bucket on the steps and my foot landed directly in it. I reached out to get my balance but felt only open space. My arms flailed about me and I heard shouts—Julie’s and Chris’s.
And then nothing.
Chapter Six
“Hard-Headed Woman”
The lights overhead nearly blinded me when I tried to open my eyes. It took a minute, and much blinking, to adjust to the brightness. A soft humming, then a snap and a sucking sound filled the room. Something gripped my left upper arm like a vise, and I quickly turned my head to see what it was.
The room spun wildly and I slammed my eyes shut to stop it.
Slowly, the whirling stopped and I ventured to open my eyes again. To my right, I heard a rustling sound. This time I turned my throbbing head little by little in that direction, discovering I appeared to be in a hospital room, the grip on my arm a blood pressure cuff. What the heck?
Someone sat in a chair by the window, hidden behind a newspaper. I recognized the sneakers.
“Chris?” My voice came out like a squeak, so I cleared my throat and repeated, “Chris?”
The newspaper lowered. “It’s about damn time you woke up.”
“What’s going on?” I moved my head again and, when the spinning started, clamped my eyes closed and breathed through the dizziness. “How did I get here?”
“Let’s just say you picked a hell of a way to get me to break my date with Julie.”
Julie. Tall, willow thin. Airheady.
Chris’s apartment. Spaghetti.
Backing into the stairwell. Julie’s suspicion that we weren’t siblings. Rushing to leave.
The bucket on the landing.
“I fell down the stairs.”
“And ruined my date with the one woman I’ve been trying to get in bed for six months.”
I groaned and opened my eyes again. “I’m sorry. Really.”
He shrugged. “It probably wouldn’t have worked anyway. If she got that freaked out you were at my apartment, she’s probably a little too Fatal Attraction.”
“I’m still sorry. What time is it?” The sun shone outside, which didn’t quite coincide with my memory of it being evening when I was at Chris’s apartment.
“Noon. Saturday.”
“Saturday!” I tried to sit up too quickly, and flung my arms out as the room twisted violently around me. I gasped and gulped back a wave of nausea, flopping back onto the bed.
Chris was out of his chair and holding my hand when I finally stopped feeling like I was going to lose…what? I couldn’t remember my last meal. Suddenly I was starving.
“What happened to the spaghetti?” I finally managed.
Chris laughed. “Probably a charred mess in the bottom of the pan.”
“Bummer.” I sighed heavily before slipping back to sleep.
***
Sunday morning, I went home with Chris. In a wheelchair, then in a taxi, and from there he practically carried me up to his apartment, because the floor kept diving at my face. The doctor indicated I ha
d a concussion and I jarred something in the fall, causing my equilibrium to be “off.” When I asked how long until it was “on” again, he just smiled sympathetically. Could be a day. Could be a month. Or longer.
I had in hand a list of restrictions a foot long. No driving, no stairs, no running, no sports, no operating heavy machinery, nothing that could jolt me suddenly or require any sort of coordination on my part. Sex was obviously out.
Chris and I arrived at his place to find the living room stacked with boxes, three deep and four high.
“What’s all this?” I waved in the direction of the cardboard mountain as I made a beeline for the couch, where I collapsed.
“Your stuff.” Chris headed for the kitchen. “I gave Kat and Adair your key and asked them to clean out Kevin’s apartment. I figured you weren’t in any shape to do it.”
“Oh.” I stared across the room and tried to imagine all my things—my prized possessions, clothes and personal items—filling those boxes. My life diminished to nothing but baggage.
Chris set a glass of water down on the coffee table. That was when I noticed my Elvis bobblehead.
“I’m going to go change,” Chris said. “I’ve been in the same clothes since yesterday.”
I nodded absently and glared at Elvis. After Chris left, I reached out a hand and gave Elvis a whack, knocking him over. He lay forlornly staring back at me.
“Some good-luck charm,” I scolded. “What happened to all the good stuff that used to happen to me? The great job? The decent boyfriend? A place to live? The award?” Well, I supposed the award wasn’t gone. That was the only thing I had going for me at this point in time. An award for a job I didn’t even have anymore.
I groaned.
“You okay?” Chris came back into the room, tucking a clean T-shirt into fresh jeans, his feet bare. “I could get you something. Food? A pain pill? Something to drink?”
“Stop babying me,” I snapped, then jammed my eyes closed as the room took a whirl.
“I’m not entirely incapable.”
“Coulda fooled me.”
“I’m not,” I protested. “I’ll be fine. I’m going on vacation, so I have to be fine.”
“I wouldn’t count on that.”
“I would.” No way was I canceling my vacation. My Elvis bobblehead may have betrayed me, but the real Elvis wouldn’t. I needed to escape my life for a while. All the mess, the things that couldn’t be swept under the rug and forgotten.
***
“I’m going.” I chucked a pair of jeans into the open suitcase on the floor at my feet.
“You’re not going,” Adair said from Chris’s couch.
I turned to glare at him and found him examining his manicure. “I’m. Going.”
“You’re falling on your face, honey. You can’t get behind the wheel of a car.”
“I’m fine when I’m sitting down.” I turned back to the boxes that held my wardrobe, slamming my hand against the wall when the room began a slow pirouette. I’d gotten pretty good at that over the last week…and had the bruises on my wrists and knuckles to prove it. A wall was amazingly easy to miss when it refused to hold still.
“Well, then, I suppose that’ll totally work, as long as you never need the john and sleep in the driver’s seat.”
I rolled my eyes, shoving aside the limp and lifeless body of my Elvis blow-up doll, still in his white fringed suit, looking like plastic roadkill in plus-sized clothes. The packing wasn’t going very well, mostly because the idea of squatting to actually pack neatly was rather nauseating. I’d save that for later.
“I give up,” I whined, when the dizziness didn’t stop this time. I closed my eyes and blindly made my way across the living room to the couch, collapsing onto the piece of furniture I’d come to know intimately in the past five days. I hadn’t left it longer than it took to go to the bathroom or take a quick shower while leaning against the wall to keep from kissing the drain.
“You can’t give up,” Adair reassured me.
“You just got through telling me I couldn’t go.”
“No, I said you couldn’t drive. You have to go see Elvis. You have to go worship at Graceland with all the other fanatics. That’s the only way you’ll get better.”
I opened one eye—I’d discovered one eye was safer than two—and stared at my friend. “Worship at Graceland? This wasn’t meant to be a religious pilgrimage.”
“Whatever, sweetie. Religious, sexual, it’s all the same.”
“It wasn’t meant to be sexual either, Adair. Gross! You’re aware Elvis is dead, right?” I closed my eye again and laid my head back. “I just need to get away. But if I can’t drive, I can’t go.”
“You need a surrogate.”
“Excuse me?” I ventured another look at Adair. He’d undergone a radical change since starting his campaign for love. He wore all black today. Black suit, black shirt, black silk tie and black Ray-Bans, alarmingly similar to the glasses worn by the Wide-Strider, atop his head. He looked like he’d had a wardrobe transplant.
“A surrogate driver.”
“A surrogate driver?”
“Yeah. Then you’d enjoy the trip, but not have to do any of the work.”
“You volunteering?” I smiled, picturing Adair behind the wheel of the SUV I’d rented for my cross-country venture.
He rolled his eyes. “Hardly. I ride in vehicles, not drive them. That’s the main reason for living in New York City. No need to take your life into your own hands. You pay someone else to do the dirty work while you lounge in luxury.”
I don’t know which cabs he took to work, but I’d yet to see one that could be termed “luxurious.”
“Well, I’m out of luck, then, aren’t I? Kat doesn’t have a license.” I sighed. “I’m going to leave for this trip in two days if it kills me. There has to be some miracle of modern medicine to cure vertigo.” Frustrated, I jabbed my foot into the coffee table and watched Elvis gyrate for a minute before it stirred up too much dizziness, and I had to sink back into blackness again.
“Maybe I should get on the internet tonight and find out.”
Without my vacation, not only was I out the money I paid for deposits, but I could probably kiss my career goodbye. I’d miss my award photos and interview. Worst of all, if I didn’t go on vacation, I had to ask Chris to let me stay longer. That would probably be the death of me. Don’t get me wrong. He’d been a prince this week. He cooked for me and helped me to the bathroom when I couldn’t do anything but crawl along the floor, using walls for support. He’d taken me to my follow-up appointment this morning, before dropping me off and heading to work. He’d done everything right…and he was driving me crazy.
Chris wouldn’t let me do anything for myself. He hovered (probably fearing litigation if I fell and cracked my skull open on his coffee table), and I heard him on the phone a few times, turning down dates. He ignored it when I told him I was perfectly capable of taking care of myself. And, I was capable. Give me a couple of knee-pads, and maybe a crash helmet, and I’d have been just fine.
But, no. He treated me like a child. He even called my mother, reassuring her I was in good hands, promising her he’d take care of me, and then spending the rest of the week making good on that promise. It was totally aggravating.
“What’s this?” Adair leaned over and picked up the small ivory card from the coffee table, flipping it over to examine the coordinating ivory doves flocking around the edges.
“Invitation to my mother’s wedding.” I took a breath, slowly picking my head up to see if the dizziness had passed. “She obviously didn’t believe me when I said I couldn’t come.”
“Won’t you be in L.A. anyway on your trip?” Adair hinted. He’d become so sentimental since watching that Oprah episode on lost love or lost opportunities or whatever. Kat was ready to strangle him if he didn’t stop trying to sign her up for Match.com so she wouldn’t be alone forever. Even she had taken every opportunity this week, while visiting me (or was it C
hris?), to bug me about this wedding, knowing I couldn’t just get up and walk away. Now Adair took over.
“Oh,” I said, not bothering to disguise the sarcasm, “you mean the vacation you’ve informed me I won’t be able to take?”
Adair huffed. “Don’t get snappy. I’m just suggesting that you might regret it—”
“The only thing I’ll regret is not getting to see Graceland. And missing my interview. I most certainly don’t regret missing Wedding Number Eleven.”
“Not now, but—”
“Not ever,” I said firmly. “Trust me. There’ll be another one in a few years.”
The front door opened before Adair could further argue with me, and Chris came in. Adair sat up straighter—like he had a snowball’s chance in hell. I bit back a reminder that he’d just remodeled his entire apartment for the guy in the park.
“Hey,” Chris greeted us.
“Hey, yourself,” I groused, suddenly crabby. Between the realization that my trip probably wouldn’t happen and Adair’s lectures about going to my mother’s wedding, I wasn’t in the mood to be nice. Oh, and Chris had picked up Angelo’s on the way home, which was what I’d wanted for lunch today but couldn’t even get to the phone to order because I was an invalid. It all just really ticked me off.
“Has she been good, Adair?” Chris tossed the take-out bags in the kitchen and returned to the living room, loosening the tie he’d worn to work despite the fact that he sold sporting goods. He’d probably had a business appointment today.
When Adair didn’t answer right away, I glanced at him to see his eyes glued to Chris as the tie came off and got tossed on the table. There may even have been a bit of drool pooling at the corner of his mouth. Sheesh.
“Fine,” Adair finally stammered, when Chris looked at him curiously. “She was fine. A little moody, but it’s probably that time or something. Katya gets just like that every month.” He stood quickly and moved around the table before I could smack him. “One of those things I really am glad us men don’t go through, you know? Makes us so much easier to live with.”
I could see where this was going, though Chris remained oblivious. He was well aware of his attractiveness to women (how could he not be when they dropped at his feet on a daily basis?), but it wouldn’t occur to him that gay men would find him equally attractive. I, however, was totally aware, and unwilling to watch the fall. “So, Adair, have you met the guy in Central Park yet?”
The Kiss Test Page 8