“Does she like this guy? This...Tiago.”
Nicole’s heart squeezed a little. “Honestly?”
“No, I want you to lie to me. Of course honestly.”
She cleared her throat. “She, uhm... I think she’s falling for him, J. I think...I think he’s a good guy.”
“You think?”
She said nothing at first.
“Nicole, what are you holding back about him?”
She said nothing.
“Nic, talk to me.”
“It’s just that... No, forget it. He’s cool. I’m sure he’s cool. Maybe he’s just been waiting for the right girl, is all.”
“Hmmmm.”
“Johnny, I gotta ask, do you still love her? I mean...really? Because if you did, you’d go after her. But you never do.”
“The question’s moot. I live in Portugal now.”
“So you do love her, but you can’t be with her.”
“Maybe. Like I said, it’s moot. And love has many faces.”
Nicole shook her head. “Johnny, different subject: Regardless of you and her, I think you need to come over to the states for a bit. Just say hello and stuff. It’s not good for you to be there away from friends. Last night... It was scary. You’re one of the good ones, J. Don’t let yourself go down the toilet.”
“Nah.”
“I’m worried about you. I’m...” Nicole heard a woman’s voice. “Marina?” she guessed.
“Yeah.”
She heard a door opening, then closing. And the girl’s voice disappeared.
“She took advantage of me,” he joked.
“Yeah, right.”
“She’s a good chick. She’s in college up here. Hot. Maybe I’ll take her out for a drink today. Maybe dinner.”
And here, Nicole felt a small sting of jealousy, but quickly put it out of her mind. “If she’s good for you, sure. J, you deserve the best. Don’t pick second best. You’re a good guy. An amazing guy. Don’t let a girl take advantage of you.”
No answer.
“Johnny?”
“Yeah, yeah, I’m here. I heard you. So, this stays between us?”
“It does.”
“FYI, Nicole, I will be in the states one of these days. But it’ll be for business, not pleasure. My dad’s looking to buy a few businesses over there, not related to shipping, and have me manage them. He thinks I’d be good at it. But I’ll be honest, I don’t think I even wanna see Cat when I’m there. I just don’t. Too damn confusing.”
“For you or for her?”
“For me. For me, definitely.” Pause. “You wanna grab a coffee while I’m there? Just us?”
“Sure, I’ll sneak behind my best friend’s back and have a coffee with her ex lover.”
“C’mon, you know it’s not like that.”
“I know. And I’d love to. Somehow I think I need to make sure you’re still breathing. You’ve gotten into an unhealthy state of mind over there.”
“Only since the sex got less. But that’s on the up and up again.”
“Oh, God. You were a lot more of a gentleman the last time I saw you.”
“Those days are over, Nicole. Life shafted me. And now I’m shafting it back.”
She shook her head. “You keep well, Johnny.”
“Nicole.”
“Yeah.”
“Call again.”
“Uhm, yeah, sure.”
“No, I mean it. You help keep my head above water. You’re right that things got out of control on this side. You remind me of who I was.”
Pause. “Uhm... I don’t...”
“Nicole. Just call, OK? You’re right that I need to get back in touch with the people there. But between you and Cat, who would I speak to? I didn’t care for anyone else at school. So...call again.”
“Fine.”
“And if you don’t, I’ll call you.”
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
~ Betrayal ~
-1-
Friday, Jun 26
The plan to use NYFA students as models backfired. Tina had shown her photos around and gotten other students interested. I’d done shoots with three of them (Lissa in a suit, Delon with a rainbow umbrella, and Jase). Delon asked me more about Tiago than Tina had. He also gave me some tips. Good tips. Invaluable tips about what to do with the tongue...
They’d then shown their own photos around, and I’d done another two shoots. Even Britta, the shy girl with light-brown hair, had come to me. She was sweet. Very kind. She was someone I might want to be friends with one day.
And then Simone called.
Out of the blue.
On the day Nicole was finishing up her workshop.
“Hey, Catherine!”
“Yeah?”
“It’s Simone. Remember me?”
How could I forget? “Uhm, yeah, hi. Uhm, how did you get my number?”
“You’re the go-to girl for superb model shoots, aren’t you?”
I didn’t comment.
“Anyway,” she continued, “I’m really interested in getting a shoot done. Britta said you never turn anyone down.”
“Uhm, yeah, uhm, sure, we’d just need to...schedule it.”
“Look, Cat”—only my closest friends call me Cat—“I’m actually in Brooklyn Heights right now. Do you think we could squeeze—”
“Now isn’t good.”
“Oh, please, Cat. Please.”
“Now’s not good, Simone. I’m sorr—”
“This isn’t because of me and Tiago, is it?”
My heart dropped to my pelvis. “Wh—huh?”
“Me and Tiago. C’mon, I know he’s yours. Look...” She paused. “...I know I can come across a little...heavy sometimes. But...I really need these shots, Cat. Please don’t tell anyone, but I do. I’m... Are you gonna make me beg?”
There was definite pleading in her voice.
I remembered Nicole in high school, how she’d attacked me so much growing up. And I remembered then seeing the human side of her. I would have never considered having Nicole as my best friend one day.
Maybe Simone was the same?
“Don’t you have school today?”
“No, because it’s the last day for the workshop guys, the regulars got some time off while papers get filled and lecturers see the students off, or try and get them interested in conservatories or BFAs.”
Nicole’s final day. And we were all gonna meet up later and celebrate her “graduation.” At a huge party in Williamsburg.
“O—OK. Fine. I’m... You can come over now. You know where it is?”
“Yeah, uhm, I’m outside already.”
What? Creepy.
I thought: Stalker?
-2-
Simone was chatty, overly friendly. She’d brought a bikini and lingerie. She wanted erotic shots, she said. A banana in the mouth, a cherry. It seemed a little tawdry to me, but I didn’t have to use the shots. That was the deal I made for freebies. I took whatever they wanted, and I could use whatever I wanted in return.
She had a magnificent body. I mean—magnificent. The kind of body that would make Jennifer Aniston insecure.
Perfect breasts, voluptuous, firm, naturally large. Not an ounce of cellulite. (Despite my slender figure, even I had a tiny bit of cellulite on the back of my legs, no matter how often I did deadlifts.) Six-pack. A tiny tattoo on her lower back of a heart with an arrow through it, just above her ass. The heart had a ribbon on it which said Fuck Yeah! Her skin-tone was perfect, not too light, but not damaged by the sun.
And she knew how to turn a simple pose into a heart-thumping fuck-me pose.
She put on some lingerie and we did a few of those. Very sensual. Made me a little uncomfortable. But it’s what she wanted.
She exposed her breasts, lay on her back and draped some linen over herself, looked up. Licked her lips. Held the pose.
And then...
...she dropped the bomb on me:
“Oh, God, this reminds me so much of when Tiago a
nd I did it.”
I dropped my camera.
-3-
Luckily it was around my neck with the lanyard.
Did she notice it?
I ignored the statement, figured she was only trying to push my buttons. I figured it was time to wrap this photo-shoot up and send her on her way.
“Oh, yes,” she said, looking up, dreaming. “Doesn’t he have the most incredible tongue?”
I stopped clicking.
She looked at me with those brilliant blue eyes of hers.
“Doesn’t he?” She smiled, held it, stared at me. “God, first time he and I did it, before I knew it, he was fucken licking me to climax!”
My hand trembled.
“Oh, come on,” she said, “we can talk about it. We’ve both had him. Isn’t he just the best goddamned pussy-licker in the whole fucking universe!? Starting out frantic, and then becoming gentle, putting his hands—”
“I think you’d better leave.”
“Huh?” She sat up, looked at me. Confused. “Why? We’re just talking.”
She was good. So good at making you feel like you’re the one who did something wrong! I mean, did she or did she not just tell me my boyfriend licked her pussy!?
“I don’t like the topic,” I said.
She pouted. “Oh, come on, Cat, I was just—”
“Don’t call me Cat.”
“God!” She stood, threw the linen on the floor, exposing her perfect breasts. “I wasn’t being mean or anything. I mean, I know you guys are dating. I just thought it would be something we had in common that we could talk about.”
Am I freakin hearing this right? Is this woman being serious, or is she just completely psychotic? “I think you’re lying,” I said. “I think you came here on a whim, just to rile me up. Just to piss me the fuck off.”
She smiled smoothly, so smoothly. And then I knew. I knew she’d planned it. And I’d fallen for it. “Oh, darling...so naive. Why don’t you go and ask him yourself? He fucked me, baby. He fucked me good and hard and often. He still fucks me. He rides me like a fuckin cowboy. What, you think a guy like Tiago sees a homely girl like you and then forgets about the quality of good cunt? You’re probably such a prude you haven’t even let him put it in your ass—”
“GET OUT!”
She smiled more widely. Grabbed her clothes. Put them on.
Before she left, she straightened her dress. Grinned again. She said only one thing: “Ask him. Oh, and you can keep the damn photos. I’ve got my own photographer.” She laughed. “So naive...”
When the door closed behind her, the world spun.
I toppled over.
And the ground hit my head.
-4-
“Woohoo! Let’s paaaaaaarteh! I am officially an actress! Well, kinda. Cat? Cat, where are you?”
All I heard were whimpers. My own. Echoing against the studio walls. Nicole was out in the living room. My head was on the parquet floor in a puddle.
“Cat?”
I sounded like a child who’d broken its leg.
“CAT! WHAT—” Nicole slammed the studio door open. “Cat, Wh— WHAT’S WRONG? WHERE’S ALICE? WHAT—”
I shook my head, unable to speak, trying to let her know it was nothing with my mom.
Nicole lifted me, shook me. “Baby, what is it?”
Spittle fell from my mouth. “Ti—Ti—Ti... Simone—Simone.” Her grip loosened.
“Oh, shit,” she whispered. She fell back on her ass. “Shit,” she said again. Ran a hand through her hair. “How did you find out?”
“I—she—” Huh? “Wait a minute.”
Nicole looked at me sorrowfully.
“You knew?” I told her. “You...fucking...knew and didn’t tell—”
“Hey!” She put her hands up. “This was before you two started dating, OK?”
“She said it was still happening now.”
A flicker of doubt shot through her eyes. Then, after thinking about it: “She’s lying, babe. I don’t believe it’s still happening. I’ve seen them at school.”
I shook my head, confused, trying to find my feet, the floor. I tried to think, tried to piece it together. “What do you know? Tell me.”
“They did it at that party in Williamsburg. Afterwards. She wouldn’t stop boasting about it. I confronted Tiago about it because I knew you two had this ‘not-date’ and I know how you are. I told him that, the moment after he saw you at the Arch, he was to dedicate his cock and lips to you, or else I’d cut it off. Slowly.”
“So he admitted it?”
She waited a beat. “Y—yeah. I...made him tell me. I wanted to know.”
“That’s why you warned me. After I first saw him. You told me he was a player.”
She nodded weakly.
“Why didn’t you just tell me? Why be so cryptic about it?”
She sighed. “Cat. I’ve seen you change in the last year. It’s taken a lot to get you back on the horse. You think I was gonna get in the way of that? You’re afraid of getting hurt, so you hold yourself back from romance. But you needed to get out there. It was a big step for you, and I knew it. Maybe it wouldn’t work out with Tiago, but I knew you had to at least try. I didn’t tell you about Simone and him because it was irrelevant. It was before you guys dated. And I know you. You would have used it as an excuse to not get out there again.”
We sat looking at each other for a while.
She was, of course, right.
“Why now?” I asked. “Why would she wait until now?”
“Because I won’t be at the college to kick her ass on Monday? Or maybe she wants to jump him again. And to do that, she needs to get you out the way. What better way than to confuse you about her and him sleeping together?”
“Either that,” I said, “or they are doing it, and she wants him to herself now. She’s sick of ‘sharing him,’ maybe. She told me to ask him. She sounded confident.”
Nicole’s face lost color. Then her eyelids dropped. And she said, “Fuck.”
There was only one way to find out.
-5-
Tiago and I stood on a pier in Williamsburg. The setting sun behind Manhattan looked like a pot of gold.
Nicole and I had been waiting together. The party had started already. Now that Tiago was here, she’d left and rejoined it. And she’d eyed him down just before that as if to say, If it turns out you did it, snip-snip.
“Catherine, what’s up?”
I looked down at the ocean water, then shaded my eyes from the sun behind him and looked at him. “I need to know something. And I need you to be completely honest with me.”
“OK?”
“No, I need you to understand that, Tiago. Please. I’m not...experienced. I... Just be honest. I don’t care what the answer is, I just want to know.”
“Sure. Yeah.” He looked worried now.
“After we first kissed, not before, but after.”
“Uh-huh?”
“You remember that day?”
“Sure. In the city. We met at Washington Square Park.”
“Yeah, after that—did you have any sexual encounter whatsoever with Simone?”
A beat. “N—no.”
“Why did you hesitate?”
Another tiny beat. “Define...sexual encounter.”
“Oh, fuck.” A lead weight settled on me. The world started spinning again. “Goddamnit. Fuck. Fuck.” I turned. “You ass—”
He grabbed my wrist as I started to walk away! “We kissed,” he said. “That’s it. That’s all!”
I let the arm go quickly. My back facing him.
“C’mon, Catherine. You and I had only kissed as well. She came over that night. No doubt you know that she and I had...”
“What about after? What about the next day, the Thursday. After you...” I turned, fists clenched. Whispered, “...after you fingered me?”
“Of course not!” he shouted. Then he whispered as well. Because people were walking the pier. “Of course not, godda
mnit. You think I’m like that?”
“I don’t know what you’re like. I know you’re good with women. I know you and Simone fucked. I know you kissed her after you and I kissed.”
“She kissed me!”
I cocked an eyebrow.
“OK, fine, and I kissed her back. But you and I weren’t dating yet, Catherine. Damnit. And I could have fucked her that night. Hell, she was practically ripping my clothes off on the street. I got home and she was waiting for me. She wrapped her arms around me and stuck her tongue in me. OK, I was still turned on from kissing you, and for a moment I got confused. And I kissed her back. It lasted maybe five seconds. Maybe ten. And then I told her she couldn’t come up. She insisted, kept trying to stick her tongue in me and I told her no. She got the point. If you must know, she came back again, twice more. But by then you and I were serious. I mean...that Thursday.” He spoke even lower now. “You think I took that lightly? Putting my finger inside you? You think that meant nothing to me? Goddamnit, Catherine. Simone came over again, threw herself in my direction. And I swerved. I told her off. I told her if she wanted to be friends, I could do that. But only if she stopped trying to get her tongue into me all the time. She agreed...eventually. We stayed outside talking for a while. She’s a good chick, once you get to know her.” Yeah, right. “I know you might find it strange, Catherine, but I’ve kept in touch with a lot of girls I’ve slept with. It’s just the way I am. It’s no big deal in Brazil. You meet a girl, you have sex, you stay friends. I’m sure a lot of people got married that way. I don’t like holding grudges, or carrying around negative energy. I mean, I go to school with her. How could I keep that energy around me all day? Every day. I couldn’t. So that’s it. That’s the story.”
“She said you two are still sleeping together.”
A beat. “She’s lying.”
“She was quite convincing.”
“Christ, Catherine, she’s lying to you!”
“How can I believe you?”
He stood straighter. Folded his arms. “You’re fucking kidding me, right? I mean, some hussy comes along and accuses me of sleeping with her—no evidence!—and you believe her? Where’s the proof? Where’s the evidence?”
Losing Johnny Page 13