I’m staring. I can’t look away. “Metaphorically or literally?”
He traces a finger down my forearm, summoning a trail of goose bumps. “Both.”
I shiver. “Is it ethical?” I ask. “For us to be . . . involved.”
“I can keep a secret,” Elan says. “If you can.”
I can. I can keep a secret. Lust and fear and power churn inside me.
His eyes pool dark.
He tugs me from my stool.
I go willingly.
In the alleyway behind the bar, under the roaring freeway overhead, he pushes me against a cold brick wall. His mouth on mine, and I can’t get enough, I need more, want more, need him in a way that overtakes everything. I am untamed, wild, an addict. A clink as he undoes his belt, pulls down his jeans. In the yellow light of a streetlamp, his cock. Stiff and warm. I need it inside me.
In my ear: “You’re on the pill, right?”
I nod.
My skirt is too much material. It feels like years before he finds my underwear, pulls it down, off, away. He positions my back against the wall, my legs around him, holding me under my thighs. His cock finds its way past the trimmed hair of my pussy. One push and he’s inside me. We both groan, hard. I’ve been dreaming about the wet, hot feeling of this. Our bodies joined, messy and panting and unrestrained. He moves again and again, his teeth on my neck, his biceps pulsing. My shirt is ripped open, and he stares down at my breasts, hypnotized, thrusting, getting faster. He’s about to come, I know, I can tell. “Fuck me,” I moan, “fuck me, fuck me, fuck me—”
And it’s this image I can’t get out of my head as Vivian, Elan, Tim George, and I are all shaking hands in a cool, bright conference room, one week later.
29.
* * *
I don’t want to lie to Vivian. But saving her company is more important than the truth.
That is what I tell myself: that I’m doing this for Vivian. For us. But if I’m honest with myself: painfully, brutally honest, I want to go into business with Elan because we’ll spend time together—as entrepreneurs, as equals. And against his “I don’t do romance” of it all . . . he’ll fall in love with me.
I know how this sounds. Oh, do I know. But the heart wants what the heart wants, and if there isn’t a clear and easy path, the heart becomes a master manipulator.
A crook.
Casually, I ask Steph not to say anything to Viv about what really happened at Elan’s trend-book presentation all those months ago: my huge (uncashed) commission check, our hot flirtation. It’s irrelevant, because I’m definitely not interested in anything beyond Elan saving our company. Steph, trusting to a fault, accepts this. She’s distracted, crushing hard on a new transfer in her course, a pretty tattooed blonde who seems dangerously heteroflexible and thus entirely on-brand.
I tell Vivian that Elan reached out to me about the app after coming across the articles in Fast Company and Forbes. Vivian’s initial suspicion gives way to enthusiasm easily. She wants to believe. “That’d change everything,” she says. “His network, his net worth.”
“Almost a million followers on Instagram,” I say. “Double that on Twitter.”
“We can do exclusives with his new seasons.” Vivian’s practically babbling. “We’d be written up in every blog in the country. Elan on the board means investors, for sure—” She stops. “Wait. We don’t know what he wants yet, right?”
“No,” I say honestly. “We’ll find out at the meeting.”
Which is now. Vivian and I sit across from Elan and Tim George, a polished and most likely gay African-American asking smart questions that Vivian is fielding like a pro. Elan is silent, his gaze shifting between us. On the surface, professional. But every time we lock eyes, I feel cold brick on my back. Hard heat between my legs. I’m certainly blushing.
Tim is outlining the scope of Elan’s potential involvement: one tweet a quarter, one Instagram post every six months. Introductions, mentions. Elan knows editors at Vogue, InStyle, GQ. He plays golf with the editor of TechCrunch, is on a charity board with two of the founders of SXSW. Vivian is practically quivering. But we’re both waiting for the hammer to fall.
In exchange for what?
Tim and Elan take a moment to confer in private. Vivian and I sit without speaking. Even though the air is cool, sweat snails down my back.
They return after a few minutes.
“Mr. Behzadi is interested in joining the board of directors of Clean Clothes,” Tim says. “In exchange for thirty percent equity.”
Vivian exhales a soft breath of disbelief.
My mouth falls open. The men stare back, impassive as concrete. A flash of fury tightens my muscles. Before I can snap a response, Vivian says, “That’s very high. Most advisers come on at less than one percent.”
Elan speaks for the first time. “But you don’t have any other advisers, do you?”
The room is so quiet I can hear Vivian swallow. “Not officially.”
“Not at all,” he says. “Or investors, or even a developer. It’s just you two, right?”
Vivian doesn’t say anything. I can feel her wondering how he knows that.
“Your problem is your customer base,” Elan says. “Teenage girls can’t afford fifty-dollar T-shirts. The people who follow me can.”
I am throbbing with anger. The tension between us is so thick, I can barely see. My own words, used against me. And yet, I want him. I’m getting turned on, quickly and against my own will. My body is betraying me: willfully, recklessly.
Vivian asks if we can have the room. The men step out.
“Thirty percent is too high,” I hiss. “Way too high, that’s crazy, right? I was thinking three, maybe five. But thirty? Thirty percent? That’s fucked, right?”
Vivian’s voice is spookily soft. “It’s unusual,” she says. “But so is this situation.”
“Meaning?”
“Meaning without Elan, we don’t have a company.”
“But I only have twenty percent. Twenty. And I’ve been working for free for ten months.”
Viv shrugs. She looks exhausted. “I don’t know what to tell you. He’s a name. He has influence. Twenty percent of zero is still zero, Lace.”
“Where does his share come from? Not Brock’s, obviously.”
“We eat it,” Vivian says. “It comes from us.”
I can’t believe this. I brought Elan in because we’re fucking and now I’m the one getting fucked. Or am I? Viv’s right: my equity is only worth something if the company becomes profitable. Without Elan, it probably won’t.
“It’s so unfair,” I say. “He’ll own double what I will for a few fucking tweets.”
Vivian nods and glances at the closed door. We can see both men through the soundproof glass windows, avoiding our eye contact. Vivian’s expression belies none of our desperation. “Look, it’s up to you. I don’t want to bring on someone who’ll piss you off. You know him better than I do. What do you think? Do we go for it?”
Deep down, I know I don’t want to continue working on the app, despite my effort so far. This is the perfect out: No, I’m not comfortable with Elan coming on. Yes, it’s over.
Elan’s head is bent toward his phone. A text? To whom? Jealousy, an unfamiliar, intoxicating monster, rears inside me with such force I forget to breathe. Holding on to Elan isn’t a hazy desire. It’s a painful, desperate need.
I know it’s the wrong thing to do. I do it anyway.
“Yes,” I say. “I want him.”
30.
* * *
May
I fall for him like a winter sunset: a startling, sudden betrayal.
Everything theoretical—I could love you, I think I’m falling for you—becomes absolute. The way he takes his coffee fascinates me—black espresso, so European, so chic. His choice of laundry detergent, a delight: French organic lavender, shipped all the way from Aix-en-Provence! His opinions on film, politics, art, and, of course, fashion all feel like important lesso
ns. Obsession overtakes me like a disease, dividing and multiplying at a rate I can’t control.
I understand the irony.
I know from every bad-boyfriend article in Cosmo that the fact we have to keep it secret should worry me.
It thrills me.
Even though it’s not technically an affair—we are both single, as far as I know—it takes on the trappings of one. Furtive messages, illicit rendezvous. Elan is not so famous that paparazzi are a problem for him, and this is Manhattan, not LA; there’s simply less interest in celebrities here. But without explicitly saying anything, it’s clear he’s not ready to go public, and I don’t want Vivian finding out. So, we’re a secret. We define nothing. I never know when I’m going to see him. We won’t speak for a few days, and then he’ll text me out of the blue: It strikes me that I have no idea what you’re currently wearing. Please remedy asap. I respond as if I don’t know exactly where he is—the Frick, the Upper East—all tracked through social media. I want so badly to be there with him, his hand on the small of my back, claiming me, forsaking all others. But I’ll settle for being the one he’s texting. For now.
With Ash, my desire was a cozy blanket, always where I left it. With Elan, my desire is a snapping, sparking live wire, whipping around like a mad snake. Uncontrollable and uncontrolled. I am constantly hungry, but I can’t eat. I lose weight; as obsession expands me, I exist less in the world. Some days, I am so overwhelmed by the way he is constantly, unbearably, on my mind and in my body, that I’m reduced to tears. It baffles me. I claim allergies.
I understand love songs and greeting card clichés. Love: a drug, a puppet master, a devil.
For me, the love I seek takes the form of sex.
We have a lot of sex.
That is what we do most.
One of the first times I catch the subway to his apartment after work, lust builds in my body to such a degree that I do not feel in control of myself. My insides roil, my breath shortens. I sit, eyes out the window on clumps of commuters, trying to contain myself. I can’t. My underwear is soaked. I’m anxious, even afraid. When he answers the door, I can’t speak. I want to consume him like a cannibal, suck flesh from his bones, snap femurs with my fangs. We fuck on the hallway floor, only half-undressed. “Harder,” I groan, my eyes rolling back in my head. “Harder.”
I cannot get enough of him. Not because it feels good, which it does, or because he’s showing me new things, which he is.
It’s because when his body is on top of mine, my fingers digging into the back of his neck, his breath hot on my collarbone, I feel completely certain of my body. Its soft, mysterious power. Its wild, unstoppable force. Its insatiable, bottomless hunger.
Sex with Elan is gluttonous dessert. I feed my body in huge, sticky handfuls, unconcerned with calories, oblivious to consequences.
* * * *
Spring grows more confident. New York sheds the last of its winter fur in favor of supple new skin. Elan attends a conference in LA, then a speaking engagement in Kuala Lumpur. In his absence, I go through the motions of my life. I work. I work out. I go to rallies in Union Square and then to Central Park to see the fragile new buds on winter-dead trees and try to feel hopeful. I maintain a perfect social media presence. I do outfits for Clean Clothes, but I don’t have to work as hard anymore.
Within a week of Elan taking ownership of 30 percent of Clean Clothes, we sew up the seed. Tom Bacon, the venture capitalist I fell apart in front of at the Hoffman House party back in January, comes in for $250K. An angel investment; his own money. It’s a bro deal, albeit a small one. He doesn’t believe in us: he has a crush on Elan. “Men use money to suck each other’s dicks when they can’t actually suck each other’s dicks,” Vivian slurs, drunk on prosecco to celebrate the deal.
I laugh. “Elan is one hundred percent gay.” I’m wearing a silk scarf to hide a hickey he gave me, blood vessels burst and broken under my skin.
Tom’s money keeps the lights on, but only just. Vivian and I both get a small wage. I use mine to start paying off the credit card debt I incurred earlier in the year, when my diagnosis knocked me off the commission game. True to his word, Elan tweets about us and we get a modest uptick of new users. We hire a second outfit curator, Suzy-from-Texas, a first-year fashion student. I train her over Skype. “Thank you so much for the opportunity,” Suzy-from-Texas keeps telling me, all corn-fed enthusiasm and big-sky optimism. “Y’all are making my dreams come true!”
We still don’t have a full-time developer. What’s left of Tom’s money gets us a freelancer in Estonia, but Vivian is waiting for Elan to connect her to his contact at TechCrunch. She’s hoping for an article that’ll attract another high-level developer like Brock. Elan is dragging his feet on the intro. I offer support, but no one expects me to be twisting Elan’s arm.
Officially, we barely know each other.
He doesn’t mind if I’m between waxes or on my period. Somehow, I’d always imagined this would be an important compromise or milestone. But all he says is, “I don’t care,” and it’s not an issue. Theoretically. My body still has the power to embarrass me with its rampant hairiness and indicators of (useless) fertility. I try not to let it. As time passes, something changes. It’s not a growth. It’s an absence. Of worry, of concern. I trust that Elan loves my body.
I don’t trust that he loves me. But, he’s changing, too. Softening. Letting go. He doesn’t say “I love you.” But this is what he does say, in a moment of shared breath, sweat-slick skin. “I like you. Too much.”
I replay this until it wears thin.
I like you—dark eyes drilling mine—too much.
I know I feel this more than he does. I’m waiting patiently. I don’t know what I’m waiting for until it happens.
We’re in bed, late on a Wednesday. He’s scrolling through his in-box. My head is on his chest, my fingers tracing his skin in soft, aimless circles.
I feel something. Through his chest hair.
Scar tissue.
My fingers run the length of it, but there’s not much to feel, barely an inch. I sit up, wanting to see better. Beneath me, he tenses. His face complicates.
“You found it.”
I can’t not touch it, the bump of raised, hardened skin. “What happened?”
He takes off his reading glasses. “I was in an accident. When I was younger.”
“What kind of accident?”
“A bad one.”
I am aware this is a moment: a moment of adulthood. I have to have the right reaction. I’m someone you can trust. The empathy I’m already flooded with infuses my words as I ask, again, “What happened?”
“Remember how I told you I used to play football?”
I nod, containing excitement.
He switches his phone off. “Do you really want to hear this?”
I have never wanted anything more badly in my life. I slip my hand in his, and squeeze. “I do,” I say in my best future-fiancée voice. “I really do.”
Over twenty years ago. Ko Samet, Thailand. The U23 team was on tour, playing a friendly game with a young Thai team. “It was a pretty wild time,” Elan says. “We took the official season very seriously, but the off-season matches were times to let loose.” A group of young men from a country where drinking is illegal, on tour in permissive, reckless Thailand. Not hard to imagine how wild it could get.
They play the match, resoundingly beating the Thai team. Celebrate at a barefoot beachside bar. “The whole team was partying: drugs, alcohol, girls. A crazy night. And then, out of nowhere, Sofia shows up.”
“Sofia?”
“My fiancée.” Sofia Marino, daughter of the Italian ambassador to Iran: beautiful and rebellious, unlike any girl he’d ever met. She’d flown all the way from Iran to Thailand to find him. “She was . . . apoplectic.” He says the word as if it could still hurt him. “I was so drunk when she walked into the bar, I thought I was hallucinating. We had an epic fight. Very dramatic. She broke up with me. I begged h
er not to. I convinced her to come back to the hotel. Figured we could work it out there.”
I picture a young drunk Elan pleading with his firebrand fiancée, the Italian who speaks to him like no other woman ever has. I like her, and I am afraid of her.
“It takes an hour, but I get her on the back of my motorbike. It’s one or two in the morning, I don’t remember . . .” He trails off, his eyes looking into the past. I wait. When he speaks, it’s in a low, calm voice, almost unemotional. “I don’t know what happened. Maybe I hit a ditch, or missed a turn. But the next thing I know, I’m waking up in hospital. Sofia’s in the next bed, hooked up to a ventilator. Covered in bruises. Barely recognizable. I was conscious for a minute or two, passed out again. The next time I woke up, she was dead.”
“Oh my God,” I breathe. “I’m so sorry.”
“Don’t be sorry for me,” he says. “It’s my fault she died.”
I swallow. I can’t deny this is true. “So, what happened? I mean, were you charged . . . ?”
“The football federation covered it up,” Elan says. “Two of my friends went on the record saying we took separate bikes. We were all twenty, twenty-one. We didn’t know any better. We wanted to save our own skin, and the federation didn’t want controversy.”
“Holy shit.” I’m being entrusted with what, manslaughter? Worse? It’s in the past, almost before I was born, yet still, I feel I’ve been handed something fragile and asked to keep it safe.
I will.
“So, this.” Elan points to his scar. “Draining a collapsed lung. I have more.” His knee, his jaw; I see them, now that I’m looking. “I broke my pelvis, busted my right leg. Four surgeries. I didn’t want to live, but my body was in such good shape. Of course, I couldn’t play anymore. Spent a year watching American soaps on my parents’ sofa in Tehran. And then, something snapped. I didn’t want to be an invalid for the rest of my life. As part of physical therapy, I started sketching. I drew the dresses and suits I saw on television. I was good at it; it was easy. It was fun. A friend’s sister told me about fashion school in New York. She brought me brochures. It wasn’t just that everyone looked young and happy. They looked purposeful, like the world was waiting to open up to them.” His gaze grows wistful. “Their lives looked perfect in those pictures: not a hair out of place. It made me feel hopeful.”
The Bucket List Page 20