by Susan Ward
“Is that the latest criticism of me? That I’m rich? Usually it’s that I’m too commercial. But it depends.”
“On what?”
That intense black stare meets mine directly. “If you are the kind of girl who gets turned on by money.”
“Nope, I’m the kind of girl who gets turned on by really bad American cinema.”
Alan arches a brow. “You find John Candy sexy?”
I do a little lift with my brows. “Extremely. There is nothing sexier than a guy who can make you laugh.”
He takes another drag of his cigarette. “Not even a guy who sings?”
I roll my eyes, toss the pillow and rise from the couch. I wander out onto the terrace. The patio is lovely, like a tiny English garden encased in cement. Everything tasteful. Everything correct. I sink down on a cushioned, double seat chaise lounge. His view of the city is spectacular.
After a minute or two, Alan follows. He relaxes casually against the concrete wall, smoking and watching me. “You don’t want to watch the end of your movie?”
“Nope. You don’t find it funny and you’re just indulging me.”
“Do you want to stay here to see the sunset?”
“No. I hate sunsets. I only like to watch the sunrise.”
I feel the sudden heavy pressure of his eyes.
“What’s going on inside that head of yours, Chrissie?”
I look at him and tense. His eyes are smoky and a potent caress, but hidden within their shadowy depths I see curiosity, caution, and something I’ve never had a guy look at me with before…pity.
I struggle to maintain my composure. “I’m just trying to figure out what I want to do since you really don’t do the date thing well.” Then sarcastically, “What’s going on inside that head of yours, Alan?”
“I’m trying to figure out why you are here. You’re a very confusing girl to read.”
I frown. “That’s the second time you’ve said that. I’m not confusing at all. Why do you say that?”
He takes a long drag of his cigarette and stares at me through the smoke. “There are usually four types of girls who end up with me: addicts, fame-whores, gold-diggers and rich little girls with daddy issues.”
Oh god, he stole my line and is using it cruelly. “Very organized. A nice system,” I say with a calm I don’t feel. “Which kind of girl am I?”
“I don’t think you fit in my A through D list.”
Forcing an air of amusement, “No?”
“No.” There isn’t even the slightest hint of lightness in that. He puts out his cigarette. “I’m not sure what it is I see in you, but whatever it is, it worries me, Chrissie. And I never expected that and I really don’t like it.”
Oh shit. My body grows cold as the entirety of my body heat concentrate in my cheeks. I rise to my feet.
He crosses the terrace to me. “You don’t have to leave.”
I look at him and find those black eyes watching me, assessing every change in my expression.
Afraid and flashing with internal anger, I head toward the door. “Sorry, Alan, I’m out of here. Go play your games on another girl. You are just too weird for me.”
He smiles, unruffled, and lightly brushes my hot cheek with an index finger. “No, I don’t think so. I’m not too weird for you. I think I’m exactly what you look for.”
I slap his hand away. “What the hell does that mean?”
“You think I’m a fucked up asshole who’s going to fuck you, fuck you without ever getting to know you, and then toss you aside. And that’s what you want. That makes me safe for you. That’s the reason you’re here with me.”
He walks away, not waiting for an answer. He disappears through the terrace doors and leaves me alone in my anger, knee deep in verbal shit and emotional mess. Wanting to scream, I shake my hands to contain my reaction, and then I realize I’m containing tears. Is that really what Alan thinks of me? It shouldn’t matter, but my insides grow icy as I realize he pities me.
He pities me! Numb with humiliation, I flee the orangey sunset glow on the terrace into the dim corridors of the apartment.
I’m almost to the door before I turn back. Oh no, Alan Manzone, I am not going to sulk off like a wounded child without answering that. Who the fuck does he think he is? He’s the one with the life that’s a train wreck.
Livid, I storm into the kitchen. There are two place settings set up on the butcher block island, two empty wine glasses and something sizzling in a pan on the stove. Alan is focused on gently moving the contents of the skillet with a spatula.
I struggle to organize my thoughts and find a way to launch my tirade.
“I offered you dinner so why don’t you stay,” he says quietly.
I exhale a long, ragged breath. “Why should I stay? You don’t even like me.”
He looks over his shoulder and the expression on his face is puzzling, yet strangely unthreatening. “I never said that I didn’t like you, Chrissie. I said that you worried me.”
I sit on the high bar chair and let out an angry breath. “How can I worry you? You don’t even know me.”
Alan ignores that question and concentrates instead on transferring the contents of the pan onto the plates. “There isn’t much here to cook,” he says, smiling in an apologetic way. “The kitchen hasn’t been stocked yet, but I promise it’s edible. I make a very good Un Croque-Monsieur.”
I stare at the plate as he opens the wine. “I hate to ruin your fancy dinner party, but it’s a grilled cheese.”
He arches a brow and starts to fill the glasses. “In Paris it is Un Croque-Monsieur.”
“In California it is a grilled cheese. Only you did it wrong. The cheese is supposed to be on the inside.”
I don’t know why I’m being so combative and petty about this. It’s just a freaking sandwich, but I don’t want to relax my guard and I’m not exactly certain why I am here eating with him.
He takes a bite and studies me with curiosity. “Haven’t you ever been to Paris?”
I pick at the layers of my sandwich, trying to figure out what’s different. “I’ve hardly been out of California.”
“You don’t travel with Jack?”
“Jack hardly talks to me. Why would he have me travel with him?”
I regret that comment the second it’s out because it makes me sound pouty and little girlish. His eyes fix on me like a laser. I take a bite of my sandwich, and then a sip of the wine.
“It’s the Gruyère cheese,” he explains, smiling over his wine glass before taking a sip. “That’s what’s different.”
I watch as he downs two thirds of his wine. “So much for recovery. Why are you drinking?”
He sets his wineglass before him. “I stayed sober in Rehab to get out of Rehab. I stayed sober at Jack’s to stay out of jail, but I don’t buy into that total sobriety bullshit and I never will. You should know that up front.”
His mouth sets in a grim line. He looks angry and it feels like he’s assessing my reaction. I frown and return to my food. “How did you end up at our house in Santa Barbara? Maria said you were there four months. And what did you do to fuck up so completely?”
His lips quirk up in a half-smile. “Ah, you’ve opted not to playact. There are consonants with your expletives. It’s a boring story. Not worth repeating.”
We eat for a while in silence
“Addiction isn’t like it is in the movies, Chrissie,” he starts, his voice raspy and tired and strangely sounding far away. “It’s more insidious, more fun, and less obvious. Unfortunately, it always ends the same way. I just got absorbed in the pain of living. I tried to escape it. But you can’t no matter what you do. So I pushed the limits a little more. And then a little more. And then I’m dragging down my best friend with me, and Len is trying to hold me together, and all I can think of is that I want to stop fucking thinking for a moment.”
I don’t want to be enthralled by this and find that I am. Stop fucking thinking for a moment…yes, I understand that. It is t
he first thing about Alan I understand.
“One day we were in Chicago. I don’t know exactly where and I don’t know exactly how. I was pretty fucked up by then. I’d been clean for eight years and I was quickly all back in it, doing more and more, and more not being ever enough. I don’t recall who gave it to me. But I sort of thought, fuck it. Why not today? It was a speedball. Do you know what that is?”
I nod. Of course. Stupid question. My brother was Sammy.
“It was good shit. Really pure. Enough for a nice size party. And I lined it up and I snorted it all and I said, fuck it, maybe I’ll just stop thinking today.”
The naked honesty in his voice is mesmerizing. He is a private and guarded guy. Why is he telling me this?
“The days after that are a blur. I don’t remember anything except waking in a hospital room somewhere, and Jack is there. He took me to detox. I bolted. Then there are some days in Chicago that I really don’t remember clearly. Then I’m in Rehab in California. And then I’m released and Jack is waiting on the steps to take me home with him. And then I wake up in the pool house and Jack is barbequing like everything is fucking normal. Except nothing is fucking normal. I don’t care who you are. You don’t expect to wake up to find Jackson Parker tossing a burger on the grill for you. And then slowly Jack’s everything normal takes over the fucking world and he’s got me straight and sober and recording again. And I’m still fucking thinking, but I’m off the smack, so something good came from it, I guess.”
He shakes his head, but the phrase ‘Jack’s everything normal’ tears me up inside. Jack’s everything normal helped Alan. It has never done a fucking thing for me. I feel the tears behind my lids.
“So, that’s it, Chrissie. End of story about me. But that’s not really why you asked that question, is it? You don’t give a shit what happened to me. You are trying to understand yourself.”
Startled, I look up. Oh god…how effortlessly he can turn my world into a shaky, shadowy mess. I can’t feel my arms, I can’t feel my legs and the words I want to scream are trapped inside my head.
“Do you want to know what I thought the first time I met you?”
Instinctive fear rises through my center and the small child in me screams: No, I don’t want to know! Go away, Alan. I don’t want you or anyone stumbling around in my lockboxes!
“I thought, what a beautiful girl. How is it possible she’s so sweet and charming and innocent in this fucked up world? So emotionally fragile that she playacts to hide how afraid she is. Sweet and charming and totally forgettable.”
I feel as though I am shrinking, diminishing.
Alan arches a brow. “Then I met Rene and I thought, how interesting. What’s wrong with Chrissie that she would have a friend like that? Maybe there is something beneath the surface of the girl she doesn’t let people see.”
The child in me screams: There is nothing. There is nothing. Go away!
“And now three days in New York,” he continues with a voice like velvet and words that burn, “I’m wondering how Jack fucked this up so completely. You’re a pretty fucked up girl. You hide it well by being charming. For what it’s worth, I think you should work at being less charming and more real.”
Scrambling in an emotional avalanche, I snap, “I am not fucked up and Jack didn’t fuck up a goddamn thing.”
His calm in the face of my welling panic is wholly defeating. It is the truth. No one ever sees it. No one ever speaks it. No one ever sees my truth. I don’t know what to do with this or what to do with him.
Alan rises, grabs the dishes off the counter and deposits them in the sink. “I don’t do bullshit, Chrissie. That’s why you are here. There are seven bedrooms. Pick the room you want.” And without looking back, Alan walks from the kitchen.
I sit in the quiet, in the kitchen that somehow got clean as though no one was ever here, and I want to run, but I don’t know why I’m not running or why I am still here.
I’ve been angry for so long, with all the things trapped in my lockboxes, and then finally there is truth in the room. I thought this moment would feel better. It doesn’t. It feels only different; a different kind of weirdness. The weirdness of letting truth in the room.
I suddenly know why I am so obsessed with Alan, and what is pushing me toward him. Alan Manzone can see right through me. It should make me run, it should terrify me; instead, it draws me toward him.
Alan sees me and has done so from the first night we met. I push off the counter and I am trembling and afraid.
Chapter Eight
The room is so quiet it is deafening.
I find Alan on his bed, casually reclined against a stack of pillows, dressed only in flannel pajama bottoms, and reading—of all things—the Wall Street Journal. There is a fire lit, the silver candlesticks flicker with flame, the bedcovers invitingly turned down as if in preparation for some sort of romantic scene. But he is focused on the Journal.
He doesn’t look at me and I feel stupid hovering by his door, so I start to wander around the bedroom, trying to still my frantic pulse. It’s a good thing that it’s an interesting room, otherwise my deliberate study would seem silly.
Even Alan’s bedroom is something I find weird and demands a certain amount of mental analysis. It looks like something from a nineteenth century English manor, elegant to the point of being almost a touch prissy. There’s an antique mahogany king-sized bed facing the fireplace; floral wingback chairs with pillows positioned before the hearth; and high-tech conveniences camouflaged in antique furniture. There’s a Monet on the wall; tall, polished sterling silver candlesticks; crystal; and fine, leather-bound, first edition books of classic literature. I sink down before a small, mahogany table where I find a stack of newspaper: Barons; the New York Times; the Washington Post; and the Daily Telegraph.
The warmth of the fire surrounds me like a caress, but I am quaking like a leaf. I wasn’t sure what Alan expected after he walked out of the kitchen. It would have been logical to assume that I would leave. But he knew I’d follow him. I don’t know why he’s ignoring me now. I look at the lit candlesticks—he wanted me to follow him.
I bite my lower lip and stare at my knotted fingers. I stayed alone in the kitchen for what seemed like ages, and now that I’ve done exactly what he expected me to do, nothing.
I struggle for something to say to break the silence. “You do have seven bedrooms. I counted them twice. But there are seven only if I include yours.”
He folds the Journal, tosses it on the table and fixes those penetrating, mesmerizing eyes on me. “Is this the room you want?” he asks, his voice gentle. “I meant it when I said you could have any room. It doesn’t have to be my room for you to stay.”
Does he not want me in his room? A ragged breath forces its way from deep in my lungs. “Do you want me to go?” I murmur.
“Of course not. I want you here.” His voice is husky and his eyes are wandering in a leisurely hold that is tender and oddly comforting. “But I’m not going to fuck you, Chrissie. I want so very much to make love to you.”
His gaze is intense, and the effect of his words travels through me. His precise tone, his odd phrasing; it should have made me laugh from nothing else but the weirdness of it. Instead, I want to cry because that statement reveals a lot of what he sees inside of me.
“Can we turn the lights out?” I whisper.
He crosses the room and stands in front of me, staring down into my eyes. “If you want, but I undressed you last night. I’ve seen you nude. I saw every part of you. Everything.”
I flush…everything?... what is he trying to tell me? Then the lights flip off and there is only the sweetly forgiving glow of firelight, and Alan is lifting me from the floor.
He is surprisingly strong, and he carries me with so little effort that it makes me feel fragile and beautiful and weightless. Tentatively, I touch my lips to the warm flesh of his neck, the taste of him running through my veins like fire, my blood pumping all through my body. But I g
et only a fast taste of him before he eases me down on the bed. I think he’s going to cover me with his body, but he doesn’t; he settles on his hip in a relaxed arrangement of long body parts beside me.
Every move he makes is with such exquisite, slow grace, but his eyes are smoky with eager desire. I take the initiative and curl into his chest to kiss him, wanting him to feel my own urgency, but he changes the flow of the current so subtly, it takes a moment for me to realize he is slowing me, calming me with his mouth, moving me where he wants. I want to melt into him, into the play of his fingers, the feel of his lips, but he holds the space between us.
His mouth leaves mine in a slow disconnect, and agony shoots up my center. He opens his eyes. The corners of his mouth lift in a diffused, sort of blurred smile.
“What do you like, Chrissie?” he whispers and leans down to kiss the inside of my thigh, hidden by my dress.
He hovers over me, watching my shifting emotions as I squirm with need. What do I like? I don’t know. I’ve never done this before. He is so seductive I realize that there isn’t anything I wouldn’t want to do with him.
“Everything,” I breathe and he answers me with a soft, raspy laugh.
Then one of my legs is in his hands. He’s slipping off my shoe, a kiss on the ankle, a gentle return of my flesh to the mattress, and then the other leg, surrounded by his touch, air hitting toes, lips touching ankle.
“You have no idea how beautiful you are,” he says softly. His hands are on my sundress. “Why can’t you see it? Why are you so unaware of your own beauty?”
Cold air surrounds my flesh. My dress is gone. My breath hitches, excitement and fear, knotted-bands running through my senses. I can’t look away from him. He is staring at me naked beneath him, seeing every inch of my flesh, and all I can do is watch him look at me.
His fingers are fluttering along my thigh, tracing and touching everywhere, and his other hand is on my breasts, and he is kissing me: my mouth, my neck, the rise of my breasts, the swell, the nipple, my belly, my navel. My skin is burning. Every move is patient, deliberate and potent.
Oh…it is getting stronger. It is getting wonderfully worse. I want to touch him. He begins to move slowly up my body with his kisses, and my nipples harden beneath the play of his mouth and fingers. I can feel his breathing, ragged and hard, and yet I’m bathed in that exquisite slowness of his moves. He is drawing me into him.