by Julie Olivia
“‘Ob-La-Di’ is always a fan favorite,” Bob says, ringing the first couple notes. Owen digs in his pocket and pulls out his phone.
After a couple moments of tapping the screen and mouthing words to himself, he nods and points to the piano. “Sure, I’m ready when you are.”
The notes start, the music goes, and off to the races is Bob the piano man, Elijah Owen, and…Elijah Owen’s beautiful freaking voice?!
Of course the man from New York can carry a crooning tune. His shoulders shrug to the beat, his throat bobs up and down with every line, and there’s a soft lick of his lips right before the chorus. The lyrics may be from McCartney, but his vocals are deep and smooth like butter, just like Sinatra.
Damn, I must be the Wicked Witch of the West, because holy moly, am I melting? Does anyone have water, or would that just make it worse? I discreetly fan my face, stopping only when I notice the bartender watching me. I purse my lips as if to say, ‘I’ll kill you if you tell a soul.’ His eyes avert very fast after that.
The chorus hits, we all sing along, people snap their fingers, stomp their feet, and take swigs of their drinks, and I’m stuck with heavy breaths and trying not to sound like a bear in heat. Bob shortens the song significantly and rings out final cords after the second round of the chorus.
Applause erupts, and I set down my drink to join in. Owen’s face, a smooth, normally olive color, is now tinted just the lightest shade of pink. I was starting to think it was impossible to slight this man into embarrassment, and yet all it took was some public singing. Imagine that.
Owen gives a low bow and laughs through his boyish smile before politely waving and walking back toward the couch.
“Okay, can we go home now?” he mumbles.
“You’re actually embarrassed?” I ask. “But that was lovely.”
“Ha ha,” he says forcefully, his face absolutely tattooed red. “Very funny.”
“Why, you are embarrassed!” I say, swatting his arm. I can’t resist touching him. I’m so beyond turned on by everything about him—his singing, his smile, and just how bashful this man actually is.
Owen smiles and rolls his eyes to the side. It’s so absurdly adorable.
“Alright, grumpy,” I say. “Let’s go.” I pat his back, immediately tugging away. Good lord, can I not help myself?
I drop my glass off at the bar, the bartender and me sharing a final ‘I won’t tell if you won’t’ glance before Owen and I disappear back down the stairwell and into the cool autumn night.
Crossing the threshold back into New York holds more power than I anticipated. The lofted speakeasy felt almost like a dream. I even turn back to make sure the yellow door is still there. It is, though slightly less mysterious than it was just a little bit ago, more welcoming like an entrance to your granny’s house inviting you in once more.
I find Owen looking at it in the same way, with a sense of longing, as if he wishes we didn’t actually leave. I look down at my mobile. The navigation is still going, and we’re close to my apartment. I wasn’t paying attention before, too distracted by walking and near-alleyway-somethings. Only a couple more blocks and I’m home.
I flow out of the alley, and Owen follows. The city lights are brighter, and the atmosphere is more alive.
We pass the sitcom coffee shop on our right. It’s closed and looks different at night. During the day, it appears to be the life of the street, the happening place where everyone is. At night, it’s just the slumped bell curve center between two hotel buildings where people trail in and out. I hadn’t even noticed those during the day.
Something about that place changed the mood around us. Maybe he’s just embarrassed. At least, I would think that, but I know exactly what changed. We were comfortable. We were alive. We had fun and, most of all, I think I started to actually like the guy.
When I look up, not aware that I was zoning out as bad as I was, I see the front of my stoop, lined by a black, rusted railing and chipped concrete. I stop in front, and Owen pauses with me.
The nerves that had lain dormant in my mind suddenly start to boil, like a kettle sitting on the stove for just a moment too long. I can feel the steam rising from me, my face growing hot, and my anxiety completely on edge.
What’s next for us? Did we just have a date? Did I want it to be?
“So which of us is gonna say the whole ‘Oh, is this you?’ kind of deal?” he asks, breaking me from my thoughts. I twist my head away from the tiny spot I was absentmindedly focusing on by the concrete and finally soak in every bit of Owen: his tousled hair, his tilted lips, and his smooth jawline so beautifully curved like a Michelangelo subject poised to be painted and preserved in history.
“Are you used to dropping women off at their flats?” I ask.
“Sure, I drop women off,” he says casually, shifting his weight from one foot to the next. “And I drop off friends who just need a safe walk home…if that’s what you want.”
His eyes say an apology, or maybe a prayer for me to voice something, anything, that would contradict us being friends.
My heart wants to lunge at the opportunity. I can picture it almost as clear as day, or as bright as the lights surrounding us: his hand wrapping behind me, caressing my neck…we’d have one of those kisses you only see in American media with the man bending his woman back by the waist, her head in the crook of his arm—a classic New York-type love, the most romantic of loves.
His lips look so full from here, the bottom one poutier than it might be on a normal man’s face but enticing all the same, plump like it might caress my own lips softer than someone else’s common, less beautiful ones. I wonder if his jaw would be just as smooth under my fingertips or if it would cut me like glass. I wonder a lot of things. But, before I can think about it any more, with my heart pounding, head foggy, and guts feeling like they might fall out of my arse at any moment, I take three steps forward, rise up on the balls of my feet, and kiss him.
There’s electricity, but it’s quick, a small tingle, a rush down to my center then gone in a flash. Fizzled out like a small spark made by unplugging a cord without warning.
Owen doesn’t move. I don’t move. We’re stunned. We stand there, lips locked together, in what should have been a peck but is now lasting much too long.
The planets rotate around the sun. Fifty years pass. And we’re still there, lips together, doing nothing else.
I finally pull back. Owen lifts both eyebrows at me. They nearly reach his hairline. He tilts his head to the left a little, an unspoken question.
What the hell was that?
“Oh my god,” I mutter, leaving my mouth gaping open at the sentiment lingering in the air: That was the worst first kiss imaginable.
The whole situation crashes down on me all at once, and suddenly I’m considering career moves. Maybe I should leave New York. California? That’s far. But, no, it’s still in this country. Somebody could find me and say, ‘Oh, that’s the girl who destroyed that one relationship before it even started.’ Maybe I’ll go to New Zealand? Yes, that’s a new place I haven’t been. Plus, there’s no way the hobbits know how to kiss properly. I’ll fit right in.
I walk backward.
“That was bad. Ohmygod.” The words slur together into one, coming out faster as they soar through my head just as quick. I thought saying it out loud might make me feel better, but it doesn’t. “I’m so sorry. That was so bad.”
Owen continues to stare at me, unmoving. No smile. No silly little lip twitch to indicate maybe he finds it just a little bit cute. No, just an unblinking expression of disbelief.
Me too, mate.
I’m not normally bad at first kisses. How did I mess that up? There was spark, tension, fireworks—all flying around in many directions tonight. How could I have misjudged? But I did. Maybe it was terrible timing. We’re on a grungy subway sidewalk. A street that likely has piss somewhere from the past year. Of course the kiss went horribly.
Owen takes one step forward. Anot
her. A final one. He’s toe to toe with me, and the height of him alone is overbearing. My chest beats faster. My arm falls limp by my side, and I lean back against the end of my stoop’s railing, letting it support my dead, useless, bad-kisser weight.
His hand rises, and I watch it like a movie in slow motion: reaching to the back of my neck, curling each individual finger along the curve of it, the last two resting at the peak of my neckline. His face lowers. My heart beats faster, almost in pain to be locked in such a tight cage, arcing out more and more as if begging to touch the man in front of me itself.
Owen’s voice is low, gruff, and delicious as he whispers, “Let’s try that again.” Then he takes my mouth with his.
This.
This is what a kiss should be.
His lips are everything—everything—I imagined, and yet my mind could not have dreamed up such a perfect mouth. Nothing could have prepared me for its perfect size, the lips’ mastery as they open and place little pecks along my own mouth, and the hot, wickedly harsh breaths that exit every time he demands more in return.
Owen’s hand pulls at the back of my neck, deepening the kiss when we linger too long, giving more of me to him. I can feel the pulse of my veins in every extremity, every pump of blood from my chest to my arms down to my stomach and between my legs. Every heartbeat punctuates my need, every subsequent echo of it tightens my core, tickles the sensitive area under my skirt.
I’m feeling his collarbone before I know it, tracing every ridge of it, riding up to his corded neck, finally ghosting along the curve of his jaw, so angled and perfect under my touch. My palm splays over it, my fingertips finding his hair. I allow myself to explore farther, to grip locks of his hair as he takes the same liberties with mine.
Owen presses his chest against me, pinning me as flush as I can be against the railing, the pressure of it against my lower back almost painful, but in the sweetest, sickest way. His mouth devours me further, our tongues somehow finding their way to meet in the middle. His free hand explores my sides, the hem along my bottoms, the place where my shirt meets the lining of my skirt, and settles right above my abs. A thumb drags across them, stopping to make its home in the dip in the center of my chest, inches below my breasts.
I can’t stop the sharp inhalation at its placement, breaking our kiss with my gasp. It’s only once I pull away that I realize how much energy was rushing out of me and into him, expended by the sheer will of my desire trying to find an outlet.
I take a heavy, admittedly shaky breath and finally open my eyes.
Inches from me are Owen’s, staring back, closer than they’ve ever been—flecked with little rings of darker brown and shines of a lighter, more milky color I’ve never noticed before, never been close enough to notice. It’s beautiful. Tantalizing. Encompassing every wonderful shade of a chocolatier shoppe.
“I liked that one more,” I say.
Owen lets out a rush of exhaled breath, as if he was holding it until I spoke. Followed by a light, airy laugh, he says, “I don’t know. That’s a difficult comparison.”
I want to quip back, but it’s hard to focus when his thumb doesn’t move from its precarious position over my core. His hands are so large that the fingers are nearly long enough to begin wrapping around my tiny rib cage. Distracting, to say the least.
And then it all comes crashing down on me—how easily I succumbed to him. How fast it was. How I’m breaking every single rule I set out for myself before coming to New York.
Against everything I want, I take a step to the side and away from him.
“So what’s the etiquette for this?” I ask, clearing my throat and fixing my messy hair.
Owen lets out a long, slow, heavy breath, a small hint of its visibility showing in the night air. Stress would be an understatement, and I feel so awful about it.
“We’re just two New Yorkers hanging out, as far as I can tell,” he says with a lopsided, disappointed smile.
“Right,” I agree.
We should leave it at that—the determination of simple friendship. He was just a meet-up partner walking me home, and our little detour was just that: a detour. The piano, the singing, the kiss…the wonderful, amazing kiss…nothing. It can’t possibly be anything.
I can sense his confusion. I get it, but I can’t explain to him what I’m thinking. There’d be no way. And there’s something more in those umber eyes, a type of want that makes them an even deeper color of burnt cocoa, something that’s fueled by warmth and desire that I just can’t look at anymore.
“Would you want to meet up again this week?” he asks. The words don’t stumble as I feel mine might if I tried to negotiate around this. They’re to the point. They’re firm, but not demanding. They’re everything that leads to my suddenly weakened thighs. “Nothing like a date, because obviously you hate those,” he amends with a clever little smile.
“Loathe entirely,” I agree.
Even though the tension is high, sparking between us like a live wire, we’re somehow still able to joke. I don’t know how, but I absolutely love that we can, which only makes all of this hurt that much more.
Owen nods then twists to face the dark spot between the two hotels just a couple blocks back, the indention in the skyscrapers where the café lives.
“Wanna meet there for lunch tomorrow?” he asks.
“I don’t see why not,” I say, shrugging, because what’s one more memory to add to the sitcom opening reel of my life? I’m convinced I will begin to live at that café, as is the destiny of any twenty-something in a city. I may as well start looking for my theme song now.
He chuckles, more to himself than to me, which makes me wonder if he heard my thoughts. Impossible, but the timing is too perfect.
“What?” I ask.
He shakes his head with another small laugh, subtle and introspective.
“You.”
“Me?” I echo.
“Yeah, you.”
I laugh. He returns the favor. And then we part ways like any good characters would at the end of a brilliant episode. We’re practically primetime, baby. The thought, as I lock my door behind me, only makes me laugh more.
12 Francesca
Meeting at the exact same coffee shop for the fourth time in a week is weird. Let’s not trick ourselves into thinking these silly fantasies of living in the big city, having a close group of friends, and maintaining the same seat at the same café every time is normal. Because it’s not. At least, that’s what I would be saying if, when I arrived for lunch with Owen, the same table near the window wasn’t available. Except it was. And I sat there, like the predictable New York heroine that I am.
It’s kismet—or maybe I’m on something resembling The Truman Show. I peer to the left of me, finding the countertops filled with bags of coffee beans, branded mugs, and to-go tumblers. Are there cameras embedded? Is Owen a prop friend?
Friend.
Even as the word knocks through my mind, pinging back and forth, the left, more logical side of my brain states, ‘Men are trash’ over to the right, more antsy and horny part as it says, ‘More like trash for screwing.’ I can tell this game of hypocrisy won’t be lost on me any time soon.
By the way he enters the coffee shop, one loop of his bag slumped over his shoulder and already running a hand through his hair, I can tell which part of me is winning. It’s the part that grips my mug of tea a bit tighter, feels the handle slip through my clammy hands, and subsequently drops it to the floor with a loud, obnoxious, attention-drawing crash.
I am a stoic angel of grace.
I scowl at myself, getting up from my chair and bending down to gather the larger pieces.
“Fran, you already drunk?” he jokes, a grin on his features as he drops his bag to the back of the chair in one smooth motion, easy and cool. Seductive. “We’ve talked about this. Maybe we’re in the wrong anonymous group.”
“Shut up.” It’s all I can get out that isn’t ‘God your arms look huge in that shirt’ or
‘What type of conditioner did you use this morning because I want to touch every single strand of your hair again?’
“I’ll go get a mop or something,” he says with a chuckle, another hand diving into those black locks of his as he walks off toward the café counter, almost in motion with the barista gathering materials for clean-up.
Last night changed things. His smile doesn’t seem as sly to me anymore, but instead jovial and playful. The crinkles around his eyes are more boyish, less tainted by the underlying ill intentions of a man who can’t carry a tune, but instead full and bright like a man who croons Sinatra with such ease. And those lips…I want them again so bad.
Next moment, he’s down at eye level with me, a rag in one hand and a pan in the other, sweeping up bits of mug shards, face so close to mine.
God, those damn wrists too.
I look up, and he’s in concentration, hair flopping this way and that until there’s a buzz between us and I know he can feel me looking at him. He glances up from under his eyelashes.
Those eyes couldn’t possibly belong to a man of ill virtue.
Right? Right?
It’s official: I’ve done the worst; I’ve convinced myself he isn’t the devil and fallen for the devil’s most impressive trick.
Owen winces and sharply inhales. Both our eyes dart to his hand, where tiny flecks of blood stain the tips of his finger.
“I should pay more attention,” he mutters, taking the rag and standing with the filled pan of mug pieces. He stares into it, as if chastising the pieces for having dared to injure him at all. It’s a pointed stare, lips twisted to the side of his mouth and jawline tense.
Would I want him to stare at me like that? Intense and controlling?
No. What the hell. No!
Except the good angel, the crooked winged Lara with the halo, says, Yes. Very much yes. Have his mouth on yours again!
I shake my head, standing and grabbing the pan from him to drop the stray ceramic pieces I collected into it.