by Jay E. Tria
“What do you want me to do?”
Shinta swept his gaze, past the two-car garage to his right and the low white walls and maroon gate behind him that guarded the two-story house. The streets outside were covered in darkness, save for the pop of light from a lamppost a few meters away. He twisted his gaze back to Jill’s half-open window. The unlocked gate was easy enough to negotiate, but this time there was nowhere to go but up.
There was a plastic chair littered near the front door, and right above the garage, a terrace secured by thin steel railings. He pulled the Monoblock next to Jill’s sleeping lime green Beetle and began his ascent.
“Tell me you’re kidding.” Jill’s faint words floated down to him.
He bent his knees and sprung from the plastic seat, the chair clattering to the ground when his weight left it. His hands found the railings and clutched them for dear life. His legs swung freely, the tips of his sneakers finding the roof of Jill’s car and taking hold.
“If you so much as scratch my car, Shinta, I swear—”
There was a whisper of a door flung open and now Jill’s voice was coming from the terrace, directly above him. Shinta concentrated on her rather than on the panic and the feeling of utmost idiocy swooping inside his belly.
“If Edward Cullen can do this, so can I,” he managed through stilted breaths.
He kicked off from the car’s roof, his left foot finding hold on the concrete platform, then his right. He wasn’t sure anymore if being six-feet-plus was an advantage in this situation. It felt like he had an excess of length and limb. Clammy hands gripped his arms, and in a succession of heaving breaths, a final push and what felt like several bruised ribs, Shinta was on firm ground, Jill’s fingers steadying him.
“That looked terrible,” Jill said as she led him through the terrace door, closing it behind them. “You must have had many stunt doubles.”
“No fair. It was a steep climb.”
Her fist landed hard on his chest.
“Ow!” cried Shinta. “Still trying to normalize breathing over here.”
“What the hell was that?”
Shinta caught her hand as she tried to hit him again, pulling her close and dipping his head so his apology would rush right to her ear. “I’m sorry. But I told you. I didn’t want to go home yet.”
He felt her ease up against him, tight fists opening into fingers that skimmed the length of his back.
“So, can I stay for a while?” he asked.
Jill shot a pained look at the locked door. Shinta half expected her parents to come bursting through it too, likely with an electric axe and a body bag, but he held his ground.
“If my mother catches you in here—”
“I’ll say hello and put her hand to my forehead,” Shinta cut her off, mouth forming a cheeky grin. “You know she loves me.”
Jill was biting her lip so hard it was bound to bleed soon. “Fifteen minutes,” she finally said. “Maximum.”
“Deal.”
Jill stepped back, pointing to the space before him as if to say, go ahead. Shinta smiled. His eyes roamed the narrow room, adjusting to the half-darkness. There was a lamp shaped like a cat on the table closest to the window, and it was the only source of light. Where its pool of light fell, Shinta was able to make things out—blurs of watercolor and line drawings on the wall, stacks of books on the table, and Julia, the seafoam green Gibson Les Paul guitar settled on a stand near the window. Shinta’s eyes lingered on her bed, on the clutter of pillows, books, and CDs there, her nighttime companions. It was his first time in Jill’s room, but her bed was already his favorite part.
He heard a shuffle of bare feet against floor behind him, and then Jill’s arms wound around his stomach, her cheek pressed against his back.
“You really are here, aren’t you? One month late, with stubble on your chin, three bottles of beer in your belly, and maybe a couple of screws loose. Why else would you even think of climbing through my window?” She sighed, a long deep breath burning against his back, sending sparks coursing under his skin. “But it’s you. You’re here. Finally.”
“I am,” he answered, wanting to give her some assurance, a small semblance of certainty.
He turned, easing around the tight cage of her arms. She was ready for his kiss, meeting his mouth with the same need. Her hands released their grip on his taut torso only to cradle his face in her palms. Shinta’s kiss, this time, had a grand intent, a purpose for being, unlike the kiss just hours before, the one that was the result of a wild surge, a mindless act, thanks to a succession of cold summer nights broken by the sight of his girl under flashing lights. His mouth moved slowly, each nip, each swipe of tongue, and each stolen bite on her lower lip a deliberate exercise.
He whispered her name between gasps of air. Jill. Jillian Marie. He said it with lips brushing her earlobe, knowing it tickled her there, a feat he couldn’t accomplish with a phone call, with an ear pressed against a receiver. He missed her. That was the root of the intent—tonight he wanted to show her how much.
Her feet on his sneakers, arms locking around his neck, she pulled herself up as high as she could go, molded against him. She kissed him back with eyes half-open, keeping him in sight, then again with eyes shut, as if willing the room to spin away. She pulled back as Shinta’s fingers were sliding down the curve of her spine.
“Nine minutes before your fifteen is up,” she said.
Shinta swallowed an oath, teeth grating against Jill’s neck that she shivered. He wrapped his hands around her waist, twisting on his heels, taking her with him as he took a free fall to her bed. A gasp of shock, muffled against the sheets. A clatter of sneakers to the floor, and a rip, zippers pulled apart. Folds of pajama stripes, white cotton shirt, and worn jeans torn away from skin and thrown against the wall, over the cat-shaped lamp, extinguishing all light.
Shinta held his weight above her, careful to not disturb the altar of books and music on her cushions. “Fast was not the plan tonight.” He exhaled on the hot skin of her throat, fire bursting inside him too. Why the hell did he waste precious minutes staring at her room?
Jill was busy tracing patterns and letters on his bare chest, on each ripple of taut muscle on his stomach; fiery, invisible tattoos drawn by her fingers. “There was a plan?”
“Fine, I admit it,” he choked out. Jill’s fingers had progressed, drawing lines that went down, down, down. “I played it by ear.”
“The way you live your life.”
One large hand draped around her neck, while his left found the curve of her breasts, the planes of her stomach, the bones of hips and flesh of thighs, each fleeting touch answered by short gasps. “But if fast is all we have, I can be fast.”
“Fast now,” she said against his lips, pulling him down for a rough kiss. “Slower later.”
“But you said—”
He heard her smile in the pitch darkness. “No one else is home. Not until morning.”
Shinta had to laugh at that. On any other night, such a teasing revelation would have made him relax, set a slower pace. But tonight was the first time he had seen her, kissed her, and touched her after three months and two days. Surely Jill knew he was counting the days too.
“I was being punished?” he said, tongue in her ear.
“You were being tested.”
“Ah. A physical test. I usually get top marks on those.”
His clothes remained draped over her lamp, so they only had the moonlight and the street lamps filtering through her window. The slivers of light were slim and faint. They weren’t enough. He wanted to see her. He wanted to see everything. They moved based on memory—with hasty reintroductions, and touches that followed shivers, answered urgent whispers.
Later. Again, and slower, he reminded himself as they moved as one, hip against hip. He raised his head and kissed her cheek, her eyelids, as together they chased release. More, again, later. They had until morning.
“You lost weight.” He found it in the fe
el of her bones so close beneath her skin. Right there. Change apparent.
“Miki said I look happy.”
“You do.” Shinta had been worried about that. That time apart had eaten into the pocketful of happy things they had collected when they were last together. “But still.” His hands spanned the slope of her back, feeling angles that weren’t there before.
Jill locked the last button of her pajama top and shifted to her side, pushing his chin up with one finger. “It’s the New Album diet. You haven’t heard of it?”
He had, of course. When he stole her away for an impromptu one-week holiday in Tokyo, he knew what awaited Jill back in Manila. He knew she was coming home to long hours in Mars’s studio, a succession of days folding into nights as Trainman transitioned their songs from ideas and free sound to an actual, living album. It was their very first full-length effort too. And as much as they teased Kim for being the one who cared most about the work, when it came down to it, they were each their own brand of obsessive-compulsive. They thrived in a give-and-take loop of addictive energy, fueling each other through the toil of recording, and in the weeks that followed, the grueling run that was indie promotions.
Shinta hooked a leg behind Jill’s bare knees, drawing her closer. “Kim is working you all too hard.”
“Mars is the boss, not Kim.”
“Same banana,” he growled, knowing better.
“You can’t really talk busy schedules with me, Mr. Hotshot Celebrity,” Jill fired back, resuming her task of drawing shapes on his bare chest, long angular curves that tickled his abs. After their second round, she had allowed him to retrieve his boxers, but had expressly forbidden him to put on his shirt. I want to make sure the abs are still there, she’d said, deadpan.
“You grew out your hair.” Her fingers rose to meet the ends of the longer locks where they grazed the angle of his jaw.
“New movie hair.” He smiled. Apparently, he’d changed a bit too.
“So. How long are you here for?”
Shinta was looking forward to this question. He had waged an extended war with his manager—the man better known as his father—over this. “Six weeks and four days,” he said, beaming. He laughed at the face she pulled. “You look shocked.”
“I thought you were going to say only a couple more hours! My sweetheart-of-hero-off-to-war speech was ready.” Jill buried her face in the crook of his neck, her finger patterns forgotten. “I can’t believe your father let you have time off again. So soon after the last one.”
Shinta fought the grimace forming on his face. He had won one battle, but this war was still at an impasse, and quite far from a peace treaty. “Don’t worry about it.”
Jill’s breaths were long, warm strokes along his jaw. He pulled her tighter against him, running his hand down her back. “Sleep now,” he crooned. “Talk tomorrow.”
“You won’t try to wake me?”
“You’ll know when I do.”
“Right.” He felt a soft smirk, a warm flash of her breath close to his ear. “Sweet dreams, Shinta,” she whispered. “Don’t forget to fake-action-star your way down the window before daybreak. Or take the door like a normal person.”
“I won’t forget. I don’t want to be murdered today.”
“Good. And Shinta?”
“Yes?”
“I can’t believe you speak Twilight.”
He stifled his laughter against her cheek. “They made that thing into a manga. There was no escape!”
“Whatever.”
He lay still on his side, unmoving save for the steady rhythm of his hand against her back, waiting for her breathing to deepen into the sound of sleep. “Jillian Marie?”
“Yes?”
“I’m sorry I was late. I broke my promise.”
“It’s okay.”
“It’s not.”
“Yeah, it’s not.” She giggled.
He wanted her to open her eyes, tilt her chin up, and look at him. But they had both had a long night, and besides, they had six weeks and four days ahead of them.
“I’m trying,” he said, both plea and promise. “We’re doing good, yes?”
“Good. Yes.”
May 23, Saturday, morning
“I knew it.”
“Let the ridicule stop there. If I knew you were coming, I would’ve had them put away.”
“And let me miss the private gallery of Shinta Mori? Why would you take that away from me?”
It had been twenty minutes since they’d stepped inside Shinta’s apartment. The yellow-white rays seeping through the high windows weren’t hot enough to be called sunrise, as if the sun itself knew it was too early to be morning. The stench of stale coffee and overcooked airplane food clung to Shinta’s shirt like it was part of the cotton weave. Hours before the flight, he was grinding against drenched bodies as Trainman rocked their set at the Pink Rock music festival in Singapore’s Gardens by the Bay. The day before that, he was baking under the impervious Manila sun.
Shinta felt dead on his feet, but a new, peculiar force was circuiting his limbs, keeping him upright. He kept his gaze on the source of this energy. Jill was here, in his apartment. He had found her in Manila walking underneath the gloom of her breakup with Kim. But last night, she had kissed him, and accepted his rash invitation for a one-week Tokyo holiday.
YES!
He’d been singing that word inside his head since—the echoes loud, triumphant, and admittedly smug. It took a large vat of self-control for him to not pump his fists with Jill right there next to him. But she had to understand. This win was years in the making.
“Aw, look at you over there all greased up and naked.”
Embarrassment was eating through his elation, though.
“Is there a rule that celebrities must have a hall of their faces?” Jill’s eyes did not leave the blown up photo of a shirtless Shinta. It was the biggest one on his living room wall, and thankfully, the last. “I see that all the time in TV dramas, and that’s apparently based on truth. I mean, is it really necessary to be reminded of your perfection?” Jill’s finger was tracing the shadows formed by his bicep, seemingly entranced.
Shinta cleared his throat. “The real one is standing right here.”
Jill turned to him, eyebrows wiggling in the air as her eyes raked the flesh of his arms exposed by his t-shirt. “It’s an uncanny likeness, is all.”
“It’s flash photography, not an oil painting. Come on, let’s get you to bed.”
“You’re going to take down all the pictures while I sleep, aren’t you?”
“Yep.” And the ones in his bedroom. And the one beside his bathtub. What was wrong with him? Why did he have so many?
He pushed the small of her back, leading the way, pausing at the threshold of an open black door. His bedroom was white, an enlarged model of the one he kept at his mother’s house in the Philippines: wide, sparse, and gleaming.
“You have one bed,” was Jill’s singular, astute observation.
“Well, it made sense because I was the only one living here.”
“It’s a big bed.”
“I’m a relatively big man.”
“I know that.” Jill turned to him, laughter and a spark of something else in her eyes. “We did not think this through.”
“Not one bit. It’s great, isn’t it?” Shinta reached out a hand to tease the curve of her hips. He then heaved out a sigh, deciding against the sharp burst of heat that shot down his navel. He knew she was tired from their long day too, more so than him. “I’ll take the couch.”
“No, this is your place. I’ll take the—”
“Hush. Have you seen that massive, supple, leather beast? My father and any one of his girlfriends could easily bunk there. Comfortably. Oh no. Have they? They have, haven’t they?” Shinta shook his head, trying to shake the vivid image pressing against his eyeballs. He focused his gaze on Jill. “I’ll be fine,” he insisted. “Besides, what kind of man would I be if I let my girlfriend sleep on
the couch while I’m sprawled on the bed?”
“Hmm.” Jill sing-songed, turning a graceful 360 degrees on her sneakers, landing with her gaze away from him.
Ah, too soon. He closed the space between them, sliding a hand up her spine to rest at the back of her head. His fingers toyed with the locks of her dark hair.
“I love you,” he said, holding her gaze. “I’m glad you’re here.”
Jill nodded, a slow bob of her head. “I believe you. Glad to be here too. This looks like a great bed.”
Shinta laughed, moving his lips down the length of her neck, leaving a trail of kisses. His fingers skimmed downwards, grip tightening around her waist. He slipped one last kiss below her ear and let her go, making for the door before he changed his mind.
“What the hell. This is stupid.”
A firm hand wrapped around his wrist, and the next thing Shinta knew, Jill’s mouth had claimed his, her arms winding around his neck. He could have endured another plane ride, another stampeding riot, with the energy that surged through him, but he knew there were better uses for it now. He answered her kiss the same way he did everything she had never asked him. Yes. YES! His fingers crawled up her shirt, up the curve of her shoulders, until she lifted her arms for him and her shirt was gone.
“We should be sleeping,” she said, arm cinched around his waist as she led him to his big white bed.
He pulled off his shirt when she took off her bra. It was only fair. “We had a really long day, yes.” He leaned forward until they tipped over, falling as one weight against the sheets.
Jill nipped at his jaw, fingers raking through his hair. “You’re not tired?”
“I feel very alive, actually.” He chuckled low, allowing his weight to press against her.
“I understand,” she said. “Who needs sleep anyway?”
“We have several nights to devote to sleep.” Shinta felt a deep sigh move through her throat as he bent his head to kiss it. “Or maybe not. Sleep is for the weak, I always say.”
He had a long time to think about how this would go. He wasn’t the type to bother too much with plans. But for this he had dreamed up each detail, each move, even allowed his mind to wander into more daring pursuits. The crucial thing was that the first time had to be perfect. The kind of perfect that proved a point—to him that this was exactly what he’d long wanted, and to her, that this was exactly what she deserved.