“You don’t even know him.”
“Yeah, and neither do you.”
I took a deep breath and finally managed to spit out the question that I really wanted to ask. “Dylan, why do you care?”
His face remained grave as threw his arms up in the air, surrendering. “You know what? I don’t. I hope you and Wally have a great night together. I’ll see you back at the hotel.”
I watched his back as he stormed off, but I was pretty sure that this time, he didn’t care whether or not I was watching. And honestly, I wasn’t even sure if I cared anymore either.
Chapter 16
Normally, when a guy as ridiculous looking as Walter is within a five-foot radius of me, I somehow forget how to form a sentence properly. However, by some miracle of God, Walter was actually such an easy conversationalist that I was not only able to push coherent words out of my mouth, but also able to shove the fight with Dylan to the back of my mind and enjoy myself for the rest of the night.
After leaving the theater, Walter brought me to a Thai food restaurant on the Lower East Side called Triple Seven. It was a cute little place loaded with colored Christmas lights, bamboos and round paper lamps. The tables were stacked a little too close together for my comfort, but I kept that to myself. I didn’t want to start voicing complaints five minutes into the date.
Although Walter didn’t align with my typical staving artist/cheating jerk-off dating genre, I was able to overlook it based not only on the fact that he was a portrait of impeccable male beauty, but also because his personality wasn’t ranking that far behind his looks. Ordinarily, guys that looked like Walter had a tendency to be either completely self-indulgent or possess the personality of a doormat, but, thankfully, Walter was a pretty bright guy. And genuine.
And gorgeous, did I mention?
While we waited for our entrées to arrive, I learned that Walter had grown up in Jupiter, Florida, a town outside of West Palm Beach. He’d moved to New York his freshman year of college and loved it so much that he never left. He had two older sisters and was, in fact, named Walter after his father since he was the only boy in his family. He worked in the real estate market since his dad had been in the industry for over a decade, and often flew back and forth from New York to Florida for business.
Walter took the liberty of ordering the fried spring rolls for an appetizer and two giant plates of Sriracha noodles for our main dishes, which were so spicy that one scorpion bowl quickly turned into three. I wasn’t all that hungry anyway, since Dylan had pretty much killed my mood and appetite for the evening, so I happily sucked down one bowl after another in hopes of recuperating what was left of the weekend.
After we left the restaurant, the excessive amount of alcohol I’d consumed hit me all at once, and through my drunken haze I decided to call it a night. Walter and I took a cab back to Times Square and were dropped off across the street from my hotel. Once we hopped out and started walking, Walter brought up the subject that I had been trying to avoid all evening.
“So, what’s up with your friend?” he asked, looking concerned.
Ugh. Talk about a buzzkill.
“I’m going to be honest,” he continued. “I really like you and I had a great time tonight – which I think you can already tell – but if something is going on between you two, then I don’t want to step on anyone’s toes.”
I shook my head. “Trust me, nothing is going on with us. Absolutely nothing.”
He looked at me doubtfully. “Nothing at all? Did you guys ever date?”
“Nope,” I insisted. “Never.”
His uncertainty quickly faded to curiosity. “Well he’s obviously crazy about you. That’s the only explanation that would make sense for his behavior tonight.”
“No!” My Irish whisper had gone into full effect again, no doubt due to the amount of booze in my bloodstream. “You don’t understand. Dylan is an asshole. It’s who he is, it’s what he does. He’s rude to people for no reason. Even earlier today, he gave some old guy the wrong directions, just for kicks. I wouldn’t take his attitude towards you personally, and I certainly wouldn’t take it to mean that he likes me. I can assure you, he doesn’t.”
Walter lowered his eyes suspiciously. “Now let me ask you something: does that bother you?”
“Does what bother me?”
A slight smirk emerged across his face, as if he knew something I didn’t. “Does it bother you that he doesn’t think of you that way?”
I sighed and plopped myself down on a nearby bench. This conversation was definitely not going to be short enough for me to last standing up. Walter followed suit and sat down next to me, waiting for my response.
“The reason I ask,” he continued, “is because when you say that he isn’t interested in you, your tone of voice isn’t very, well, nonchalant about it. You sound almost upset by it.”
I buried my face in my hands and tried to seek out a response. Walter was a great guy; that was obvious. He was so great that I was actually able to push Dylan out of my mind temporarily. But as the night went on, the thought of Dylan had slowly started to resurface, despite the fact that I’d tried my hardest to suppress it. I had used a gorgeous man and excessive amounts of alcohol to try to block Dylan out of my mind, but as luck would have it, it didn’t work. Nothing worked.
Love conquers all.
I raised my head to meet eyes with Walter, but I didn’t have to say anything. He already knew. I could easily have told him that I had no interest whatsoever in Dylan, but I didn’t want to lie to him. From what I could tell so far, he was a genuinely nice guy and deserved to know the truth.
“Walter, I think you’re a great guy…”
“Oh, here we go.” He rolled his eyes like he’d been down that road before. It made me laugh.
“No, really, I’m serious,” I insisted. “If we had met under different circumstances, I’d be all over you. I mean, come on. Look at you. You’re…” I stammered, trying to tone down the number of perverted adjectives that were dancing through my brain. “You’re…”
Mouth-wateringly, coochie-shakingly delicious? An orgasm with legs? What sex would look like if it presented itself in human form?
“You’re gorgeous,” I spit out. “And you’re fun. I just… I just can’t. It’s not the right time.” I forced a smile. “I’m not swearing you off forever, just for right now. I have to straighten out this situation before I can even think about dating.”
He looked at me knowingly. “You love him?”
I nodded reluctantly, surprised that I was even admitting it. I hadn’t even wanted to admit it to myself. “Very much. I’ve been trying to fight it because I don’t think he feels the same way and I don’t want to ruin our friendship. But considering I do have feelings for him, it really wouldn’t be fair of me to start anything with you knowing that, even if he doesn’t feel the same.”
What I loved about Walter was the fact that he was so understanding and appreciative of my honesty. He leaned back and put his arm around me, listening and offering suggestions with the patience of a social worker. I wasn’t sure where on earth this perfect being had beamed down from or why the hell he was still on the dating market, but I made sure that when he slipped me his phone number and instructed to call him if I changed my mind, I tucked that bad boy into a safe place. I had to keep my options open. Just in case.
“But before I go, I have one more question,” he said, standing up to see if any cabs were coming down the street.
“Shoot.”
He waved his arm into the street and flagged a cab over, then turned back around to face me. “Are you ever going to tell him how you feel?”
That was the question I had been tormenting myself with for the last few months, over and over again. But no matter how many times I replayed the situation in my head, I could never come up with an answer.
“Honestly,” I said. “I have absolutely no idea.”
***
From the time I stepped foot
into the lobby ‘til the time I reached our hotel room, I had played dozens of different scenarios in my head, all of which contained my paranoid revelations of Dylan’s revenge ploys against me. What if he brought a girl back to our hotel room to spite me? Or if he didn’t come back to the room at all? What if he’d picked up some tramp at the show and decided to spend the night at her place instead?
My ridiculous musings were put to rest the minute I walked into the hotel room and found that Dylan was not only present, but he was alone. He was sitting on the edge of the bed, leaning forward with his chin cupped in his hands. He didn’t even acknowledge me when I walked in, just continued staring at the floor. The TV and radio were both off, making the room completely and awkwardly silent. He looked so deep in thought that I almost didn’t even want to disturb him, but I knew we had to talk.
“Hey.” I realized I was whispering and I wasn’t sure why. Maybe because our room was so damn quiet.
He looked up and made eye contact with me, forcing a smile. I could tell right away that he wasn’t mad anymore. He had a sad, distant look in his eye that made me want to slither up beside him and bury my face in his chest.
“Hey,” he mumbled. “Did you have a good night with Wally boy?”
I shot him a look that said don’t even start, which usually he would find funny, but something about his whole demeanor was different. I couldn’t put my finger on it, but I sensed that something was definitely on his mind. I took off my shoes and sat down on the bed next to him.
“Do you mind telling me what that was all about back there?” I asked, referring to the incident at the theater.
He shook his head and refused to look at me. “Not really.”
His gaze alternated from the floor to me for about half a second before resuming its original focus on the floor. I couldn’t tell if he was upset with me or he just wanted to be alone.
“Listen,” I said, with as much compassion as I could dig up. “I’m sorry I got upset with you earlier. But you have to understand, you can’t be rude to people just because you’re pissed off that some kids in the crowd were being assholes.”
He shook his head again, his expression still blank. “That’s not it.”
“What’s not it?”
“That’s not why I was upset.”
I put my hand on his arm, thinking that it might provide some sort of level of comfort. I was surprised when he didn’t pull away. “Okay, so tell me why you were mad.”
“I’d rather not.”
I threw my legs up on the bed and sat Indian-style, waiting for him to explain himself, but he didn’t. Instead, he was about as talkative as Bianca. I was getting nowhere.
“Dylan, we’re friends, right?”
He shot me a look of dread, like I was going to give him some maternal lecturing speech.
“You know you can talk to me about anything,” I pressed.
“Not anything,” he mumbled, toying with the hole in his jeans. “So, how was your night out with Wally?”
Despite my annoyance that he was purposely changing the subject, I went with it anyway. “It was okay.”
His attention was now focused on me, and he was looking at me with that all-too-familiar intensity, like he was trying to decipher some hidden meaning. “Just okay?”
I rolled my eyes. “Come on, you’re changing the subject to get out of talking about what’s bothering you. None of this is important.”
“It’s important to me.” He mumbled it in such a barely audible whisper that I was almost positive I hadn’t heard him correctly.
“What did you say?”
“Nothing.”
“No, tell me what you just said.”
“You heard me.”
I had heard him. My chest started to ache. I wasn’t sure if he was insinuating what I thought he was, but I hoped, I prayed, that he was.
Please God, I begged. Please tell me he’s saying what I think he is.
I wasn’t sure if I even believed in God, but I thought about the fact that if God really did exist, he must really think I was one selfish bitch. The only time I ever prayed was when I wanted something, or needed something. And it wasn’t even a real prayer, it was more of a half-assed one where I just said a quick few lines of “give me this, please” and ended it with an Amen. No wonder I was up shit’s creek. God didn’t grant wishes to selfish people who couldn’t even pray right.
“Well, if you really want to know, I told Walter that I think he’s a nice guy, but I don’t plan on seeing him again.”
Dylan sat up straight and leaned in towards me. “Why?”
If there was one thing I knew about myself, it was that I never told someone how I felt about them without knowing how they felt. It set you up for rejection and failure. Everyone knows that the person who says “I love you” first is almost always the one that gets dumped in the end. Stupid girls did that. I wasn’t a stupid girl.
“I’m done answering questions,” I said, pulling back from his stare. “I’m not answering anything until you start talking. I want to know why you pulled that attitude earlier and I want to know why you’re giving me the third degree about my night.”
“Why do you think?” Dylan yelled. He stood up and started pacing around the hotel room in the same circular motion as he was earlier during his wardrobe crisis. After about ten laps, he stopped pacing and sat down on the bed next to me, reverting back to his original position, with his chin cupped in his hands and his eyes focused on the floor. As I watched him, I saw a familiar emotion resurface, but this time it had nothing to do with music. It had nothing to do with a stage and an audience that consisted of hundreds of people. I wasn’t sure of the cause, but I knew one thing for sure.
Dylan was terrified.
I watched him, waiting for him to say something, anything, but he just stared blankly into space as if he was trying to find his way back from the millions of thoughts rummaging through his head. After what felt like hours, he finally spoke.
“I didn’t like seeing you with him.”
“Okay,” I replied, trying to pry out a detailed response. “Well, what was it about him that you didn’t like?”
He shook his head in frustration, like I was missing the point. “It wasn’t just him. To be honest, I… I don’t think I’d like seeing you with anyone else.”
If there was one question that I needed answered, it was whether Dylan really felt the same way that I did. I had to make sure it wasn’t just one of those scenarios where he wanted what he couldn’t have only because he thought it was gone.
“Okay,” I said. “Well I need to know one thing. Is it because you want to be with me?”
Dylan nodded slowly and then finally made eye contact with me, bracing himself for my response. “Yeah,” he said in a soft voice. “It is.”
Now I was the one leaning in towards him. “Why?”
He stared back at me, confused.
“I want to know why,” I said. “Why are you all of a sudden telling me this? I need to know this isn’t just because you’re one of those guys who wants what he can’t have, because in that case…”
“No,” he interrupted. “That’s not it at all. To be honest, I didn’t know whether to tell you how I felt because I didn’t know how you felt. But when I saw you with that guy tonight…” His voice trailed off and he looked up at me, his blue eyes glowing from the reflection of the lamp, and he didn’t need to say any more. I knew. He felt it, too.
“When I saw you with that guy tonight,” he continued. “I was sick to my stomach. I actually watched you guys for a minute before I came up to you, which was why I was so pissed. I saw you guys talking close together and laughing and I thought…” He started to stumble on his words. “I thought I had lost you. Well technically, I never had you, but you know what I mean. I tried to put it out of my head for the rest of the night and forget about it, but I couldn’t. Every time I thought about you with him, it made me sick. I left the show and came back here so I could be
alone and think.” He sighed and looked up at me, awaiting a response. “Jesus Christ, Renee, please say something.”
I didn’t know what to say. There was so much I wanted to say, but when I tried to tactfully sum up the combustion of feelings that had been bottled up inside me for months, my words froze in my throat. I wanted to tell him that he was the person I’d been waiting for my whole life. The person that made me feel like I’d found something I never even knew I’d lost. The person that I could spend all day, every day with for the rest of my life and it would never be enough.
But I couldn’t. Instead, I put my hand on the back of his neck and pulled him towards me, my lips pressed hard against his, his hand slowly working its way up my thigh.
And then, we proceeded to have, hands-down, the best sex I’ve ever had in my life.
Chapter 17
Love is a funny thing. It’s as if you spend your whole life waiting for it, and then, when it finally happens, everything just sort of falls into place. You don’t have to question it or second guess it. It just feels… right.
For the first time in my life, I could feel it. It wasn’t that senseless sappy honeymoon zing of infatuation; it was different. I finally had a valid reason for downloading cheesy romance songs, crying at weddings, smiling like a complete idiot at absolutely nothing when I was by myself in public. I was in love. Not pathetic one-sided stalker love, or humiliating boyfriend-sleeping-with-my-best-friend love. Real, true, living, breathing, mutual, inseparable love. And it felt surreal.
After practically living in Dylan’s bed for two weeks straight, I slowly started to make my way back into the real world and drag our relationship out of the closet. My mother practically dropped the phone with glee when I told her I was dating someone new. I was positive it was only because she was glad I wasn’t holed up in my apartment pining over David anymore.
“I’m so happy for you, honey,” my mother gushed. “I can’t wait to meet him.”
Sound Bites: A Rock & Roll Love Story Page 10