The Interview

by Alice Ward

  “At least let Phillip take you home.” Something flashed across his face — relief maybe? — and he twisted into a sitting position. “I trust him, unlike those cabbies who take drugs to stay awake for long hours, and it’s free.”

  I didn’t know if he was inferring something about my income by referencing the cost of a cab or if he was just trying to convince me to let his driver take me home, but I wasn’t about to hang around and ask. Despite my body still buzzing with afterglow, I was extremely disturbed about the eruption of feelings I’d felt and wanted nothing more than to run away from them and leave them behind.

  They’d followed me. Even as I sat on my upcycled desk chair and punched random letters on my keyboard, a warm and tingly sensation crept along my neck and arms as I remembered how nice it felt to be cuddled up against him.

  And it had felt amazing to be impulsive. Wild nights had never been on my priority list, nor had they ever been something I just stumbled upon, but I was now acutely aware of what I’d been missing.

  Phenomenal, mind-blowing sex with celebrities, apparently.

  Admittedly, there was a small part of me deep inside still stuck in my high school social oppression that wanted to stand in the middle of Times Square and shout to the world what I’d done.

  The vast majority of me, though, was embarrassed, not because I’d had casual sex but because I couldn’t stop thinking about it. In any event, what Tate and I had done on his couch was going to stay far, far away from my interview.

  ***

  “Just tell me what you think. And be honest.”

  “Aren’t I always honest?”

  I didn’t reply, and Jenna turned her focus to the piece in her hand. My stomach was rolling as she started reading, and I was clenching my hands so tightly my knuckles were a sickly shade of yellow-white. I hadn’t been this nervous for a critique since I first started writing for The Apple.

  “Oh my god, I didn’t realize Kelly Harper was in this play.” Jenna looked up at me with wide, sparkling eyes. “I love her!”

  “Mhm.” I couldn’t muster more of a response than that. Tate’s opinions about Kelly Harper flooded back to me, and I mentally batted them away like irritating gnats.

  My apartment was quiet again as Jenna continued reading. I wished it was rush hour so I would have the sounds of angry horns and sudden brake screeches to serve as a distraction, but the only thing I had to distract me was my fingers, so I folded and unfolded them over and over before beginning a tapping ritual on my knee.

  Once I’d gotten mildly focused, I’d managed to put together the interview portion of my article in a meager six hours. My deadline was rapidly approaching, and Jenna was my last line of defense before I submitted. She was also a journalist at The Apple, though her beat was gossip and pop culture trends, and she was one of my best friends, so I knew I could rely on her to give me honest feedback. The problem was that I feared the honest feedback this time.

  Finally, she placed the printer paper featuring my review and interview on the coffee table and leaned forward with her elbows on her thighs. It was a stance so similar to that which Tate seemed to favor that I actually felt my cheeks heating up at the sight.

  “What do you want first? The good or the bad?”

  Crap. “The good.”

  “Your review is stellar, as usual. Raw and real and informed.” For a gossip columnist, Jenna was an incredible writer, and it was high praise coming from her. “I didn’t have any interest in seeing Concrete before reading it, and now I think I’m going to make Derek take me for our next date.”

  “Okay…” I was bracing myself. “And…the bad?”

  She leaned back into the sofa, threw one leg over the other, and crossed her arms. “The entire city of New York is going to know you slept with him.”

  I froze. I hadn’t told Jenna, or anyone else, about what had transpired between Tate and me once we’d reached his penthouse. In fact, I hadn’t even mentioned going to his place in the interview.

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Oh, please, Sadie. The article aside, I know you well enough to know when you’ve met someone. I just put two and two together, and believe me, this interview doesn’t make it hard.”

  “Don’t use the word hard,” I groaned. The feeling of Tate filling me up bloomed throughout my body, and I forcefully shook myself to dispel it.

  Jenna glowered at me. “I can’t believe you slept with Tate McGrath and didn’t call me immediately.”

  “I’m still not sure it happened.” Even though I still smelled like his cologne that seemed to be lodged in my every pore. “It was surreal, you know?”

  “There’s no excuse. You’re supposed to tell your best friend when you sleep with your celebrity idol. That’s part of the code.”

  I rolled my eyes and grabbed the article from the table. “Can we get back on task, please?”

  “We are on task.” She uncrossed her legs and leaned toward me, snatching the paper from my hands. “This thing is dripping with sex. I knew something had happened three sentences in. Here, listen. ‘He looks at me like I’m crazy, his intense eyes peeling away my layers to find clarity.’ Or this one. ‘He fiddles with the edge of his plate because the crowd is growing bigger and his exit is closing. The caged animal inside him is showing.’”

  “So? There’s nothing sexual in there.”

  “Not overtly, no. But, come on, Sadie, you know this is way too poetic for a newspaper, and the way you describe him is extremely intimate. This isn’t just a Broadway star you interviewed for an hour because your editor told you to.”

  I practically roared in frustration and threw my head back against the chair. “Well, I don’t know what to do about it.” Jenna didn’t flinch at my snappish tone. “I can’t get it out of my head, Jen. The whole thing just sort of happened, and I know that’s a cliché a lot of people use as an excuse for bad behavior, but I certainly didn’t interview him with the intention of sleeping with him.”

  “Well, you know I’m going to make you tell me all about it.” Jenna smiled, and a whoosh of slight relaxation blew over me. There was something so comforting about having a good friend. “But, for now, let’s worry about the piece. You need to approach the interview portion the same way you do your reviews. Be unbiased and blunt with a few details to color it.”

  I nodded, inhaled a deep breath, and took the paper back from her. Over the next half hour, we steadily went through the bits and pieces she found questionable, and by the end, I was stunned to see how much correction ink I’d scrawled across the thing.

  When I was writing, I hadn’t even noticed how, as Jenna had put it, intimate I’d made it sound. Once we were finished, however, it was a piece I not only could be proud of but also wouldn’t give the entirety of New York a glimpse into my sinful evening of bliss.

  “Okay. Now that we’re through with that…” Jenna propped her legs up beneath her and bounced a little, reminding me of the fan who’d approached Tate at the pizzeria. “Tell me everything.”

  I looked down at my hands and scuffed my foot against the floor. Jenna might have been my best friend, the person I went to for absolutely everything from complaints about a bad hair day to weeping when my grandfather passed away, but I was reluctant to share the details of the night before. Part of me wanted to hold on to them and just keep them as mine, like a greedy teenager, and the other part of me didn’t want to acknowledge some of the things I had yet to come to terms with.

  Like those stupid feelings.

  “There’s not a lot to tell. I went backstage to interview him, and he wanted to leave because he didn’t want to get mobbed by fans, so we went across the street to a pizzeria to do the interview instead. Some people realized he was in there, so we left and went to his place. Then, things just started happening.”

  “She says with her face still glowing.” My dear friend jabbed her finger at me aggressively, and my face flamed. I wouldn’t have believed me either. “Forget the int
erview. I read that already, and I don’t need a recap. What happened?”

  I sighed. She wasn’t going to let me off the hook. “Okay.” If I was going to tell her, I was going to tell her everything, and that included the bits I wasn’t keen on recalling for the sake of my own emotional stability. “I was hot for him from the start. Not in the fangirl way, either. It was his eyes, Jen. They go right through you.”

  “Ugh.” She palmed her forehead. “I’m such a sucker for intense eyes.”

  “So, not much happened at first. Like I said, fans were gathering, and he wanted to get out of there. We went out the back of the Imperial to this tiny pizzeria and got some food and sat at a table where we were pretty isolated.” Just remembering it brought goose bumps to the surface of my skin. “I started interviewing him again, but we kept getting off topic. It was the best first date I ever had, and it wasn’t even a date. And he kept calling me Juliet.”

  “As in, Romeo and…?”

  I nodded. “Which practically made me swoon when he explained why. And that name came up later when we were, you know, together. He was spewing lines from Shakespeare while we were fooling around, and he told me it was time to drink the poison right before he made me come.” My whole body shuddered as the mere mention of the orgasm Tate had given me summoned residual sensations in my core.

  Jenna was staring at me with dinner-plate eyes. “Oh my god, he’s perfect for you.” Her voice steadily rose in pitch until she was painfully screechy. “I can’t believe you’re dating the guy you’ve admired since I met you.”

  “Whoa, doing what, now?” I shook my head. “If anything, I slept one time the guy I’ve admired since you met me, and I wouldn’t even say that. We didn’t exchange numbers or emails or anything. It was a one-night stand.”

  Hearing myself say it out loud twisted my intestines into a knot, and I realized with displeasure that it bothered me to think I was never going to see Tate again. Offstage, anyway.

  “I think you’re wrong. I’ve got a good feeling about this.”

  I waved a dismissive hand at her, but little butterflies of hope swarmed around my knot anyway.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Tate

  Droplets of sweat rolled down my sides and blotted into my t-shirt, but I didn’t take off the sweatshirt. Rather than sending out a member of my staff, I was venturing into the streets of Manhattan like a normal citizen, although the normal citizens around me were dressed in tailored suits and designer dresses while I plodded by in a cheap gray hoodie and a pair of impenetrable sunglasses. The issue of The Apple featuring Sadie’s review had come out today, and I was determined to get my hands on it.

  Aside from the show I’d performed the night before, I had remained holed up in my apartment for the last forty-eight hours. The events of opening night scrambled my brain so thoroughly I’d been unable to think about anything else. Something had switched in me that night, something light and dark at the same time, and I was rattled. I didn’t feel like myself, and yet I felt more like myself than I’d ever been.

  It was a mindfuck, one I hadn’t been prepared for in the slightest bit.

  My elbow bumped a passing executive, who snarled at me to watch where I was going, but I wasn’t offended. It was an indication my identity was well-hidden, at least for now.

  To most, I probably looked like a seedy purse snatcher looking for his next victim. That was fine with me. I preferred a wide berth around me as I walked rather than the unbreathable tightness of the crowds I usually unwittingly gathered. Sidestepping a mother in Versace with her toddler in tow, I beelined for the nearest newsstand.

  I could’ve looked the article up online, of course, but I’d long ago established a tradition of collecting every review of my performance in print. Once I read them, I cut them out and tucked them into a keepsake box that sat on the top shelf in my bedroom closet. Ironically, despite taking such care to possess and save them, I never went back and reread them, but there was both comfort and pride in knowing they were there.

  “Just this.” I brandished the top copy of The Apple at the vendor and slapped a ten in front of him.

  He eyed me with obvious suspicion, and I had a moment of paranoia in which I was sure he recognized me and was seconds from shouting, “Tate McGrath is here!” I then came to my senses and realized he was probably wondering if I was about to rob him thanks to my outfit. To combat this, I thanked him as he handed me my change and I scuttled away.

  I could feel Sadie’s words pulsing in my hand from somewhere inside the paper. Reviews hadn’t made me nervous since my first year on the stage, but the long-forgotten fluttering of anxiety had returned for another showing in light of this particular publication. I wasn’t concerned about a negative critique of my performance, or even of Concrete as a whole, but I was teeming with curiosity about how Sadie expressed her feelings on the show.

  To read her work was to peek through the blinds into her person, and I was rife with desire to venture further into who she was. I had been trying to convince myself since she left two nights ago that pulling back the curtain and discovering the magnet within that hooked my interest was going to humanize her, make her less of a mystical goddess to me and more of a forgettable woman.

  Deciding I’d already played with fire enough, I strolled back to my building instead of taking a seat on a bench or meandering to the park. I wanted to be in a private space to read the piece, anyway. Sadie had already left such an impression on me that I could only imagine how I’d react when reading what she’d written about me and our night together. Not that she would’ve written about everything, but I knew it happened, and the reminder of the events leading up to it was certain to bring back some of the more personal parts of the evening.

  Once I was safely inside my penthouse, tucked in my bedroom away from my cheerful housekeeper, I flipped open the paper on my comforter and scanned for the review. I found it on the second page, but what jumped out at me wasn’t the title. It was the byline.

  Sadie Danes.

  Just a typed name, but it held so much power. My palms instantly tingled as they recalled the smoothness of her skin. Rubbing them against my pants, I started to read.

  The review was a rave, which I’d arrogantly anticipated. I didn’t always expect such a positive response to the shows I participated in, but Concrete meant so much to me that I simply couldn’t imagine anyone hating it. Especially not a theater lover like Sadie. Skimming her comments gave me a new perspective on the production, however, and I was pleased to discover the emotion I and the rest of the cast tried to portray was well-received. I didn’t do as thorough a reading as I had others in the past, however, as I was eager to reach the interview below.

  It began elegantly enough:

  To many, the only part of the Imperial Theatre that matters is the theater itself, and after a stunning opening night to Broadway’s newest production, Concrete, I can understand the sentiment. Somewhere within the hallowed walls, however, tonight’s headliner and recent movie star is waiting for me, so I venture into the bowels of the famed locale. A stark, narrow hallway lined with photos of stage legends leads me to a dressing room, and it’s in this small and equally stark space I find Tate McGrath.

  I was impressed, to say the least. She wrote much more eloquently than I ever would have expected of a journalist, reviewer/interviewer or not. Every word played back to me in my head in her voice, sweet and feminine with a mild edge. Chills sprang up my neck to my ears, and I continued to read.

  He sits on a couch stolen from the Edwardian era in a shirt that gives the girls something to drool about and a pair of jeans that hint at a humbler time. There isn’t a trace of exhaustion in his face from the stellar performance he just had, but there is hesitation. He has made many a reporter aware of his discomfort in interviews, and I am prepared to be told the same.

  Her voice was coming in stronger now, and I replayed the exact moment of our first meeting in my mind. It wasn’t as she’d described it, sin
ce I’d walked in to find her already there and I’d frightened her half to death. I wasn’t surprised, or bothered, that she’d told it differently. I would’ve been embarrassed to tell the city the truth too, if it had been me, and it seemed like such a Sadie thing to do to reinvent a more graceful greeting, even though I knew relatively little about her. An involuntary smile brushed my lips, one I forced into a deep frown as soon as I noticed it.

  We exchange introductions, though his is hardly necessary, and sit together on the antique sofa. He looks at me silently, and I am struck by his presence. So big and charismatic on stage, he is reserved but powerful in the seclusion of a single-person audience. I am unashamed to admit my awe in meeting him.

  My cock was starting to swell, which I found offensive in an utterly twisted way, and I had little zings of electric currents zipping down my arms and up my legs. This woman was turning me on, and she wasn’t even with me. I had known she was a little shaken when she’d met me, but to see the words printed in a paper circulated city-wide proclaiming her awe was as intense as an invisible hand reaching into my pants and stroking me.

  “If you’re not the most egotistical bastard I’ve ever met…” I pushed down on my groin, trying to encourage my penis to submit to my will.

  From there, the rest of the interview was simple question-and-answer without further observation of me or the surroundings, but I was fascinated anyway despite many of the responses I’d given being redundant to other interviews I’d done since Paradox became a hit. Even in my parts, with the words printed verbatim, I still heard Sadie’s voice. It was as if she was standing beside me reading the entire piece to me.

  I liked the idea of that more than I wanted to.

  Though I left the paper open, I strode around to the opposite side of the bed and flopped onto it facedown. My body was rebelling against itself. My dick was stiff with the memory of being inside Sadie, but my fingers were twitching with the innocent desire to call her, and my brain was screaming at both to forget about her. I stayed out of romantic relationships.