by Jerilee Kaye
“And?”
He kissed her lips gently. “It felt so damn good, I realized how badly I wanted it to be true.”
“Oh, Justin. I’m sorry it took so long for us to get here.”
“It doesn’t matter. It’s true now.” He smiled at her. “And trust me, hon, I haven’t been with any other woman since I met you. Before you, the last woman I’ve been with was named Jamila McBride. And I’ve been faithful ever since.”
Adrienne laughed.
Then Justin added, “How could I talk to her, when all the time, I was cursing the day Ian slept over at my apartment?”
She laughed. “Why?”
“Because I almost lost you.” He kissed her again. Then he chuckled. “I can’t believe it! You were jealous.”
“I was not!” she denied, pulling away from him.
He laughed and pulled her to him for a tight hug. “Too bad,” he whispered. “I would have liked it if you were. Because I sure as hell wanted to punch the walls every time I think about Troy.”
She laughed. “Okay, maybe I was jealous. A little,” she admitted. “I mean when I saw Ian I was…stunned. I’m a woman… and I’m straight. But I thought, wow, she’s so gorgeous!”
Justin laughed. “She better be! She’s my flesh and blood.”
Adrienne’s eyes widened and she pretended to choke. “Help! I can’t breathe! Your inflated head is taking up all the space in the room!”
Justin laughed harder and squeezed her to him again. “Come on! Don’t I at least look a little bit cute to you?”
She rolled on top of him. “Cute is a huge understatement, actually.” She smiled at him. “You’re sinfully handsome.” Then she leaned forward and kissed him until they were lost in the heat of love once again.
They made love again when they woke up in the morning. Adrienne sighed contentedly. She was happy. It was bliss.
Then she realized that her time was up. It was time to face Jill and Yuan, and then Kim and Troy.
She felt her heartbeat double its speed.
Justin rolled on top of her and looked down at her, studying her face.
“Honey, are you okay?” he asked.
She reached up to caress his hair. “I was thinking that…it’s time to face the music.”
Justin smiled at her apologetically. “You know I’m with you on this, right?”
She nodded. He leaned forward and kissed her. “Let’s go have breakfast,” she suggested.
“All right. But promise me we will come up here around noontime just so I could make love to my sweet and lovely Adrienne again.”
She giggled. “I’m surprised you are saying that fifteen minutes after we just did.”
He grinned. “I haven’t been with you for more than a week, what do you expect? Do you think it was easy for me to run into you at Blush? To see you sulking in your office?”
“I wasn’t sulking!” she protested, laughing.
He laughed. “Really? So the puffy eyes and the bad moods weren’t because of me?”
She pinched him. “Lucky bastard!”
She wore a two-piece suit and a sarong was wrapped around her waist. They went down to the beach hand in hand.
They found Yuan and Jill already having breakfast in the restaurant. She nervously approached them.
“Hey guys,” she greeted them.
“Yuan. Jill.” Justin nodded at her friends.
Yuan and Jill smiled but didn’t say anything.
Justin looked down at her, his eyes asking her if she wanted him to stay with her while she talked to her friends.
She took a deep breath and whispered, “I’ll be fine.”
“Okay. I’ll go find Mike and James. I will be back in a while.”
She nodded. Justin leaned down to give her a smack on the lips.
“I’ll see you later guys,” he said to Yuan and Jill before he left.
She sat down on the table. Yuan and Jill were just staring at her. They didn’t speak…but if looks could kill, she’d be dead within a minute.
She took a cigarette from Jill’s pack. At that moment, she could really use nicotine to calm her nerves.
Then she said, “All right. First of all, I wanted to say, I’m sorry. There is absolutely no valid excuse for what I did. I can’t offer any specific explanations. But if you ask me your questions, I will answer them. Truthfully.”
Yuan and Jill looked at each other for a while. Then Yuan leaned back on his seat and said. “First off. Are you still a virgin like we thought you were? Yes or no?”
Adrienne bit her lip. Then she shook her head.
“Thought so,” Yuan murmured.
“Who was it?” Jill followed up.
Adrienne took a deep breath. “Justin.”
“Did you ever sleep with Troy?”
Adrienne shook her head. “You know I didn’t.”
“Oh, I’m sorry!” Yuan began sarcastically. “We wouldn’t know! Because all the while, we thought Troy was the boyfriend.”
“You weren’t the two-timing type, Adrienne. Who would have guessed, right?”
Adrienne didn’t have anything to say to that. She didn’t want to aggravate them further. She figured she would accept their anger because they deserved to lash out at her for lying to them for so long.
“You wanted to break up with Troy because of Justin, didn’t you?” Jill inquired in an accusing tone.
She shook her head. “No. I broke up with Troy because I’m not in love with him. I haven’t been for a very long time. And I don’t even know if I really was in love with him in the first place or if I was just in love with the idea of being with a man that my mother approves of.”
“How the hell did you hook up with Justin Adams?” Jill asked. “I work with you at Blush. We were always together when we go out. When we saw him in the bars, you didn’t even stand less than five meters away from him. How could this happen?”
“He couldn’t have met you just yesterday. He calls you honey,” Yuan pointed out. “And you know what? He knows me. He hasn’t even met me. And moreover, how the hell does Justin Adams know Troy?”
“Did you see his face when he was punching the life out of Troy? He was furious! He freaked out when he saw you were hurt! If he was just rescuing us, he wouldn’t have felt so…involved with your fight with Troy! You can’t just…have met him.”
Adrienne took a deep breath. “Jill, remember you told me about some girl that Justin picked up at Gypsys?”
Jill nodded.
“That was me,” she admitted. “I went alone for Gypsys’ opening. I was drinking. I felt frustrated with Troy, my Mom. Justin approached me. Introduced himself, bought me a drink… things got out of hand…I ended up going home with him.”
“Gypsys opened more than four months ago!” Jill exclaimed.
Adrienne nodded guiltily.
“You’ve been seeing each other for more than four months now!?” Jill asked. Her voice was full of shock.
“The shades in your apartment,” Yuan interjected. “The same one he was wearing now. That was him who spent the night with you, wasn’t it? It wasn’t Troy.”
She nodded. “I went to Gypsys. I was mad at my mother and at Troy. I felt like a total failure. I felt that no matter how hard I tried, they would never look at me in a different light. I will always be the inferior one. The less pretty, less smart second daughter. The black sheep of the family. So why bother? I dressed up in this sexy outfit that Jacob had picked for me. I drank a bit and didn’t care that I was alone. He approached me. I pretended not to know him. I even gave him a fake name. Things happened fast, and I spent the night with him.”
“You lost your virginity that night? After just hours of meeting him?”
Adrienne nodded shyly. At times, that part didn’t really make her proud but she really was hopeless to resist Justin’s charms.
“I thought that’s all I’d ever have with him. One night. Make myself feel good in spite of Troy’s and my mother’s efforts to
constantly shoot me down. I deserved Justin Adams. Even for just one night.
“Anyway, I was sure that he would forget about me the next day. He wouldn’t even remember the fake name I gave him. But I was wrong. He showed up on my doorstep the following morning. Turned out, he knew who I was from the beginning. He even knew where I lived.”
Jill raised a brow. “And how would he know where you live?”
She took a deep breath. “You know the guy next door to my apartment… torso god you called him. Well, that’s Justin.”
“Oh my God!” Jill sighed in frustration.
“So you went with him, and you gave him the virtue you’ve been saving up for Troy.”
Adrienne took a deep breath. “I wasn’t saving it for Troy. I was saving it for the right moment… the right guy.”
Jill raised a brow. “And Justin Adams… the City’s most wanted playboy seemed like the right guy? Well, I can’t really say I blame you!”
“It’s not just that, Jill.” Adrienne said, trying to be calm. “Justin made me feel things I never felt before.”
“I’m sure he did!” Yuan said. “He wouldn’t be a rakehell for nothing, you know.”
“Would you please just listen to me!” Adrienne finally raised her voice, which silenced her friends.
Adrienne took a deep breath. “You see… I got tired of my life. I realized I’ve been living each day for all the wrong reasons. One night. I decided to just finally live it for my own! And my paths crossed with Justin. I felt this… this sense of need that I couldn’t control…that I haven’t felt with Troy before. I actually forgot that I was a virgin, until he…until he was in me.”
She stared back at them. They listened to her quietly. Their silence encouraged her to go on.
“I wanted to feel guilty. I knew it was wrong. I had spent one night…in sin…with the City’s most notorious playboy,” she said. “But I didn’t feel guilty at all. I felt like… for once in my life, I did something right. I did something that made me happy… regardless of what others would think about me. But I never intended for it to happen again.”
“It was supposed to be just a one-night stand?” Jill asked.
She nodded. “It started out to be a one night thing. And yet, he showed up in my apartment the next day. And then again the following day. Until…we just saw more and more of each other. I couldn’t believe that I lost my virginity to Justin Adams. And I had planned to stop. I knew that after a day, he would forget about me but he didn’t. He was persistent. He…pursued me. Until I got more and more attached to him.”
She looked at her friends. “Guys…the real Justin Adams is far… from the playboy we all thought he was. He is sweet. And caring. He brought out the best in me. He made me feel cared for. He appreciated me for who I was… the way Troy never did. Not even once. He taught me how to trade stocks. He spent almost every night in my apartment. I couldn’t seem to get rid of him.”
“Why didn’t you tell us?” Yuan asked.
She shrugged. “There could be absolutely no excuse for what I did and didn’t do.”
“He didn’t want it to go public,” Yuan said. “He was the one who didn’t want people to know. That would make sense. Justin Adams wanted to keep his reputation of being a bachelor.”
Adrienne shook her head. “No. It was me. And it annoyed him so much. Once when you went to my place, we had an argument. Because he didn’t want to hide anymore. He was getting tired of being kept a secret. He felt insulted every time I wondered if he would stick around for a long time.
“I tried telling you, too. But you laughed at me. You thought it was the biggest joke on earth. And then you told me, Jill, that if you were to find out, it would ruin our friendship. I got so scared of losing you guys.
“I just didn’t know what to do. I never expected Justin Adams to be…a relationship type of guy. But that’s what we had for months. Troy may have been the official boyfriend. But Justin was…the real one. He was the one I spent my nights with and told my dreams and frustrations to. I never expected him to be so much different from what we know about him.”
“Justin mentioned about the best date he ever had. Northern Lights in Alaska?” Yuan asked.
Adrienne slowly nodded. “Yes. That weekend I told you I was going to Boston, Justin actually took me to Alaska. He wanted to be with me without my fear of being named or being seen with him.”
“Oh God!” Yuan breathed. “How many lies did you tell us, Adrienne? We were your best friends!”
“I know. And I’m really sorry.”
“That day you crashed over my apartment, you weren’t fighting with Troy either, were you?”
Adrienne shook her head. “When Kim spent the night at my place, the next morning, I went to Justin’s apartment and some blonde opened the door and I thought, he was with another girl…”
“But it was his cousin,” Jill finished for her.
Adrienne nodded. “Yeah. He called me, sent me messages, even talked to me at Blush. He wanted to explain. I didn’t want to listen. I realized that I still believed his notorious reputation in spite of knowing him better. I was so stupid.”
“That’s why he told me the reason why he broke up with the girl he was seeing. But he told me not to print it. He knew I might talk about it with you or you might see the video. That was his way of letting you know what really happened that night,” Jill realized, thoughtfully.
“Now, that makes sense! How else would he be confiding in you like you were BFFs?” Yuan said to Jill and Jill actually glared at him.
“His car plate. I-E-N-N-E. It was short for Adrienne, after all,” Jill mused.
Adrienne nodded. “Before we fought, he said he had a surprise for me. But we never got to that part. I even thought that the car belonged to the girl I found in his apartment that morning. But then, I think I’ve always known what he meant when he got that plate. I just stubbornly refused to believe it. I didn’t think that he would do that for me. That I was worth it.”
Adrienne stared at her friends ruefully. “Guys, I’m sorry. I didn’t know how to deal with it. It was something that I didn’t expect to last. I thought it was nothing serious. Because Justin Adams wasn’t known to be serious. But now…I know this is real. For the last four months we’ve been together, I can say that I couldn’t ask for anything more from a man. He is everything I want, everything I was asking for in my prayers. If you thought the Justin Adams you knew was drool and swoon-worthy…well the real Justin Adams happens to be much more than that. He’s worth falling head over heels in love with… over and over again.”
“And have you fallen in love with him?” Jill asked.
Adrienne took a deep breath and nodded. “Hopelessly.”
“Does he love you back?” Yuan asked.
She shrugged. “I know that we want to be with each other. I never asked him to be with me, to stay with me, but somehow at the end of each day, I wind up in his arms. I know that I’m important to him. When I got mad, I saw the efforts he made to get me back. Last night, when Troy hit me, I saw the rage on his face. I know he cares about me. He said he’s crazy about me. He didn’t say the ‘L’ word. But for now, that’s good enough.”
Yuan and Jill stared at her for a moment and then Jill said, “You let us talk about him and Tara Lambert! How could you have endured that?”
Adrienne giggled humorlessly. “That wasn’t fun. I wanted to cry, but I had to keep a straight face. That was tough.”
“But just so you know, my friends, who write gossip columns, did confirm that Justin Adams was ignoring Tara Lambert. She chased him. But he seemed to her a slippery fish to catch.”
“And now, we know why,” Yuan said. “At first, we thought that Justin just wasn’t interested in a relationship because he’s just a big-time player who couldn’t be tied down. But now…we know why he was single. He was waiting for the one. And it’s you.”
“He wants me, I know. I don’t know for how long, though. But I don’t care.
For once in my life, a guy wants me with every fiber of his soul. And he happens to be a god! And I feel good about myself. All my life, I believed I wasn’t worthy… that I wouldn’t attract a man who’s more than good enough for me.”
“That was your mother talking,” Yuan began. “But you are pretty and smart. You’ve got this appeal that draws men to your feet. But you were raised believing that Kimberly defined beauty. Yet, she won’t even hold a candle to you, Adrienne. You overlooked the fact that you have your own charm.”
“And you wasted years trying to make the Troy thing work,” Jill added. “We never believed it would. You needed a guy who could challenge your spirit to come out. Not clip your wings and make you stiffer than you already were.”
“So now…you and Justin?” Yuan finally asked. His voice lacked the trace of anger now.
Adrienne smiled. “Yes. He said he didn’t want to be the sideline guy anymore. And he doesn’t deserve to be.” She took a deep breath. “I love him, guys. There’s just no…turning back for me anymore. I don’t care about what my Mom will think. I don’t care if she curses me all my life. For once…I just feel like I’m fighting for what I want… what I believe in.”
Adrienne looked at her friends again. “I’m really sorry. I hope you will be able to forgive me.”
Jill and Yuan looked at each other. Then they looked at Adrienne soberly.
“Well, I guess it’s not entirely your fault,” Yuan said. “If we didn’t gossip about Justin a lot or if we didn’t laugh at you the first time you attempted to tell us, then you would have the guts to come clean.”
Jill had tears in her eyes. “You know that I was only kidding when I said that hooking up with Justin and not telling us would be a friendship ender, right?”
Tears welled up in Adrienne’s eyes. “Oh, guys! I’m really sorry!”
Jill and Yuan stood up from their seats and gave Adrienne a hug.
“Oh, honey, if you’re happy, we’re happy,” Jill said. “Just don’t get hurt, okay? And we’re here for you. I mean, Justin is known to be a playboy, yes. But he never seemed committed to anyone. Never been seen with one woman exclusively. And look at what he was doing here with you, Yen? It’s like telling the world that what we know about him were all lies. That he’s human after all. And to tell you the truth, we knew it was serious when we saw his face last night, when he saw that you were hurt.”