Текст книги "The Girl On The Half Shell"
Автор книги: Susan Ward
сообщить о нарушении
Текущая страница: 17 (всего у книги 23 страниц)
“You just screwed me like a whore in the middle of a party!” I hiss, wounded and accusing.
His expression doesn’t change. “If you are going to behave like a whore, guys will treat you like a whore.”
“Get out!” I scream.
His clothes are all put back together on him. He is staring down at me. “Your things are in the closet off the bathroom.”
I nod, and just like that Alan leaves. I manage to hold back the tears until I’ve counted to twenty in my head, just to be sure he’s not coming back and won’t see me cry.
My body feels heavy as I pull myself up onto my feet. Shaking, I go into the bathroom, but I feel spacey, disoriented, and uncoordinated. My trembling flesh sinks onto the ledge of the bathtub.
What am I supposed to do now? I can’t just pack up my things and lug them out in the middle of a party where everyone will see me. Raw, bitter, humiliating emotion runs like ice through my veins. What did I do that was so awful that he would screw me at a party then dump me? Scalding tears pour down my cheeks. Frantically, I replay the minutes in my head, but for the love of Jesus there is nothing to explain this—his lashing out at me and ending us.
I curl into a tight ball, rocking, trying to stop my tears. What did I expect? You have only to open a newspaper to get a pretty clear idea of what kind of guy he is. I knew—but I thought he cared about me. Really cared. How could he do this to me? How could he turn in a flash into an asshole that screwed me at a party and tossed me aside?
My gaze darts around the bathroom trying to figure out what to do. I can’t leave. I can’t go back into the party. And I don’t want to stay here, trapped in a bathroom, humiliated and alone.
I hear sounds from the bedroom and my anxious heart betrays me, wishing that it might be Alan returning to apologize to me. Maybe it was just a fight? A big wicked nothing.
I peek through the open bathroom door. The wives and girlfriends, all but Linda, are huddled around the table where the newspapers magically appear each morning, and it’s covered with white powder, and one of them is using a credit card to line it.
Shit, now I’m trapped in a bathroom while the wives snort coke.
I hear my name mixed in the chatter of the room.
“Who does she think she is that she doesn’t think she needs to talk to us?”
“Talk to us? She doesn’t think she needs to talk to Manny. She ignored him the entire night.”
“Who is she? I’ve never seen her before, not anywhere, and out of nowhere she’s just here.”
“Where do you think he found her?”
“She reminds me of that girl. Remember that girl he dragged around with him on tour in ’86? The one who took it all too seriously and didn’t know Manny was just messing with her. All sweet and small town cute.”
They all laugh.
“I think she is cute. In an understated way. Her clothes are awful and she really needs to do something about those eyebrows. But she’s cute.”
The bedroom door opens. Linda enters the room and sinks down among the circle.
“OK, Linda. What gives? Is the little princess living with him? And where the hell has Manny been for six months?”
Linda snorts a line. Then I hear the snort sound of fingers to nostril to clear the powder from the nasal passage. She wets her fingers, snorts it in again, and then dabs her finger and rubs it on her gums.
“I like her.” That’s all Linda says.
“Well, I don’t. Such a bitch. Where does she get off thinking she is so superior?”
Linda stares at them all. “Don’t mess with her. This girl matters.”
This girl? I shake my hands to shake the icky feeling away. This girl. That’s what I am. This girl. Just another girl, just the girl of the moment, and not even the girl of the moment any longer because Alan dumped me.
“Christ, Linda. He makes them all feel like they matter.”
Linda arches a brow. “No, I didn’t say he makes her feel like she matters. I’m saying she does matter. And we’ve got enough fucking drama and enough problems without you messing with her. Leave her alone.”
“I don’t know. Everything feels so bizarre. Stranger than usual since Manny came back with her, which is strange enough.”
“Does anyone know what happened?”
Linda says nothing. Not one piece of what she knows falls on the table. “He’s just went into Rehab. Why do you all make such a drama about everything?”
“Rehab certainly hasn’t helped with his anger issue. Did anyone else hear that he broke Vince Carroll’s arm for drugging her?”
Linda rolls her eyes. “If you are going to get your gossip from the tabloids, no one will ever take you seriously, Bianca.”
Bianca looks up at Linda. “Ryan told me Manny almost put Ian through a wall just for talking to her and then admitted he broke Vince’s arm for drugging her. I don’t think the Rehab shit helped much with his anger issues.”
Linda is now like a laser-guided missile. “Manny has been with Ryan and Ian?”
“You didn’t know?” Bianca asks. “He’s recording a solo album with the little princess. Manny didn’t tell you? Len doesn’t know?”
Linda says nothing. She stares. She shrugs. I can feel how upset she is, but she is loyal. Always loyal.
Linda stares them all down. “Shut the fuck up! I mean it. No more gossip. No more chatter. Nothing. And if you fuck with her you are fucking with me.”
The door slams behind Linda. The girls stare at each other.
“God, what’s up with her these days?” Bianca asks.
“These days? It’s every day. Len fucks everything that moves and she goes ballistic on us.”
Another line snorted. The door opens and the wives all look up at once, as Kenny Jones saunters in.
“What’s up with the hen house? You all look guilty. What are you cackling about now?”
Kenny sinks to the floor and pulls his girlfriend back against him. He takes the rolled hundred, does a quick line, and then cleans his airways.
Bianca says, “The little princess. Ian says Manny is recording a solo album with her. That he’s quitting the band.”
Kenny leans back against the bed, laughing so hard that his face reddens and tears sparkle in his eyes. “Where the fuck do you get this shit? The girl is nothing. Just something to do. She’s just some bird he picked up at The Blue Light. Her friend was a crazy ass bitch. He fucked her in the bathroom at the club. You know how Manny is. Fuck ’em and on to the next one.”
Bianca fixes intense eyes on Kenny. “How do you know for sure Ian is wrong?”
Kenny does another line and stands up. “Because he fucked her and dumped her thirty minutes ago.”
Chapter Fourteen
I grab from the closet a black cardigan of Alan’s. Someone can deliver my things to Jack’s tomorrow. I leave the bedroom with only my purse, and spot Jesse Harris still at the party.
I cross the room to him, unable to look up as I speak. “Can you walk me home? I would really appreciate it if you’d walk me home. It’s not far and I want to leave here.”
He stops me with a hand on my arm. “Are you OK?”
“I’m OK. But it would be really, really cool if you just walked me home and didn’t ask any questions.”
He nods. He is a nice guy. I wasn’t wrong about that. At least I wasn’t wrong about one thing. Don’t cry, Chrissie. Don’t cry. Not yet.
“Stay right here,” he says in an urgent and soothing sort of way. “I should tell my brother I’m leaving. I’ll be right back. Don’t leave without me.”
I start to shake, realizing I must look more of a mess than I thought. I fight not to look from the entry hall into the party. In a moment, Jesse returns.
The streets are as close to empty as New York ever gets. We walk without talking and I focus on the stench in the air. It is only six blocks to Jack’s apartment. A fast walk. It feels long. Very long, and I’m tired by the time we get there.
The doorman opens the door the minute he sees me.
“Home?” Jesse smiles. “Nice digs.”
I stare at him. “Would you like to come up?” I am on the verge of meltdown and grab his arm. “Please, come up. I don’t want to be alone just yet. Please, I don’t know anyone in New York and I could really use a friend.”
He follows me into the elevator and I take the key and insert it in the panel.
“Penthouse, huh? Nice digs.”
Small talk. Jesse’s just making small talk. Trying to insert normal here, when there is absolutely nothing normal about any of this.
I smile. “It’s my dad’s apartment. I live in California. Remember?”
Jesse gives me a kind smile. “UGG boots. How could I forget?”
Why does it feel like it takes forever to get to the top floor? Chug, chug, chug. Metal can move so slowly sometimes. I don’t want to cry until I’m through the front door.
Too late. Tears. And my body curls into Jesse’s chest. “I hope you are an ethical reporter. I would die. Absolutely die. If any of that makes print. Ever. Please. Never, ever, ever.”
His fingers lift my chin. He has such kind eyes. “Never, ever, ever. I’m a lousy reporter because I’m ethical. My family lights candles in church every week, praying my novel sells. Otherwise, I’m not going to have much of a future as a writer.”
I give a soggy laugh, though it isn’t much of a joke.
Jesse looks disconcerted now. He’s studying me almost as if he’s debating with himself. “But, Chrissie, you need to know. I’m off the record tonight, but I wasn’t the only reporter there.”
Oh shit! What have I done?
Jesse folds me into a comfortable, protective type hug. “Don’t break on me now. It doesn’t matter. Who cares if it does make print? It will all go away in about thirty seconds. My professional opinion. You can bank on it. This will all go away and be nothing.”
I can’t will my legs to carry me out of the foyer, and I stand surrounded by my mother’s priceless collection of glass encased violins. But that’s not all that’s there is in the cabinets. There are family photos. Lots of family photos in between the spruce and ebony, and Jesse is staring at them as if the mysteries of the universe have just been revealed to him.
“Now I know why you look familiar,” Jesse says, his voice quiet and a trifle grim. “You’re Jackson Parker’s daughter. I’m sorry, Chrissie. This is going to be a long night.”
* * *
I curl on a couch, wrapped in a blanket, sipping a cup of tea that Jesse made for me and the phone just won’t stop ringing.
Ring. Ring. Ring. I’m afraid to answer it. We let it go to service most of the time. Jesse suggested unplugging it. I don’t know why I won’t let him do that. Why do I want to know Alan is ringing? Why do I need to know it? He humiliated me, he hurt me, he dumped me and he is the cause of this horrid, horrid night that never seems to end.
The sound of the ringing hurts me. It makes me more shaky. It makes me cry. I need to hear the ring, even though every ring isn’t Alan.
If Jesse answers, sometimes it’s Linda, but it is most frequently the press. And I won’t talk to anyone, and Jesse is very good at getting rid of people. He is a born crisis manager.
Jesse answers a call, makes an abrupt response, and hangs it up quickly.
“It’s part of being a nice guy,” he jokes. “Knowing how to deal with a girl’s relationship problems. And I’m a reporter. I definitely know how to handle the press.”
I laugh. I don’t feel like laughing. I don’t want him to go. How long will he stay?
Shit. It’s 6 a.m. and this hideous night feels like a slow moving century. It feels like it’s never going to end, time isn’t making me feel better, and the phone won’t shut up. I miss Alan and I don’t want to.
I stare into my cup of tea. Only a stupid girl would miss Alan after what he did to me. I grab another tissue.
Jesse is staring at me. “It’s going to be OK.”
“Don’t you have somewhere you have to be? How long do you think this will last?”
He shrugs. “I don’t know. It will blow over. It always does.” He’s trying to be calming, nonchalant. “I can stay as long as you want me to.”
I wipe my cheeks and blow my nose. “There is food in the kitchen. I’d cook you breakfast except I don’t know how.”
He laughs. He puts a pillow on his lap and instructs me to lie down. I curl into a ball and he tugs the blanket around me. His fingers start to gently stroke my hair.
“You look exhausted, Chrissie. Go to sleep. I’ll stay right here.”
He takes the receiver and lifts it off the rest. My eyes round. “Don’t worry. I’m not going anywhere, just giving us both a break. If you want, I can stay until it’s time for your plane and I can take you to the airport.”
I nod, too overwhelmed by his kindness to answer him. I close my eyes. I need to try to sleep. I will never make it from New York to California if I don’t sleep.
I hear the elevator and then the door open. Jesse tenses and nudges me. “Didn’t you tell the doorman not to let anyone up?”
My eyes round as I stare up at him. “No, because they don’t. Not ever. Not without permission.”
“Oh shit,” he says, staring at the entry.
I look toward the foyer.
Alan.
* * *
Alan stares and I remain curled on the couch next to Jesse. I focus on wrapping my fingers around my lukewarm teacup, though internally, even as hurt as I am, I am pathetically thrilled that he came after me, even if it took him three hours to go six blocks.
“If you’ve got something to say, say it. And then please go,” I snap and every line of his face hardens.
“May I sit down?”
I point at a chair a good distance from me.
“I did not expect you to leave,” he says in a rough desperate sort of way.
“You told me to go.”
“It was bullshit at a party, Chrissie,” he says, his voice ragged and low. “I didn’t want you to go. I was angry. I never thought you would leave.”
I still haven’t looked at him. I stare hard into space in a part of the room away from him. In my peripheral vision, I see Alan fix his burning stare on Jesse.
“Would you mind leaving us alone,” he demands tersely.
“I’m not leaving unless she asks me to,” Jesse replies firmly. He tilts up my chin to look at him. “Do you want me to leave, Chrissie?”
I shake my head, biting my lower lip because I can feel myself weakening. If Jesse leaves, I will fall to pieces and Alan will mold me any way he wishes.
“Are you going to make me do this in front of the press, Chrissie,” Alan says.
“Whose fault is that?” I snap, in spite of my resolve to stay emotionless. I look around. “Did you bring my things, Alan? Can you have someone bring them over today? I’m catching a plane to Santa Barbara this afternoon.”
“No,” he breathes, his eyes wide with panic. “You are not going anywhere, Chrissie. Not like this. Not over this, please.”
“This? You call it this?” I look at him directly then. I can’t stop myself. “You humiliated me, dragged me out of a party, and then told me to get out. And while I was packing my things I was trapped in a bathroom being humiliated all over again by your friends. Do not call it this.”
“You’re the only person in my life who matters to me,” Alan says quietly.
“Well, you’ve got a strange way of showing it,” I scream and my voice cracks.
“I don’t know what you heard, but whatever it is, I apologize for it. It won’t happen again, Chrissie. I swear.”
“Please go.”
“NO. And I am not going to tiptoe around what I want to say any longer.” Alan is on his feet, angry and full of restless energy. “I am tired of this, Chrissie. Send him on his way so we can really talk.”
“I don’t want to talk to you,” I say, and I hate that my tone sounds pouty and little girlish.
His penetrating black eyes burn into me. “If we don’t talk this through today, we will never speak to each other again.”
I blink at him. What does that mean? That easily he can send my chaotic emotions into full free-fall. I am angry. I am hurt. And I am the injured party here, but that doesn’t mean I’m ready to never see him again, and I don’t know for certain that that isn’t what he is warning.
It is probably stupid, but right now it feels like if he walks out the door I won’t make it through the day.
I wipe my nose with another tissue and sit back a little away from Jesse. “Can you go, please?”
Those kind hazel eyes search my face. “Are you sure?”
I nod.
Jesse pulls something from his wallet and scribbles on the back of it. He holds out a business card. “I’ve put Sandy’s number on the back,” he explains. I don’t take the card. He puts it on the table. “If you need me, if you need anything, call me.”
I feel on the verge of tears again and I don’t trust my voice. I can’t push out my words. I nod.
I will call to thank him, when Alan is gone. He was such a nice guy to me and I hate that I can’t be gracious because right now it feels like a machete is hacking at my insides.
Once the elevator doors close, Alan sinks back into his chair. “Thank you.”
“I didn’t do it for you. I did it for me. You, I owe nothing.”
That hurt him. I can see it in his eyes. He moves toward me until he is sitting on his knees in front of the couch beneath me. “I love you, baby,” he breathes. “It was a bad night. I had a lot going on and I could have really used you being there for me.”
I shake my head. I feel my heart accelerate. I feel my limbs go weak, and I just want to bury myself against him and cry.
“You were horrible to me. There are times I don’t feel like I know you at all.” I don’t know why this is the place I want to start. I rally my strength. “Did you screw Rene?”
His eyes flare and widen. “I’m repulsed by her. Why would you ask me that?”
“Someone told me you did. She’s my best friend, Alan. How could you do that and think it wouldn’t matter later to me?”
He sits back and runs a hand through his hair, confused and angry. “Is that what that bitch told you? No. Never. I did not fuck Rene.”
“It wasn’t Rene who told me. Apparently everyone knows you did it in the bathroom at The Blue Light. It’s funny how everyone always seems to know everything you do.”
“Well then it’s news to me because it didn’t happen,” he growls, his gaze so intense, his expression so open I nearly believe him.
“Are you saying that you didn’t take her into the bathroom for a fast screw?”
“I’m saying I didn’t fuck her in the bathroom at the club,” he grounds out. “You were loaded and she was too absorbed in herself to give a damn if something happened to you. I took her to a bathroom and I got in her face and made her take you home. And that’s the end of what happened, and if she tells you otherwise she’s a liar.”
I can barely breathe because I know he’s telling me the truth. I can also feel the power he wields over me, how my traitorous emotions pitch and chase after him.
He starts to pace the room, and I can feel his body pulsing with anger. “The bullshit always fucks everything up, Chrissie. I can’t stop the bullshit and you’re going to have to learn not to listen to it. I have always told you the truth. I will always tell you the truth.”
“How many girls have you been with?”
God, why did I bring that up again?
“I don’t know. Does it matter?” He takes a sharp breath, running a hand through his hair. “Fuck, give me a notepad. I’ll write down names, whatever I can remember. Do you want positions, too? Christ, Chrissie, why does any of this matter?”
I look around the room.
“Don’t bother,” I whisper. “Better question. Why did you screw me in a bedroom and dump me last night? You wanted to humiliate me last night. Why did you want to hurt me?”
His eyes widen with pain and almost tortured reluctance. “I didn’t like that you wanted to be with him instead of with me,” he admits after a long while.
“I didn’t want to be with him. I just didn’t want to be at the party. Your reaction was completely irrational. I didn’t do anything to deserve any of that. What did I do that was so awful that you would want to deliberately hurt me?”
He’s frustrated again. I can tell he doesn’t want to answer, and he doesn’t like the direction I’m taking this.
“Lillian was a very popular actress in her day and the biggest whore in London, Chrissie,” he says through gritted teeth. “I didn’t even know who my father was until I was eighteen and he died. Lillian gifted me with the truth and a trust fund, as if everything would be fine. I knew him my entire life and never once did he acknowledge me. I didn’t have a clue he was my dad.”
He turns away from me and I can see something powerful coursing through him. “My father was Vittorio Manzone.”
My eyes round in surprise. “The Italian tenor?”
He nods.
He stares down at me. “You hit a nerve, Chrissie, not wanting to be seen with me, and I fucked up. I’m still working through some things. You have to be patient with me. I’m doing my best here.”
“I don’t think your best works for me, Alan,” I whisper with more injury in my voice than I want to show.
“I’m doing my best,” he repeats, raking a hand through his hair. “I’m being honest with you, I’ve told you things I’ve never told anyone, and if you were anyone else I wouldn’t be here or trust being honest.”
I change course. “I’m not staying in New York any longer. I have to go home.”
He takes a deep breath and doesn’t move.
“You are not leaving, Chrissie.”
He leans in to kiss me and I inch back instinctively. If he touches me I will crumble. I pull farther back.
“You need to go.” I’m proud of how my voice sounds this time. Calm. In control. Firm.
“What? No.” He eases back from me, blinking. “No, I’m not leaving until we’ve worked this out.”
“There is nothing to work out.”
“Don’t say that.”
“You’re not good for me.”
“How can you say that? We are good for each other,” he says in desperation. “I am completely lost in you and that’s a good place to be, Chrissie. A very good place to be.”
I look away from him again. I am lost in you too, Alan, and I’m not sure if that is a good place to be. I feel the tears. I grab a tissue. I hate that I’m crying, that I couldn’t hold it back until he was gone.
I stare about the room. I’m so tired. I don’t want to do this. I don’t want Alan to leave. I want to curl up in bed, cry, and then fall asleep next to him. But I can’t forgive him. Not after last night. I need to send him away.
“When will you send my things over?”
“Never. You’re not going.”
He sinks down on the sofa beside me. I can suddenly see how tired he is. It feels so very right to have him close to me. “I love you. I don’t want to fight. Please, don’t leave.”
“You hurt me.”
He swallows. “I love you.”
He inhales sharply, lies his head back against the cushion and closes his eyes. He looks so despondent, so weary, and so young. It’s so unfair that he can shift effortlessly into someone who melts my heart. It makes me want to curl into him, hold him, even after the horrible things he’s done.
“I’m so tired, Chrissie. Tired of the bullshit. Tired of everything. I just want one thing in my life not drowning in shit. I just want to be with you and be happy, be with you and let all the other fucking shit go.”
His lids lift just enough so he can look at me. Gently, he tugs my hand from beneath me, where I’d buried it so he couldn’t take it. He places a feather-light kiss in my palm.
“Can we just go to sleep and finish this later, Chrissie?” He sets my teacup on the table. “Never argue when you’re tired. It’s not good. And I won’t be able to sleep unless you are next to me.”
I hesitate. Alan picks me up and carries me to my bedroom.
* * *
Reluctantly, I open my eyes. I don’t want to wake. I don’t want round two of the fighting. I don’t want to end us. And I don’t think I should go any farther with Alan. I’m at a point where I can exit. Only I don’t want to exit, though I know deep down I should.
I check the clock. It is 10 p.m. We’ve slept fifteen hours straight, and I have not moved from the tight ball on the edge of the bed where I deposited myself after Alan released me. I didn’t argue with him about postponing our fight or lying down with him to sleep, but I wasn’t about to lay down with him as if everything were normal. I don’t know where we are, but we are not in normal. Not that we are ever in normal, not really, not in the way I used to think normal would be. Alan and I together are a lot of things. Normal just isn’t one of them.
I carefully turn to look at him. I want to get up, but I don’t want to wake him. He is wrapped around me in that warm, surrounding way that feels as though he is holding onto me, even in sleep. His flesh is warm. His breathing is quiet.
How do I get out of here without waking him? I need a little distance so I can think through what I should do.
Suddenly, my panties are gone and I am pressed into Alan in a perfect, side-by-side fit, and he is in me without foreplay or stirring touch or kisses. He’s just in me and this is different. It feels dark and angry as he slams into me, filling me, even more so than it did being pounded against the bedroom door.
His groans are different. His touch is different. His fingers on my breasts are different, the way those callused tips roll my nipples, tugging and pinching. He is something beyond angry, I can feel it, and I close my eyes, absorbing him, part afraid, a greater part hungrily savoring. The sensations through my flesh push me higher, too quickly, so right.
He grasps my hip firmly, eases out of me slowly, and then again, harder this time, slams into me.
“Don’t ever leave me.”
I lie panting beneath his touch, feeling his intense anger, knowing he’s going to get rougher. My femaleness courses through my veins. It is messed up, but my insides quicken, excited by my femaleness and his temper.
I’m about to surrender to the heat of my own flesh. A ragged whisper penetrates my near exploding senses.
“Did you fuck him?”
What? No! My senses halt in their march toward climax.
“Did you fuck him?” he repeats fiercely.
He stays still.
“No,” I hiss furiously, the shock of him asking me that leaving me breathless and flashing with anger. “No.”
He closes his eyes, there is a ragged shudder through his limbs, and the feel of him is different, frenzied and possessive. He starts again, a brutal, divine rhythm. I hear his groan, a guttural thing, desperation, relief, sadness. He moans low in his throat and I can feel the tension change, as his adrenaline runs through his veins, a different type of current.
“I’ve been out of my mind since you walked out the door with him,” he breathes, his face buried in my hair. “Don’t do that again. Don’t walk away from me. Don’t make me feel like I don’t matter to you. I can stand anything, Chrissie, except not mattering to you.”
And then the words are lost. Alan is letting go, calling my name, and I surrender and explode with him. I sink to the bed. I sleep.
* * *
Alan gazes at me, assessing my expression as I stare up at him.
It’s morning and I don’t have a clue where we go from here. Last night was different. I don’t know what is happening beneath his surface, but there is something and I can feel it. I should be furious that in the cease-fire between the rounds of our fight, he decided to have an extremely rough “did you fuck him” fuck.
His anger issues. I’ve seen them, but last night I felt it in his body, in the way he had sex with me. Did I fuck him? God, Alan, how could you ask me that?
I try to rally my anger, fortification for today’s round of fighting, but I’m slightly disappointed in myself. I realize that I am less angry with him because I really got off on the angry “did you fuck him” fuck. It was weird, consuming, and a turn-on.
His anger is dark, complex and layered, just like mine. But unlike me, he lets it surface, in his music, in his impulses, and in his body when he fucks instead of making love. Maybe that was why it was a turn on? I fight my anger, I struggle to keep it contained, but last night my anger ran with his through my flesh and it was a sensory right sort of thing.
I stare at him. So what’s up today, Alan? Are we going to continue talking? Are we going to continue having angry fucks? Or are you just going to lie there staring at me as though everything is fine, perfectly normal in this alternate universe of not normal.
“Do you want to go on a date-date today?” Alan asks.
Oh crap, how did he remember that? Date-date. How lame.
He starts to move my hair from my face. “I owe you a date-date.”
So, it’s going to be door number three: act like everything is fine. What do I do? Do I roll with it? What did Jesse say? Guys hate conflict. Act normal and so will he. But is that what I want? To act normal and just leave it all alone?
I don’t answer.
He climbs from the bed, naked, and completely comfortable in whatever we’re doing now.
I sit up in bed against the pillows.
Alan is sorting through his clothes on the floor. “Are you hungry?”
Normal conversation in not normal context. I take a deep breath, willing myself calm.
“I’m starving. We didn’t eat yesterday.”
He gives me a look that makes me quicken all through my flesh.
“Do you have any clothes here other than the shorts and UGGs? Maybe jeans, a long sleeve shirt, and some kind of closed toe shoe?”
Why is he asking me this? “I don’t know. I’ll have to look. Rene left a lot of junk.”
He makes a face and continues to rummage through his things.
I frown. “How did you get into the apartment yesterday?”
“I have a key.”
You do, do you? I stare.
“You left the extra key on the entry table.” He is distracted and looking for something. “Not smart, Chrissie. Anyone could have just come in here, a delivery person, taken it, and then where would you be?”
It’s not worth pointing out, but just anyone did take it and look at where I am. With you, Alan, sore after a night of angry fucking.
I watch Alan disappear into the bathroom. I hear the shower turn on. He doesn’t ask, he takes my hand and pulls me into the shower with him.
As I stand beneath the warm streams, his damp body pressed against my back, his gentle hands wash me from behind. “Did you ever finish Ivanoff?”
Oh, Alan, why are you so weird? I shake my head. “You could always give me the Cliff Notes really fast.”
He smiles. His chin rests on my shoulder and he continues washing me, and his voice, so sexy, makes it arousing to do this, even listening to a brief synopsis of Chekhov.
By the time we’re toweling off, I’m kind of wishing he’d just take me back to bed. Sexy Alan was a turn-on, even reciting Chekhov, but it’s probably not a good idea. I’m sorer than I thought and I could feel it when he touched me there, even lightly while washing me.
I make a face at him, since he used my toothbrush without asking, and I pat my face dry with a towel.
