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Alex ducked reflexively as he stepped to the loft’s center. He wasn’t in danger of bumping his head, but the ceiling was so low up here it felt possible. Grinning over his shoulder at me, he sank onto the sectional and bounced a little, then put his hands behind his head and his feet on the table.
“Awesome.” He looked at the pile of books stacked on the floor next to the sofa. “More Jackie?”
“Probably.” I tilted my head sideways to check out the titles. Lots of science fiction, some romance, a couple of mysteries. “I think there’s a little bit of everything there.”
Alex lifted the book from the top of the pile. “Robert R. McCammon?”
“Swan Song. Have you read it?”
He shook his head. “No. Should I?”
“It’s scary,” I told him. “You can borrow it, if you want.”
Grinning, he tucked the book into his fist and stood. “Thanks.”
Alex was tall but not big, not broad, more lean than anything. Yet he took up an awful lot of space. He stretched up one arm and placed his hand flat on the ceiling, and the lines of his body shifted. A hip went down, a knee bent. Once again I pictured him in a catalog. He had a face that could convince people they wanted stuff they couldn’t afford and didn’t need.
“Well, I’d better get back,” he said after a spare few seconds.
“Lots of unpacking?” I asked over my shoulder as he followed me down the stairs.
“Umm…no.” He laughed. “I don’t have a lot of stuff.”
“But you got a new ride. I saw it out back.”
Alex laughed again. “Yeah. Fucking Bumblebee. What can I say? I got my first hard-on for the Transformers.”
“Better that than Rainbow Brite, I guess. Or the Smurfs.”
We laughed together and he looked around my apartment again. The layout of my place was a little different than his, with more open space and higher ceilings, plus the loft. It was brighter, too.
“Nice place.”
“Thanks. I can’t take much credit for it. I bought it already made into apartments. Hey, would you like some hot tea? I just got some chai.”
“That would be great.”
I left him to make himself at home while I heated the water and put away my groceries. I had no doubt he would, and though I was more one to guard my privacy, that was surprisingly okay with me. By the time I came out of the kitchen with two mugs of steaming chai, he’d made the tour around my apartment.
“You took all these?” Alex reached for the mug without looking at me, his gaze fixed on the photos I’d hung in stark glass frames without mats.
“Yes.”
We studied them together. I warmed my hands on my mug. He sipped. He said nothing for so many minutes I began to feel nervous, as though I wanted to speak. Had to speak. I bit my tongue, determined not to ask him what he thought.
“This one.” He pointed to a shot of me and Patrick at the far end. “You didn’t take this one.”
“Oh. No.” I’d hung it there because it was a favorite, a candid shot of us in happy times. Our hands were linked, my head on his shoulder. We looked like a normal couple.
Alex sipped more chai.
“I should take it down, I guess.” I made no move to do so.
He looked at me then. “Why?”
“Well…because…it’s a lie.” It wasn’t what I’d expected to say, but once the words came out they felt right. “That picture isn’t real. It was never real.”
Alex handed me his mug and I took it automatically. When he lifted the frame off its hook I made an unexpected noise of protest. He gave me a look and took the single step up onto the level where my dining table was. He put the photo facedown on it.
“Now, it’s down.” He reached for his mug and I handed it to him. “Feel any better?”
“No.” But I laughed a little. “Thanks.”
“Hey, do you have any plans for tonight? I know it’s Friday. You probably have something going on.”
I had to work the early shift at Foto Folks the next morning. “Actually, I don’t.”
“I rented some movies. And, like a d-bag, didn’t remember I don’t have a TV yet.”
“Ah. So you’re going to use me for mine, is that it?”
“I’d be ashamed to say yes, but it’s the truth.”
I sipped from my mug as I pretended to think about it. “What did you rent?”
“The new Transformers movie. And Harold and Maude.”
“Yeah, wow, because those two are so similar,” I told him with a laugh. “But I haven’t seen the Transformers and it’s been years since I watched Harold and Maude. Sure. I’ll let you use my TV.”
“I’ll buy the pizza, how’s that?”
“Sounds like a plan.”
We made arrangements to meet later, and Alex showed up at six o’clock with a large pizza from the place down the street in one hand, a bunch of DVDs in the other. I hadn’t done more than change my clothes into Friday-night-stay-at-home sweatpants and a T-shirt, but he’d showered and shaved, and wafted through my door on a delicious cloud of garlic and cologne. I wondered if I should’ve made more of an effort.
“Dinner by candlelight?” he asked as he set the pizza on my dining table.
“Oh…no. They’re not for ambience.” Lighting candles was something I did on Friday nights when I wasn’t out and about, a habit left over from my childhood, when my mom had made a point of lighting candles even if she’d done very little else to usher in the Sabbath. Big change from now, when her life revolved around it.
He gave me a quizzical look. “Are you Jewish?”
I shouldn’t have been surprised he guessed—a world traveler would probably have encountered some Jews somewhere along the way. “Not really. Sort of.”
“Oookay.”
I laughed, self-conscious. “It’s complicated.”
“Fair enough. It’s not any of my business.” He glanced at the candles. “They’re pretty, though.”
“Thanks.” My mother had given me the candlesticks. I don’t think she knew I used them. At least I’d never told her. “What can I get you to drink?”
Moving right along. Alex got the hint. “Water’s good.”
“You sure? I have some red wine. In a bottle even, not from a box.”
He made an impressed face. “Fancy. But no, thanks.”
“Do you mind if I have some?”
My question seemed to surprise him. “No, of course not. It’s your house.”
He’d been gracious enough not to push me on the religion issue; I gave him the same treatment about the drinking. We piled slices of pizza on our plates and ate in front of the television while the Transformers blew up a lot of stuff and Harold fell in love with Maude. We laughed a lot and talked over the movies. We sat at opposite ends of the couch, but our feet met in the middle, nudging every so often.
It was the nicest night I’d had in a long time, and I told him so.
“Get out of here.” Alex flipped a hand at me.
“I’m serious!”
“Well. Good. I’m glad.”
A few glasses of red wine had left me mellow and languid. “It’s nice, just hanging out with you, Alex. No pressure. None of that stupid back and forth stuff.”
He was silent for a few seconds as the credits rolled. “Thanks. It’s nice hanging out with you, too.”
I yawned under cover of my hand. “But it’s late, and I have to get up early tomorrow.”
“Work?”
“Yeah. Think of me while you’re still snuggled down under the blankets in the morning.”
He laughed and got up, held out a hand to help me up, too. “Oh. I’m sure I will.”
Our fingers had linked, but now he let me go. I watched as he popped open the DVD player to take out the disc, and slipped it into the paper rental sleeve. He caught me looking as he turned.
“We should do this again,” I said. “It was fun.”
I wasn’t drunk, but I was tired and more than a bit fuzzy. I couldn’t quite read his smile or the expression in his eyes—something was there that looked like amusement. Something beneath that, too deep to decipher.
“Yeah. I’d like that. Good night, Olivia.” Alex didn’t move toward the door.
This was the point of the night where, with another man, I’d have been tipping my face up for a kiss. Hell, this was the part of the night where I’d already have decided if he was going to spend the night or be kicked out. Instead, we both laughed at the same time. Alex stepped away. Whatever tension I’d imagined—and it had to be imagined—faded.
“Good night, Olivia. See you.”
“Night,” I called after him as he let himself out the door. “Catch you later.”
The door clicked shut behind him. I gathered the trash and put the leftover pizza in the fridge, then padded into my bathroom for a hot shower so I wouldn’t have to wake up so early the next morning. Usually the steam and water relax me enough so that I’m boneless by the time I come out, ready immediately for sleep, but not this night.
My soap-slick hands slid over my skin. Nipples tight. An ache between my legs. I wasn’t making myself come with Alex’s face in mind, his long, lean body…the sound of his moan. I wasn’t sliding my hands over my breasts and thighs and belly pretending they belonged to him. I was absolutely not lying in darkness on my bed with my legs spread, a finger in my cunt and another on my clit, working my body into ecstasy while I pretended it was him.
All right, so I was. It was impossible not to. He was beautiful and sexy and the closest I’d had to a date in months. That was by choice, since plenty of men asked me out but very few impressed me. And he wasn’t into women. I’d seen evidence of that with my own eyes, even if Patrick hadn’t warned me off him.
Yet my body gave it up for him, my mind swirling with thoughts of how wrong it was. How stupid and useless. My mind knew better, but my pussy didn’t care. I slid fingers deep inside my hot, slick flesh and felt the clamp and grip of my internal muscles as I spasmed. My clit throbbed, pressure building while I tapped a fingertip in a slow beating rhythm on top. Teasing. Holding off.
Until at last I thought once more of his voice, my memory conveniently merging the sound of his groan with my name, and the way he said “fuck me.” In my head it had become a command, not an exclamation of surprise. And as I surged up and over and down into the spiral of heat and pleasure, I wished he would say it to me for real.
Chapter Four
“I haven’t seen you in forever.” Patrick frowned. “You never return my calls and I sent you about four dozen pings at Connex and you ignored me there, too.”
I fiddled with my camera settings and took a few shots of nothing just to test them. “I’ve been busy with work. I haven’t even logged in to Connex lately. What sorts of pings?”
“I invited you to our New Year’s party. Teddy thinks I’m crazy for having another party so soon after the last one. But what can I say? I like parties. Besides, I don’t want to go out anyplace around here for New Year’s Eve and nobody invited us anywhere.” Patrick shrugged. “You’ll come.”
“What if I have plans? Turn to the left a little. Hold up the cup. Look like, c’mon, Patrick, look like you’re enjoying it.” I peered through my lens to frame the shot I was supposed to use in an ad for a local café. “I’ve seen you look more enthused about watching Lawrence Welk reruns.”
“What do you want me to do, look like I’m getting ready to fuck the mug?” Patrick frowned and lifted the cup higher and forced an entirely false grin onto his handsome mouth. “Is this better? How’s this, Olivia? Ooh, coffee, I’m so horny for you…”
I snapped a couple of shots just to annoy him with later, when he saw how ridiculous he looked. “Quit being a jerk. C’mon, I need this for tomorrow.”
“Nothing like running behind schedule.” Patrick licked the mug.
I snapped another shot and thought I might frame that one as a gift. “It’s a last-minute job, and I can’t afford to turn them down.”
He shot me a glance, then put his pout into place. “How’s this?”
“A little less constipated, but yes. Good.” Finally I got something that would work. It wasn’t art, but it would do. Patrick put the mug down while I transferred the pictures to my computer.
“You’ll come, right? And dinner on Friday. You haven’t been over since the party.” He flipped through the large album of photos I’d chosen as my best, to show off to potential clients. “Oh, I like this one. Why don’t you do more of these, Livvy? They’re so good.”
I glanced at the picture, a nude I’d taken at a photography workshop I’d gone to the year before. “Because I’m not an erotic photographer and I don’t have much use for nudes.”
“She’s pretty.”
I gave him a look. “Yes. She is. She’s a model.”
He flipped a few more pages. “I like this one, too.”
A landscape. Nothing special. I could add text to it and play with the dimensions to use in brochures or Web sites. I shrugged.
“You don’t take compliments very well.”
I laughed and began toying with the pictures I’d taken of him. “I want to make my living doing this, Patrick. I don’t have any grand ideas of becoming a famous artiste. The work’s good. Yes. I get it. I’m not setting up shop at the street fair to sell my prints, okay?”
“You could have a gallery show. Your work is good, as good as some of the stuff I’ve seen hanging up downtown. You know I have a friend of a friend—”
“Stop,” I told him firmly. “Patrick, I love you, but I’m not having a gallery show. And besides, I know people, too, you know. It’s not like I couldn’t get something going if I wanted to.”
