Chapter 14
Laine
I couldn’t go to my car. Yes, I wanted to protect him from me. Yes, I cared about everything I’d built, and he was a walking, talking career bulldozer. But I couldn’t walk out. I kept imagining his body under his clothes, the way it moved, his hands on me, his lips, those lips.
Some base instinct told me he’d show up, and an even baser one wanted to see him so badly, I felt the blood flowing through my veins when I thought about it.
And he did. I thought I’d explode from the unexpected relief in my chest. But something came over him, as if a mask he was wearing came off. I didn’t know what it was about. At first I thought he was angry that I’d called him a liar, which technically, I hadn’t. I’d only meant to say that you either care what people think or you tell them to kiss off. There was no in between. I was ready to explain all that, but he put his finger up to shush me.
“Work with me,” he said, taking my wrist and pulling me up.
“Where are we going?”
He pulled me down the stairs, my skirt flying and my skill in heels more useful than ever.
“You watched me practice every day for six months,” he called over his shoulder.
“Partly true.”
He stopped when my feet hit the court and turned to me. “Your point?”
“For the last two, you kept me from studying with your yack yack yack.”
“I offered to teach you to play, and you didn’t want to.”
“I’m not an athlete.”
“I disagree.”
He took my hand and pulled me again, lacing his fingers through mine. He walked toward the clubhouse, and I followed, so distracted by his touch I almost tripped over my own legs. The small building had a tunnel through it, an underpass with trophy cases of memorabilia and a water fountain.
“All that time,” he said, his voice echoing in the small space, “I wanted to volley with you. Just talk without talking, and you wouldn’t.”
He got to the equipment closet door with a little keypad with ten buttons above the doorknob. He let go of my hand to push a combination while his other hand pressed the lever.
Nothing happened but a soft beep and a little red light.
“Michael, seriously? You think they didn’t change the combination in all these years?”
“You don’t know this school very well.” He tried it again with the same result.
“I should be going. It’s late,” I said, even though I didn’t want to go. Not at all. But I didn’t feel aggressive or demanding, and I felt as though Michael needed a little space.
He approached the trophy case and put his phone up to it. The blue light fell on racquets and balls used to win meaningless championships and pictures of kids who later became famous as players or magnates. Some were winners, and some only qualified for a mention because of what they did later in life.
“Here,” he said, motioning me over.
He put his hand on my back and directed his phone light to a black-and-white photo of his younger self with a championship trophy, next to another photo of his gorgeous body stretched in the air for a mother-of-a-whore serve. The line of hair between his navel and his waistband distracted me from the grimace on his face. I wanted to trace it to its logical end as much now as I had when I was fifteen. The black graphite racquet and yellow ball he’d been using when he won leaned on the side wall behind the tempered glass.
“Are we reliving past glories today?” I said, feeling as though that was too harsh only when it was halfway out of my mouth.
But if he was offended, he gave no indication. He just scanned the underpass by the light of his phone. When he found a garbage can, he removed the lid by grabbing the edge of the center hole. “Back up, Laine.”
“What are you…?
He swung the heavy lid at the case and shattered it. Glass tinkled to the concrete.
“Jesus! Michael!”
“It’s my racquet.” He took it out of the case, shaking shards off it.
“But—”
He plucked up the ball. “I’ll put it back.” He bounced the ball once, twice, then smacked it into a vibrating mass using the racquet. “The strings need tightening, and the ball is only half dead. Come on.”
He pulled me again. No alarms went off, and no security guards came running. It was just us grinding broken glass under our feet.
He went out to the court, and I followed.
“So, not for anything?” I said, “But what’s gotten into you?”
He pointed the racquet at me, handle first. “You’re a lefty, right?”
I couldn’t believe he remembered. My hand went to the work leather handle as if guided by an invisible force.
He smacked the ball to the ground and snapped it into his fist on the way up. “I wanted to do this when you and I were talking up there in the bleachers. Talking was nice, don’t get me wrong, but this is too. Just try to get it over the net.”
He bounced the ball to me. I swung and missed.
“It’s gonna be a long night,” I said as he retrieved the ball.
“You’ll be a pro in fifteen minutes.” He smiled from ear to ear. “Just swing, don’t swat. Like, who do you hate the most in your life?”
“Right now?”
“Sure.”
“I want to kill my brother,” I said.
“Why?”
“Because he brought my rig into a VIP room after I’d told someone he wouldn’t. Then it got thrown off a balcony, which if you ask me, was totally fair considering it didn’t belong there, and then he sold the picture, which had me in it.”
“You were in it?”
“My back, but that’s not the point. The point is he’s leveraging the fact that I love him, and I do not like being leveraged.”
Michael threw the ball. It bounced right at me, and I pulled that racquet back and swung as if Tom’s stupid head was a little yellow sphere.
It went flying.
“Oh,” Michael said while it was midair. “Wow, it’s…”
It landed on the flat roof of the clubhouse.
“It’s the only ball we had,” I said.
“Short lesson.”
I didn’t see disappointment in his face as he looked up though—only some kind of exaltation, a basking in something wonderful. A release, maybe. And maybe I was wrong. Maybe I was projecting how I felt at that moment and he was just passing time until he got to do the next thing famous rich people do. Maybe it was dark except for the streetlamps a block away, and that smile was really a grimace, and his posture wasn’t relaxed but slouched.
I didn’t even know the guy, really, and I could have been wrong about a lot of things, but I wasn’t wrong about the release in my own ribs, the glorious wonder I felt at the stupid stolen ball getting lost on the roof, or the flutter I felt seeing his pleasure.
I felt fifteen again, and he was a senior holding my hand on the armrest, and this minute at Breakfront was my big chance at redemption. The whole of life opened up before me. A life where I didn’t have to chase. I only had to make someone happy for a few minutes a day, and sometimes, not always, but sometimes good things didn’t have to be chased down. Sometimes they’d come to me.
“I want that ball,” I said.
He tilted his head. “Really?”
I leaned the racquet on the net. “I want that ball, and I’m going to get it.”
“We’ve been losing balls on that roof for years.”
“That was your last lost ball.”
I’d climbed fences, trespassed on roofs, broken things, run in front of traffic, been arrested and not charged, and sped down the freeway and Santa Monica Boulevard. But never had I ever been so thrilled as when I went behind the clubhouse and found the utility ladder attached to the building. I got up the first step. Michael stood beside the ladder, and I turned my head to him. My eyes were a few inches above his.
“You’re going to crack your face with those heels,” he whispered.
“You have no idea who you’re talking to,” I whispered back before I headed up the ladder. I felt him behind me in the stability his weight added .
“Are you looking up my skirt?” I called back.
“Yes. Yes, I am. And if I may say so—”
“Don’t even make something up. It’s pitch dark.”
“You’re beautiful. I’m not making that up.”
I stopped and looked down at him. “Do not even.”
“I’ll say what I like.”
He put his hand on my ankle, lightly at first, looking at me. Our eyes locked, me from above, him tilted upward. I didn’t move my foot, and he moved his hand up my leg slowly, over my calf, lingering on the back of my knee before ever so gently moving a few inches upward and brushing the inside of my thigh.
My legs lost the ability to hold me, and my other foot slipped. His grip tightened to hold me up, and his touch sent shockwaves through me.
“Jesus,” he said, hand still inside my thigh. “You all right?”
“I’m fine.”
“Good. Get moving.” He slapped my calf, and I got moving.
When my head crested the roof, I saw a flat surface littered with hundreds of yellow orbs arranged randomly, like stars in the sky. Scooting to the ledge, I spun on my bottom and dropped onto the tar surface. Michael came up a second after.
“This is a pretty good view for being only one story,” I said, walking to the north side, where the city laid itself out for me like a quilt on display, from my feet to the blackened strip of sky where the mountains ended.
“The best view in the city is from the courthouse rooftop, downtown.” He touched my bare shoulder, fingertips laced with intention.
I kept my eyes on the skyline, because if I looked at him, I would lose myself, and I couldn’t. Not today. Not ever. Not with him. What was I doing up there? His fingertips traced my collarbone, his breath on my ear, and I was going adrift.
“I know the best views,” I rambled in a last ditch effort to keep the career I’d worked so hard for. “I went up to the top of the library once, tallest building in LA. Of course, it was as illegal as hell, but I knew this guy who… he…” I turned. I had to. We were kiss close and getting closer. “We came here to do a job.”
I pulled away. He took the side of my face and yanked me back toward him. A second went by, his green eyes black in the night. His intentions were broadcast through his posture, his energy, enfolding me inside it.
If I ever had a real actor this close, I’d never trust him. But this wasn’t acting. Or if it was, I was fooled. I swallowed and pressed my lips together.
“We’d better get to it,” he said with a smirk.
How could I be relieved and disappointed at the same time?
I stepped back, picked up a tennis ball, and threw it east toward the practice court. It didn’t clear the length of the roof. It bounced off another ball and flew sideways, disrupting the pattern and sending a bunch of other balls skittering.
“Told you I wasn’t an athlete!” I cried, laughing.
Michael shot two over the roof, and I heard them plunk onto the court. “Put your back into it, Laine. Throw it like you mean it.”
I grabbed one in each hand and threw them. They barely cleared the edge of the roof, but I put up my arms and cheered, claiming victory.
“Faster!” Michael said, lobbing a blitzkrieg of tennis balls.
I scuttled along the roof, knees bent, chucking balls and laughing as I tried to keep up with him and failed. I didn’t know if we were even making a dent in the roof’s tennis ball population. I didn’t even know if half of mine were making it to the court. I started throwing balls to Michael, and he caught them and lobbed them. He picked up more between my poorly aimed tosses, moving his body like an instrument.
I moved back toward San Vicente, conscious of the edge of the building. I was high on the rhythm. I couldn’t disrupt his poise, even when my toss was so bad I didn’t think it would reach him. We were laughing so hard I was blind and barely able to walk and throw at the same time. He lunged, caught a ball, and I stepped back. My foot landed on top of a tennis ball, and it rolled. I lost my balance.
The ledge of the roof was only two feet high, and as I tried not to fall, my body was pitched left with the torque of my shoulders. If I’d have been on the ground, I would have taken a step left and taken a deep breath before I stood straight. But I didn’t have the ground under me, just a two-foot-high ledge I was about to fall over.
The wind dropped out of my lungs as I was yanked back. Michael pulled me straight, his grip definitive and almost painful. I steadied myself on him, gulping for air.
“You really aren’t an athlete,” he said.
He still smelled like cinnamon, and I had to know immediately if he tasted of spiced cider.
I didn’t wait for him to move or even breathe. I put my hands on the sides of his neck and pulled my face up to his, smashing our lips together in the most graceless, artless kiss in the history of kisses.
I was so clumsy, I kissed his teeth, and it took him a full century and a half to align his mouth to mine, putting lip to lip, skin on skin, slipping his tongue to mine. Oh, yes, he tasted like sunshine and smelled like cinnamon. Like a different world. The other side of the city. Deep brown and layered in cardamom. Drenched in sepia. His tongue filled my mouth like a flood, and my belly twisted with a rolling current.
It was better than I’d ever hoped. More intense than I’d imagined. More real than the roof under my feet and more divine than the heavens above.
He stopped, putting his nose astride my nose, and I thought of that pause as my last chance to save my career.
Screw the pause. Screw the career. Screw Michael Greydon.
We kissed again with renewed passion. I threaded my fingers through his hair, and he moved his along my back. He drew the pin out of my chignon.
“That hair,” he groaned before putting his lips to mine again.
His erection pressed on me, and my knees went jelly. He pulled me to him, holding me close to keep our lips together. My body overrode every firing neuron in my brain. That erection was mine. I owned it. I wanted it to be a part of me, moving inside my body with gentleness and violence and everything in between. Him. I wanted him, with his hands slipping around the side of my dress to touch my breast and his hips pushing against me, with the taut body I stroked under his jacket, with the motions of a man on the edge of losing control.
I didn’t even have a brain. I was simply a velocity. A direction. Zero to desperate for him in three point two seconds.
I would have let him take me on that roof, though I didn’t know if that was what he had in mind. I would have gone home with him or taken him back to my loft. I would have given him every inch of my body without a hope of seeing him again. Stupidly. Definitively. Recklessly.
But it wasn’t to be. A light flashed, diffused to orange by my closed eyelid. Then another. Though I couldn’t hear past the white noise of the busy street below, I knew that each flash had a click to accompany it, and each click was a hammer on a nail on the coffin of my dead career.
I believed love was forever. I knew people should always choose love over a job, but this wasn’t love. This was a set of circumstances that led to real heat between two people. I wasn’t choosing between two worthwhile objectives.
At twenty-five, I’d been a photographer for almost a decade. I’d done nothing but work. I’d had a bad few years with men after leaving Breakfront, then I had a sprinkling of short, unsatisfying romances I didn’t take seriously. I lost my virginity just to get it over with. The only thing I’d ever cared about was taking pictures, and giving it up for a moment’s pleasure didn’t seem like something I’d be happy about in the long run.
I mean, we existed in the world. On a rooftop surrounded by lost tennis balls and a good fifteen minutes of laughter, I might have felt as if we were the only two people in the universe, but the fact was, we weren’t an island. If we were ever destined to become a unit, to fall in love or even some half-shaded version of it, we had to exist in the larger world together first.
And that wasn’t going to happen.
Not with the paparazzi dog pack huddling on San Vicente like, well, dogs. As soon as we stopped kissing and stood there staring at each other, they started calling our names, because sure, he was famous, but they all knew me.
“Just say this wasn’t your plan the whole time,” he growled.
“Go to hell.”
I pulled my hand back as if I was getting ready to slap him, and he held it gently. He must have felt me shaking or seen the tears welling in my eyes, because his suspicion disappeared.
“It’s going to be fine,” he said, touching the side of my face.
Even as my mind told me that he didn’t know what he was talking about, my heart was soothed. It was going to be fine. I believed him.
He didn’t look down at the paps, but in that moment of confidence, I did. I saw Jerome and Terence, Raoul with his bald head and chunky gold chains.
I pushed Michael away.
“Listen,” he said, putting his finger up as if he was going to school me on how to handle a crowd of paps.
I couldn’t speak to him about anything that mattered. I couldn’t even form words. I felt slapped repeatedly by the shutters.
“I didn’t ask for this,” I said.
I turned and walked to the ladder, kicking yellow balls. He grabbed my arm when we got to the edge. We were still visible from the street, and the photographers had moved down the block like a school of fish.
“Let me go,” I said.
“I’m going first so if you fall, I can catch you. Now you can either wrestle me to the ladder first and give these guys more to shoot, or you can let me go first and give them nothing.”
My face screwed up as I realized what he was saying. We would get shot going down no matter what, but what we gave them was up to us. I was frozen.
He took me by the shoulders and looked me in the eye, but all I could see in my mind was the angle of the cameras below, what we looked like together and what would sell. I couldn’t think past that.
“Laine, listen.”
I couldn’t even look at him. I only had eyes for who was in the street and what they were getting.
“Look at me.” He shook me almost imperceptibly, and I turned enough to put him in my field of vision.
He leaned in, one eye clear jade in the streetlight, one dark in the night, his mouth set to make a point. The little pepita of a hairless spot on his chin was a comfort, a memory of times “before.” I breathed once, then again, focusing on him. I would have told him he was beautiful if I hadn’t been somehow cleared of any kind of rational thought.
“Just follow me,” he said. “Don’t look at them.”
The desire to look down was overwhelming.
“I’m going to go first,” he said, “but I’m going to be with you the whole time. Right?”
I nodded.
“Just look at me, Laine. When we get down, I’ll show you the way out.”
Like a poke in the pride, what he said woke me.
“I can get out without you,” I said.
“Challenge accepted. Now come on.”
As soon as he put a foot of distance between us, I felt the loss of his presence. He stepped onto the ladder, and I watched him, unmoving, until only his chest and head were visible.
He waved me over. “Come on. Don’t look. Just come here.”
Carefully keeping my dress over my legs, I stepped onto the ladder. He was close to me, too close to look up my skirt. I had a hundred wisecracks at the ready that I couldn’t utter, because he was blocking me from the lenses, and I needed him. In three steps, we were below the hedge, blocked from them completely. We got to the ground seconds later.
Michael took my hand and headed for the court and the front door.
I pulled back. “I’m going this way.”
“There’s nothing that way.”
“Michael, in about a minute, they’re going to put holes in that hedge big enough for their lenses. We need to be on opposite ends of the city by then.”
“Come out with me. We’ll deal with it tomorrow.”
“That’s too late. I’m sorry. I’ve worked too hard.” I let his hand go and stepped backward.
“Where are you going?” He looked like a man slapped in the face.
I didn’t want to hurt him. I didn’t even think it was possible.
“I want you to know,” I said, “I’ve never been kissed like that.”
Before he could respond, I ran into the trees.