seven
Vivian
Jim opened the door of his green Saturn to let me in. He was a gentleman’s gentleman, looking into my eyes when he spoke despite the low-cut liquid silk of the dress, complimenting me chastely, and keeping the conversation light.
“Security told me Dash Wallace from the Dodgers was in the building Monday,” he said. “I wonder what he wanted.”
I told him about the glove and the conversation after, leaving out the double entendre about endowments and the part where I blurted out how handsome he was. “So it’s this big deal because you can’t go around accusing kids of stealing, but we have to solve the issue if there is one. We’ve searched backpacks and lockers—”
“Third graders don’t have lockers.”
“But they have brothers and sisters and cousins, yada yada. It’s such a disaster. If one of our kids took it, it’s not in the building. So we’re contacting parents, and it’s going to be an ugly mess, I’m sure.”
“Did he say what was so special about it?”
“No. Just that it was important. I don’t have high hopes.”
The museum rose at the intersection of Fairfax and Wilshire. Gigantic wind-shaped comic-book swirls made of brushed metal covered the building, lit from behind in deep red. In one sense, the building was ridiculous and fake, out of proportion, overly ambitious, poorly yet grandly designed to look like a birthday cake or to represent the absurd cartoonishness of Los Angeles itself, a city so driven by cars that they had their own museum. In another sense, if the designers had wanted to go big or go home, their mission had been accomplished.
Jim pulled into the lot, the only entrance to the building (it was a car museum after all), where we were stopped by a valet. Flashes went off for everyone getting out of their limos and foreign sports cars, but he and I were able to walk up to the doors without a glance from anyone.
I caught a glimpse of Michael Greydon and Laine Cartwright with two of their children. Brad Sinclair was there. Monica Faulkner, the singer. I scanned for Dash. Every face. Every body. Would I see him first, or would he see me?
One guy. From the back. Brown hair and a perfect body next to a woman in a copper up-do. I gulped. Of course he wouldn’t be here alone. The man turned to kiss the woman.
Wasn’t him. But it was a reminder. Dash was a beautiful man. He was rich, talented, and sought after. He wasn’t coming alone.
“Wow, this is some raffle you won,” I said as I clung to Jim’s arm. I was glad I’d worn the gold dress. It was appropriate. Whoever Dash’s date was, I was about to give her a run for her money.
We got on the white-lit polymer steps to the second floor. Below us, the first floor was designed like a freeway clover, and inside each leaf was a car on a turntable. One from each of the major auto-producing nations: Japan, the US, Italy, India.
I scanned for him below. Nothing.
“Who are you looking for?” Jim asked.
“Dash Wallace said he was going to be here.”
“The roof is the VIPs,” he said as we crested the second floor. “He’s probably up there.”
I deflated and felt relief at the same time. I could stop looking for him because I wouldn’t see him unless he came looking for me, which was unlikely.
As soon as we stepped off the escalator, we were assaulted by a cacophony of bells, whistles, whirring, and tapping. The floor was crowded with people and games, machines, tables, and an announcer.
“Looks like all the fun stuff is here,” I said.
“Your specialty.”
“I’m fun? I’m not fun.”
He laughed. “Yes, you are.”
“What do you want to do first?” I straightened his satin blue tie and patted his lapel.
“Batman.” He pointed at the Batmobile. “Gotta do Batman.”
We headed to the exhibit that had inspired the party. The museum had acquired each incarnation of the Batmobile from the 1970s TV show to the most recent reboot. We grabbed drinks and got in line to sit where Michael Keaton had sat while the car shimmied in front of a screen depicting the chase scene with Superman.
Michelle appeared when we were at the front of the line. Her smooth ebony skin seemed to stretch for miles from her neck to her sternum. Her breasts were covered with two strips of shiny white fabric belted at the waist so precisely placed that not an inch of inappropriate nudity could be seen at any angle.
I saw her just as Jim and I were giggling about bat signal-worthy crises at school. Out of apples. Bat signal. Inappropriate language. Bat signal.
“Ex-girlfriend at two o’clock,” I said.
“Bat signal,” he murmured, looking behind me.
“Not your two o’clock, you dolt. My two o’clock.”
She tapped his shoulder so hard it must have hurt then triangulated between us. I guessed I didn’t have to worry about him stalking her. She had no problem being in the same room with him.
“Hi, Michelle.” His face lit up like the city at sunset. He loved her, the poor sod.
Her lips pressed together, and her eyes burned two dime-sized holes right in him.
I held out my hand. “I’m Vivian.”
She glanced at me as if deciding it was safe to shake my hand, then she did. I looked at her and tried to think non-threatening thoughts, averting my gaze after a point and looking over her shoulder. At which point I swallowed my own face.
“Bat signal,” I squeaked.
The guy running the Batmobile attraction undid the velvet rope. “You two next?”
“Yes,” Michelle said, slipping between Jim and me.
He looked at me, silently asking if it was all right, but I was still speechless that a man I hadn’t seen anywhere but on a TV screen was five feet from me for the third time in a week.
“Mr. Wallace,” I said.
He smirked. “Almost didn’t recognize you without the glasses, Apples.”
“Did you forget my name?”
“No, but I think he did.” Dash pointed toward Jim and Michelle having it out in the front seat of the Batmobile, so deep in discussion that they weren’t paying attention to the attraction.
I turned to face Dash. He’d shaved for the event, and though I liked the scruff he’d had before, the angles of his jaw looked extra sharp without hair to soften them. His tux brought out the width of his shoulders, and the open jacket let me see the flat perfection of his waist. I didn’t want to think about the rest. Not while I had to form words.
“I hope they stay together this time,” I said.
“You look…” His eyes scanned my body, and I felt prickly heat all over. “What are the words?”
“Nice? I look nice?”
“You could conduct electricity in that dress.”
I laughed. Part nerves. Part space filler. Part delight over an obscure fifth-grade science reference.
I flattened the gold fabric against me. “I was going for more insoluble.”
“You’ve just out-scienced me.”
“I help the kids with their homework after school.”
He pointed his chin at the Batmobile. Jim and Michelle were talking quietly among the blasts and screeches of the screen. “I think you lost your date.”
“Yeah. Well, I don’t want to keep you from yours.”
She was a five-foot-eleven triathlete with a PhD, no doubt.
“I came with my sackmate.”
My brain skipped as if tripping on a crack in the pavement.
Sackmate.
A friend with benefits. That was my first thought. Up on deck, the consideration that a casual fuck buddy made him kind of available. In the hole, the actual definition of the word sackmate.
A shortstop’s second baseman. Double-play partner. Jack Youder.
Not a fuck buddy unless you’d just hit a grounder to short with a man on first. Then you were fucked.
It had taken me forever to unravel that, and he watched the process, probably wondering if I knew what he meant. I couldn’t stand in public with a baseball god and look like a deer in headlights.
“What are you going to do when he goes free agent?” I asked.
He stiffened, unamused and seemingly unimpressed. Fuck. Foul ball.
“He’s not going anywhere,” Dash said.
“You’d have a hard time finding a mate as good to sack.”
I was trying to lighten him up, and it worked. He smirked and looked at me the way he had when we’d met at the park. He looked at me as though he was trying not to. As if I was a magnet’s north and his gaze was stuck on me like magnetic south.
“You have a way with double entendre, don’t you?”
“Don’t let it fool you. I’m a librarian. You don’t get more boring than that.”
Jim and Michelle got out of the Batmobile. I didn’t know what to do with my hands. They wanted to touch Dash Wallace, but my brain wouldn’t let them, and the energy it took for mind to command matter drained me of any conversational material. I’d never felt so stupid in my life.
“Is there someone in your life, Apples? A guy type?”
I shook my head.
“Is that a ‘no’?”
I nodded. God almighty, what was wrong with me?
He bent toward me, and I could smell his cologne. Pure heat and crackling ozone. Spice and musk and something that could only be described as lust in a bottle.
“Was that a forward question?” he whispered in my ear. His breath was warm, and with every syllable, I knew how his tongue and lips moved to make the sound.
“No. I don’t think so. I mean, I guess that depends on what your intentions are. If you’re just curious, then it’s forward and inappropriate.” You’re babbling. “But if you’re trying to come on to me, it’s probably one of the first questions you should ask because a gentleman would establish consent.”
You implied he wanted to come on to you.
I wasn’t the feisty heroine I imagined I was. The whole conversation had no place in a romance novel, or even life. I was supposed to feel his heat and still parry/thrust with clever comebacks. I was supposed to push him away while I beckoned him closer, all leading him to chase me until I could no longer run. For every hundred times I had been told by my father and my friends that romance novels were fake, life proved it true two hundred times.
“I found the word for that dress,” he said.
God, I hoped it wasn’t vintage or something. “Tell me.”
“Molten.”
My insides went as molten as my dress, and I saw him and what he was saying in a narrow tunnel. He liked the dress—and my body in it.
This was the best night of my life. Ever.
I was losing my crackers. I needed a distraction.
“Look,” I cried, pointing at a guy in a top hat and white face paint approaching us with a stack of iPads.
“Play the trivia game!” Top Hat handed me one. “We’re giving away a trip to Cancun.”
“Oh,” I said. “I’ll play!”
“Keep your eyes on the screen!” He pointed at a flat screen behind the Mercedes exhibit, then he handed Dash a tablet and took off for the next willing victims.
“Wait!” Dash held up his tablet and put it back on Top Hat’s stack. “I’ll play with her.”
“Play with me?”
Top Hat took off, and I was left with a shrinking space between me and my double meanings.
“Yeah. Like sackmates.”
Dash seemed to like sexy entendres, and everything I wanted in the world right then was for Dashiell Wallace to like me. I didn’t have to promise him anything, and he didn’t have to deliver after we left the event. All he had to do was stand near me. Let me be in his orbit.
“What if we win?” I said.
“Let’s cross that bridge when we come to it. Now…” He leaned over me to look at the screen. “We need a nickname. Apples?”
“Apple Dash.”
“Sounds like a delicious dessert.” The glow of the screen washed the surfaces of his face in blue light as he tapped in the name.
I didn’t even know what the nickname was supposed to mean except we’d become a team while I wasn’t looking.
I was going to die with happiness. It was temporary of course. But I couldn’t stop smiling. I knew then why women threw themselves at the feet of men like Dash. Actors, musicians, athletes, the kings and gods of the world. The social alphas. The gifted ones.
It felt good. Really, really good.
The screen flashed. Ready-Set-Go.
“The suspense is killing me,” he said, glancing sidelong at me.
“You better watch it,” I said. “Trivia’s my thing.”
The screen flashed.
First category. Three questions.
“Really?” he asked.
Literature.
“Yes. Really.”
In what play was the phrase beast with two backs coined?
The word was almost out of my mouth, but I didn’t get past the initial vowel before Dash had typed the answer.
Othello.
I tapped Send, and a big gold star filled the screen.
“Talk about double entendre,” I said.
“He’s the king.”
Who created Lenny and George?
“That’s so vague,” I grumbled.
“Do you know it?” His fingers hovered over the screen as if a batter was switching his stance to send it his way.
I scrunched up my face and let it go when I realized how unattractive that was. I did know, but I didn’t. “Skinny book. Tree on the front.”
“Right. Uh…” He shook his head as if loosening the information. “Unemployment. The Great Depression.”
“Steinbeck.”
“Has to be.” He tapped out John Steinbeck.
Gold star.
We high-fived, and for a second, his fingers curled into mine. I pulled my hand away. I would have burst if he’d held my hand. Just exploded into hot, sexy bits of Vivian all over the automotive museum.
What 2012 American novel ended with an unfinished sentence?
It was a hard question because the book wasn’t on any bestseller list, nor was it part of popular culture. It was thirteen-hundred pages long, and the only way to know that was to finish the book, which no one had. Except me. That was where I earned the prize. The other questions were bullshit.
“I got this,” he said.
“Don’t send!”
He couldn’t know. He was going to type in the wrong book entirely. I would correct it before he hit Send, saving the win for us and impressing the hell out of him with how much time I spent alone on my couch with a Kindle.
But his fingers tapped the glass confidently, and the letters that appeared were exactly right.
Eternal Joke.
He knew.
“Right?” he said.
“Right.” I hit Send. “Did you read it?” It was a stupid question. I was supposed to assume he had, but where had he found time to read that monstrous doorstop of a book?
The screen flashed beneath us. I knew why. Gold star.
“I like long books.” He shrugged.
“I’ve never met anyone who finished the whole thing. Did you like it?”
“Loved it. Right up to that last comma.”
Winners will be chosen randomly from players who answered all three questions correctly!
Next Category – Pets!
“It was beautiful,” I said. “Do you read a lot?”
“Yeah. It helps me.”
“Helps you what?”
He didn’t answer but handed me the iPad. “I travel too much for pets. Do you want to do this one?”
Without him? Did I want to answer questions about pets without him? No, I didn’t. I just wanted to ask him what else he’d read, his favorites of all time, everything. I pushed away the iPad.
“Paper or Kindle?” I said.
“Paper.”
“You’re missing out! Look, I have my Kindle in this tiny bag.” I opened my gold clutch, revealing my slim grey device. “I can catch a couple of pages anywhere, any time. It’s the best thing!”
He dropped the iPad on Top Hat’s pile and guided me around the room. “I’m not a couple-of-pages-at-a-time kinda guy. Once I’m in, I’m all in.”
“What are you reading now?”
I practically jumped out of my fancy shoes. I was sure he wasn’t reading about Jax the sexy banker and Harriet the waitress as they explored a hundred ways to have sex, but that was okay. I was sure he was reading something that had come across my path, and the thought… oh, the thought that we could talk about books of all things was so exciting I couldn’t contain myself.
“Reaper’s Weekend,” he said.
“Oh! That’s…” I caught myself before I said hard. “Postmodern.”
“The denser and more opaque, the better for me. Slows me down, or I go too fast.”
We ran into Jim. Michelle was on his arm.
“Hey,” Jim said, pointing at me then Dash. “Shortstop. Dodgers. Three Golden Gloves.”
The men shook hands.
“He was with me the whole time you were in the Batmobile,” I said. “You notice now?”
He jerked his thumb toward Michelle. “I was distracted by her beauty.”
She elbowed him playfully. I didn’t know what they’d fought about, but it obviously wasn’t anything a little jealousy couldn’t fix.
Jim turned to Dash. “What’s up with Youder? What are you gonna do when he goes free agent?”
It was a normal question, yet I didn’t know what to expect from Dash since he’d tensed up on me when I asked. He and Youder were great partners. Almost psychically connected. They’d led the league in double plays for three of the last five years, and I just figured if he could do that with Youder, he could do it with anyone.
But no. Dash’s expression was clear. The impending free-agency of his fielding partner bothered him. “I’ll figure it out.”
Youder was a sore spot. Jim hadn’t done anything wrong, but I wanted to pop him.
Michelle nudged Jim, and he said to me, “Meet downstairs when it’s over?”
“Yeah.”
“I can take her home,” Dash said.
My mouth opened. Words came out.
No. Nothing came out. They got caught in a mental bottleneck.
I probably looked like a choking victim.
Sort it out. Fast.
What Dash had intuited was that Jim wanted to go home with Michelle. He was right. Jim didn’t need me dragging him to the west side.
But Gentleman Jim wouldn’t allow me to get in a strange car with a strange man no matter how famous he was.
And what did I want?
“No,” Jim said in the split second it took me to separate the mental wheat from chaff. “I brought her. I’ll get her back.”
Michelle interjected her two cents right after. “Girl, he brought you. He delivers you home. Don’t worry about me.”
“Of course.” Dash nodded.
“I’ll take a Ryde.” I waved away their objections. “I’m fine. Thank you, guys. But I got it.”
“It’s decided.” Dash held his arm out for me.
I slipped my hand in the crook of his elbow. The wool of his jacket was warm to the touch, the arm under it hard with muscle. The moment lasted forever. I was at Dashiell Wallace’s side. Thank God I was wearing Mom’s dress. Even if I wasn’t the most glamorous woman in the world, in that dress, I could pretend I was.
Dash pulled me away from the crowd to a less-populated room housing concept cars from the eighties. A solar car. A one-person car. A three-wheeled car.
“I feel like I haven’t earned this nice treatment,” I said. “I haven’t found your glove yet.”
“You will.”
“I can’t guarantee it. There’s not much time until spring break.” I stopped the stroll around and faced him. “I just want to tell you the odds aren’t great. I can’t search everyone’s house. In the end, it’s just us hoping one of the kids is honest.”
He walked a few steps along the guardrail to the card for the wind-powered car, but his eyes didn’t move with the lines. They locked onto the middle distance. I shouldn’t have broken the moment with stupid pessimism. Now I felt like an interloper in this moment.
It was just a glove.
Right?
“I don’t like losing things,” he said before his gaze flicked to me. “It bothers me.”
“Yeah, I understand. It’s disruptive.”
He tilted his head, blinked, looked through me as if my skin were made of glass. “Yes. That’s exactly right.”
I had about four minutes’ worth of babble in me. The cost of attachment to objects. The time spent looking for the old glove versus the time spent getting used to a new one. I discarded all of it in favor of letting him look at me like that.
“How long did you have that glove?” I finally asked.
He took my hand.
He was touching me. Skin to skin. This whole scenario was impossible.
“Not long.” He led me around the perimeter. “I got a new sponsorship at the beginning of the year, so I switched.”
I would have broken in with a question, but he was still holding my hand. I could barely think, much less gently and subtly question why a new glove would mean a damn thing to him.
“It wasn’t the glove,” he continued.
“No?”
“No.”
He led me to the elevator banks. A few other people in eveningwear waited.
“Where are we going?”
“The VIP event’s upstairs.”
The doors slid open. People got out in their black ties and sparkly gowns, tittering and slurring, holding up purple tickets.
A man in a burgundy jacket stood by the elevator control panel. “Do you have a ticket?” he asked me.
“I do.” Dash took out his ticket. “The lady’s with me.”
Burgundy Jacket turned around, took a look at Dash, and nodded. The doors slid closed. “Yes, sir.”
The elevator whooshed, and I felt the enormous pressure under the soles of my stilettos. We stood side by side, facing the door, arms pressed together. He was an immovable wall against me, all muscle under his tux.
“Rule-breaker,” I mumbled.
He leaned down to my ear, and I breathed in his cologne, memorizing it, shifting the angle of my chin just enough to feel the skin of his cheek on my jaw.
“You make me reckless.”
My knees went weak, and I lost the capacity for words just as the elevator stopped. I lost my balance, and Dash put his arm around my waist before I fell, drawing me close.
“You all right?”
“I’m fine, thank you.” I moved an imaginary piece of hair behind my ear.
“You’re blushing.”
I thought I’d been aroused before, but his words and his physical presence activated every nerve between my legs. I sucked in a breath to keep from moaning at the feeling.
Was he turning a little red again? Because I was for sure. The heat in my cheeks didn’t lie, nor did the deepening color of his.
What a strange man. What a bundle of contradictions. Like that slightly overlapping tooth in front. It was awkward but somehow a necessary part of the whole incredible package.
I wasn’t tall enough. Fit enough. Rich enough. Smart enough. Accomplished enough. Exciting enough. I was a dead weight to a man. Didn’t he know that? Couldn’t he tell I’d drag him down?
I wasn’t supposed to set my sights too high. My mother had told me so. My father—not my real dad but the man who had given me my DNA—had been “beautiful as a Michelangelo and smart as Einstein.” That was what my mother had always said. Even when I was only a first grader, she’d leaned over me as I ate my blueberry oatmeal and was very, very clear about how I was to react to that kind of guy.
“Don’t be fooled by the handsome ones or, God forbid, the rich ones,” she’d say. “Look for a beautiful heart.”
I was six. I remembered it because of her intensity. If she’d lived, she probably would have had to repeat it a hundred times before it stuck. But she didn’t live, so her advice went into the vault, only to be trotted out when a rich, handsome man like Dash Wallace held my hand and I didn’t know why.
But, Mom, I want to. Can I just do this one thing?
The elevator doors slid open, and I knew my mother would tell me it was all right.
Just this once.