Flirting with disaster, p.11
Flirting with Disaster, page 11
“Well, you’re my wing-person. You’re supposed to help me.”
“Help you do what exactly?”
“You know…lure Guillermo. Make him want me. Make him like me.”
“Lure Guillermo? Really?” His expression tightened. “You really don’t have a clue, do you?”
“About what?”
“I’m going to show you. Take a deep breath,” he said and stepped closer.
“What are you doing?” I shrieked and stepped back right into the ottoman, nearly falling over it. But he reached out and grabbed me by the elbows again, keeping me on my feet. I was all elbows. I was only elbows. My whole life narrowed to his hands on my elbows.
“Can you not freak out?” he asked me.
I wanted to protest that I wasn’t freaking out, but the evidence was totally stacked against me. “I’ll try.”
“Close your eyes.”
“Why?”
“Trust me.”
“No,” I laughed. “I don’t think I can.”
“Try,” he said. “Just close your eyes and try.”
I closed my eyes and held my breath.
“You can breathe,” he said. I laughed and then felt him step closer. My eyes popped open and he was right there. His broad chest in a white t-shirt and his tan neck, muscled and strong. That hair. I wanted to touch it.
“What are you doing?” I whispered.
“You’re trusting me, remember. Close your eyes.”
There was something in his face. His eyes. A firmness. A steady hard strength. It made my heart hammer against my ribs. It made my skin tight. It made me want to let him do whatever he wanted.
Surrender.
I closed my eyes.
“Keep breathing.” His voice was low and rough, and a shiver, an actual shiver ran down my spine.
He stepped closer again. I felt the heat of him, of his skin. His breath.
“What…?”
“Shhh.”
His voice was physical, like a hand against my skin. Then I realized it was his hand against my skin. The rough warmth of his palm against my arm and then my wrist. I didn’t jump. I didn’t make a sound.
“Breathe, Annie,” he whispered.
I gasped for air.
It’s just my wrist. Like he is checking my pulse. That’s all he is doing. Nothing to freak out about.
I felt his other hand touch my hair. My hair. How could I feel that through my whole body?
“Calm down,” he murmured. “Breathe.”
I did what he told me. I felt him breathe in the small space between us and I began breathing with him. In and then out. Until we were just a cocoon of warm touch and breath.
“I lied to you,” he said.
“When?”
“When I said you were only beautiful in certain light. You’re beautiful in every light. In every way.”
Oh God. He’s being nice. I can’t handle it when he’s nice.
“Levi?” I whispered.
“Yes, Annie?” he whispered back.
I kept my eyes shut, because why would I open them? We’d split reality here. There was the outside world and then there was us. We were breath and warmth and a low steady pulse in my blood stream. An awareness, electric and exciting.
He thought I was beautiful.
“Is this kissing lessons?” I felt brave and foolish.
“Do you want kissing lessons from me?”
Time stopped. The breath in my lungs stopped and I wanted…more. I wanted him to step closer. I wanted him to wrap his arms around me. My body ached for his.
But he didn’t do anything else. He didn’t step closer. Or touch me anymore. Or anywhere else. Had I completely misread this whole situation? Of course, I had.
I was Annie Piedmont and getting situations like this wrong was my superpower.
I pulled away from his hands, but he kept me close.
“Stop thinking so much,” he said. “It’s yes or no, Annie.”
No. “Yes.”
I felt his breath first, across my lips and my cheek. His hand ran from my wrist, to my elbow and then to the soft sensitive skin at the back of my arm and I gasped. Electric and thrilling. This was thrilling. And wrong. But thrilling.
Kiss me, I thought. Please kiss me.
Then he did. Levi O’Rourke kissed me. His lips were soft and full. His breath was delicious. Like mint and cinnamon. I leaned into him, wanting more. Wanting everything.
It was like Levi was some kind of sex shaman and when given the chance to be kissed by a sex shaman, shouldn’t a woman like me go for it? Wasn’t that a universal rule? This opportunity wasn’t going to come around again.
I stepped forward, pressing my breasts against his chest.
He sucked in a breath, like this time I’d electrified him. That thought and the sensation of my nipples hard against his firm chest, turned me into a different person. It was true. Kissing this man, I was a different person. I opened my mouth, my tongue touching the corner of his lips and he was so still for a moment. All the doubt raced back.
He wasn’t kissing me back because he didn’t want this. He didn’t want me. What kind of idiot thinks a sex shaman wants to make out with a bookstore owner?
He groaned, deep in his throat, the most masculine sound I’d ever heard in my life. Part growl and part moan. He bent his knees, my nipples squeezing against him, and wrapped his arms around me in a way I could only call deep. Like he was pulling me deep into his body. Trying to absorb me. Shoulders to knees. I could feel his heart pound.
I could feel his… oh my god.
That was his dick hard against my stomach. I gave a tentative roll of my hips trying to map it out, find its edges. A fact seeking mission.
“Jesus, Annie,” he growled again. He pushed his hands into my messy curly hair, cupped my head and tilted it to a degree he seemed to crave. Then he devoured me. He ravished me.
Me.
The sound I made wasn’t human. It was needy and whispery. Like I was hurt and surrendering all at the same time. I clung to him because the world outside of us was gone. This kissing lesson was exploding into something else. Something I wanted. Something I needed.
He tore his mouth from mine and pushed me away. As if that wasn’t enough, he stepped over towards the window and the plants there. His back was to me and I watched as he reached down and adjusted himself before turning to face me.
Why was that so hot? That masculine rearranging of his parts.
“That’s enough,” he said. Only he sounded angry.
Enough? What was he talking about? Where were my hands? Was my body here? There was an emotion about to burst through me, like a wave, I could feel it but it wasn’t there yet, I was still trying to process that kiss. That feral, wild, animal kiss.
“Levi-”
“Congratulations. You aced your kissing lesson,” he said, his voice sharper. Popping the bubble I’d wrapped myself in.
There it was. An Annie Piedmont special mix of guilt and shame flavored with embarrassment.
Everything in me fell from a terrible height. My knees nearly buckled.
Levi must have seen something in my face. He stepped toward me, but I held up a hand.
“Don’t,” I whispered, trying to gather myself behind my pride. Pride was beyond me, but I managed haughty. Like Alex faced with a person dressed in plaid.
“Annie,” he said quietly then. Not as sharply. “It was just a kiss.”
“Yep.” I tried to make it sound like I agreed, when I knew I would torture myself with that kiss for years to come. “No big deal.” I waved my hand around.
I think I actually said “pshaw.”
His jaw flexed and he looked away at the bright sunlit window.
When he looked back at me, his smile was bland and charming. The kiss, the moment, all of it, clearly behind him.
“Pshaw,” he said, like he agreed. “Now, if you don’t mind, I need to get back to work.”
He sat down on the couch, opened his laptop and acted like I’d already left.
9
Levi
A million years ago when I’d been a baby photographer and convinced I knew everything, I’d been on this tiny island no one’s never heard of in a part of the world no one cares about. I’d been there a few months, trying to get this remote tribe to trust me enough to let me take some pictures. One day we were on the beach when there was this tiny rumble. Like the sound of a garbage truck going down Bleecker in the middle of the night. Barely enough to notice.
But the men I was with all looked up, ears perked, eyes sharp. A wave rolled out across the gritty golden sand. The men watched it and I watched the men. The oldest of them shouted something and started running up the beach. He left everything. The fish, his nets…all of it.
The other men started running too, pushing me along with them. I didn’t know what was happening. And like a stupid know-it-all westerner I’d laughed and asked out loud, even though they couldn’t understand me, what’s the big deal?
A tsunami was the big deal.
Half the island was destroyed.
Annie Piedmont?
A goddamn tsunami.
I’d been trying not to kiss Annie Piedmont since the first time I saw her.
When I walked into the bookshop to get the keys to the apartment. I’d been put on house arrest in this tiny little town on the edge of Maine by my agent and best friend Dean.
I’d been pissed about the intervention, lost in my own damn life. Beyond stressed even though I was no longer taking pictures of war and devastation.
Annie had been wearing a purple old-fashioned bowling shirt and a black skirt that hugged her ass in a way I found provocative. She’d looked up at me, that ridiculous cat in her arms, blinked those anime blue eyes at me and asked:
“Are you lost?”
I’d been going to a therapist ever since Sudan. I’d been going to marriage counseling since the minute Jessica and I got married, right up until our divorce.
Dean, as both my agent and best friend, had been asking me a variation of that question for almost a year.
That is to say, I’d been asked that question. A lot.
Are you lost?
Every time, I shrugged and said nope.
But Annie Piedmont looked at me, with her big blue eyes and her wild hair, and the quiet realness of her had me almost falling to my knees.
Yes, I’d wanted to say. I’ve been lost for so long, but you found me.
Except I didn’t think I was someone who ever wanted any of that. Jessica and I proved I was a loner by nature. I wasn’t meant for long term, or serious relationships. None of it.
I’d been wandering this planet by myself since losing my parents and I was happy in that world. In that space.
So immediately, I told myself to Stay. The. Fuck. Away.
I told myself texts weren’t anything. Dropping by her store occasionally meant nothing. A joke here or there about her cat. Nothing but innocent entertainment.
Which, considering I just kissed the bejeezus out of her and my dick was wondering where she went, was the absolute right call.
Because I wasn’t an asshole. I knew I was trouble Annie did not need in her life.
Except ever since Courtney Braverman in sixth grade, I have had a thing for the good girls. The ones in white socks and high ponytails. The ones who sat in the front of the class and raised their hand after every question. Who looked down their upturned noses at a guy like me.
I have always been deeply invested in the fantasy of getting my dirty hand up their clean skirts.
Annie Piedmont was the epitome of a good girl. She was the queen of the innocent.
Their very own patron saint.
Geezus, the things I wanted to do to her.
For months I had done the impossible and resisted her. Barely there contact in which I bred her contempt until every time she looked at me with disdain.
If only she knew every time she did it, I felt a visceral thrill down my backbone.
The ding of my phone every time she returned one of my annoying texts was a Pavlovian response for my dick.
She was nice to everyone. She was, in her shy and slightly formal way, easy with everyone. I wasn’t really sure if she had friends. Alex at the store, yes. Her sister, although with Carrie’s schedule she couldn’t be around much. Her grandmother was the first person with whom I’d seen her let down her guard. It had been a moment so pure I was still kind of reeling from it.
But she wasn’t nice to me. Or easy. She shot daggers at me with her eyes and the air crackled when I was in the same space as her. I fucking loved it.
It made me feel alive.
The many therapists I’d seen since Sudan said I was searching out negative patterns and behaviors in order to feel alive. Also, that I was potentially suffering from an extreme case of survivor’s guilt that was driving unconscious decisions to take on dangerous work.
Simply put, I was on a path of self-destruction. Hence the intervention.
I didn’t need to pull good girl Annie Piedmont into my unstable headspace, so I did the only thing that made sense and I kept my distance.
At least physically.
Then the next thing I know she’s attempting to flirt, albeit very badly, with some other guy and I basically lost my shit.
Wing-person? More like stalker. I’d gone to that bar with her because I wanted to see her implode with Guillermo. I wanted to make sure she made such a disaster of it that the guy ran away as fast as he could. She was my good little girl to corrupt. No one else’s.
When I saw her try to kiss/head butt him, I’d nearly pole vaulted everyone in that bar to pull her away. Fortunately, I didn’t need to do anything because she had the good sense to run away.
So what the hell was tonight’s dinner invitation about? Me and Annie and Alex?
Was it possible that Guillermo was just as bad at the flirting thing as Annie?
I didn’t care.
Those two were not happening, and I knew it.
It didn’t take much intuition to understand Annie’s crush was misplaced. That whatever she told herself in that pretty little messed up head of hers about how attracted she was to Guillermo was utterly false.
She wanted me. Me. It was there in the way she looked at me, couldn’t look at me, turned into a pile of goosebumps at the slightest touch.
Annie didn’t want me to go to dinner to be her wing-person. She wanted me to fuck her, and I kissed her, goddamn it, to prove it.
Only it backfired because I knew it was going to be that much harder to stay away from her now.
That fucking mind-altering kiss?
A tsunami-sized mistake.
10
Annie
Saturday morning I woke up still feeling Levi’s mouth on mine. Could you even call what we’d done a kiss?
It felt like a different category.
Was that how other people kissed? With hungry, angry mouths?
Or was that just how sex panthers kissed?
Somewhere in the middle of the night that was the nickname I’d given Levi.
Sex Panther.
I certainly couldn’t imagine Guillermo kissing like that.
I closed my eyes and tried to find that happy fantasy of Guillermo and me side by side with our cats, reading parts of our favorite books to each other. I imagined leaning over the arm of my chair, and him leaning over the edge of his chair and our lips touching. In a polite way.
A regular way.
He was, in all ways, the opposite of Levi.
Though, I will say, for the comfort that little fireside fantasy provided me, the day was spent getting more and more stressed out about this dinner party. My potential awkwardness. The fact that I was already basically cheating on my potential future husband, Guillermo, with a sex panther. How there were going to be pockets of uncomfortable silences and I would try to fill those silences with inane chatter about serial killers of ancient Egypt.
There were literally a million ways I could turn this dinner party into a disaster.
By four in the afternoon, I panicked and invited my sister.
“Sorry, Annie,” she said over the phone.
I was actually looking at her through the front window of the bookstore as she sat in the square getting her hair and makeup touched up. It was 80 million degrees out there and even through the chaos around her I could hear exhaustion in her voice.
“We’re going to have a late night, and then I’ve got an early call in the morning. The director is under orders to speed the shoot up. We’re in jeopardy of going over budget.”
“Sure,” I said. I continued to watch as Carrie exchanged air kisses with the woman who had teased her hair. Then someone else came by showing her what looked like a script. My sister nodded, as she absorbed everything.
She was the sun all the planets orbited.
“You okay?” she asked, when the script person had walked on.
I kissed Levi. Wait. I mean Levi practically ate my face and I rubbed myself against his hard on. Then he dismissed me and I don’t even know who I am anymore.
“Fine,” I said.
She turned her head toward the direction of the store and our eyes met through the window. I smiled. So did she. “Why are you lying?”
I laughed and shook my head. “I’m fine. Really. Just maybe nervous about this little dinner party.”
“Why nervous? Guillermo is a total sweetheart. There is nothing to be nervous about.” My sister’s dismissal of my feelings that she didn’t understand was nothing new. If I called my mom and explained this all to her, she’d be the same way.
I didn’t hold it against them, but neither of them understood the plight of the introvert.
Gran would get it though.
I made out with a guy who I don’t think I like. Or am not supposed to like. Who doesn’t like me. Except my body turned to stardust against his. Isn’t that only supposed to happen between people who like each other?
“What’s chemistry?” I asked.
“Uh, context please,” Carrie asked me.
“You say it all the time. You have chemistry with some actors, but not other actors. But you don’t actually have relationships with them. So it’s not based on genuine feelings, or common background or purpose. Is it just biological then?”
