All Eyes on Her (22 page)

“Oh, him?” In my haze I had forgotten that Luke knew I was engaged. “I don’t know. It’s sort of…off.”

I hiccupped and was in danger of actually thinking about that fact when the waitress came back with our drinks.

“You know you really do have a beautiful smile. Beautiful teeth.”

“That’s a new one,” I said.

“I’m a sucker for the details, I guess.”

“Well then don’t look at my nails, because I’ve bitten them down to the stubs.”

“Better small and real than big and fake.”

“Are we still talking about nails?” I whispered, gesturing with my chin at the well-endowed redhead who had draped herself across the next bed.

We were sharing a snicker at her expense when we were interrupted.

“So I leave you alone for a minute and now I find you in bed with another guy?” The pirate was back. And was trying to make light of the situation, since he probably couldn’t figure out what was going on between myself and Luke.

Fueled by the vodka, the champagne and the altitude of the hills, I swung a leg over Luke’s ankle and shrugged. “What can I say? A woman has needs. Right now I need to be with a man who has hair on his head. And then I see this guy, and his hair is almost as long as mine. There’s something very hot about that.”

“That’s cold,” the pirate said good-naturedly. “And after I stayed faithful to you even while I was locked up.”

“I’ll always love you for that, pirate guy.”

“Pirate guy?” he asked.

“Never mind.”

“You snooze, you loose, man,” Luke chimed in playfully.

“Not necessarily,” I said, propping myself up on my elbows when I spotted Cassie on her way over. “Have you met my friend Nina? She’s a stewardess for Air-Mexico, and she’s in town for two nights on a layover.”

“Where have you been all my life?” he asked her, before taking her by the hand and leading her off to admire the pool.

“Is that true?” Luke asked. “Is that friend of yours a stewardess?”

“Shh,” I told him. “Too much talking.”

“I’m confused.” He wrenched his gaze from my thigh back up to my eyes. “Are you single, or what?”

I took a deep breath, pulled my legs together, and mustered up what energy I had within me to address the reality. And it wasn’t even a very deep breath, considering how tightly the straps of that shirt bisected my back, making it so that I had to choose between wearing it and actually taking a complete breath all evening. Being the class act that I was, I chose the shirt over the oxygen. Which may have had something to do with my behavior in the moments that followed. But you’ll hear all about that soon enough.

This time, I blame Messieurs Moët & Chandon.

“Luke, I’m not in the mood to really get to know someone deeply tonight, all right?”

He laughed.

“What?”

“Nothing.” He shook his head like I was adorable. “You just seem like such a nice girl…or…err…you know…a good girl. And then you say things like that and it seems like you have no idea how funny they seem coming out of your mouth.”

Oh, puke. I always resented the way that men presumed my innocence.

“Have we not already established that appearances can be deceiving?” I charged.

“Good point. So what are we gonna do about it?”

Dear God, why was it that when you wanted someone to take you seriously, there were only pirates as far as the eye could see, but when you wanted a little anonymity men always insisted on getting to know you? It was the curse of the nice girl, I thought. God’s way of reminding us that we are meant to be mothers one day and should think twice about doing whatever it is we were about to do.

And you know what the antidote to that sort of divine intervention is? Vodka with a champagne chaser.

“Why don’t we try something new?” I had a flashback to Alex’s screenplay and suddenly the words were ready to come spilling right out of my mouth.

“What did you have in mind?” Luke propped his head on his hand and gave me his full attention.

“Instead of telling me all about yourself, and where you grew up, and if you have a dog, and blah blah blah….” I flashed my most girlish smile. “Why don’t you just
tell me more about my eyes?
”

“Okay, you’re the best person ever,” he said, beaming.

“I know.”

A half hour and another champagne flute later, I wasn’t feeling so badly about Raj. In fact, I wasn’t feeling much of anything. Truth be told, I had kicked off my shoes, and was lying on my back next to Luke, looking up at the stars.

“And anyway, in my opinion reality TV isn’t the plague on society that it’s made out to be. In fact, it’s more like the mirror society is uncomfortable yet fascinated with having held up to its own bloated, puss-filled underbelly.”

“You sure know how to romance a girl.”

He rose up to hover above me. “I wasn’t sure that I was allowed to romance you. What with you hating me and all…”

I was drunk enough where I would have been equally satisfied getting lucky as I would have been going right to sleep. Well, almost as satisfied. I was numb enough where I wasn’t worried about bumping up against my feelings about Raj at any point that night. I was attracted enough to Luke to have noticed that he smelled like baby powder, that his camel-leather jacket brought out the flecks of gold in his eyes and that he wasn’t looking away. But I still wasn’t sure.

Then I noticed the redhead from before, glowering at us from her perch on a barstool nearby. So I reached around Luke’s neck, weaved my fingers in to grab a tight hold, and literally yanked him down onto my face by his ponytail.

And there was nothing remotely
good girl
about it.

T
HE LOBBY OF THE
M
ONDRIAN HOTEL, WHICH FEATURED THE
entrance to The Skybar, was packed with the usual Saturday night mix of security-flanked celebs, Hollywood industry-types and college kids looking for trouble. Unless Luke and I had set ourselves on fire, nobody would have paid us any attention as we made arrangements and headed for a room. Still, we both felt the need to maintain our composure. At least until we stepped into the elevator.

I slammed him against the opaque glass wall with the weight of my body once the doors slid shut behind us, while Gnarls Barkley wailed overhead about losing his mind.

“Ouch!” Luke complained about the barely perceptible little nibble I took out of his lip.

“Take it like a man!” I ordered, giggling and going in for another bite.

I can only imagine that from the perspective of the security guards, watching the elevator security camera, I must have looked like a deranged midget-dominatrix attempting to climb on top of this strapping, panting man. And he acquiesced, wrapping his arms around me and kissing me with lips pulled taut in a smile.

God, I had forgotten how much fun it was to be carefree. I couldn’t remember the last time that Raj and I had a night like this. The best part, I reminded myself as Luke and I stumbled down the hallway without breaking the kiss, was this brief period between giving yourself permission to do something like this, and having to deal with it later on.

He swept me up into his arms newlywed-style, and whisked me into the room. He grabbed a bottle of champagne from the minibar and treated the both of us to a mouthful. And then he dove into my cleavage like an Olympic swimmer, sending shivers up my spine and lots of heat everywhere else. Moments later he was rustling my hair into a veritable bee’s nest of knots, but I couldn’t have cared less. He lapped sloppily at my neck, swallowing some of my hair and getting a good taste of my chandelier earrings.

“Man,” he said, “you’re driving me crazy!”

And to be honest with you it felt a little bit like an accomplishment.

So, apparently women are easy, too.

And men are able to sprout multiple arms on call. I could’ve sworn there was a hand on my butt, another in my hair, a third on my breast and yet another one sliding up my thigh, which is probably why I didn’t notice in time to stop him from getting to that spot. The one below my right ear that immediately sends my eyes to the back of my head and my self-control on a one-way trip to Mars.

“Wow!” I hunched over and tried to refrain from having an orgasm right then and there. “What’s the rush? Let’s…uh…umm…slow it down a little.”

I took a deep breath and what I could only hope was a graceful step back. He was panting and looking at me like a confused and lipstick-covered bull who had been restrained, midcharge. Seeing him like that I decided I wanted to have some fun with this. Simplicity was so hard to come by that I wanted to make this last. To seduce him. To make this movie scene a little more cinematic.

And what could be sexier than a striptease?

For once in my life I was going to be
that
girl. That effortlessly sexy, genuinely spontaneous girl. The one who took off after graduation with a backpack for parts unknown and returned a year later with a palpable calm, a permanent grin and a much wiser veneer. The one that jumps on the mechanical bull at a Western-theme bar without a moment’s hesitation and leaves the crowds hooting and hollering for more. The one who knows what she wants and takes what she needs without a second thought. Just once I wanted to feel like the kind of woman who can actually pull off an impromptu striptease without blinding anyone with a projectile button, failing to move to the beat of the music in the background, or snagging any zippers or straps on her stockings and tripping all over herself.

Wait a minute. I wasn’t wearing any stockings. Beautiful! I turned up the volume on the wall stereo.

Luke dropped onto his elbows on the bed behind him, and started loosening his tie. I twisted and I turned, putting on a pretty good show of arousing myself. And the grin on his face only encouraged me.

Casting him a “who’s a naughty boy” look over my shoulder, I reached back to unlace my shirt. I paused for a second before yanking it off, and waving it above my head like a sign of surrender. I even sent it flying over a lampshade, all the while keeping my girls covered with my other arm. And then I managed to unzip my skirt and suck in my belly long enough to have it drop to the ground in one elegant flourish.

Mentally, I high-fived myself. Physically, I acted as if this was just how suave I always was.

“Well,” he said. “Happy Birthday to
me!
”

“Is it your birthday?”

“No, but I didn’t know what else to say.” He reached out and pulled me toward him by my hips. “It’s not Christmas, either.”

As he turned me around and kissed up the length of my back I closed my eyes long enough to keep myself in the moment. To savor the feeling of his hot breath, his deliberate hands, and his pillowy, gentle lips and teeth on my neck while he forced me to lean back into him, and Gnarls suggested that perhaps we were all crazy.

I noticed the view beyond the balcony that looked down over the lounge of The Skybar…
as well as into the windows of other guestrooms!

You know how they say that most managers rise to their level of incompetence within a company? Well, I think most good girls similarly rise to their line of personal craziness on a night of low self-esteem, and then try to claw their way across it. My line, as it turns out, was the one marked exhibitionism.

I stiffened. “Is that…Do we have
shades
for those windows?”

He laughed. “We made out at the bar and you violated me in the elevator, but now you’re shy?”

I nodded, covering myself with his arms.

“Man, you’re cute,” he said, hopping off and grabbing a fluffy white robe. “But I guess you’ll have to wear this and then make a mad dash for that hot tub on the balcony.”

“But this is The Mondrian!” I said, while he wrapped me in the robe and pulled me close. “The place is crawling with paparazzi!”

“Paparazzi who are looking for celebrities,” he clarified, brushing some hair from my neck, pulling off his shirt and then taking me by the hand. “Not for us.”

“Hey,” I said and dug in my heels before we made it to those sliding doors. “I’m not taking the chance that they see black hair and brown skin and mistake me for somebody else, and then my butt winds up on the cover of
Pucker
.”

He tilted his head, grabbed the champagne off the dresser and then swept me off my feet again.

“It could happen,” I said, apparently to myself.

It’s a lot like telling someone that you’ve never been unfaithful. Even if it’s the truth, nobody ever believes you when you say it. Especially because you said it. But still.

“I don’t normally do this, you know. Go back to a hotel room with some strange man, I mean.”

“Of course not.” He yanked my foot out from under the water, propped it up against his chest and began massaging it. “Me, either.”

“No, I’m serious,” I said, grabbing the nearly empty and condensation-covered champagne magnum and tipping it back.

“Well, tonight you’ve been an absolute tigress,” he complimented me with a sinister glint in his eye and all of the cockiness of a lion who had already cornered his prey. “And what makes me so special?”

This has always been a big part of my problem: I listen to people when they talk. So when someone tells me that they don’t deserve me, I believe them. And when someone reminds me that I’m acting out of character, I reconsider. While the bubbly suds simultaneously made their way around my body and swished inside of my mouth I paused to think about it. I looked beyond his smiling face and steaming shoulders to the skyline of the City of Angels. I listened to the giggles of the women at the lounge below our sheltered perch. And I felt something I hadn’t felt in quite a while. Sober.

Those twinkling lights seemed as close as they were far away…and so did this man, who was right there for me, just like all the rest of the readily available excess in this town. I could have told myself that I was merely dabbling in the insanity, merely dipping my toe in a world full of divers. But the truth, I realized with a shudder, was that I was on the verge of submerging myself whole. How had I gotten myself into this hot tub just a few short hours after Raj left my apartment? Had Alex come back into my life to become a part of it, or just to shine a mirror on my own dissatisfaction? Who was this strange man rolling my big toe around on the tip of his tongue, and why had I felt the need to convince him that I was taking him seriously just to get through this night?

The truth was that I didn’t want him. I didn’t want any of this.

“Luke, wait,” I began, taking my foot back, much to his disappointment. He looked like a child whose newest toy had been snatched away.

“What is it?” he asked.

I stared at him while the jets whirred in the background. This wasn’t about Luke. And it wasn’t even about my mother, or Raj, or Alex, or anyone else. It was about me. Me and how I felt about that redhead at the bar. Of course I was attracted to Luke, and of course I was hurting from what had happened that afternoon with Raj. But tonight was about reinforcing my status as a sexual alpha female. The worst part was that I wasn’t even reacting against the redhead in particular. I was battling directly against my own weakened self-perception. I was battling myself.

Knowing that, I couldn’t go forward with this. I may have been an ape deep down inside, just like Stefanie and every other woman in the world, but unlike them I was going to choose to walk away from it. To walk away from him. Right now.

“I’m sorry, Luke. I…I have to go.” I hoisted myself out of the hot tub, and started toweling off. “I can’t do this.”

“Why not?” he asked, alone in the hot tub.

I avoided eye contact while I zipped up my skirt. “This is not me. I’m just not myself tonight…around you.”

“Or
maybe,
” he coaxed, “this is exactly who you are. Did you ever consider that?”

“I just can’t go through with this, okay?” I attempted to refasten my blouse while searching for my heels.

He climbed out of the hot tub, swaddled himself in a towel and came toward me. “Monica, you take yourself too seriously. And then when there’s finally a glimmer of your real, playful self, you pull her away!”

“I’m sorry, Luke. I really am.” I yanked my arm out of his grasp and turned for the door.

“No, you’re
not!
” he yelled, and reached out to grab me again.

And what I saw in his eyes wasn’t anger; it was hurt. But I just didn’t have it in me to deal with it. I had enough of my own problems already.

So I unbolted and ripped the door open, launching myself into the hallway.

“Why are you so freakin’ closed off?” he yelled at my back.

He might not have been poisoned, but I knew I had left a bad taste in his mouth. I tried my best to walk calmly down the hallway with its blue lights, nightclub color scheme and thumping music. I knew that I had been about to do something we both would have lived to regret. There was a chill in the air of that hotel hallway, but I didn’t shiver. I just stood there calmly at the elevator, staring ahead even as the heat was still rising from my body.