Playing With Her Heart (11 page)

“He’d better not be
calling, either.”

“He’s not.”

“I don’t even want
you to respond to any texts from him.”

“He doesn’t text me
anymore,” she says, raising her voice.

“Good. If he tries to
get in touch with you, you need to let me know.”

“What, so you can hit
him?”

“If I have to, I
will.”

“I know,” she says,
with a sigh. “I’m fine. You have to stop worrying about me.”

“What else would I
do, then? I just want you to be happy.”

“I could say the same
for you.”

“I am happy,” I
say, even though there’s a hollow ring to the words.

“What about you? Are
you being careful with your new show?”

I pick up a fork and
twirl it between my thumb and forefinger, looking away. “Yes,” I
mutter, because now she’s back to seeing right through me.

She presses her palms
together, almost as if she’s praying. “Please tell me you’re
not falling for some captivating young actress who’ll break your
heart again?”

I drop the fork.

“Oh, Davis,” she
says, worry etched in her features.

“Michele, I’m
fine,” I tell her, because it’s up to me to look out for her, not
the other way around. I look down at the menu, so she can’t read
the expression on my face that clearly says I’ve been busted.

“I don’t believe
you. I don’t want to see you get hurt again. I hate what Madeline
did to you.”

“She just left,
that’s all. Okay? Please, let’s stop investing this and her with
so much monumentality. Besides, it was a few years ago now.” I
don’t want to dwell on Madeline Blaine. I don’t want to revisit
all the promises we made, all the things we said to each other. Most
of all I don’t want to be reminded of how much it hurt when she
walked away soon after the play we worked on together ended.
You
gave me my first big break and for that I will be forever grateful,
but I don’t have time in my life for love. I need to focus on my
career and only on my career.
Then she went to LA and did just
that.

It’s not like I
expected a fucking plaque for having cast her, for having plucked her
out of the pile of young hopefuls. That’s my job, that’s what I
do. I would never expect her to owe me anything as her director.

As the man she fell in
love with though, I had hoped for a lot more than a cold goodbye
after the curtains fell. But that’s how it goes with actors. They
fall in love with their roles, they fall in love with the show, they
fall in love with you. Then it ends and they move on, because they
know how to turn emotions on and off.

“I read she was in
talks to do that new Steve Martin play. I’m totally not going to
see it, even though I love his work,” she says, as if she’s
making a solidarity statement by boycotting this show preemptively.

“Let’s talk about
something else. Health care reform or the impasse in Congress,” I
say sharply, because I need to shut this topic down. My sister is the
only person who really knows me. Sometimes I hate being known.
Sometimes I prefer the appearance I’ve carefully crafted with my
work.

My sister is insistent
though. She reaches her hand across the table to wrap it around mine.
“I know you worry about me, but I worry about you too. Just let me,
okay? You’re all I have.”

The waiter appears with
a plate of bread.

“Thank you,” I say
to him.

“But of course, sir.”

He leaves.

I grab a piece of bread
and bite into it. When I finish, I point to the bread. “You should
have some,” I say, reminding her to eat. She always forgets to when
she’s sad, and the last thing I want is for her to be sad for me.
I’m fine, I’ll always be fine. But even though I like to think
I’m the one who looks out for her, as I have since that snowy day
our parents died in a car crash when I was only seventeen, the truth
is we look out for each other. “I promise I won’t do something as
abysmally stupid as fall for an actress again.”

“Good,” she says,
and takes some bread. “There are plenty of wonderful women in the
world who won’t use you to get ahead.”

I want to believe that
Jill wouldn’t do that. I want to believe that she’s different
from Madeline.

As soon as I realize
that, I know too that I don’t really care if Madeline will be in
town. What I
do
care about—maybe too much for my own good—is
the sweet, sexy, vulnerable woman who’s already gotten me hooked.
But that’s a different problem, a far bigger problem, and that’s
precisely why I’m going to have to resist her with everything I
have.

Jill

Now that my beer-soaked
skirt and tights are in the hamper, I wash my face, brush my teeth,
and pick a long t-shirt to sleep in. I slide under the covers and
grab my eReader, because I want to return to a Patrick state of mind.
Between the messed up morning in the stairwell and the buzzkill of
Alexis in the bar, I need to get back into the groove with the main
man of my fantasies. The one who makes me feel again.

I click on the title
Kat gifted me. She got me into her steamy romance novels, and now I’m
a junkie. I started with the lovey-dovey stuff but I’ve moved well
past her now, and am all about the out-of-the-gate heat.

Especially on nights
when I’m alone. When I can say his name out loud.

I open the novel and
skip straight to the good stuff. The hero’s a rock star, and he has
a filthy mouth, and I could never imagine liking that in real life.
I’m sure Patrick whispers only sweet nothings about love and beauty
and how I’m the only one for him, but somehow this dirty-talking
rocker who’s telling his woman that he wants to bend her over the
bar at the hotel where they’re staying is doing something for me
tonight.

“
I’m going to
take you and it’s going to be hard, and it’s going to be fast.
I’m not going to be gentle, and I’m not going to apologize, but
you’re going to fucking love it,” he said, his voice rough
against her ear.

“
Yeah? Why don’t
we see if I love it?”

“
For doubting me,
I’ll make you come harder.”

“
Can you though?
Can you make me come harder?”

He slid a hand
between her legs, spread wide open for him. “You are the perfect
kind of wet for the way I’m going to fuck you right now.”

Who talks like this in
real life? Does anyone say this stuff? But it works on the heroine
because she’s spiraling off into another stratosphere right now,
and it starts to work on me, because soon I’m hot and bothered and
breathing harder. Little moans are coming out of my lips, and it’s
nice to have the place to myself from time to time because I don’t
have to stay silent. I know how to bring myself there without noise.
I can achieve soundless orgasms without even moving my hips either. I
know, such a talent. Enter me in the Guinness Book of World Records
for most quiet orgasms, which will tell you something about my
completely pretend sex life for the last several years. I’m quiet
because I have to be, and I’m quiet because I do this a lot. I do
this because I haven’t been touched in so long that I’m a pinball
machine, full of restless desire.

I focus on my main
attraction. I picture Patrick taking his clothes off, Patrick
climbing over me, Patrick telling me I’m the one. And now I’m
moaning and I’m nearing the edge, but then it’s no longer Patrick
on me. Because Patrick would never talk like that, or move like that.
He’s disappeared and I’m with someone else, someone nameless. I
don’t even know who he is, but he’s doing all sorts of things to
me, and saying all kinds of dirty words.

Spread my legs for him.

Touch myself for him.

Show him how I make
myself come.

And maybe it’s the
rocker hero making me feel this way, but Nameless has a way with his
hands and his body and his voice, and I’m almost there, I’m
almost over the edge.

But then I stop.

Sit up straight in bed.

Turn on the light.

Look around.

As if I’ve been
caught.

But no one’s here,
the apartment is quiet, and the only noise is in my head. It sounds
like a radio tuned slightly wrong, static mixing with the song I used
to know well.

Because something is
wrong. Something is wrong with me.

I’ve only ever
pictured Patrick. I don’t understand why he’s not coming out to
play tonight, and yet I still feel this itch inside my bones to be
touched, to be held, to be savored.

I throw off the covers,
pace down the hall and check my phone that I left on the coffee
table.

But there are no new
messages and, honestly, I don’t even know who I’m waiting to hear
from.

When I finally fall
asleep, everything is still wrong, because I dream of the letters in
the locked box by my bed. Letters living, breathing, creepily alive.
Letters making demands. Letters being opened on the streets, and I
try to grab them, and stuff them back inside, but they’re rippling
away in the wind, and I can’t reach them anymore to hide them.

* * *

The next morning, I
skip my run. I shower quickly, get dressed and take one of the
letters from the wooden box. Then I catch a train to Brooklyn and
head for Prospect Park.

I clutch the piece of
notebook paper in my right hand, my fingers digging into the faded
words, now smudged from all the times I’ve read this one, the first
of the handful of letters Aaron sent me after we split. I walk deeper
into the park, following the path by memory from having explored
every inch of this place while growing up nearby. I spent so many
days here with my brothers, riding bikes, climbing trees, playing
hide and seek. When I was a teenager, I relearned all the corners of
this oasis in Brooklyn that were perfect for stolen kisses, for first
tastes of beers, for moonlit make out sessions far away from parental
eyes. But I haven’t set foot in Prospect Park since Aaron. Not
since the last time I saw him under Terrace Bridge.

Now I have to because I
can’t keep holding onto the pieces of the past. I can’t keep
carrying all this blame with me. My life is changing, it’s
unfurling before me, and if I don’t free myself from the past it’ll
keep haunting me. I weave down the path that leads under the bridge,
remembering how green and lush the trees were the last time I was
here.

Thick emerald bushes
and branches hang low and burst with life as the sun casts warm
golden rays. My heart pounds loudly against my chest, drowning out
the lone squawk of a hardy crow circling overhead, scanning for
crumbs on the barren ground.

The cobblestones curve
under the rusted green bridge, and my feet nearly stop when I see the
bench with its wooden slats. He waited for me at the bench, looking
so sad, but so determined, too. Memories flood me, like a dam
breaking.

“
Please don’t do
this to me.”

“
It’s the only
way.”

“
No, we can try
again. We can start over. I promise to be everything you want me to
be.”

“
I have to go.
Please let me go.”

But he didn’t. He
didn’t really let me go, and so I went from being a happy carefree
seventeen-year-old to being completely fucked in the head. I realized
I could break someone, and someone could break me. But then, I also
clawed my way out. I threw myself into my acting, letting go of
myself and all the emotions I hated being crushed with, and that’s
when I fell for Patrick, for the opposite of all those cruel
memories.

Now, I need to let them
go so I can be free. I start with this one note.

My fingers are gripped
so tightly around the paper that it feels as if they have to be pried
off. But instead, I open my fist, one finger at a time, and it’s as
if a piece of me is moving on. Then I stand in front of the garbage
can and I tear up his words.

They flutter down into
the metal can, unreadable, unknowable.

I don’t know what
I have to do for you to love me again…

I wipe my hand against
my cheek, and then inhale deeply. “It’s done.”

And I walk away.

Davis

One week.

Seven days.

One hundred and
sixty-eight hours.

That’s how long my
detox from Jill has lasted. No more stairwell encounters. No more
meetings alone in my office. Nothing but the necessary interaction at
rehearsals, and for the last week the assistant director has been
working with the chorus on some of their numbers so I’ve rarely
seen her.

Now, we’re blocking
one of the dance numbers with Patrick, Alexis and some of the
featured actors. I lean against the wall and watch the choreographer
guide the actors through the bare-bones motions of what’s shaping
up to be a sensuous number as Paolo and Ava dance on stage.

Then Alexis stops in
the middle of a step. She raises a hand and waggles her fingers at
me, sweetly, or feigned sweetly. Damn, that woman can act. Because I
almost believe she’s about to ask some sort of thoughtful, curious
question.

“Excuse me, Davis,”
she says and is grinning ear to ear, as she gestures to stage right.
She’s wearing a flouncy red dress. As she sashays to stage right, I
suck in a breath because here it comes—the patented Alexis bit of
input. “Wouldn’t it better, don’t you think, if say, we started
this number right here—” she stops and gestures dramatically to
the spot she’s deemed the proper starting point, then tips her
forehead to the back of the room “—instead of back there?”

Right. Now she’s the
choreographer too.

“No. We’ll start
the number where we always start the number.”

“Of course, Davis,”
she continues, still smiling, still syrupy. “But have you
considered it might be better if we started it here?”

“No. I haven’t
considered it, nor do I plan to. Let’s go through the song.”