I raise my eyebrow. “You make it sound so easy.”
“It is easy, Stella. No matter how many women scream at Gavin and Tyler, we’re the ones they picked. Chin up and own that. Whoever this Kim Archer chick is, she’s part of Tyler’s past, but not his future.”
Unless. That word creeps into my mind at the end of Beryl’s sentence. A baby is forever. If Tyler fathered Kim’s child, she’s guaranteed to be a permanent part of every Christmas and birthday from this day forward. The thought sickens me.
Beryl leads me down the theater aisle to the third row where Tattoo Thief is seated. Servers dressed as old-time cigarette girls pass out retro candy, gourmet popcorn and cocktails.
I take my seat between Tyler and Beryl and immediately Tyler’s arm is around my shoulders, his lips moving against my ear.
“Stella. I’m so sorry you had to hear it like this. You deserve better.” Tyler’s face is pained and his whisper raw. I feel like I’m gliding on a knife edge, forced to choose whether to cut him down or comfort him.
I choose to help. I turn to face him and my lips brush his, coaxing the first real smile I’ve seen from him since he helped me out of the limousine. “It’s not about what we deserve, remember, Tyler? It’s grace, forgiveness, and maybe luck.”
I kiss him again, letting my mouth linger on his long enough that he can’t mistake my meaning. He blindsided us with this media disaster and I could freak out or get angry, but I’m not going to. For the first time, my connection to a guy runs deeper than my concern for myself. I want Tyler to make it out of this OK.
I catch a familiar face out of the corner of my eye and I look up just as the house lights go down and pitch me into disorienting darkness. My pulse races and I struggle to understand why. Is it fear? Anger? I’m not sure who I just spotted, or if my eyes were mistaken. I shouldn’t know anyone here but Tattoo Thief and friends.
I try to escape from this flash and the tension set on Tyler’s face by watching the movie. I even try celebrity spotting without being too obvious. Jamie Foxx and Andrew Garfield sit in the front row.
Throughout—action scenes, funny parts, even the romantic bits—Tyler clutches my hand like a life ring. I try to ease his tight grip by stroking his hand, letting him know that I’m here, I’m attuned to him, and I’ll protect him.
That’s what I did with my interview answers. And that’s what I want to do now in whatever way he’ll let me. Since I met Tyler, I’ve been in one stupid disaster after another, and each time he’s rescued me.
Homeless. Drunk. Crushed under a fence. Running in fear of an editor’s threat. Maybe this string of screw-ups in my life isn’t repellant to Tyler. Maybe it’s exactly what he needs to relate to me?
I remember a line Tyler lobbed in our latest round of guess-the-lyrics: “I cheer, I rave, for the virtue I’m too late to save.” That’s from “The Sadder-But-Wiser Girl” in The Music Man, a song about wanting a woman who’s been hurt and who’s made mistakes.
Tyler doesn’t want a Barbie doll. He told me as much when he rejected Teal at the Bowery Hotel; he even called Jayce’s groupies “dollies,” because they were so overly made-up that they appeared very much like real dolls.
Flawless. Faultless. Plastic.
I’m flawed in every way—foul-mouthed and flat-chested, short-tempered and career-impaired. It feels impossible that Tyler and I could be together. It feels too good to be true.
I guess Kim Archer is proof of that.
When the movie ends, Tattoo Thief’s members are somber, each still digesting what happened in the media lineup. It’s clear Gavin and Dave are still angry but they’re not going to have it out here. Dave decides we’ll scatter again and sends us out different exits to avoid the cluster of reporters outside the main entrance.
I follow Tyler out a side door where a black car is waiting for us. As I climb in, I hear pounding footsteps and shouting. A reporter is running toward our car.
“Tyler! Do you deny Kim Archer’s baby is your child?”
Tyler jumps in the car behind me and slams the door. He can’t get away from this nightmare fast enough.
TWENTY-FOUR
We don’t talk on the ride to his loft, but I inch across the seat and work my hand beneath Tyler’s to twine our fingers together. He looks surprised at this gesture, as if I thought he was repellent, but he allows me to hold his hand.
His head is bent—with what? Shame? Guilt?
Tyler doesn’t offer a piggyback to his loft and I doubt my dress could accommodate it. Instead, we trudge upstairs, side by side, our footsteps echoing in the stairwell.
I undress in my bedroom, lay the Marchesa dress across the air mattress and throw a T-shirt over my head. When I hear Tyler exit the bathroom, I take my turn brushing my teeth and washing my face, leaving it blank and pale without makeup. I unpin my hair but its sprayed-in curls remain, floating around my face like a halo.
I exit the bathroom and the loft’s lights are off except the small lamp on the shelf by my bed. Tyler must have turned it on. Is this a signal that he doesn’t want me in his bed? My heart plummets with disappointment.
No.
I won’t let Tyler push me away. I won’t let him withdraw when every part of me craves his touch and he craves mine. Maybe he’s too ashamed from tonight to show it.
I climb the stairs to his bedroom loft. He can hear me and see my silhouette in the light that filters through the warehouse windows. I see his profile in shadow, smell his familiar scent and feel his suffering.
I pull my T-shirt over my head and drop my panties on the floor, wanting our skin-to-skin closeness more than anything. I peel back the sheet on my side of the bed and snuggle against the hard plane of his back as he curls on his side away from me. He doesn’t speak.
I fit my body behind his, my knees behind the bend in his knees, my stomach and thighs cupping his boxer-clad rear. My lips trail kisses across his shoulder blades and I snake an arm around his waist, pulling my chest against him tightly.
“Stop it, Stella. You don’t have to pretend.”
These simple words hurt, but they’re wrong. I tighten my hold on his middle, my fingers running up and down his abdomen and along his sternum. He doesn’t protest again and so I sweep my hand left and right, connecting with his nipples and feeling a tiny jerk in his body each time I graze one of his piercings.
“This isn’t pretend. This is real.” I’m whispering and kissing his back and willing him to open up to me but he still doesn’t respond. “You told me yourself. Facts are real and stories might not be true. Whatever the truth is about that story tonight, I don’t care. I care about who you are. How we are together. And I want you. Fact.”
I trail my hand to Tyler’s boxers, feeling his muscles harden when I come within inches of his shaft but don’t touch it. My hand continues down along the top of his thigh to his knee, as far as I can reach, then I reverse course and let my fingers creep up his body again, this time infinitesimally closer to his center.
Tyler groans and rolls on his back, his arm outstretched for me to lay my head on his shoulder. Is this encouragement or surrender? I can’t tell, and so I let my hand continue to wander, each time closer to him and more overt, more needy.
I feel his body respond beneath his boxers even though the rest of him is still. With my ear to his chest, I can’t see his face to gauge his reaction, but he doesn’t push me away. Lying on my side and stroking him, I shift my top leg forward and drape it over his knee, widening the part in his legs.