Strangers. This I can do. This we know.
“No. Um . . . not at all. Be my guest,” I say, and gesture to the seat on my right.
Ansel folds all six feet, two inches of his frame onto the brushed aluminum stool and toys with the neatly folded cloth napkin. I didn’t get to fully drink in the sight of him before he left this morning, and try to covertly check him out as he fidgets, playing this new role.
He’s wearing a shirt I’ve never seen on him, deep green with a pattern so delicate I have to peer closely to even make it out. His black dress pants fit him perfectly; there’s a touch of stubble lining his jaw and his hair seems a bit more disheveled than normal, falling forward over his forehead. I have the sudden desire to twist my fingers in it while I pull his face between my legs.
I actually have to look away to catch my breath. This guy is my husband.
You look amazing, I want to say.
How did I find someone so easy and perfect in Las Vegas of all places? I want to ask.
But instead, I stay quiet and let him show me how this night is supposed to go.
“I think I was stood up,” he says, and now that I’ve composed myself, I turn back to face him.
“That’s terrible. They didn’t call or text?”
He shakes his head and runs a hand through his hair, righting it again. “It’s probably for the best,” he says with a resolute lift of his chin. “I don’t think we are that compatible anyway.”
I angle myself toward him. “Was this supposed to be the first date?”
He shakes his head and opens his mouth to speak, pausing when the bartender stops in front of us. “Un whisky-soda, s’il vous plaît,” he says to the man before turning to me expectantly.
“Um . . . gin et . . . tonic?” I phrase it as a question and the bartender smirks before walking away.
Ansel gives a lingering stare to the bartender’s back, then clears his throat before continuing. “We’ve been together for a while but—” He stops abruptly, shaking his head. He leans closer, dropping his voice when he says, “No, ignore that. I don’t want to pretend to cheat.”
I bite my lip to hold in my grin. Jesus, he’s cute.
“What I mean to say is that we had talked on the phone a few times?” he says, his eyes searching mine as if this cover story works better. “It never felt totally right but I thought if we met in person . . .”
I hum in response, shaking my head in sympathy. “Sorry she’s not here.”
He takes a deep breath before relaxing his shoulders, and his lips push out in an edible pout. “What about you? You said you’re not meeting anyone. Are you dining alone?” Holding up his hands, he adds, “And I ask that in the least stalkerish way possible. Please don’t call security.”
I laugh, spinning my phone on the bar in front of me. “I’m new to town,” I say. “It was a long day at work and I needed a drink. A friend said this place had the best view around.”
“‘A friend’?”
“Just this guy I know,” I tease.
Ansel smiles and looks over his shoulder. “Your friend might be wrong. Not sure you could beat the view on top of that,” he says, motioning to the Eiffel Tower.
The bartender sets our drinks in front of us and I reach for my glass. “No alcohol up there, though.”
“Ahhh, but yes. There’s champagne on the top level. Served in the finest plastic stemware around. Don’t want to miss that while you’re here.”
“You make me want to brave the terrifying lines and claustrophobic elevators.”
“You must make sure to do it before you leave,” he says. “It’s a touristy thing, but it’s sort of required at least once in your lifetime.”
“Actually, I did see the top,” I admit, and take a sip of my drink. “I went alone on one of my first days in town. I didn’t know they had booze there, though, or I’d have stayed a lot longer.”
“Maybe someone can go with you next time,” he says quietly, apology darkening his expression. He’s guilty that I’m alone so much. I’m guilty for interrupting him. We’re both living so much in our own heads, no wonder we pretend.
“Maybe,” I answer with a smile. “And you live here? In Paris.”
Ansel nods and takes another sip of his drink. “I do. But my mother is American. And I traveled around the States after college.”
“Just traveled around?” I tease. “Backpacked your way across America?”
“Close,” he says with a laugh. “The summer before law school I participated in a program called Bike and Build. Have you heard of it?”
I shake my head a little, saying only, “I’ve heard the name . . .” Of course Ansel has mentioned it before, but I feel a bit guilty never having asked him more about it.
“It’s basically a group of people—mostly university-aged—cycling across the country for three months, stopping en route to work on various building sites.”
“I went to Vegas after I graduated from college. I think you win.”
“Well that could be fun, too,” he says meaningfully, eyes teasing as he takes a drink from his glass. “I hear there is plenty of adventure to be had in Vegas.”
“Yes,” I say and smile. “But three months? On a bike?”
Ansel laughs. “Three months. Well, eleven weeks to be exact. Riding about seventy miles a day.”
“I would be dead. You’d have to call my mother to collect me by about day four.”
He makes a show of looking me up and down appreciatively. “You look like you could handle it.”
I shake my head. “I assure you, I am not good on two wheels. So, tell me. Did you sleep in hotels or . . . ?”
“Sometimes,” he answers with a shrug. “Some groups stay in churches or other places. Maybe a group of families. My group had a sort of . . .” He pauses to search for the word, his brows drawn together. “Sleeping outside in a tent?”
“Camping,” I say with a laugh.
He snaps his fingers. “Right. We’d usually be in one place for a few days while we worked, and so we’d set up a kind of traveling camp. Three or four of us sharing a canvas tent, sleeping on the worst cots you can imagine.”
I look at him now, in his crisp shirt and pressed dress pants, and have a hard time imagining him even as he was, dressed down in Vegas, let alone sweaty and working on construction sites. I let my eyes linger on his neck and enjoy the fantasy for a beat. “That’s pretty intense.”
He nods in agreement. “Four of us, together all day long. Sometimes it was excruciating, the heat. How humid it could be and we would all just keep pushing until night. It was hard, but it was the most fun I’d ever had. I don’t know that I’ll ever know anyone in the way I know those three friends.”
Fascinated, I break character for just a moment. “You mean Oliver and Finn and Perry.”
A shadow falls over his face and he nods slowly.
Shit. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to—”
But he’s already holding up his hand. “No. Those relationships are some of the best and . . . complicated of my life. Does that make sense?” I nod. “I rode next to them for sometimes eight or ten hours a day. I slept three people deep in a space no bigger than your average bathroom. We missed our families together, we comforted each other, we celebrated some of the proudest moments of our lives. Practically living in each other’s pockets at that age made three months feel like a lifetime, and it . . . I guess maybe it’s hard when lives change in ways that aren’t how we imagined or hoped.”
Whatever this Perry is going through, it’s obviously something Ansel is having a hard time dealing with. He’s quiet for a moment, attention zeroed in on his glass. I’m not used to seeing him like this, and it presses like a bruise in my chest. I didn’t realize how hungry I was for more details of his life until we were here, pretending to be sharing these pieces with the
safety of a stranger. “You don’t have to talk about it,” I say quietly.
“It’s just that there’s nothing I can really do to fix what Perry’s going through, and . . . I don’t mean to sound self-important, but that’s not a situation I’m familiar with.”
“Whatever he’s dealing with,” I say, “you can be there, but it is his life. You can’t make it perfect for him.”
He studies me for a silent beat, opening his mouth and then closing it again. “No . . . It’s just that”—he pauses and draws in a deep breath—“I know. You’re right.”
I want to tell him I understand, that I know what it’s like to be so close to someone, to feel them drift away and be unable to pull them back, but I can’t. The closest people in my life have always been Harlow and Lorelei. They’re my constants, and have been since we were in elementary school. By the time Luke and I broke up after the accident, I was ready to let him go. And while I might feel the occasional hollow spot from where he used to fit into my life, I think I always knew I wasn’t going to be with him forever.
Wanting to change the subject, I whisper, “Well, from where I’m sitting, whoever stood you up tonight was a total idiot.”
Understanding washes over his expression and he turns on his stool to face me completely, one elbow propped up on the bar.
“I don’t know,” he says finally, biting his bottom lip. “I’m beginning to think she might have done me a favor . . .” He leaves the sentiment hanging meaningfully between us, and we continue to sit there in silence, the pulsing bass of music overhead thumping all around us. “Do you have a boyfriend?” he says suddenly.
“Boyfriend?” I shake my head, fighting a grin. “No.” It’s technically true. “Girlfriend?” I ask in return.
He shakes his head, eyes flickering to my mouth before blinking up to meet mine again.
Once the conversation about Bike and Build moves on, all traces of sadness and regret seem to disappear from Ansel’s eyes and it’s just like the first night we were together: the two of us, talking for hours. It helps me remember every detail that hadn’t yet returned. Like the way he talks with his hands, pausing only when he forgets a word, his brow furrowed in concentration, before I laugh, a mini-game of Charades breaking out as I help him find the right one. Or the way he listens so carefully he tilts his head toward me, eyes continually inspecting my expression. He makes me feel like I’m the only person on the planet. He looks at me like he’s one second away from devouring me.
No wonder I proposed.
He asks me about my life in San Diego, and listens with the same rapt attention as if the night in Las Vegas never happened, and he hasn’t heard every detail before.
“And you loved dancing,” he says, smiling, his empty glass abandoned on the bar in front of him. It’s not posed as a question, but an observation.
“I did.”
“And performing.”
I sigh. “I loved performing.”
Ansel’s eyes narrow, a beat of meaningful silence stretching between us before he says, “I’m sure.”
He’s completely unashamed by the way he scans my body, gaze lingering at my breasts. I feel goose bumps spread along my skin, my nipples hardening at his suggestive tone, at the hunger in his eyes.
“But business school,” he says, blinking back up to my face. “It doesn’t hold your interest the same way.”
I laugh. “Uh, no.”
“Then why will you do it? Spend so much of your life on something that makes you clearly unhappy?”
A spark of panic flares in my chest, but I manage to quickly tamp it down. This is my safe place—this strange space that Ansel and I have found—where I can say or do or be anyone I want.
And so I choose to avoid answering at all, directing the focus back onto him. “Lots of people are unhappy with their jobs. Do you love yours?”
“Not this particular one,” he says. “No.”
“But you continue to do it.”
“Yes . . .” he says thoughtfully. “But mine is temporary. I know what I want to do with my life; this job is simply one door that will lead to another. This job will let me have my pick of positions anywhere in the world. Two more years of school is a long time, and I saw the way you reacted when I brought it up.” He laughs softly. “Like your life had just flashed in front of your eyes. If the prospect of school makes you unhappy . . .” His voice trails off and he watches me, waiting for me to finish the sentence myself.
“I can’t dance anymore,” I remind him. “Screws through my leg and three centimeters of metallic alloy artificial bone aren’t something I can overcome if I just try hard enough. It’s not mind over matter.”
He spins his glass, widening the dark ring of condensation that’s formed on the coaster beneath it. The ice clinks against the walls of the empty tumbler, and he seems to be considering something carefully before he says it. “Not professionally,” he adds with a shrug.
I shake my head but don’t offer more. He doesn’t understand.
“Your career as a stripper, extinguished before it ever began.”
A laugh bursts from my throat. “Which sucks because I had a name picked out, monogrammed pasties ordered and everything.”
Ansel leans against the bar and turns toward me. His eyes scan my face before slipping to my mouth and down . . . down again. It’s such an obvious, silly attempt at seduction that I can’t hold in my laugh. This is the guy I couldn’t take my eyes off in Vegas, the one who drew my attention no matter where he was in the room. The one I told my entire life story to in the span of a few hours, the one I married, the one I’ve had sex with many times.
“I’m really glad you got stood up,” I say, hoping the way I’m looking at him makes him feel half as wanted as the way he’s looking at me.
He brushes a single finger over my knee. “So am I.”
I’m not sure where to go from here and so I decide to try out brave. “Would you like to leave?” I ask. “Maybe go for a walk?”
He doesn’t hesitate, just stands and motions to the bartender to pay our bill.
“I’m going to run to the bathroom,” I say.
He watches me with hungry eyes. “I’ll be here waiting for you.”
But when I step out of the large, art deco bathroom, he’s right there in front of me—head down, face obscured by the lack of light. Dangerous. He looks up at the sound of the door and his features look stronger here in the shadows, hard, thrown into sharp relief under the neon glow. In this dimly lit corner his cheekbones resemble carved stone, his eyes shadowed, his lips lush and exaggerated.
He doesn’t give me time to hesitate, just crosses the tiny space to back me against the wall.
“I couldn’t wait,” he says, gripping my neck, his palm cool and steady while his thumb presses to the pulse beating wildly in my throat. It’s a possessive hold, and so different from the Ansel I know that it sends a silent thrill of fear up my spine. In this game we’re playing, he’s a stranger again. He doesn’t know me and beyond what he’s told me in the last hour; I’m not supposed to know anything about him, either.
A smart girl would walk away, I tell myself. A smart, quiet girl would pretend she has friends waiting and head right out the door. She wouldn’t stand in a darkened hallway with a man she doesn’t know, liking the way he’s manhandling her so much it never occurs to her to leave.
“I can hear you thinking,” he whispers, tightening his hold. “Let go. Play with me.”
And it’s exactly what I need. I relax my shoulders as my head clears. The tension melts from my body as I lean into him.
Even though I’m in heels and he’s inches above me, I only have to lift my chin and he’s there, the tip of his nose brushing over mine.
“I don’t usually do this,” I say, lost in the idea of a one-night stand. Of letting this sexy stranger do whatever he want
s to me. “I hardly kiss on the first date, I never—” I close my eyes and swallow, opening them again to find him smiling down at me.
“I know.” His grin says, Except that time you married me in Las Vegas.
Except that.
He presses a thigh between my legs and I can feel how hard he is already. I relish the small shifts of his hips as he rocks against me.
“Want you,” he mumbles, kissing me, chaste and soft. He pulls back, licks his lips, and moves forward again, moaning softly into my mouth. “Can I?”
“Now?” My heart takes off, pounding so hard beneath my breastbone that I swear I can feel my chest move from the force of it.
He nods into the kiss. “Here. It’s getting busy,” he says, motioning back toward the restaurant. “We’d have to be quick.”
It feels like someone lights a match inside my chest and I wrap my fingers into the fabric of his shirt, pulling us both back into the empty bathroom. He follows without a word, kissing me until the door shuts behind us and the lock clicks into place.
I’m suddenly overheated, oversensitive. I can feel every inch of clothing that separates us. His hands grip my face, tongue slipping against mine, and he tastes so good, I’m almost light-headed.
The room is dark, lit overhead by another strip of neon pink. It’s so easy to pretend in here, lost in light that makes everything look like make-believe, surrounded by sounds on the other side of the door. I feel the beat of the music push up through the floor and into my feet, and it’s only this that reminds me there are other people on this planet beyond our kisses, our frantic hands as we try to get closer, push clothes out of the way.
My dress comes up, his shirt pulled from the waist of his pants so I can scratch my nails over his stomach. I gasp as cool air finds my skin, where my panties are damp between my legs. He moves a palm down over my navel, fingers slipping just beneath the skimpy lace waistband until he’s cupping me, dragging his fingers between and over, everywhere but the place I want him.
“Want to taste this,” he says.