DAMAGED - A Bad Boy Romance (84 page)

I turned the package over in my hands again and again. It was almost a perfect cube, tastefully wrapped and giving no clues at all about what could be inside.

“Oh my god, is what’s-his-name still sending you shit again?” said Clara.

I’m pretty sure I’ve had hours-long conversations with Clara only to discover at the end of it that we both had been talking about completely different what’s-his-names. Present circumstances meant I was relieved from having to lie to her, which was convenient, so I managed to be less curt with her than I usually am.

“Yup, from what’s-his-name. Idiot.”

“Open it.”

“Nah, later.”

“How did the meeting with what’s-his-name go?”

“Fucking hell, Clara,
which
what’s-his-name? I can’t believe anyone ever lets you near a keyboard.”

“You know, buddy, what’s-his-name …Tom Hood. Your interview with him.”

“Yeah it was OK. He’s a bit of an asshole, no surprise there.”

“Oh,” she said, taking her turn to look over the box.

“Complete ego maniac. Wants me to write a big piece singing his praises.”

She lifted her eyebrows. “Are you going to?”

“Nah. What kind of asshole does that? I’m just going to write it like I see it,” I said, putting on a phony accent and shrugging. Why was I saying this? Why couldn’t I tell Clara what I really felt?

Her face went serious.

“It’s such a big story, though. And it is kind of weird. No offense, but …well, why not get Penelope to write it? Why did he ask
you
? No offense.”

I took the package from her hands.

“None taken. He just saw that I had mentioned him in another piece and he thought I owed him an apology.”

“That’s it? So, Tom Hood,
the
Tom Hood, wants
you
to do a feature piece on him, just like that?”

I shot her a sour look and she balked immediately, sensing she had overstepped.

“Whatever, celebrities, I don’t understand them,” she said breezily.

“He’s not just a celebrity you know, he is an actual entrepreneur … and a lot of what we’ve written about him is actually kind of shitty and--” I stopped. Clara was staring at the package with renewed interest.

“Oh my god. That’s from
what’s-his-name
isn’t it?” she said slowly, eyes widening.

I spun around and went to shove the package in my desk drawer.

“Yes, it’s from what’s-his-name, so what?”

She backed away with a
sheesh
and left, leaving me to think about what had just happened. Was she jealous of me? It hadn’t occurred to me, but many women would have killed for the chance I had. More seriously, my mind wandered again to a darker thought: why had I thrown him under the bus like that? What counted as staying true to my story angle and what counted as a stupid crush on a hot celebrity?

Look, I’m a decent writer. But Tom Hood’s life seemed harder and harder to explain. I was getting drawn in, when all I wanted was to occupy that calm, neutral territory of a true pro, be objective, show people that I didn’t care how glitzy and glossy a thing was, my job was to get to the bottom of things …and I intended to do that job well.

I opened the drawer again and tore off the wrapping. Inside was a padded jewelry box, with a delicate gold bangle nestled inside. Along the bangle’s edge was a beautiful etched eye motif, like something you’d find marked on the entrance of an undiscovered Egyptian temple. It was so exactly my style that I held it in my hands for a moment, taken aback by its weight and cool surface, how pretty it was.

A tiny note inside was scribbled with a time and a date, as before. It was from him. I was being summoned, again. I snapped the box closed and flung it aside. Here I was trying to brainstorm a flattering and subtle profile for this man, and he was just a garden-variety player after all. Trying to buy me with stupid trinkets… One hot tear was growing on my lower lashes.

I had never both badly wanted and
not
wanted a thing at the same time before.

I returned to 67 Baltic Terrace the next day with quite a bit more apprehension than the first time, which is saying something.

Oppressed on all sides by sparkling fountains and trimmed topiaries, I felt more keenly than ever how much I didn’t belong here. Not only was this attention from Tom Hood,
the
Tom Hood, entirely unexpected, I felt compromised by it instantly.

Was he making fun of me?

I was nothing like Kai, nothing like the leggy goddesses that seemed to follow him everywhere. I was dumpier by miles. Completely lacking in glamor. Matte, even. So, what was the game, then? I couldn’t decide if I felt more humiliated that he had given a gift at all, to
me
, or that I was completely, utterly, one hundred percent wooed by it. Not only did this playboy jock have the audacity to mistake me for one of his floozies, but astonishingly, he seemed to be doing a good job of it. And here I was, dressed up, again, excited nearly half to death to see him once more.

What an idiot
, I thought, as I found myself again in that cool marble entrance hall, except I wasn’t quite sure if I meant him or me.

Half expecting Kai to glide down the staircase and collect me again, I was surprised instead to see him, standing at the top of the staircase, looking down at me. This time, there was no broad, easy grin. Just his face. He was covered up this time, too, and the contrast to before seemed more intimate somehow.

“Hello,” I said, my voice echoing slightly against the walls.

He simply stared at me a little longer, then gestured for me to come up with a small, noncommittal lift of his chin. I obeyed. It must have taken me roughly 40 years to ascend that staircase, or perhaps it only felt like it with his eyes following my every step. But I reached the top landing and looked him square in the eye – or as square as I could given he was more than a foot taller than I was.

His gaze moved down the length of my body but stopped, and he frowned and suddenly looked crestfallen.

“You didn’t wear the bracelet,” he said, already seeming to accept the unhappy fact.

I had come here full of indignation for him but with these simple words his disappointment crushed me and I realized that I had offended him, again, and that it was the last thing I had wanted to do. Why hadn’t I worn it? I had no clue.

“I’m …I’m sorry but I …” I could do nothing but trail off as I stared at his eyes again, and what I found there stunned me a little, so that even
I
, Katie Mack, who always has something to say, was speechless. It was a naked gaze, a look so full and open that I blushed instantly and started stammering again, desperately trying to normalize the situation.

“I can’t accept gifts you know, especially as favors, it’s just completely unprofessional…”

The disappointment on his face remained. I had blown it. But blown
what
exactly? I didn’t know. I had gone through my entire life level headed and sober and somehow this, this man with just a few words could send my whole head into a fluster and have me bumbling like an idiot.

He looked down again at my bare wrist, reached out to softly take my hand and then led me along the corridor, to a different part of the house from before. My heart was beating violently inside me, his touch, though casual, seeming to send a wave of invisible goose bumps all up my arm.

We reached a dark, small room with a modest wood fire burning at the far corner. This room had a different character to the rest of the house. As my eyes adjusted, I could make out a few details here and there: an expensive speckled hide on the floor, two Bohemian looking red brocade chairs, arranged as though they were having a light conversation in the corner, an empty Chinese vase laced with red and gold filigree. I thought of poor Tigger alone at home, in my pitiful flat with its peeling wallpaper and budget shower fittings.

He sat down in one of the chairs and I followed and seated myself in the other. I would submit my article to Penelope tomorrow, and then …I didn’t know what would happen then. I couldn’t think of anything beyond this warm, strange moment, and this curious face in front of mine, so strange and yet so familiar all at once, lit gently with the light from the flickering fire.

I reached into my bag and pulled out three printed pages, then handed them over to him. My article. He took them, looked at me, then lowered his eyes. Dozens of editors had ripped into my work, people had criticized things I’d written nearly half to death, all my life, and like a good little journalist, I had taken it all with a thick skin, swallowing my hurt ego and committing to learning more. But this felt different. Very different. I sat in painful anticipation, studying his face to find any hint of what he thought of the piece, inwardly desperate for any flicker of approval, any sign that I had pleased him, at least in some small way.

His almond brown eyes flicked through the lines rhythmically, and he read quickly and quietly, not betraying his thoughts about it at all until he nodded once and raised his head again to speak.

“It’s … very good,” he said simply.

I felt warm and happy and confused and filled with a strange growing hunger that had no direction, no focal point except to do whatever he would find pleasing. It was a silly, girly state of mind, but as his praise hung there between us, I didn’t care, and I relaxed a little in the thought that I had written something
good
. For him.

“Thank you,” I said, consciously trying to reign myself in.

He let the pages drop to the floor and looked at me again, cocking his head to one side.

“I’m sorry about what I said the other day, about you being a cowardly journalist,” he said. The warmth and darkness of the room seemed to be closing in all around me. “I just don’t like to see people being …well, you have a talent, and you censor it. Why?”

My face flushed with this new, gentle turn his attitude to me had taken. I tried to think of some witty comeback, something to quip in response. I tore my eyes away from his and tried to think.

“What are you afraid of, really? Why do you hold back all the time?” he said, and I was again thrown off by the casual intimacy of the question.

“Hold back? I never hold back,” I snorted. I told it like it is. That was my whole job, right?

“Yeah you do,” was his immediate response. “You go up
really close
to something you want, then you back away. Like you’re scared.” He shifted his weight in the chair and let his eyes wander shamelessly all over my body. “I meet a lot of women. A
lot
of women. Some are more closed up than others, and that’s fine by me. Take a woman like Kai. Now she’s not afraid of a damn thing. Her heart’s completely open.”

The mention of her name felt like finding a bitter seed in what till now had been a sweet fruit. I hated hearing him talk about her.

“Yeah, I’m sure being a gold digger like her takes a lot of guts” I said.

He laughed.

“See? See how closed you are?”

“But come on Tom,
Kai
? Of course her ‘heart is open’, I mean she’s stupidly beautiful and she probably has had men paying her way all her life.”

He raised his eyebrows at this little outburst.

“Where is she anyway?” I asked.

“She’s in Brazil right now. I only see her a couple of times a year.”

“In Brazil? Attending a sugar daddy conference is she? Getting some more plastic surgery?” I felt growing anger that we were talking about her at all, that she was in the way, even when she wasn’t here at all.

“No, not at all. Kai owns a coffee plantation in Minas Gerais and she’s in some serious talks with the unions there about implementing more environmentally friendly farming techniques.”

It felt like Kai had appeared before me and slapped me hard across the face.

“Oh, I’m sorry.”

“It’s OK, you’re jealous of her,” he said simply. He smiled at the frown this brought to my face. “You know, if you just opened up a little, you’d probably discover lots of
other
feelings, too.” His eyes were moving over me again.

“Ok, fine, I am jealous of her,” I said. I
did
feel relieved to say it out loud like that.

“See, was that so hard?” he smiled. “To be honest,
I’m
a little jealous of her,” he said, laughing.

I laughed too.

“You’re also very attracted to me,” he said suddenly, and I stopped laughing.

“What?”

“Yeah. You keep coming here, getting really close …and then running away again. You’re attracted to me.”

“I…” I stammered, but realized I was only going to say something stupid, to lash out again at him. It seemed that every wall of resistance I put up, every jab and barb, was melted by him. It really was an uncanny ability of his. Disarming.

“Hey, it’s OK, though. I know that you are, and you don’t have to pretend you aren’t.”

I said nothing.

He leaned back in his chair and gazed at the ceiling.

“Why do people walk around this earth so tightly wound up? Why does everyone censor themselves and pretend not to want what they really want? There’s something I admire about people who can
surrender
. Who have the guts to be themselves. People who can look at something bigger than them and just let go, just release into it, you know?”

I did know. It was something, in fact, that I admired in
him
. Suddenly, all the tales of his exploits and orgies in the media were falling into place. Maybe Kai wasn’t so bad.

“Maybe it’s just my ego, but I’m convinced I could get you to open up, too. To me,” he said, completely unguarded.

He extended one bare foot in my direction, and we both watched as he gently let his toes graze the edge of my ankle and then rest on the floor again, right in the empty space between my feet.

“Let’s try an experiment, ok? I’m going to compliment you and try to make you feel good, and you’re going to not be a big ol’
bitch
about it.”

We both laughed.

“No seriously. No arguing back. No smart-ass comments. You just sit there, and enjoy it, ok?”

“Ok,” I said, already way, way out of my comfort zone.

“Ok.”

The fire crackled quietly.

“You have very, very pretty hands, and your hair is really sexy,” he said.

I didn’t know whether to laugh or squirm and hide under the seat. He was right; I was completely incapable of receiving any sort of compliment.

“I like how
little
your body is. You have such dainty wrists and arms, they’re really pretty…”

I opened my mouth to speak but he jumped in.

“Uh uh uh! Don’t argue! Just enjoy it. Doesn’t it feel good, to be told that you’re pretty?’

I felt like I had turned the most obvious shade of school girl pink and would die of embarrassment any second now.

He leaned back in his chair again, looking off towards the fire. “I think this world would be a very different place if people weren’t so afraid of pleasure. Of pushing themselves to see what they’re really capable of.”

“Ha!” I interjected, “Tom Hood, the philosopher,
fancy
.”

He shot me a cold look.

“So what if I am? Is that bad? Maybe it seems cheesy to you, but I don’t want to hide behind make-believe barriers, too afraid to
feel
anything.”

It occurred to me that he was probably slightly drunk. It also occurred to me that I didn’t care. At all. I wanted to be persuaded by this strange argument. I wanted to go along with it. I had this vague notion that if I just blurted out how meeting him here, like this, was the single most thrilling moment of my life, that he would judge me, that my excitement would seem unsophisticated, that we would withdraw everything and I would be humiliated.

“I’m attracted to you,” I said and braced myself. He looked at me with a bright face.

“I’m attracted to you too” he replied, quickly.

The fire crackled on, oblivious to this new change in dynamic. I hadn’t had a single sip to drink but felt myself intoxicated nonetheless. By him. By the thrilling thought of
myself
and what I was capable of right now, in this moment. Surely life doesn’t really work this way? Surely people can’t go around blindly declaring one another hot and boning in the streets? If it was such a good idea to be this “open” why didn’t everybody do it?

“I’m wondering if you’re going to kiss me,” I said at last, feeling somehow that narrating my own thoughts felt less intimidating than baldly saying what I wanted, outright.

He smiled.

“Take off your clothes,” he said.

What?

“Trust me,” he said to my shocked expression.

“But I…”

“No! Just stop thinking for a moment. No excuses. Just listen to me. Do you trust me? Or are you going to turn around and run away from me again?”