Heat fills your cheeks, and your heart is pounding in your chest. Your eyes feel heavy as his breathing slows and yours picks up.
Daniel’s other hand moves to your waist, and he turns your body, gently pushing you against the surface of the cold rock. You can barely breathe and blood rushes behind your ears and you can barely process what’s happening as he lowers his head. His lips aren’t touching yours, but they are so close that if you were to move a fraction of an inch, they would touch.
He steals your breath when he begins to speak. “Are you imagining it? The way they felt?” A shiver runs through you with his words, and you press your back farther into the cold rock. You nod, overwhelmed and alive with adrenaline. You are certain that he won’t kiss you, he’s only trying to prove his point that this rock is more than a vandalized block of stone on a dirty beach.
“Don’t think of the possibility of anything else, only that they were in love when they were here, completely infatuated with one another. . . .”
His hands tighten on your waist, and you can taste his breath on your tongue. You have never, not once in your entire life, felt the way you do right now. You feel like you’re floating, yet you’ve never felt so grounded before. You feel present—you feel like you’re actually involved in your own life for once. You feel strong and in control of your own thoughts, your own body, for once. You don’t hesitate when he inches closer. You press your lips to his without hesitation, and the moment they touch, something in him snaps. He’s no longer the controlled, nice, charming guy who finds radiance in everything. He’s shifted into a wild, grunting force, and his hands push through your messy hair and his breath comes in fast spurts, along with his tongue. He’s not tentative; he’s not gentle. But you don’t want gentle, you want this. You want to be lost in the madness of him, you want his teeth biting at your lips, you want his hips pressed against yours. You’ve never felt this, you’ve never felt wild before in your boring, unsatisfying life, and you are terrified that when you’re no longer tasting the sweet taste of him, when your hands aren’t exploring his chest, you will be become you again. You don’t want to go back to being a simple, no-name waitress . . . you want to be this. You want to be his. The crushing reminder of reality is trying forcibly to take this moment from you. Every doubt you have about yourself, from your appearance to your achievements, is threatening to overtake the wildness, and you use every ounce of strength inside of you to crush that doubt. You need the wildness; you need to live in this moment for as long as you can. Your doubts have taken enough from you since the day you decided to let them, and you refuse to let them today.
His mouth is unforgiving, unashamed, as his hands move from your hair, to your neck, to your chest. He doesn’t grope at your chest the way you see in movies, and despite the madness, you know he’s aware of the crowd closing in on us. As if he’s reading your mind, he turns you again, hiding you from the sunlight, from the crowd.
“Fuck,” he mutters into your mouth. You grow bolder with each second. Each flick of his tongue makes you more powerful, more aware of yourself and your body. Your hands clench his shirt, needing more of him. You are panting, adrenaline rushing through your veins like blood, and you try to shut your thoughts out completely. The only thing you want to think about is the way his hungry mouth feels as he kisses you. This is the longest, most important kiss you’ve ever had, and you know that even when you’re back to reality, you will never, ever forget how it feels. He presses his body against yours, leaving no space between you. An instinct you didn’t know that you possessed is nagging at you, begging you to touch him, pleading for you to take more.
“Oh my God!” a girl’s voice shrieks, and Daniel jerks away from you like he’s been burned. You feel as if someone ripped out a part of you, the best part of you, when he turns to the crowd.
“Is this your girlfriend?”
“How cute!”
“Get a room!”
His fans joke, teasing him. A younger girl toward the back of the crowd is scowling at you, eyeing you from your dirty boots to your messy hair and swollen lips.
“Guys . . .” Daniel is gentle with them and his demeanor is impeccable. He’s completely unaffected by what just happened, and you feel the threads inside you coming undone, one by one. The crowd swallows your Daniel—
And you realize how insane you sound thinking of him as yours. He’s not yours; he never was, and he never will be. At best, you could claim him for the last two minutes, but now that your time has run out and he’s smiling for pictures and graciously thanking random people for their compliments, he’s theirs.
They have stolen him from you, and you don’t have anything to offer him that they don’t have too.
You can’t tell him how great he was in some play, like a woman in a red shirt is doing. You can’t say that you loved him in his latest big-screen role, like a teenage boy is doing. You can’t offer him anything that he can’t get from anyone else, and that knowledge is a bitter taste in your mouth. You swallow the acid and your pride and slip out from behind the rock. The wind drowns out their praises behind you, and you couldn’t be more grateful for that. You rush up the shore and curse at yourself when your boot catches the sharp corner of a rock. You fall to the ground, landing on your knees. The toe of your boot is ripped now, along with your jeans and skin, but you keep running. You take the stairs without fear this time and run past the white buildings as fast as you can. Your chest is burning—your entire body is burning—by the time you make it down the street and away from the beach. You don’t stop running until you can no longer hear the waves crashing against the shore. You want to vomit. You want to cry. You want to scream by the time you stop.
But you don’t. You simply pull out your cell phone and call a cab. You’ll use your entire savings to get back to West Hollywood if you have to. You need to get away from here, away from this fake paradise where beautiful, thoughtful, and intelligent men are actors who kiss sad, simple girls backed up against the rocks.
WHEN YOU WAKE UP, the cab is pulling up to your apartment building. Your legs burn as you climb out of the car and try to forget how much money you just threw away. The entire day has been nothing but a waste of time and money and energy. You drink half a bottle of wine and pass out on your couch watching a string of horror movies. You don’t even like horror movies; you just can’t stand to see even a flicker of happiness right now.
Or ever again.
Okay, you’re being dramatic, you know this, but it doesn’t make any difference. When you wake up, your chest feels as empty as your wallet, and you call your job to see if you can pick up a shift. You need the money and the distraction.
You’ve always been a bit of a masochist, so it doesn’t surprise you when you’re googling his name on the bus ride to work. You try to keep your mouth closed and your breakfast down as you scroll through the newest pictures of him. He’s on the beach, walking next to you, then talking to you while touching the rock. He’s kissing you, his hands in your hair, his mouth crushed against yours. You can’t stop yourself from reading the comments attached to each picture.
You aren’t surprised to find that not a single one of them is nice—not even close to it. You’ve been insulted plenty in your life. Hell, you tear yourself down on a daily basis. But the list of names and insults these people behind the screen of anonymity are saying is something else entirely. You have never been the center of attention—you’re not stupid enough to think you could be a model—like every single one of Daniel’s exes listed on the internet—but you also weren’t aware of the many flaws you have that these people are ready and willing to point out.
She looks like a bird pecking him to death, one man from Michigan says. When you click on his profile, he has a Confederate flag as his icon. You roll your eyes and completely disregard everything and anything he says.
The next few comments are claiming that you’re a whore and too ugly to be with someone as “sexy” as Daniel. You hate that you agree with the second part of that.