“Are you trying to kill me?” she asked, softly.
“Yes,” I agreed, chuckling.
“You’re doing a good job of it.”
I held her, thinking she was doing a pretty good job of it, too. And not in the way Lola had spoken of, earlier. I didn’t like thinking about that side of it, the fake façade on all of this. I wanted to stay right there in the dark with her, where I knew it was real. And where I didn’t have to think about the inevitable end to all of this, when Ana would brutally stomp on my heart and leave me forever. Had I thought that sounded like a great idea a week ago? One of us was crazy, either that Ash or this Ash, standing and holding Ana like my life depended on it. Either way, only one of us could make it out of this mess. I didn’t know which one it would be.
13
Ana
Ash and I were back on the grid, big time. Following Lola’s tightly scripted itinerary (smile under the clock on the corner! Ana take Ash’s arm crossing the street!), we were definitely not in that supply closet any more. But boy did I still feel the heat.
The way he talked to me! OK, I hadn’t exactly had a lot of experience with men, but I had some experience. Most of it with Stan. Well, all of the sex had been with Stan. I didn’t think he’d ever talked to me once during any of it. There was really no lead-up, maybe a “You wanna?” Or even sexier, “You got your period?” as in, is it safe to touch you or are you contaminated?
I’d never had a man talk dirty to me, telling me what he wanted to do to me, making me tell him what I wanted. Now, as we walked along the sunny, snowy streets of New York City, smiling pretty for the cameras, it wasn’t just my mittens keeping me warm. The memory of his nasty words, telling me he was going to fuck me hard, getting me to beg for it. Holy hell, my knees felt weak at the thought of it.
“Care for a skate?” Ash asked me with a devilish grin.
I knew it was all staged. What romantic movie didn’t feature the ice skating rink at Rockefeller Center? It was such a cliché. I should be rolling my eyes.
But it was my stomach that was flipping over when Ash took my hand in his own and swept me on to the ice. I stumbled a little and caught my balance on his shoulder.
“Can you skate?” he asked with concern, steadying me.
“I can,” I protested. “I’m Russian.”
“Yeah, but it’s not like you grew up in the heart of Moscow.”
“My parents did,” I explained. “And if you don’t ice skate, your Russian ethnicity is revoked.”
He nodded. I loved how joking around with him came so easily. Half the time I teased Stan he thought I meant it and got offended. “It’s like an official thing?” Ash asked, gravely serious.
“Yes, it’s a huge disgrace to the family.”
“Well, we can’t have that. Let’s see your Russian moves.” Together we set off on the ice. Ash could skate as well. But I couldn’t resist, I had to hop around and skate in front of him backwards.
“You remember we’re being filmed,” he teased me. Oh shoot, I’d almost forgotten. I hopped back into place by his side, much less risk of falling on my ass facing forward. I could see the headlines now, “Fat Cow Falls Hard!” with a big picture of me grimacing in front of Ash. Come to think of it, that would probably still be the headline. They didn’t even need a real photo of me, did they? They could just photoshop my head onto someone else’s body and create any version of reality that they wanted.
But that night, as I sat in my bed back in my own tiny apartment, I couldn’t find anything bad online. Everything I found looked like it came straight out of a romantic storybook. The press were buying our romance hook, line and sinker. The problem was, so was I.
There we were under a clock on a corner, smiling at each other. Arm-in-arm at the ice skating rink, cheerful with red mittens and rosy cheeks. An impromptu snowball fight as we strolled through the park.
That video I couldn’t resist playing over and over. Someone had captured it perfectly, 45 seconds of glee, my catching Ash unawares with a snowball square in his back, him turning on me and nailing me with one right on the shoulder. But I got him good one more time on the thigh until he ran up and caught me, spinning me around in his arms, and then letting me down right in front of him. It was the look in his eyes that got me. Right then, I paused it. When he rested me there, my feet touching his, and he brought a hand up to the back of my neck. Right before he kissed me. He looked at me like he couldn’t believe what a jewel he’d found in me, the most beautiful woman in the world.
That was some look in his eyes. A woman could go her whole life hoping for a look like that from a man, never mind if that man happened to be a tall, built, gorgeous famous rock star. Who happened to sing some of her favorite songs in a gritty, sexy voice. And also happened to give her orgasms so intense they made her forget her name.
All for show, I had to keep reminding myself. All fake. But like a cheesy Hallmark movie you found yourself sucked into watching anyway, I couldn’t turn the channel. You knew it was fake, scripted, every second of it. You knew this story and exactly what would happen next, how it would end. But you still got sucked into it, still felt your heart skip a beat when he finally took her hand in his and admitted how he really felt.
Only the Ash and Ana story wouldn’t have a happy ending. That was guaranteed. I had to remember that, no matter how easy it was to forget.
Liv burst into my room, her now-purple hair all aglow. “I have 10,000 new followers on Twitter!”
“What?” I sat up, unused to Liv exuding unbridled glee. Sarcasm, brooding, these I recognized in her. But now she practically jumped up and down with excitement.
“Ash! His photo!”
“From the art installation?” I asked, realizing what she was talking about.
“It’s crazy! You have to thank him for me!” With a joyful squeal—another surprise from Liv—she closed my bedroom door.
My life wasn’t the only one getting changed by Ash Black. Here he was, getting intertwined with the other people close to me. That thought made me wince. My parents had heard about all of this. I knew they would, at some point. My mother had called me yesterday having a serious fit. I’d managed to get off the phone with a good excuse—I’d had to get to work, and I wasn’t making that up. I was squeezing in a few shifts in-between L.A., S.F. and what was that other place? Oh yeah, Paris. Ash was taking me to Paris.
Ash was taking me to Paris! I’d always wanted to go. Who didn’t? The amazing food and fashion, the architecture and the history and museums. I couldn’t believe we were headed there, the two of us, off-roading, fully departing from Lola’s script. I was sure she’d hit the roof, but Ash assured me that she’d come around. We’d make sure the trip fit both of our agendas, he and I having some fun and her getting some great romantic pics.
I’d started sensing a shift in his perspective, as if it were me and him aligned against Lola and his agent. I liked it. But I couldn’t trust it.
He was at the heart of this, the whole reason I’d gotten hired. Because that’s what this was, a contract job.
And the next couple of days were going to be hard. It was one thing to put on a show for the general public, the nameless, faceless fans of Ash Black. It was another thing entirely to lie to family. First, Ash’s lovely grandmother was having us to tea tomorrow afternoon. She seemed especially sharp and insightful. I couldn’t imagine that she wouldn’t see right through us to the truth of the matter in an instant.
Then, I had to spend Christmas with my family. I usually loved this time of year, sharing presents I’d devoted time to picking out and wrapping, seeing friends at church, sharing an hours-long meal with extended family and still more friends. I loved it, all of it, from my mother’s elaborate decorations to the special desserts we made together. And this year I’d have to do it all under a cloak of duplicity, somehow finding the right way to talk about it where I didn’t exactly lie to them but didn’t exactly tell the truth. That meant lying, I knew. But I?
??d never really lied to my parents, especially not over something this big.
The only thing to do was to play it down. Tell them I’d recently met him and it wasn’t a big deal, the press was simply making more of it than they should. Spreading rumors. Who knew, in a week they might even claim we’d gotten engaged? You couldn’t believe everything you read in the tabloids. It probably wouldn’t last long. This would all be over in a heartbeat.
That last part, at least, was the whole truth and nothing but the truth. This would all be over in about two weeks. I had to remember that.
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