Chapter 8 The Real Andrew Harding #5
Then the front door opens.
He’s in a bomber jacket, a gray tee, his jeans hugging his hips. His hair’s tousled and towel-dried as he steps out. The reminder of how fucking gorgeous he is hits her right in the chest.
All bedroom sin and boyish ruin—haunted and heartbreak-wrapped.
He slides his keys into his pocket, lifting his head.
And he freezes when he sees her.
Elle slides her window lower.
“What’s the matter, Andrew? Can’t face me after that kiss?”
He walks to her car and stops at the curb. “You serious with this shit?” He leans down, one hand gripping the roof, looking at her through the passenger window. “You’re for real outside my fuckin’ house right now?”
“Yeah. For real,” she says. “It’s Roger’s birthday. I’m not doing awkward hellos and fake smiles across the table. We’re not pretending we don’t know each other tonight. So get in.” She scoffs. “Taking the bus would be pathetic. You can be mad at me from the passenger seat.”
He holds her stare a beat too long. Then he exhales hard, pulls the handle, and slides in. His scent rides in with him, cologne clinging to his skin.
“That kiss got you actin’ crazy, huh?” He clicks the belt with a humorless grin. “Camped outside my house. Real stalker behavior, sweetheart.”
For the next ten minutes, the music fills the silence while she keeps her hands on the wheel and her thoughts in her head. She curated the playlist to all his classic rock shit.
When Wonderful Tonight comes on, Elle glances over. The tension’s still thick, but taps the beat on the leather wheel. “God, this song? That’s fuckin’ love,” she mutters, grinning at the windshield.
“Yeah?” Andrew chuckles, keeping his gaze out the window. “You know he wrote that while his wife was gettin’ ready for a party he didn’t even wanna go to. Guy was bored and drunk, wishin’ his wife would hurry the fuck up.”
She glances at him. But his eyes stay on the passing billboards—divorce lawyers, injury claims. “She was George Harrison’s wife first, his best fuckin’ friend. He stole her, then cheated on her, then abused her—repeatedly. Total piece of shit.”
Her wide eyes drift from him, back to the brake lights pulsing in front of her.
She just wanted to say something cute, something girls usually say when they’re flirting. But filleted the fucking song in half and handed her the bones.
She waits ten more minutes before poking the bear again.
“Ugh. This song again?” she says. “Dream On is so overplayed. It’s like, dramatic for no reason.” She gestures to the dashboard. “And his voice is so weird. Sounds like he’s dying.”
He turns his head slowly, a blade being unsheathed.
“You just say that shit out loud?”
She glances over at him. “What? Aerosmith always felt kinda corny to me.”
His face splits open in a cold, stunned scoff. One breath out through flared nostrils, as if he doesn’t know how to respond.
She’s laughing now, head tipped back, hand on her heart. “You’re so fuckin’ serious about this, acting like I’m burning vinyl. Relax.” She snorts. “Probably cried to that one song in the movie Armageddon, didn’t you?”
His eyes rake down her, full disbelief. “You know what? I fuckin’ did. And I’d do it again. While eatin’ pussy and savin’ the fuckin’ world, just like Aerosmith taught me.” He mutters Italian, offended. “Soft and filthy ain’t opposites, and bein’ both don’t make me any less of a man.”
Silence creeps in. Elle lets it.
Andrew leans into the leather, elbow on the door, the Lincoln Tunnel’s yellow lights reflecting in his eyes.
But ten seconds later, he’s up again, not over it.
“You know what? Nah. I can’t let that slide. You basically just told me you hate Aerosmith and expected me to be chill? That’s like sayin’ you hate breathin’. Or orgasms. Or—or fuckin’ lasagna.” He exhales just as the tunnel spits them out into 40th street. “Swear these Montclair girls…”
She hides a smirk behind her lips, eyes going wide in fake innocence.
“Okay, jeez. Chill. I didn’t say I hate all their songs. That one—what’s it called? Living on a Prayer? That one slaps.”
He presses his fingers to his temples. “Nah—ma che cazzo, for real?… That’s Bon Jovi. You just mixed up Aerosmith with fuckin’ Bon Jovi.” He lifts a hand, then drops it, as if she’s not worth the effort. “You know what? Just drive. I’m done talkin’ to you.”
All she wanted was to ease toward the kiss talk, see if she could get him to finally admit how he feels.
But instead of answers, she got shut out and shut up—hard.
Half an hour later, the car door swings open into the night, tension pouring out. Manhattan spills in, sirens in the distance, food carts in the air, some sax player crying from a corner two blocks down.
They walk shoulder to shoulder, crowd blowing past, her heels hitting concrete. Every step closer to the restaurant steals another second from the conversation they should be having. She’s running out of time.
Their arms knock, and he’s hot beside her, body buzzing.
Elle glances over at him once, then lets her fingers slide into his, inch by inch. As soon as their fingers lace, his body stiffens, eyes dropping to the sidewalk.
His jaw locks, holding it a second longer.
Then he lets her go and turns to face her.
“C’mon, Elle. What is this, huh?”
They stop in the flow of foot traffic, city moving around them.
“I’m not gonna beg you, but I deserve the truth.”
His eyes sweep the sidewalk, then dip to the ground, both hands sinking into his back pockets as he leans into his hip, finally dragging his gaze up to meet hers.
Elle exhales. “This thing between us? You don’t do this with anyone else.
” She gestures between them. “You got rules, I know, but you’re breakin’ ‘em for me. You don’t get with the same girl twice—except me.
You don’t have sex, but you fucked me. More than once.
You don’t kiss, but you kissed me back, Andrew.
Now you wanna act like none of it matters? ”
A cab passes, bathing him in yellow light.
Her daggered stare pierces through it, waiting for him to lie. “C’mon. You think I’m stupid? Just admit it. You’re falling for me, and you’re scared as hell.”
His gaze is down the sidewalk, tongue pressing to the inside of his cheek.
When he looks back over at her, he lifts a brow.
“You want the truth?”
Elle nods.
He squints, tilting his head. “Yeah? You sure?”
“Just say what you gotta say.”
Andrew laughs through his nose.
Then he tips his chin up, staring.
And he shrugs. “It’s all a lie.”
Confusion slams into her. “The fuck’s that supposed to mean?”
He steps back, tongue swiping across his bottom lip.
“C'mon—you were takin' advantage of me, and I was just givin' you what you wanted. Gave you just enough to make you think you were gettin’ somewhere no one else had.” He gestures to her. “You wanted a fuckin’ challenge, so that’s what I became. Kept you right there—on the fuckin’ edge—and you thought you were getting in, winning somethin’. But you never were.”
His face goes cold, gaze hard as the streetlight behind her bleeds gold into his eyes.
“I knew what you wanted, and I fed it to you. There’s no fuckin’ truth to it. It’s all fake. It's all performance. ‘Cause I’m a fuckin’ pro at it.”
He laughs, but it’s hollow, and it dies before it gets past his lips.
“That’s it, sweetheart. All it was.”
Elle steps in front of him, blocking his path. “You kissed me for real, Andrew. That wasn’t just a peck on my thigh. You fuckin’ kissed me.”
He doesn’t flinch when she says it.
He exhales, like he already walked away in his head.
“So what—I fuckin’ kissed you. You know what else I can do?” He raises a brow with a grin. “I could give you the best relationship of your life and not feel a fuckin’ thing. I could say all the right shit. Touch you exactly how you wanna be touched. Be exactly what you need me to be—”
His hand cuts through the air.
“—and you’d never know I was fuckin’ lying.”
He steps closer, eyes cruel and drifting between hers.
“I been doin’ it my whole goddamn life, Elle. None of it’s fuckin’ real.”
Elle steps in closer, chin up, arms crossed over her chest to keep from shaking. “No.” She swallows. “No. You looked like you were gonna cry. Don’t act like I made that up. You felt something. I know you did.”
He wipes a hand across his mouth, then lifts it halfway in surrender, smirk loading. “You want a fuckin’ tear?”
She's too paralyzed to answer.
His shoulders sink, and he drops his gaze, scrubbing a hand down his face. Then he steps in close enough to smell the cinnamon on his breath.
Behind his glasses, she watches his eyes glint through a fog, a crack giving way before it shatters, and the well of his eyes flood.
A tear slips out—alone, graceful.
It slides past his lash-line slowly, tracing the angle of his cheek as if he’s telepathically telling it where to go.
It catches the streetlight and stains his cheek.
He doesn’t wipe it and lets it fall.
She stares at it.
Then she sees the ghost of a smile tugging at the corner of his mouth.
Son of a bitch.
“One perfect drop, right down the cheek, yeah?” He wipes his jaw with the pad of his thumb.
“And I’d let it hang long enough to make you think it means something, then wipe it off slowly to break your fuckin’ heart.
And you would’ve eaten it up, wouldn’t you?
Think you finally got the real Andrew Harding. ”
He laughs with a shake of his head, steps in closer, dropping his voice down low.
“I could eat you for hours, hold your fuckin’ hand, play with your hair, make you come six different ways, tell you how fuckin' good you taste, tell you everything you wanna hear, break my own fuckin’ rules.
I could let you kiss me, touch me, make sweet fuckin’ love.
Make it look like forever, and not give a single shit. Ain’t even a challenge with you.”
His shoulder rises half an inch, enough to say he doesn’t give a damn.
“Wouldn’t mean a goddamn thing. Not to me. It’d be fake. All of it. And you’d never fucking know.”
Elle's too blindsided to speak.
He searches her face. “You wanted truth? There’s your truth. Only stopped entertainin’ you ‘cause I got bored, sweetheart. Never once had me workin’ for it.”
Manhattan moves around them.
But she’s so frozen that if one person bumps into her, she'd shatter.
Andrew laughs a dry laugh, palm sliding across his mouth. Then he flicks two fingers her way. “I ain’t tryna be a dick, but I need to not look at you for a minute.”
He steps back, catching the door of an old storefront, then it swings shut behind him after he walks inside.
Glass warps her reflection in the door—shaky, ghost-colored.
She blinks at it, the faded serif letters on the glass.
Type No. 45.