Chapter 12 Cleo
CLEO
TO: ihopeurhappydummy@
FROM: themerrymaker@
SUBJECT: The kiss I can’t forget
Hi. First of all, I just want to say that you and Alyssa have made a really wonderful little boy.
Secondly, I want to assure you (even though you may never actually read this) that I am not feeling this way in response to the little song Paxton sang yesterday.
I do not, in fact, hope to marry you before the new year.
But the truth is I think about the kiss and that night from just over eight years ago quite often.
Usually when I’m in bed. Even when I was lying in bed next to the guy I was living with for my last two years in NYC.
After the first six months, we didn’t do much in bed together besides sleep, you see.
It was one of those Manhattan relationships for busy people wherein we liked each other enough to share an address and even eat together when we were actually in the same space at the same time, but there wasn’t much in the way of passion or shared goals for a future together.
For a year and a half, it wasn’t worth it to break up because we both liked our apartment so much more than we disliked each other.
It was in a fantastic building on the perfect street in Greenwich Village.
So the days passed by and our address stayed the same.
And then, all of a sudden, he met a French girl and she loved the apartment even more than I did. She obviously loved my ex-boyfriend more than I did too. So we all mutually agreed that I should move out as soon as possible.
But that’s not what I wanted to write about in this email.
I wanted to tell you how I remember our last night together, back when we were in film school, before I left for New York. It probably doesn’t surprise you that it plays like a short film in my mind. Not an artsy, experimental one—don’t worry. It’s very straightforward.
We fade in to the expansive poolside bar at an iconic hotel in the heart of Hollywood.
It’s after nine when our heroine shows up.
Technically, she isn’t supposed to be there, given that she is not yet twenty-one years of age.
But fuck it—no one’s checking IDs for the private party.
She was invited, she bought a ticket, and she’s celebrating.
Celebrating her Best Short Film Award and celebrating the news of a second callback for a role in the world premier staging of a Broadway musical that’s based on one of her favorite films. It isn’t her goal to have an acting career, she just loves being creative and working with other inspiring creative people.
Her penchant for telling fart jokes to children had not yet become apparent as an income portal.
The film school she’s been attending has rented out the entire outdoor lounge area for their annual Christmas party.
The stately palm trees that line the perimeter of the patio have white Christmas lights wrapped around their trunks.
There’s a DJ remixing Christmas songs with vintage hip-hop and disco hits.
There’s a screen with National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation being projected onto it.
There is rampant debauchery. Our heroine loves to have fun, but this particular brand of fun isn’t really for her.
However, she’s here because her friend Franklin insisted she show up to this party to see a certain someone before making her final decision about dropping out of film school and moving to New York.
She herself is quite certain that the certain someone, who has been her rival ever since they first met in their required Film History class and he revealed his terrible taste in movies, is now also mad at her for winning an award that he felt was rightfully his.
But she is wearing her new boots, along with a short red-and-green plaid skirt, nonetheless.
Despite everything, she is attracted to him, you see.
Not just physically but mentally. He turns her on in so many ways.
She knows how he feels about the theatre in general, though, so she hasn’t even told him she auditioned for the Broadway play.
While she is confident in her talent, it had seemed unlikely that she would get a video callback, much less invited to New York to meet with the director and producers.
It seemed like a sign that she should move out east sooner rather than later.
As much as she loves her mom, she knows now that it wasn’t her own dream to go to film school and that her mother will understand her change of heart.
What she didn’t know was that her stomach would flip when she walked out onto the patio of that poolside lounge, looking up to find her rival standing twenty feet away in a dark blue suit.
She did not expect him to give her a slow once-over that is in no way lascivious but is also somehow…
totally filthy and promising at the same time.
She has never shuddered like this before.
Never felt that kind of erotic electricity shoot down her spine and sparkle through her center.
And he hasn’t even touched her.
Wordlessly, intensely, he closes the distance between them.
“You,” he says in his deep, disarmingly warm voice.
“You’re here.” He offers to buy her a drink, and they find a secluded spot in a not very quiet corner, sharing a lounge chair.
He tells her he wants her to know that he’s glad she won the award for her short film.
That he thinks it was, objectively, better than his.
It surprises and moves her. Not that he deserves to be celebrated simply for not being a jerk or anything, but it seems significant for him to admit this to her.
He seems to really mean it. He also seems to be saying it because he wants to do things to her.
Things that she wants him to do to her. She is twenty, after all.
He is twenty-five. It’s the holidays. Why shouldn’t they put aside their differences and make out under the palm trees?
He teases her about her cocktail of choice. She takes a sip of his scotch. They get up and dance to the remix of “Ice Ice Baby.” He’s a much better dancer than she expected, and this bodes well for his ability to do things to her if things should go that way later.
She really wasn’t expecting him to be this friendly with her.
A couple of months ago, when she first found out that the Broadway musical was in development, she had an inkling that it might be time for her to move to New York.
She may have pulled away from him a bit because of this.
She may have ceased to engage in banter with him because she knew they shouldn’t get attached.
He may have sensed her pulling away from him and responded by pulling away from her too.
He may have pulled away from her so much in response that it made her realize just how drawn he had been to her before this.
And it may have made her sad and mad—smad—to realize how much he was withholding from her now.
But no one is pulling away from anyone tonight.
There’s holiday and Hollywood magic in the air, even if one of them doesn’t believe in that first kind of magic.
He can’t stop staring down at her boots. At her legs in those boots, rather. Those knee-high black boots with heels that bring her lips four inches closer to his when they’re standing up. And yet still several inches away.
“Those fucking boots,” he mutters. “They can’t be comfortable to walk in.”
“They’re probably not comfortable to fuck in either, but they look so good on me it’s worth it.”
“Fucking hell, Curly. Don’t tease me.”
“I’m not teasing you, Dummy.”
“Yeah?” He takes a seat on the lounge chair again, grabs her by the waist, and pulls her down to sit on his lap.
Surprisingly, she doesn’t mind it. Surprisingly, she enjoys that move a lot.
“You want to keep them on while you fuck? Or do you want me to slowly unzip them, drop them on the floor, and kiss my way up your smooth bare leg to your inner thigh and farther…”
“I think the night is young so we can do both, and I think you mean further.”
“I think you want to kiss me.”
“I think for once you’re right.”
And just as she wraps her arms around his neck and leans in, their Cinematography professor calls out to them to take a picture with him and a few other students.
They laugh, because the night is young and so are they and there is time for them to kiss and fuck and why wouldn’t they assume that that is where the night is taking them?
After posing for pictures, when everyone else disperses, she decides to tell him then and there about the Broadway musical.
That she is flying to New York tomorrow afternoon for an important callback and that she is thinking about staying there, whether she gets the part or not.
His response is perfect. He congratulates her, knowing how happy this must make her.
And then he makes fun of her for even considering a career in theatre instead of film.
And then he tells her he would miss her if she left.
He asks her if there’s anything that would change her mind about dropping out of the degree program because he thinks she’s really talented.
She says, “Why don’t we get another drink and discuss this further?”
He says, “We could get another drink and discuss this farther away from here. Somewhere more private…upstairs in one of the hotel rooms…”
“Yes. We could.”
Ignoring their classmates, he takes her hand and they walk along the side of the pool, toward the lobby.
As they pass beneath an archway, he stops and glances up at the mistletoe hanging overhead.
She never would have guessed that he, of all people, would recognize such silly holiday traditions as kissing under the mistletoe.
But her knees practically give out when he says, “C’mere. ”
He pulls her in close. She grips his shirt with both hands, feeling his abs beneath the material.
She very much wants to see those abs. He hooks an index finger under her chin, tilting it upward as he slowly, so slowly, lowers his mouth to hers.
He kisses her softly at first. She nibbles on his lower lip, very sensually.
Kisses his earlobe. She can’t hear him groan so much as she can feel it rumbling in his throat.
Her lips part for him, and he accepts the invitation to kiss her deeply.
His beautiful hands press into her lower back, pressing her into him, so she can feel how much he wants her.
She can feel it against her stomach. He tells her, with his lips and his tongue and his fingers and his hard length, that he wants her.
Now. Needs her, even. It doesn’t even scare her to be needed like that, not in this moment anyway.
She gasps when he suddenly squeezes her hips.
How is it possible that such a simple move would have such a profound effect on her entire body?
How has no one ever done that to her before?
If he can make her feel this good when they’re both fully dressed, surrounded by people, what—dear God, what—will he be capable of when they’re alone together?
The kiss grows more urgent.
They are attracting the attention of their peers.
There is hooting.
There is hollering.
Someone jokingly suggests they get a room.
Her rival kisses her softly again, kisses her cheek, kisses her forehead, lowers his forehead to rest against hers.
He massages her hips, ever so gently, very subtly, and she feels the first of what she thinks will be many waves of pleasure roll through her.
Just that. Just from the tiny movement of his thumbs and fingers on her hips, over her skirt.
“Shall we?” he whispers.
“Yes. We shall.”
She goes with him to the front desk. The only room available for the night is the penthouse.
He slides his very heavy credit card across the counter and says he’ll take it, asking for two key cards.
She says she’s going to use the ladies’ room and then she will meet him up there.
He cups her face in his hands and kisses her again, making her promise not to keep him waiting too long.
She promises she won’t.
She means it when she says it.
And well…something unexpected happens.
I already wrote about that in another email that you also may never read.
But I have to get ready to go to work with you now, so… I’ll see you soon, Dummy.