Chapter 6
CHAPTER SIX
Christina
? Smoke a cigar
Poor Danny is trying so hard to capture me “in the wild,” but I can’t stop asking him questions.
Who knew there were so many options? Vodka in every conceivable flavor, tequila in gorgeously crafted bottles, bourbon in portable plastics, wines from dozens of countries, champagne in bubbly pinks, syrupy mixers with increasingly ridiculous names …
shelves and shelves of possibilities, all under fluorescent lights like any run-of-the-mill grocery store.
“Why did I think gin was brown?” I ask.
Danny shrugs, trying not to speak again while the camera is rolling and also trying not to smile at me.
He’s got the camera rigged up in his steady harness that’s strapped under his leather jacket like he did at the pagan festival.
The only difference in his ensemble compared to that night is that he’s swapped out the black jeans for dark gray ones.
And no beanie—just soft brown hair to his shoulders.
I round another corner. “Okay, but what’s the difference between liquor and liqueur? And is wine considered liquor?”
His mouth twitches, like he’s very much struggling not to answer my questions. I also get the sense that he’s highly entertained by me. While my questions are one hundred percent sincere, I would do almost anything to amuse this man. I will get him to laugh again.
“The socioeconomic stratification feels aggressive,” I ponder. “Do you think the expensive alcohol on the top shelf demanded that the less expensive alcohol be banished to the bottom shelves?”
He shakes his head indulgently, staring at me in the little screen of his camera.
I shift to a ritzy voice. “Surely you wouldn’t deign to put me, Goose of family Grey, beside Barton’s trashy ass.”
A gruff laugh bursts out of him—victory!—but he immediately cringes at himself. I decide to put him out of his misery.
“To be honest,” I say, surveying the vast options around me, “this place is both overwhelming and underwhelming. The overwhelming part is how there’s a whole culture and literacy around alcohol to which I have practically zero exposure.
I wouldn’t know what to buy here. I don’t know what’s good, what I like, what’s overpriced, what needs mixing with what …
It’s so bizarre to think that most people grow up with this vocabulary. Or at least an awareness.”
I pause, allowing that overwhelming sensation to wash over me.
“And the underwhelming part?” he asks, quiet and focused.
“Honestly?”
“Always.”
If there’s one thing I could guess about Danny Reeves, it would be that he values honesty above all else.
I meet his big eyes. “The underwhelming part is that this is just a store. There’s a lady piddling on her phone up at the checkout counter. It’s not a den of sin or some dark secret place. It’s just a normal store.”
He nods knowingly.
“And yet,” I add with a sad smile, “it still feels like a den of sin to me. I feel like I’m doing something wild and bad by being in here.”
He still doesn’t speak, but something about his fiery gaze encourages me. “But I rather like being wild and bad for once.”
Until now, Danny’s smile has always been a sharp, sudden thing, as if it snuck up on him and got out without permission. It’s like a little adrenaline hit to receive it. But now, his grin unfurls slowly, almost dangerously, one side tugging higher than the other.
I’m transfixed.
“Raspberry vodka,” that mouth I’m staring at finally says.
“What?”
“Raspberry vodka mixed with Sprite. That’s Charlie’s favorite drink. And … it’s definitely in my top five.”
I’m more moved by him breaking his documentarian objectivity than anything. He’s officially shaping the story now, and god it feels so much better.
I clap my hands. “Raspberry vodka it is!”
Once we’re at the counter, I clap my hands and bounce on my feet because they also sell cigars here.
I add two and a lighter to my purchase. The phone-piddling lady who signed a release with Danny earlier is clearly having trouble grasping the momentousness of the occasion.
When I gasp over her quick work of cutting the cigar ends at Danny’s request, she looks to him quizzically, as if he might have an explanation for me.
He just keeps to his quiet amusement behind his camera.
The lady remains suspicious as she hands me a solid black bag—okay, that seems very den-of-sin–esque—but I can hardly keep from skipping out of the store.
Danny joins me on the sidewalk of the par-for-the-course American strip mall a few minutes later, I assume because he quickly interviewed the lady at the counter or was wrapping up footage.
He finds me sitting on the curb down the sidewalk a bit, trying to get the damn lighter to catch.
Camera still rolling, he clicks a few buttons to adjust for the gradually setting winter sun and looms over me to get the full picture of my black bag sitting beside me, red cap poking out of the top, and my legs loosely crisscrossed on the ground in front of me.
He doesn’t seem fazed that I’m choosing to blaze this baby right here right now.
Wait … is it okay to drive after smoking a cigar?
I continue to struggle with the new lighter. “I’ve never actually used this kind of lighter,” I say, clicking clicking clicking. “I’m used to the kind with the trigger for candles.”
Click click click. “I know watching me fumble with this is probably wonderfully metaphorical footage for the doc,” I say, staring down this damned lighter. “You’re welcome.”
After another failed minute, Danny’s soft hand on mine stops my spastic thumb.
I pop my gaze up to his, but he’s staring at where our hands are joined.
The camera is still rolling when Danny, leaning over me, gently sinks his fingers between mine to extract the lighter.
That hand drops foolishly onto my lap once he withdraws, but I’m still loosely presenting a cigar with the other.
I can’t focus on anything but his smoldering eyes as he leans forward, lines up the lighter, and clicks the flame to life with a strong and steady flick of his thumb.
“You have to take a few puffs for it to catch deep,” he says, low and secret and sure. I wrap my lips around my end of the cigar but keep my eyes on him for instruction. “Just short sucks like on a straw to get it going. Don’t inhale into your lungs. Just hold the smoke in your mouth.”
The cigar’s tip glows bright in the dusk as the earthy, spicy sting hits the back of my throat.
I’m instantly transported to a rich leather wingback, my body draped in beads and scarves, surrounded by reverent gentlemen in tuxes who can only watch in awe as I sensually rotate the cigar between my fingers from my place on high.
Just pure debauchery.
Danny begins to lower the lighter, but I quickly whip out the second cigar and extend it expectantly. I want him in the decadent wingback next to me. He opens his mouth to respond, uncertainty clear in the set of his eyes.
“Please, Danny?”
Once again, I sense there’s so much more happening in his head than the outward sign—just a slight clench of his jaw.
After a moment of clear internal struggle, he throws up his pointer finger in a wait a second gesture.
He digs into the bag attached to his harness and extracts a bundle of poles that he deftly pops apart and extends into a medium-sized tripod.
With practiced movements and quick assessments, he situates the tripod and camera atop it several feet away from where I’m still perched on the sidewalk.
Then he drops beside me on the curb, long legs stretching straight out, before plucking the cigar from my fingers, flicking that little flame to life, and taking it to his mouth for quick puffs that light it up.
When he finally slants his gaze over to me, I snap my mouth shut, realizing only then that I was openly gaping at his skill with both the camera and the cigar. And I may have been staring a little too hard at his lips wrapped around the thick piece.
But then my gaze bounces from him to the camera, back and forth. He’s clearly in frame with me. I’ve never seen his face in one of his documentaries, and yet here he is. On camera, smoking a cigar with me, because I asked.
Because I said please?
“Where did you learn how to smoke cigars?” I ask.
“Aren’t I supposed to be asking you the questions?”
I pointedly look at the camera again. “Maybe. But I want to know.”
He tilts his head to appraise me—maybe looking for the truth of my words? They couldn’t be more true. I’m finding I want to know all kinds of things about Danny. And it’s very difficult to have him in my presence and not find out.
“My mom celebrates big rites of passage with cigars,” he says carefully, still studying me. “She let me and Charlie have a quick puff of one that Waffle House night. Our first police encounter.”
“Your mom sounds like an unbelievable badass.”
He nods appreciatively. “She is. I smoked my first full cigar when I graduated high school and then again when one of my videos hit a million views.”
“What will be the next milestone?”
“She lets Charlie and me decide what counts as a rite of passage. Charlie smoked one last year when he made what he deemed to be a perfect cup of coffee.”
“Appropriate.”
Danny huffs air through his nostrils—the ghost of a laugh.
“Oh gosh,” I say as a thought occurs to me. “I didn’t realize smoking cigars was so symbolic for you. I’m sorry I convinced you to smoke one now.”
His big eyes never leave mine as he takes a long drag, smoke curling in his hair. “Today is appropriate for a cigar,” he says, his voice like the smoke made into sound.
“Yeah?”
His eyes dart to the camera and back. “It’s my first day in front of the camera.”
I laugh with a light hand on his forearm. “Well done, you.”
“And …” he adds, catching a quick glance of my hand on him before I remove it. “And it’s the day I got to film my muse.”
The air is suddenly very thin.
His eyes smolder like our cigars in the waning light. “Because I have no doubt you’re my muse, Christina, whether this is our first day or our only day.”
Oh boy. Okay. I know he usually tries to ease up with people, and I suddenly want to slap anyone who would prefer that.
Who made him feel like his intensity was a bad thing?
It makes me feel melty and captivated and …
achy? Danny makes me feel seen. Maybe that’s what people don’t like about him—how exposed he can make you feel.
But I’ve been hiding in plain sight my whole life so I want him to x-ray me. I want him to see everything.
And with the way he’s looking at me now, I know that he does. It’s why he astutely asks, “What are you still concerned about?”
I inspect my cigar. “I’m a pastor’s kid.”
The revelation soaks the smoky air for a moment. “Otherwise known as a PK.”
I turn my face to see him smiling gently at me, and I release a laugh. “Not just a PK, but a PGK too. On both sides.”
“Pastor’s grandkid? That’s serious.”
“And all the women in my family are music minister counterparts to their pastor husbands.”
“That’s why you know all about performing,” he says, something like relief on his face. As if that piece of my puzzle was bothering him and now it’s slotting into place.
“I grew up on a church stage. Literally and metaphorically. We kids were always on display, always being examined as the pastor’s children.
My parents even had a rule that we had to respond to every altar call to set an example for others.
‘There’s always something to pray about,’ my mother would say. ”
“Are you afraid of becoming a cliché? The pastor’s daughter gone wild?”
I wave my hand dismissively. “Not necessarily. If anything, I think this project could add some depth and clarity to that trope.”
“I completely agree.”
“The problem is more that I’ve spent my whole life under watchful eyes.”
We both look at the camera.
“The Jezebel List is one of the first things I’ve done truly for me,” I continue. “I don’t want it to feel like a performance. And it does feel a bit like being isolated on that church stage to be near you but not be with you on camera.”
The misery that briefly flashes across his features shocks through me. “Do you feel that way right now? Isolated?” he asks, looking like his sanity hangs on my answer.
I note the cigar in his hand. “No. When we’re doing things together or when I get to have a conversation with you, it just feels like I’m having fun. When we’re sharing, I don’t feel like I’m on display. Even with the camera rolling.”
He closes his eyes and drags a knuckle across his bottom lip. “Then let’s do it together.”
“What?”
He opens his eyes and twists his body to face me, legs bending and knees colliding with mine.
Eyes blazing. “We’ll do everything together.
I’ll film with a combination of tripods, selfie sticks, and Charlie.
We’ll have conversations instead of me just interviewing you.
We’ll both experience all the things on your list.”
I can feel my grin growing wider and wider as he talks. “The Maestro and his Muse take on tee-juhl?”
His forehead wrinkles. “Tee-juhl?”
I wave my cigar. “C’mon, Maestro. We can’t waste all our precious time saying ‘the Jezebel List’ over and over. ‘TJL’ is more efficient.”
When my pronunciation of the acronym clicks, his smile bursts so suddenly that my heart skips more beats than can be healthy. “Sure, Christina. The Maestro and his Muse take on TJL.”
I recognize this gesture for what it is.
Enormous. He’ll no longer be the objective documentarian but will become a subject in his own work.
He’s not only conceding to shape the story but be the story.
All so I can show people who might be in the same position I once was that they are not alone.
He’s making it possible for me to share what would have been life-changing for me so it might be life-changing for others.
“Well, then.” I clink our cigars together as if they are glasses. “It looks like we’ve got a documentary to make.”
Now his smile is big enough to hurt my chest as we both bring the cigars to our mouths, officially sealing the deal.
I take my first real long drag and hold the smoke in my mouth—then predictably cough and sputter and wince.
“I hate this so much,” I rasp.
He laughs, and I briefly close my eyes at the rough beauty of it. He leans to one side and pulls a little packet out of the back pocket of his jeans.
“Cigarillos,” he explains, holding the pack of skinnier-looking cigars out to me. “They’re flavored and a little more palatable. I thought you might prefer them.”
I stare at them. “Did you buy these for me after I stepped out?”
He tucks his hair behind his ear, and I clamp down on the urge to follow his delicate fingers with my own. “I don’t think I was ever going to be an objective documentarian when it comes to you, my muse.”