Chapter 11
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Danny
? Share a bottle of wine at a fancy restaurant
? Wear a mini dress
This is not a date. I repeat: This is not a date. It is more than okay that I am meeting Christina at this restaurant instead of picking her up from her apartment and opening car doors for her. Because this is not a date. This is the next scheduled event for our documentary.
Charlie chuckles in the driver’s seat beside me, as if he knows what’s going on in my head while I stare at the front door of the restaurant through the car window.
“What’s funny?” I ask.
“You’re spinning out.”
“No, I’m not.” Yes, I am.
“Yes, you are.”
I sigh and tuck my hair behind my ears.
“You need me to come in and help you set up the cameras?” Charlie asks.
I shake my head. It’ll only take a couple of minutes to set up the tripods—one classic side shot and then one behind each of us for over-the-shoulder shots.
Charlie claps a hand on my shoulder. “Then hop to, buddy. You sure you don’t want me to pick you up after?”
“No, I’ll order a car.” Christina and I both decided to leave our vehicles at home since the point of this dinner is to share a bottle of wine. Charlie was already at my place editing footage through the afternoon, so he offered to drop me off.
When I continue to rub my palms along the side of my thighs, the material of the dress pants foreign from my usual jeans, Charlie grips my shoulder and shakes me a bit. “You look good, man. Don’t leave her waiting too long—you know I’m two seconds away from going in and introducing myself.”
I shove his hand off me, and he dramatically slams back into his door as if I had the strength of Captain America. “Man down!” he exclaims.
A laugh bursts out of me. Charlie grins—his task of getting me out of my head accomplished.
“I used to be the only one who could get you to laugh like that,” he says wistfully.
“What?”
“Dude, I watched hours of footage this afternoon from both the science museum and her apartment. She deserves a medal—all you do is laugh with her. And stare at her.”
I grimace. “Do I really stare at her?” As if I don’t already know the answer.
“Afraid so.”
I rub my palms some more.
“For what it’s worth,” he adds, “she doesn’t seem to mind. In fact, she seems to like it quite a bit.”
God, I hope that’s true. Deep down, I think I know it’s true. She’s never shied away from my intensity; she only ever seems to lean into it.
“And she touches you a lot.”
I swallow. “Yeah, that’s just her. She’s like that with her friends too.” She was so sweet with Runzhou, cuddling into his side or snatching at his arm whenever he said something to make her laugh.
But that was nothing like when she slammed her hand down on mine, urgent and demanding, fingernails digging into my flesh.
Neither of us have taken the steps to actually lay those cards on the table, even though we’ve been texting nonstop.
I’ve feared since the beginning that my attraction to her was one-sided, but now I’m quite certain that’s not the case.
And yet I’m not brave enough to bring it up again.
Part of me wants to give her the chance to take the lead on that conversation, but the dominant part of me is mostly just scared.
I’m scared she’ll refuse me, and I’m almost equally scared that she won’t.
Having Christina might actually drive me insane.
Charlie hums noncommittally. “Whatever you say. Enjoy your delusionally platonic touching and staring and laughing.”
I roll my eyes and exit the vehicle laden with my camera bags.
I’m not wearing my steady harness since I won’t be collecting any roving footage—except for my entrance into the restaurant.
I want to make sure I get shots of us being seated to set the scene.
I wave goodbye to Charlie as he pulls out, and, before opening the restaurant door, quickly arrange my selfie stick.
I take a deep breath, hit record, and haul the heavy door open.
“Christina?”
On hearing my choked gasp of her name, she peeks over her shoulder from the hostess stand but keeps her back to me. At the satisfied smirk that curves her lips, I know I must be gaping at her like an idiot, but there’s nothing to be done for it.
Because Christina is wearing the tiniest, tightest little gold dress.
The thin straps over her shoulders plunge down her back in a deep V that doesn’t end until right above her waist. She’s got her long hair swept over and pinned into an elegant side knot, so I can see her entire exposed back, the tight material hugging her slim waist and stretching enticingly across the swell of her hips.
And her ass—holy god. It’s cradled perfectly, the dress ending just a few inches below it, revealing two gorgeous legs that end in delicate strappy heels.
She slowly turns away from the hostess stand to face me, and I finally know what it means to be speechless. Her black hair explodes from its knot over one shoulder, and the V of the front is only slightly less deep than the V of the back.
I don’t know how long I spend raking my eyes up and down her body before I wrangle some semblance of control. When I meet her eyes, I realize she’s looking me up and down too.
“A suit suits you,” she says, a touch breathless. “And look, the world didn’t implode without your leather jacket.”
I can’t even laugh. The only appropriate reaction to this dress would be to crash to my knees and crawl to her. “You …” I’m unsure how I could even finish this sentence. Her eyelashes flutter in anticipation of my response, and the words burst out of me. “You’re beautiful.”
I try to pour every unsaid feeling I have about her, about what this dress is doing to me, what she always does to me, into the suddenly paltry word. I think she understands, though, because she smiles to herself as she looks away, a sweet blush pinkening her collarbone.
“It was basically a makeover montage at my apartment today.” She steps toward me. “My friends fancy themselves fairy godmothers.”
“I wish I’d been there to film it,” I mutter to myself.
She places a hand on the lapel of my blazer. “I thought of that, actually. Reese took a hundred videos of the process while the others made me over.”
She quickly pulls up a fifteen-second video and hits play.
A woman with red hair and a person with a half-shaved head—who I recognize as Ally and K from Christina’s photos—are splayed on the sectional in Christina’s apartment.
The camera pans to Christina’s bedroom door, where Runzhou appears and flourishes his hand.
“Ladies and gentlepersons, I present: Christina Motherfucking Edmondson.” Christina steps through the doorway in her gold dress—her hair and makeup not yet done, her feet still bare—and both Ally and K leap up from the couch whooping and hollering, and even Reese is obviously jumping and whooping because the camera violently shakes.
But you can still see Christina laughing hysterically as they all collide in a huddle.
Christina grins at me as she returns her phone to her clutch. “He’s already shared the folder to your email.”
I nod, trying not to show how much it means to me that she knew I would want that footage.
And trying even harder to steady my heart rate so she can’t feel how elevated it is under my jacket.
“I think intercutting less official phone footage for some of the doc will better create the lived experience we’re going for. ”
She smiles, bright and open. “I thought that too. I even thought we might do a live scroll of some of our text exchanges about erotica.”
“That’s a brilliant idea.” And I think I’m smiling back at her when she finally drops her hand from my chest and points to the hostess.
“They have our table ready for us if you want to set up now.”
I continue to film us with the selfie stick as we’re led to our table.
The whole restaurant is dark and romantic, little lamps on the cloth-clad tables illuminating a range of low-talking couples.
As arranged earlier, we claim a table in the corner so I can set up the tripods and fix the directional mics without filming or picking up too much of the other guests.
When our waiter default hands me the wine list, I immediately turn it over to Christina, who all but bounces in her seat, her smile bright enough to light up this dim restaurant.
But then she scans the list with casual sophistication. “Lovely selection tonight,” she says airily to the waiter before secretly winking at me. I have to bite down on my cheek to stay quiet.
She hums in her throat. “The 2009 Sauvignon Blanc could be a good choice for this evening,” she considers, then lifts those hazel eyes to me. “What do you think? Shall we order a bottle?”
“That would be wonderful,” I say. She and I both know this is her first time ordering from a wine list in a restaurant like this, and she’s enjoying the hell of it.
“Two glasses, Edgar,” she tells the waiter as she hands the wine menu back to him.
Edgar barely leaves the vicinity of our table before she squeals. “That was so much better than I imagined!”
I’m laughing before I can help it. “Okay, obviously alcohol wasn’t allowed in any form, but why is this—Share a bottle of wine at a fancy restaurant—specifically on the list?”
She leans back to cross her legs under the table, and the quick flash of her bare knee distracts me.
“It’s just so worldly,” she says. “I was told my whole life that I had to live in the world but not be of the world. And that’s a real rock and a hard place because I was still just a girl in the twenty-first century.
I think it’s easy to think of fundamentalists as sheltered kids, but we still went to school and had access to the internet.
The church couldn’t actually shut out the modern world.
So they just told me that most of the modern world was evil and wrong and would lead to eternal damnation.
Even without involvement, I still had plenty of exposure—just with heaps of guilt and fear. ”