Chapter 14 #2
Antonio plants his hand on my shoulder, friendly, but with just enough pressure to make it a move. “You’re coming to the afterparty tonight, yes?”
I look at Emma, but she’s gone enigmatic again. “Sure,” I say. “Wouldn’t want to miss it.”
Antonio beams. “Perfecto.” Then he kisses Emma’s cheek, takes her hand, and winks at me. “See you at midnight. Bring your dancing shoes.”
He vanishes into the crowd, swallowed whole by a swirl of sycophants and gallery girls. Emma is silent for a moment, staring at the mobile overhead.
“So,” I say, carefully, “that was interesting.”
She turns, eyes glassy. “He’s harmless. Mostly.”
“You dated?”
She considers the question, then shrugs. “For like five minutes. It’s not a story.”
I want to believe her, but the memory of Antonio’s hand on her shoulder burns. “You don’t have to hide shit from me, Em.”
She gives me a look I can’t decode, lips pressed thin. “It was never a thing. Seriously. He just likes playing the old co-star card.”
I nod, but the energy between us has shifted, subtle as a tectonic plate. She refills her champagne, and we finish the gallery tour in silence.
Back at the W, we’re ushered to separate rooms for hair, makeup, and “wardrobe tweaks.” I’m twenty minutes early for mine, which gives me time to run to the rooftop bar and stare at my phone, scrolling through a thousand photos of Emma with other men.
I end up on a Spanish gossip blog, which has a slideshow of her and Antonio at some film festival, arms entwined, laughing.
I know it’s ancient history, but it needles at me in a way I can’t intellectualize away.
When I get to the afterparty, Emma’s already there, perched at the table with the big-name director and two Spanish actors I recognize but can’t name. She’s animated, flushed with wine, and when I slide into the seat next to her, she plants a chaste kiss on my cheek.
Antonio appears moments later, arms spread wide, carrying a tray of drinks.
He passes them out, drops into a chair across from us, and launches into a story about a disastrous shoot in Morocco, something with snakes and a sandstorm.
Emma relaxes into the rhythm of the group, laughing at the punchlines, eyes darting to track Antonio when he gestures too close to her, but never lingering long enough to be called out on it.
It’s a masterclass in plausible deniability, and all I can do is watch, stuck somewhere between pride and a weird, animal resentment.
Maybe it’s the mezcal or the jet lag, but by midnight the party is a blur of new faces—directors, influencers, that guy from the cooking show who got canceled and came back as a vegan.
Emma disappears at some point, maybe to the bathroom or maybe just for a break from the meat market, and I’m left at a cocktail table with Antonio and two male models who seem genetically engineered to intimidate me.
Antonio is in full storyteller mode, spinning tales about his childhood in Madrid, his grandmother who made the best paella in the universe, and his philosophy on love, which seems to involve a lot of hand gestures and the word “destiny.”
Through it all, he keeps dragging the conversation back to Emma.
Not crude, never direct, just enough to let me know: yes, he knows her, yes, they have history, no, he doesn’t believe for a second that a past is ever really finished.
I want to hate him, to call him out, but the guy is too fucking likable. That makes it worse.
“You are a lucky man, Asher,” Antonio says, clinking his glass against mine. “Emma is…how do you say? Una tormenta. A storm.”
“Yeah,” I say, trying to keep it light, “she’s kind of a force of nature.”
He laughs. “She twists you into knots, no?”
The models snicker, all teeth and angles. I smile, but my knuckles are white around the glass.
When Emma comes back, she floats right into my space, looping her arm around my waist. Outwardly, it’s all show—a subtle fuck you to the room, maybe to Antonio—but her fingers are tense, almost digging.
She says something in Spanish to him that I can’t follow, and he throws his head back, delighted.
When he leans in to kiss her on both cheeks goodbye, she allows it but keeps her body rigid, like she’s surviving a tsunami by holding her breath.
We leave not long after, wading through the dying embers of paparazzi outside the club and hurrying to the cab line. The city is a blur of neon and laughter and old stone breathing with midnight moisture. I put my arm around Emma’s shoulder, but she’s silent the entire ride back to the hotel.
Upstairs, she kicks off her shoes and sits on the windowsill, looking out over the harbor. I flop onto the bed, trying not to stare at her, waiting for something to break the silence.
“He’s always like that,” she says finally, voice distant. “Antonio.” She doesn’t turn around. “You know he does that to everyone?”
I can’t tell if she’s angry or just tired. I prop myself up on one arm. “What, the alpha-male thing?”
Her shoulders tense. “Always a game. Always trying to get a reaction.”
“Did it work?” I want to take it back as soon as it’s out of my mouth, but I don’t.
Emma turns, finally, eyes sharp as mirrors. “You tell me. Who actually got jealous tonight?”
I sit up straight. “Yeah, well, I’m not going to apologize for wanting you all to myself.”
She stares at me, as if she’s weighing a million possible responses, then shakes her head in disbelief. “You wanted to piss on me in front of half the fucking Spanish press.”
I bark a short laugh. “Come on, I barely did anything.”
“That’s the problem, Ash. You don’t even know when you’re doing it.
” She moves away from the window, pacing in that tight, animal way she gets when she’s upset.
“You could have just ignored him. You could have played it cool, let it roll off you. But instead, you had to match him. One-upping and marking your territory.”
The words are sharper than I expected. “So what? I’m not supposed to care? Are you fucking kidding—Emma, he was practically undressing you with his eyes all night.”
She stops pacing. Her tone drops, steely. “I’ve dealt with men like him my entire life. But you? I thought maybe you’d be different. Or at least try.”
This last part stings worse than the rest. My chest goes tight, and my voice ratchets up. “Different how? Explain it to me.”
She shakes her head again, slower. “You’re smart enough to figure that out. If you even wanted to.”
And then she disappears into the hotel bathroom, shutting the door with a soft but absolute click.
I stand, unsure what to do with my hands, and stare at the pale rectangle of light under the door.
After a while, I slip into the hallway, find my phone, and text Craig. He replies at once, because of course he’s still up—it’s only four in the afternoon back in L.A. I say I want to meet, now, which is the kind of code that even Craig, after three years, actually respects.
We rendezvous at the lobby bar, which smells like expensive sanitizer and old cigar smoke. Craig orders a Coke and hands me a glass of neat whiskey.
“What’s up, man?” he asks. “You looked great out there tonight. All the right people are talking.”
“Is that a good thing?”
He smirks. “With your hair? It’s a very fucking good thing.”
I swirl my drink, watching the ice cube melt in real time.
Craig leans in, dropping the act. “Talk to me, Ash.”
I tell him about Antonio, the vibes, the way Emma looked at me like I’d morphed into something ugly—but I don’t tell him everything.
That would mean admitting how little I actually know about the woman I’m supposedly in love with.
Or how much of this—her, us, the entire weird fantasy—is balanced on some invisible tightrope that could snap at any moment.
Craig is silent for a long time, listening. Then: “You ever think maybe you like her so much you want to ruin it before somebody else does?”
I glare. “That’s not what happened.”
He shrugs, not unkindly. “It’s basic reptile brain stuff, Ash. The more you want something, the more you try to break it on your terms. You’re not the first guy in this industry to get weird about a beautiful woman.”
Somehow, that’s less comforting than he intended.
He grins, anyway. “So what are you gonna do?”
“Make it up to her, I guess.”
Craig considers this, then holds up one finger. “Do not, under any circumstances, do a grand romantic gesture. She’ll see through that shit so fast you’ll snap your own neck.”
I finish the whiskey and set the empty glass back on its coaster. “Got it.”
Instead, I sneak back up to the suite, let myself in as quietly as possible. The bathroom door is ajar. Emma’s in the oversized tub, knees drawn to her chest, hair floating around her head like she’s underwater at a shoot. I sit on the cold tile beside the tub, back against the wall.
She doesn’t look at me.
“I’m not good at this,” I say. The words echo off the bathroom’s marble angles. “You know that, right?”
She huffs softly, not quite a laugh. “You’re fine. You just think you’re not.”
“No, I mean—” I squeeze my eyes shut. “I’ve never actually had to care what someone else thought. Not really. So when I start to, I turn into kind of a dick. That’s not an excuse. I’m just saying I don’t know where the guardrails are yet.”
“Maybe just back off when I say something’s not a big deal,” she murmurs. “You don’t have to push.”
I nod, then realize she can’t see me. “Okay. I can do that.”
We sit in silence, the only sound the hum of the hotel’s central air and the occasional ripple of water as Emma shifts. After a few minutes, she says, “I’m sorry, too, for earlier. I hate that Antonio gets under my skin, and I should have made you feel more comfortable. He’s a dick.”
“He’d get under anyone’s skin,” I say.
She turns her head, finally meeting my eyes. I consider telling her what Craig said, but it feels cheap—like outsourcing my self-awareness to a third party. Instead, I just say, “I’m only jealous because you’re that good and I don’t want to lose you.”
She shrugs, then beckons for me to come closer. I kneel at the edge of the tub, careful not to drip cufflinks in the water.
“I don’t want to fight with you,” she says softly.
“You won’t,” I promise, and mean it.
She leans forward, and I kiss her, tasting a hint of floral bath oil and, weirdly, vodka. We make out like teenagers, which gets me entirely soaked, which makes her giggle. The moment is so light, so easy, it borders on mythic.
Later, when we’re wrapped in towels and sprawled on the bed, I braid my fingers through hers. There’s a faint bruise on her forearm, thumbprint-shaped, and for a wild second, I want to smash Antonio’s face in.
But Emma follows my eyes and says, “I did that. Too much Pilates.”
I believe her, but I also don’t. I let it go.
She falls asleep before me, hair damp on the pillow, mouth slightly open.
I stay awake a long time, listening to the city outside, and try to convince myself that this is actually what I want.
That whatever’s under the velvet surface—jealousy, insecurity, all the ancient shit I thought I’d left behind—will disappear in the morning.
It doesn’t, but I get better at pretending.