Chapter Thirty-One #2
‘It’s one of the best things about LA, if you ask me.
Other than the ocean, the weather and the Mexican food.
We have these unbelievable buildings all over town, beautiful, streamlined designs with insane details inside and out, the mosaics, the gold, the geometry .
. . show me a vertical window and I’ll be a happy guy.
There’s this one, the Eastern Columbia Building, it’s in downtown and it’s fucking stunning, I can’t even tell you.
It’s a 1930 Claud Beelman building, all turquoise terracotta, this gorgeous sunburst design, ugh!
’ He shook his head with unbridled enthusiasm.
‘I keep thinking about buying a loft there but haven’t pulled the trigger. Life is long.’ He shrugged.
I couldn’t help staring at him, I felt so overwhelmed by this side of him I’d never seen before. Josh Sacco, architecture nerd?
‘What?’ he asked.
‘I’m just surprised, that’s all. I never knew this about you,’ I said gently.
Josh looked at me, his eyes soft. ‘You’ve gotta realise by now that there’s a lot you don’t know about me.’
‘I . . .’ I began, not knowing what to say. He was right: our relationship until the latest film was mostly based on me ostentatiously ignoring him and him winding me up. ‘Of course, I know that. I guess the first few films weren’t really conducive to getting to know each other.’
He shook his head. ‘I just want you to know there’s more to me than meets the eye. Promise.’
There was something in that vulnerability, that desire to impress me, that made me fancy him more than any gym workout ever could.
‘I know that. Promise,’ I said back.
We walked the streets of Tiong Bahru, every so often turning down paths leading us past residential blocks of flats, Josh pausing to admire every facade, to point out details to me, to explain what made it special, different, the way they existed in three dimensions, the curves, the long vertical lines, the decoration.
I tried not to look at his face too much as he spoke, because his enthusiasm, his knowledge, his warmth had such a transformative quality on him that it made me absolutely melt, and he could not see that.
I wanted to keep my cards close to my chest, see how things played out.
I was cautious, rightly, and this version of Josh was testing my limits in ways I didn’t know possible.
‘They don’t make ’em like that anymore,’ he sighed, sadly.
I had truly never seen this side of him before. I felt almost ashamed. I’d shown even less interest in Josh than he’d ever shown in me. Of course he was the ‘aggressor’ in a sense, always winding me up, picking on me, trying to embarrass me. But I’d barely made an effort with him.
As I watched him photograph the art deco frontage of the market, its red lettering gleaming in the late afternoon sunlight, I realised exactly what the problem was.
When you’ve known someone for years, since you were a child really, how do you even start going about things differently?
How do you interrupt the pattern of how it’s always been?
Not warring with him on set was a big enough change, but going from even that to .
. . something more? I didn’t know if it could even be done.
‘I’m starving, you want something?’ He nodded at the market. The unbelievable smell of the place hit me like a truck, along with the realisation that since I’d missed breakfast, I hadn’t eaten all day.
‘Sure,’ I said, as if it didn’t matter to me either way. That was what girls were meant to do, wasn’t it? We weren’t allowed to be hungry, weren’t allowed to want things.
Josh furrowed his brow. ‘Wait, have you eaten at all today?’
I shook my head, knowing I couldn’t make up a lie since he’d been with me the whole time. ‘But I’m fine! Let’s go in?’ I was starting to feel a bit light-headed.
‘You take a seat, I’ll go foraging. I’m an absolute fiend for char kway teow and I never met a roti I didn’t like. You ever had shui kueh? I’ll get us some,’ he murmured, his eyes scanning the market, taking in all the many and varied thrilling options.
I slid onto a shiny black bench in front of a Formica table and watched as Josh buzzed from one stand to another, surveying their offerings. Finally, he returned, his arms laden with various plates heaped with food.
‘Hope you’re hungry. Well, I know you’re hungry, so I went a little overboard,’ he said, setting the various options down in front of us.
The smell of the noodles made my mouth water instantly, as if I could already feel the flat rice noodles against my tongue.
Hungrily, I set upon them with chopsticks, taking in the rich, deep flavours, the juiciness of the prawns under my teeth, the fibrousness of the spring onions, the uneven texture of the little pieces of scrambled egg.
I paused for breath, closed my eyes and said, ‘Josh, this is the most delicious thing I’ve ever eaten in my life.’
He beamed, proud that he’d made a good choice. ‘Wait till you try the roti. I got it with dhal for variety but I can always go back for the chicken,’ he offered.
We grazed on the food he’d chosen, chatting about what made it all so delicious, how lucky we were to get to be here, how we should never take it for granted.
‘I feel actively sad that the roti is gone. I think it might have changed my life,’ I sighed.
‘You want another? I can get us some chicken and roti?’
I nodded. ‘That sounds good.’
He bounded off, full of the joy of a day of no responsibilities, eating delicious food in a foreign country. As I waited for him to come back, I realised there was something I wanted to ask him about that we’d never discussed. He’d brought it up earlier, so I knew it wasn’t off limits.
‘Can I ask about the whole Howard Hunt thing?’ I asked, gently, tearing off a piece of roti.
Josh looked surprised. ‘What do you want to know?’
‘I don’t know exactly. I guess I want to know if your response was something you came up with as a team or if it was just you.’
‘Ah.’ His face clouded with something like sadness. ‘You think it seemed kinda . . . impulsive?’
‘No,’ I said, quickly and firmly. ‘No, absolutely not. I don’t want you to think that for a second. I thought it was unbelievably brave. And cool.’
‘Wow . . . that means a lot coming from you.’ He shifted in his seat.
‘You were kind of on my mind that day, in a weird sort of way. The whole pushing-you-in-the-river episode is a bit of a blur, as is almost everything you said to me afterwards, although I absolutely understood the general vibe of what you were saying. But the one thing that really got to me was the word “integrity”. I’d never really thought about it before, but I can, like, still hear you saying that: “you have absolutely no integrity”. ’
I wanted the ground to swallow me up. I couldn’t believe I had spoken to him like that.
‘And I thought, you know, this is a good opportunity to prove that I have integrity. That I’m not just going to benefit from Evan Cole being thrown under the bus like that, just accept this deranged praise from a—’
‘Fucking fascist?’ I supplied.
‘Emily Montgomery, I have never heard you curse before.’
‘It doesn’t count. I was quoting.’ I felt a little overwhelmed at the idea that anything I’d said had affected Josh that much, for better or for worse.
‘So, yeah, I guess in a weird sort of way it was down to you.’
‘That’s . . .’ I swallowed, not knowing what to say. So I went for something simple. ‘I’m proud of you.’
‘There was a time when hearing that would have been even more shocking to me than hearing you curse.’
‘Well, I hope those days are behind us.’
‘Me too.’
We held each other’s gaze, back to the comfortable silence of the botanic gardens.
But this time it felt heavier. Not so comfortable, as if there were things deliberately being unsaid.
It felt like too much to hope for, the idea of something happening with Josh.
What did I even mean? What did I even want to happen?
I had no idea, since I’d barely let myself consider it a possibility.
We had been out of the market for maybe a minute tops, when the heavens opened.
I gasped at how instantly and violently the rain hit us, my eyes wide with both horror and amusement.
We just looked at each other in disbelief for a moment, everyone scrambling for cover or opening umbrellas, which reminded me I had actually brought one with me.
I quickly produced it from my bag and opened it, holding it above our heads.
We could have run back to the market for cover, but for some reason we just .
. . didn’t. It was as if we liked being in our own little world like this.
We stood there, blinking at each other, smiles creeping across our faces at the situation we’d found ourselves in.
With the rush of people going on around us, it felt like we were in a bubble, protected from the outside world by a shared fiction that we didn’t have to go anywhere, nothing was happening, we weren’t being soaked to the skin.
As the rain pounded down on the umbrella, the little veil of privacy, I knew that this was when the something was going to happen.
Josh looked down at me, tiny drops of rain clinging to his eyelashes. Finally, after what felt like an unbearable wait, he pulled me towards him, one strong arm around my waist and whispered, ‘Emily, do you want this?’
I nodded. And then he kissed me, our mouths finding each other, my free hand cupping his sharp jaw, the other clinging on to the umbrella for dear life, his tongue pushing against mine, our teeth meeting in the feverish, clumsy frenzy.
Imagine the Rowan/Linderley kiss moment and multiply it by a thousand.
A million. That was what it felt like to kiss Josh for real.
The screen kiss was intense but controlled.
This was pure desire, no restraint. It was almost too much to believe.
I felt as if my whole body was on fire, every inch of my skin prickling with desire, wanting to kiss him so hard I melted into him.
We pulled apart, but Josh didn’t release his hand from my waist. He blinked at me, wiped the raindrops off his lashes. ‘That was good, right?’ He sounded just as surprised by the whole thing as I was, but he couldn’t keep the smile off his face.
I nodded, my heart racing. ‘That was good.’
He swallowed, staring me in the eye as if he thought I might disappear at any moment. ‘It’s crazy how . . . different it felt from . . . you know . . .’ He seemed almost embarrassed, as if it was childish of him to have thought of our Wonderwick kiss as real.
‘And I thought that was good,’ I said, reassuring him I felt the same, my entire body fizzing, my thoughts in chaos, wanting him to do it again.
‘Oh, that was good,’ Josh said, a little more confidently. ‘But this was something else.’
And that was when the rain stopped. It was as if it had appeared by magic, done what it needed to do, and moved on.
I collapsed the umbrella, shook it off and slipped it back into its cover.
When I looked back at Josh, he was smiling, a slightly bashful, irrepressible grin that he couldn’t have hid even if he tried.
Just like the rainstorm, it was as if the pressure had been lifted off us and we could spend the rest of the day together, secure in the knowledge that it had happened, and that the world hadn’t ended.
In fact, it had been incredible. There was a sense of calm around us now, the security that it would happen again and we didn’t need to rush anything. It would all take care of itself.
We took the train a couple of stops to Chinatown so we could see it at night, and walk the rest of the way back to the hotel.
On the train, we held on to the overhead rail and just looked at each other.
Every so often one of us would break the spell, look off to the side, before reconnecting, knowing the other would still be there.
I realised my heart was beating hard, but not fast. Everything was just right.
As we walked the busy streets zigzagged with red and yellow lanterns, I felt Josh’s arm slink around my waist. ‘Is this OK?’ he murmured into my ear.
‘It’s . . . very OK,’ I reassured him. I felt silly, like I wanted to play it cool but didn’t know how, and I knew deep down that I didn’t have to play it cool anymore. We were way, way past that.
We had no purpose, nowhere to be, just wanted to be out on the streets like normal people. Our strolling took us to a rooftop bar, where we had a drink and surveyed the city. Josh laid his hand on my thigh under the table and I felt my whole body relax, rather than tense up.
‘It feels kinda like everything conspired to make it happen today,’ he said as we sipped the last of our cocktails.
I laughed and shook my head. ‘I still can’t believe we tried to get other people to join us!’
‘Yeah, that would have been kinda buzzkill energy.’
‘Speaking of buzzkill, do you think we should go back to the hotel?’
He sighed. ‘I guess so. It’s been a fun day, though, right?’
‘Right.’
On the walk back to Raffles, I felt sick with nerves, both at the idea that we were definitely going to have sex tonight, and the idea that we definitely weren’t.
I didn’t know which scared me more. I couldn’t tell what he was thinking or what he thought I was thinking.
He’d been the one to instigate the kiss, so would he be the one to instigate sex, or would that have to be up to me? And if so, how would I do it?
Back at the hotel, we walked silently towards our rooms, arriving at his first. ‘Well, this is me,’ he said, but he didn’t immediately turn to touch his keycard against the door. I couldn’t tell if he was waiting for me to suggest that I came in, or if he wanted me to give him space.
‘Thanks for a fun day,’ I said, deciding not to roll the dice right then, but I did step forward and kiss him gently on the mouth. I felt him melt against me, his arms wrapping around my body, the kiss getting deeper and less gentle as he pressed me to him.
‘Fun is one word for it,’ he said, releasing his hold on me.
I turned towards my room, looked over my shoulder and said very casually, ‘See you at the next junket.’
When the door closed behind me, I had to face facts: my feelings were anything but casual. I was completely obsessed with Josh Sacco.