Chapter 33
MANHATTAN brIDGE
After two of the strong, warming cocktails and a very brave attempt at demolishing all the delicious side dishes, they left the cosiness of the diner behind for the cold late-night streets.
But, with a full stomach and her mind a little woozy from the alcohol, all Gabriella felt was strangely, uncharacteristically content as they strolled along the walkway of the Manhattan Bridge that spanned the Hudson River.
Before she could dwell too long though, Luca spoke.
‘So, originally, this bridge was going to be called Bridge Number Three.’
‘Wow, so inventive! But Blur did write a track called “Song Two” and that was a massive hit so who knows what might have happened if they’d kept the name.’
‘Names are important though. Like with your book.’
She sighed. ‘Yeah, well, that wasn’t my choice.’ And ‘content’ felt like it might not last long. Her shoulders started to tighten.
‘No?’ he asked. ‘It’s a great title. I mean, who hasn’t said they give zero fucks about something. Blur too maybe?’
‘Definitely maybe Oasis.’
He laughed. ‘But, you didn’t get to choose it?’
‘No,’ she answered. ‘It’s not unusual. The title is just a marketing tool. Like the cover. If people like the cover and the title they’re going to buy it no matter what the content is.’
‘Is that true though?’ Luca asked.
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘You should know. Your whole career is based on creating a look that’s going to get your client noticed. Sold to the press. Advertised. It’s the same thing.’
He stopped walking. ‘That’s not how I see it.’
‘No?’ she said, stopping too. ‘You don’t style people so they stand out? So an audience looks and says “wow” and rushes off to find a replica outfit to wear on their next Saturday night out?’
‘Is that what you think I do?’ Luca asked. ‘Because, to me, you’re making it sound like the looks I create are overshadowing the product. And the product is always the most important thing. Because my product is always the person.’
He was impassioned and he also sounded a bit like she had insulted him. She hadn’t meant to do that. Her own frustrations about the new ugly green book cover and All Chapters’ insistence on not ‘dwelling’ too much on Lulu’s ‘sadness’ was blighting her insights.
‘Gabriella,’ he said in a serious tone. ‘If any of the clothes I’m dressing you in make you feel like you’re anything other than the strong, beautiful, intelligent woman you are then… you need to take them off.’
She met his eyes and they were a mix of intense and perhaps a bit furious as he gripped the fence with his fingers.
She could see a pulse beating in his neck and his hot breath met the freezing air between them.
His words had hit her almost brutally, but then they had wrapped around her, squeezing tight.
She couldn’t remember feeling this physically charged with anyone in so long.
Why? How? She needed to dispel it fast. Except, instead, she put her hand over his and held on.
‘I shouldn’t have said what I said,’ she told him.
‘Did you mean it?’ he asked, fingers entwining with hers against the wire. ‘Because if you meant it then I haven’t been doing my job right.’
‘I think,’ Gabriella began, her voice shaking, ‘that it’s me who hasn’t been doing her job right. And maybe it’s because I can’t. Maybe I never could.’ She pressed her fingers tighter to his.
‘You know, there is something you could do to help me do my job better,’ he said. He leaned slightly closer with his body, but it was really his energy shift that Gabriella caught.
‘What?’ she asked, his hand still captured under hers.
‘Tell me why you order burgers at midnight and who you were talking to in your dressing room the other day before the show.’
Now her heart felt like it had stopped and was in freefall down towards her toes. She let go of his hand, but he was too quick to hold on. She was shaking her head before she even realised it.
‘No,’ she said, also almost involuntarily.
‘No, what?’ he whispered.
He was stroking her fingers, gently, caringly and she was so touch-starved she longed for it as much as she desperately wanted to push it away.
‘You don’t get to ask me that,’ she said to him. ‘No one gets to ask me that.’
‘Because it hurts,’ he said.
He hadn’t asked it as a question. He had stated it like fact. Like he knew it was fact. And that was too close. Too much. As was his hand, still knotted with hers on the walkway of this bridge over the river. ‘I can’t.’
‘Ask me something,’ he encouraged. ‘Ask me anything you want to and I’ll tell you the truth.’
‘Like what?’
‘Anything,’ he said again.
She took a moment then locked eyes with him. ‘Tell me why your family’s so complicated. That’s what you said. That they were complicated. What does that mean?’
He didn’t hesitate for more than a second. ‘It means none of them are like me. And I won’t compromise on being me.’
As his words hit her she was overcome by a sensation of recognition, of understanding like never before.
And it was so powerful Gabriella didn’t even know if she moved or Luca moved or if the universe somehow moved them both.
But before any implications could be considered, before she even had a chance to make rational thought, she wasn’t just holding his hand, she was in his arms and he had whirled her around until she was backed up against the fence, his weight colliding with hers in a force of passion as their mouths met.
And Gabriella drank in the moment, the little things – the way the inside of his mouth felt, how his tongue moved with hers, tantalising, teasing, turning her on…
This didn’t feel like only a kiss, it felt like a re-introduction, a more truthful one than she’d ever given away before. Until…
He broke away, then seemed to second guess himself and reached out to touch her hair, only to draw back again. ‘Sorry. I shouldn’t have done that. It was unprofessional.’
‘Yeah,’ Gabriella said, nodding. ‘It really was.’
‘Sorry,’ he apologised again.
‘OK, you can stop with the apologies now. Don’t they say it takes two to tango or cha cha slide or whatever?
’ She was shaking more on the inside than she was from the outside temperature, but it was pointless to admit that now.
He regretted it. And so should she. Another un-thought-about fuck up.
Or, as her mother liked to call it, a Gabriellaism, said like it was a venereal disease.
He went to reply but she looked at her watch and beat him to it. ‘We should go. I need to collect Phoebe and Mr Darcy.’
‘Sure,’ Luca said, hands going into the pockets of his coat as she began to walk. ‘Let’s go.’