Torn(18)

I scoop my clutch into my palm and follow her out the door of her apartment, hoping this dinner will chase away what happened, or technically didn't happen, in my studio this afternoon.

***

"Are you ever going to forgive me for that?" Maya whispers as we step out of the restaurant after dinner. "I can't tell you how sorry I am."

"For what?" I ask with an animated cock of my head to the left. "I have no idea what you're talking about."

"This train wreck of an evening I subjected you to," she mutters as she looks towards the curb where Tony and Jason are huddled together in a deep conversation. "I should have pre-screened Tony more closely. I had no idea he was considering getting back together with his ex-wife."

I shrug. "I know everything I'm ever going to want to know about Lenora Valdize. Who, by the way, has an ex-husband who worships the ground she walks on."

"You don't have to find a bright spot in this. You can be mad that I wasted your evening."

"Wasted my evening?" I half roll my eyes. "I got to have dinner at an expensive restaurant with my best friend and her boyfriend and a guy who is all kinds of crazy in love with a woman he just divorced. How is that a waste?"

"You could have been at Asher Foster's place."

I don't need the reminder. I've thought about him all day. It started when he calmly said goodbye and walked out of my studio. I had to push myself to focus during the hour long headshot session I had after he left. It was with a budding Broadway actress who nervously talked about her high school performance days while I tried to find the right angle to hide the large hickey on her neck. I finally gave up, deciding that it would be easier to remove it in post-production.

Dinner wasn't any better. Listening to the burly man seated next to me talk about kissing his ex-wife for the first time make me think of the taste of Asher's lips.

"You should call him now and see if he wants to hook up."

I smile at Maya, shaking my head. "I'm going home to bed. I don't think I'll be seeing Asher anytime soon."

"It's not going to kill you to sleep with him, Falon. You know what they say about all work and no play."

"You know what they say about rock stars."

"What do they say?" she asks with a slow drawl. "Do they say that it's an experience that you'll always remember and that you'll be able to write a memoir when you're old and gray about all the famous men you've f*cked?"

"No one I've slept with has been famous," I point out.

"If memory serves," she pauses to tap herself on the forehead. "Tyler Monroe wanted to f*ck you senseless when you took his picture."

She's delusional. When I took a set of photographs of celebrity chef, Tyler Monroe, in his new restaurant, Nova, he commented that I had nice legs. That's a far cry from wanting to f*ck me.

"He never said that, Maya."

"They never come right out and say it," she begins. "Actually, sometimes they do but sometimes you have to read between the lines."

I don't respond. Instead I look over her shoulder at an approaching cab.

"I know for a fact that Drake Sullivan wanted in your panties bad."

"Drake Sullivan?" I stifle a giggle. "You're talking about that baseball player who donated all that money to the children's charity?"

"I was there when you took his picture. The man had a hard-on the size of the Empire State building."

"He was standing behind a podium giving a speech at a dedication ceremony, Maya." I rub my hand across my chin before I wave at the cab as it nears us. "There's no way you saw anything from where we were standing."

She raises both eyebrows. "He was staring at you. He had that look in his eyes."

"I was hired to take his picture. He had to look at me." This conversation is going nowhere fast. "We'll talk about this tomorrow, or never. I need to crash."

"Don't let Asher Foster slip through your fingers. You've got nothing to lose."





CHAPTER 14


Asher




"You're staring at me." His voice is raspy. "I'm so goddamn good-looking you can't take your eyes off of me, can you?"

I want to laugh, but I can't. Any other day I would have. All I can do is say something, anything back to my brother. "You're getting old, Caleb. I'm staring at the wrinkles on your forehead."

His right hand darts to his brow. "Fuck you, Asher. I don't have wrinkles. I'm only six years older than you."

There it is. That's the relationship I've longed to have with him. It's that easy banter that ends with him telling me to f*ck off or go to hell. Anyone else might be offended when Caleb says those words to them, but I know for him, they're a token of affection.

I wanted this for years. Caleb couldn't be around me when I was using. My addictions scared the shit out of him. He withdrew from me then, instead using anger to deal with it all. He'd scream at me to quit, call me degrading names to try and guilt me into rehab and then one day, he had me arrested because he thought I was using again. He thought I physically hurt someone who worked for me at Foster Enterprises so he had my ass thrown in jail.