Damn those eyes. There was definitely something in them – something that had captured me despite the rage in the park, despite the flash of anger at the book launch as I’d taken another appetizer just to rile her. There was an allure to them. A warmth. It was as if she was gravity and I was matter, unable to resist her pull. I wanted to get lost in them, and wondered what it would feel like to have her turn them on me with something else. With want.
I shook my head.
“What the hell is wrong with you, man?” I said aloud. “She’s just like the rest of them. Probably worse."
To prove my point, I hit the return button on the keyboard and my screen filled with her digital persona. Articles from magazines and newspapers. Video clips from interviews on late-night talk shows. Images from paparazzi as she left a club, a restaurant, or sat in the stands at Wimbledon sandwiched between a rockstar and a famous female political news anchor.
The search results went on forever.
I clicked what looked like an aerial image of something and found myself staring at Lior’s ass in a tiny red thong as she sunbathed topless on a yacht in the South of France.
“Fucking hell.”
I quickly exited the screen.
I was wrong. She wasn’t at all like the others. She was definitely worse. And yet that didn’t stop me from opening another link, leading me straight to her personal social media page – which I scrolled with wary curiosity.
The photographs here were different. A mix of real life versus work life, many times within the same frame. Her in sweats and no makeup. Her in a backless, painted-on black dress, advertising perfume for a huge brand name. Her in a no-name track suit, hair piled messily on top of her head like it had been in the park. Her in a short, red dress with cutouts, her hair slicked back, and eyeliner that looked otherworldly while she held a small tube of the product in her hand.
In each picture she morphed into another version of herself, each more beautiful than the last.
I scrolled further. There were shots of Seattle, her and a pretty woman with light brown hair making faces at the camera in front of the Space Needle, a wall that looked like it was covered in gum, and a large troll. Two pairs of feet with painted toenails, two pairs of feet in snowshoes, two pairs of feet in cowboy boots.
And then there were the men. Chiseled, ripped, god-like specimens standing beside her, holding her, looking like they were about to kiss her or…
“Jesus,” I said, staring at one of the pictures. “He looks like he’s going to eat your face. Run, Lior, run!”
And then another one, the man looking completely uninterested in the beauty lying beside him.
“Yeah right, buddy,” I said.
I looked down at Brontë who was staring up at me judgingly.
“Shut up. I am not jealous. I’m proving a point.”
I scrolled further and found a photo of Lior and an older woman with similar facial features but different coloring.
“Happy Mother’s Day, Mom,” the caption read.
“Oh shit,” I said aloud, recognizing the woman.
Liliana. One name. That’s all one needed to say and a person knew exactly who you were talking about. She’d been the model a couple decades back. Beautiful in an inaccessible way with her pale blonde hair and ice-like blue eyes. I’d never have imagined she was Lior’s mother. I could see the resemblance now, but while Liliana was undoubtedly stunning, there was something about Lior that was just… more. She was warmer, the light in her eyes was kinder. And her figure… She had curves her mother didn’t.
I scrolled more and saw other images of the two women, stopping at a candid one of them in someone’s living room, Lior sprawled on a tasteful pale blue sofa, sticking out her tongue, her mother, legs crossed at the ankles like a royal looking not amused at her daughter’s antics. I grinned, then berated myself for being amused.
There was another of them that Lior had created in a side-by-side post, “Me and mom, both at 21 years old.” The resemblance of the two women, despite their almost night-and-day coloring, was uncanny. But even at their young ages, there was still something softer about Lior’s face. More peaceful. As if she was having a good time, whereas her mother’s face looked tight, with no trace of humor. In fact, most of the pictures of her mom looked that way.
“She seems like a good time,” I murmured. “And probably even more drama. It’s like it’s the family business.”
I scrolled some more until I stopped, my breath catching as I clicked on an image to make it bigger.
It was a selfie, Lior’s face free of makeup, her dark hair wild around her shoulders, and she looked like she wasn’t wearing anything, her collarbones exposed, the rise of her breasts… and a smattering of the sexiest freckles I’d ever seen.
I shut the laptop and tossed it gently to the couch.
Giving Brontë a few pets, I got to my feet, and bounded up the stairs to the second-floor workout room to try and sweat thoughts of Lior Flynn’s red thong out of my system. But at the sight of the white-on-white-on-taupe, too-bright gym Nadia had created, I found all I wanted to do was be anywhere else.
I threw on a sweatshirt and went to rouse Brontë from her slumber. Fifteen minutes later we ambled slowly down the front steps and, by habit, I started to head left down the sidewalk. But the thought of running into Lior stopped me.
