AllFreeNovel
Share Us
I sigh at the gauzy white t-shirt and gray chinos. Letting the whole world see my nipples is exactly the conclusion this day needs. As I dress, I notice a protein bar wrapper in the bathroom trash.Gotcha. I want to feel judgmental, but I mostly just feel relieved. And like all my other feelings today, that annoys me.
Victor already has the door open when I come out, bouncing it from one hand to the other. He shakes his head at my outfit and turns to go.
“I’m not some kind of sadist, you know,” I blurt at his back.
He doesn’t turn around. “I know.”
“Then what were you trying to prove at lunch?”
He walks off down the hall, nearly shutting the door in my face. In the elevator, he weaves his fingers in the cage door. I’m about to point out how dangerous that is when he says, “You’ll figure it out. Or you won’t.”
“I’m not here for your entertainment.”
“Ok.” His soft shirt bunches as he shrugs his shoulders.
The photographer waiting on the front steps of the hotel has an assistant with him. While she works on untangling Victor’s curls, I hunt through the garden for my phone. It survived the fall, so I text Mom that I’ll call back later.
The reporters have gotten bored and left, which makes the security guard who follows us at a distance seem redundant. I don’t realize how tired I am until we start to walk; my mouth tastes sour, my throat hurts, and every time I blink it’s a fight to open my eyes again.
Warm two- and three-story buildings crowd the narrow streets, shading wide, clean paving stones. Mopeds nudge their way between cafes and flower shops and apartments. We emerge right by the sea, on a path divided from the water by a low stone wall streaked with seagull droppings. Colorful flower pots lined with moss hang from the ornate iron lamp posts, and the castle looms in the background. Victor hops up on the wall and balances, hand shading his eyes as he watches the slow roll of the surf.
I’ve never hated something so beautiful so much, tortured by sleep deprivation and not allowed to enjoy any of it. And I don’t entirely know if I mean the view or him.
“Sit on the wall together,per favore.” The photographer hoists his camera with its long lens. “This is perhaps for two pages of a magazine.” He spreads his hands to indicatewide. I blink uneasily, trying to focus as I put my arm around Victor like we’re posing for a Christmas card. His body, just a little smaller than mine, fits almost but not quite perfectly against my side. He smells bright, the cologne he gave me at the press conference. I probably smell like Listerine and sadness.
“More, um, hot, please.” Our director hunts for English words, looking unsatisfied.
My brain fills with an unwanted image of us stripping off our shirts, and I’m so deliriously tired I can’t get rid of it. I’ve never been high, but maybe this is what it feels like.
“Fuck’s sake.” Victor squirms away from me and grabs my chin, pulling our foreheads together, holding me there as the camera clicks. His eyes pick up the yellow haze of the afternoon sun and the pale blue of the shadows below us, mixing them into colors as impossibly elusive as he is. I can see traces of salt on his dry lips just before he rolls them into his mouth to moisten them.
When the photographer tires of this pose, he points over the wall, where a jumble of unsteady-looking rocks slopes to the water, which picks away at the smooth, wet stone with hungry little gulping sounds that turn my stomach. “I want a clear shot.”
Victor vaults the wall and looks at me expectantly. A warm breeze keeps trying to pick his curls out of the gel, return them to their natural chaos.
I shake my head. “It’s not safe.”
He waits, unimpressed, hands hanging loose at his sides as the wind ripples his black shirt against his body. The silver chain around his neck is all crooked, and he’s frowning into the sun, and suddenly he’s so much bigger and smaller at the same time, not a monster but just a guy, just a human, hot skin over weak bones. But at the same time, he looks like a wild mystery, a fey god of the sea.
“If you don’t get over this wall, I’ll fucking fire you,” the god complains.
And so I climb after him, trying to hold my shaky balance. When my foot slips, he grabs my arm. “Come on, big boy.”
The photographer’s assistant comes back with a packet of fried balls from a stand across the street. “Arancini.” She hands them to me. “Feed them to him or something cute.”
“Really?”
They feel greasy against my palm, and the rich smell makes my overly-full stomach clench. The camera’s already firing again, catching all the candid moments as I contemplate how little I want to try and put anything into this psychopath’s mouth. Then I notice his face. He looks helpless, staring at the food like it’s going to crawl down his throat and kill him.
In an explosion of feathers and wings and whatever the hell’s inside an arancini, a gull cannonballs my hand and makes off with as much of the food as it can carry. The rest scatters between the rocks.
And you smile. The first one I’ve ever seen.
Not a TV smile or a fuck you smile or a smile that hides things, just a quick bubble of laughter from his chest. “Your face,” he says, eyes glittering. There’s sweat on my skin and on his, and the air smells like vinegar and warm stone, and I’m losing my mind. I want to make this moment belong to me and no one else, to put my hands all over him, to make him pray my name.
“Merda.” The photographer glares at me, like it’s my fault he wasted his money on the food. “Can you just kiss?” I stiffen. This is a worse idea than the food. The worst idea. I can see Victor’s eyes assessing, face blank.
“Holy shit,” a woman’s voice drawls. “Victor, is that you?”
