Nicky moved closer, and I felt him against my back. Not just his muscles, but also his desire, unmistakable and resting against me.
That’s when I realized that this whole night had been a date, that we were, in fact, still on a date, and that he was waiting for me to respond.
My heart filled with panic. I didn’t quite know what to do. I had engaged in a couple of romantic fumblings before this, but they weren’t quite what you’d call relationships. More like a few dates, sex once or twice, and then a fizzling out. It was hard to date when you couldn’t be even halfway truthful about who you really were. I did not quite know what to do with this man who was ten years older than me. A stern, cranky man who I had thought I knew until he pressed himself against me, already hard and desirous.
I closed my eyes.
For a fleeting second, I thought of James Farrell. He had graduated from Princeton and was now working in the marketing department of Farrell Fine Hair. His father had stepped down as president, after getting elected to Congress, but that didn’t mean that James couldn’t step into the position with a few years of experience. . . .
Nicky put his hands on my shoulders.
Suddenly James was gone, and it was just Nicky and me and a big decision that had to be made right now. I asked myself, What would the most beautiful woman in the world do at this moment?
Then I switched off the burner and turned around.
. . .
Two things happened in September 2000:
Farrell Fine Hair sold itself to Gusteau International, a cosmetics conglomerate based in France, for three hundred and sixty-two million dollars. Since Farrell Fine Hair was still a privately held company, that meant big payouts for the Farrell family. But it also meant that James would never be president of Farrell Fine Hair. The position he had been groomed for his entire life was gone.
When I read about the sale online, I felt both sorry and happy for James. Sorry because he had spent just about his whole life preparing to be president of Farrell Fine Hair, and happy because at least he was free to do whatever he wanted now, and he had a lot of money with which to do it.
I had been with Nicky for three years, so I could afford to be somewhat generous with both my pity and my good wishes where James was concerned. Somewhat.
The other thing that happened was that Russell gave up his screenwriting dreams and decided to funnel his natural talents for both gossip and journalism into a staff position at Celeb Weekly, which meant he was finally making enough money writing to quit his waiter job at Nicky’s.
Nicky hired a girl named Chloe Anderson to replace him. She was a pretty caramel-candy girl with big brown eyes and even bigger curls that stopped just above her shoulders, and she had actually come into the club inquiring about being a backup singer. But Nicky said no, because he had just taken on a three-piece band to accompany me, and he was waiting to see how that worked out.
Our section of Hollywood had steadily gentrified in the eight years since the club had opened, which meant more people with more money coming through the door. And now, right up the street, there was some high-end movie theater called ArcLight being built around the old Cinerama Dome. So maybe even more people would be coming in for a postmovie drink and show.
But Nicky didn’t want to hedge his bets. So Chloe had to settle for replacing Russell. Nicky did tell her she could sub for me if I got sick or hurt, which Chloe actually took as an opportunity. She didn’t know then that Nicky wasn’t exactly the kind of guy you asked for sick days, even if he was your boyfriend. There wasn’t a flu on this earth that would make putting up with Nicky’s mouth worth it, so I always showed up for performances no matter how miserable I was feeling.