He kissed me hard, water raining down on us both, his fingertips moving from my ear, tracing a line down my throat, encircling my wet breasts—one by one—achingly slowly, as I breathlessly exhaled his name to the flowing showerhead.
An hour later, with dewy, flushed faces, we sat inside Asher’s town car, in dead-stopped traffic on Thompson Street. Asher curved his head out the window, surveying the traffic.
“We’re going to get out here, Joey,” he said to his driver.
“You sure?” Joey asked, with eyes raised.
“We’re already a couple minutes late, it’s right there.” Asher looked at me. “C’mon.” He nodded as he opened his door.
He held my hand as I expertly folded my body to the side, so as to not show my vagina off to any passersby. Exiting a vehicle in a minidress should be an Olympic sport. Men could never. I exhaled as my heels hit the pavement, tugged my dress back down, and Asher wrapped his hand in mine. Like clockwork, he put his chin down, walking forward toward the red neon CARBONE sign as if he were a bull. Suddenly, I understood why he walked that way, as huge camera flashes lit up my face. Asher’s arm instinctively went over his own face, and he shielded me behind his body, leading me into Carbone as the flashes disappeared.
He tugged me far past the front doors and pulled me close to his chest as we approached the hostess stand. The restaurant was dimly lit, and all I could see were flashes behind my eyes. Asher held me against his body, his hand on my cheek as he took me in with concern. I knew he could feel my chest racing against his.
“You okay?” he whispered.
He studied me like no one else was watching, even though I knew that everyone else was watching. I could get used to the way he was looking at me. Which I guess meant that I would have to get used to strange men shoving their lenses in my eyes.
“I’m fine, I promise.”
A hostess tapped her hand on Asher’s arm, with a bright, red-lipped smile. “Mr. Reyes, can I show you to your table?”
Asher nodded, and he locked his fingers into mine as we made our way through the old red-and-black square-tiled room. Carbone was a New York institution. Red-and-brown brick walls, dark woods—the kind of restaurant that the Mob would lust after. I could smell the red sauce and garlic pouring out from each dish as we passed the tables, and we entered into a private corner, with a packed long table taking up the entire alcove.
I saw Raini immediately, and hugged her tightly, thankful to have a friend at the table. Asher introduced me to three different producers. I recognized one of them as Amos. Then, he introduced me to the film’s first AD (assistant director), the DP (director of photography), the PM (production manager), and person after person who had acronym after acronym—people who were going to make Asher’s movie something beautiful. The phrase “it takes a village” absolutely applied to filmmaking.
Around the first course, Amos leaned back in his chair across from me and Asher, with his indifference slightly waning now that it was buried under a second glass of red. Asher was engaged in conversation with Raini about the movie’s sex scene—him assuring her they’d hired an intimacy coordinator, and that the crew assembled that day would be minimal. Asher’s hand was casually around my shoulder, and in between their conversation, he looked back at me and kissed my cheek. I watched Amos stare at Asher and then myself. He grinned like a little kid.
“So, when did this happen?” Amos asked, not so subtly and not so quietly.
I swallowed my forkful of eggplant-and-zucchini scapece with a large sip of a terrifyingly expensive glass of Barbaresco, wide-eyed. Each head at the rectangular table quieted and shifted in my direction. I looked to Asher, seeing his hard jawline soften into a slight smile.
“Twenty-one years ago?” Asher asked.
“Yes and no,” I said.
Amos bunched up his eyebrows and leaned in.
“You lost me,” Amos said.
“They’re the cutest,” Raini said, with puppy dog eyes staring at us both. “Do you guys know they fell in love when they were fourteen? Fourteen.”
Raini loved this story. I told it to her one morning over tea, and she couldn’t stop idealizing it. I wanted to tell her to stop—to darken her sunshine just so that she wouldn’t go looking for this kind of rare fireworks, because, again, I was still a little stung from He Who Shall Not Be Named. But I didn’t. I let her bathe in my love story, because even after experiencing heartbreak, I believed coming out the other side was worth celebrating.
Raini beamed at us, her body close to the maybe-boyfriend seated next to her, the guy she couldn’t get enough of, Joshua Carlyle. He was a nice enough Ken-doll actor whose fame had recently exploded in his early twenties, but Josh could play sixteen, and so he had been cast in every young-adult movie that Netflix spit out over the last two years. Sure, he was a vulnerable actor whose sad eyes made your insides hurt, but I was certain that he had to know where Netflix buried their bodies. Josh was good, but not five-movies-and-two-TV-shows good. He was also a man-child, with his eyes glued to his overactive Instagram account. Raini pursed her lips and put her hand over Josh’s cell phone. He looked up and smiled brightly, tucking his phone away as she pulled him close to her chest and nodded at Asher and myself, as if showing her boyfriend what she wanted out of their relationship. She wanted him to look at her the way Asher looked at me—like I hung the moon. My body lit up and my cheeks reddened, realizing how fucking lucky I was. It wasn’t every day that a man looked at a woman this way.
“Well, you just made the studio’s PR team very, very happy,” Amos said.
Asher tugged his eyes off me and took a sip of his wine with an eye roll.
“That’s not what this is,” Asher said.
“Just, please plan the messy breakup for after the movie comes out,” said Amos.
Asher turned to me, eyes unwavering on mine. “I don’t plan on a breakup of any kind,” he said, following the statement with a wide grin. I couldn’t speak, I just let the words comfort and warm every inch of my body.
“Jesus Christ, I don’t think I’ve ever seen you smile in public before,” Amos said as Asher’s gaze stayed locked on mine. “You usually save the smiles for the camera.” Amos turned to me, alarmed. “What have you done to him?”
I shrugged, because this was always how we were.
“Alright, enough already. Stop interrogating my girlfriend,” Asher said, putting his arm around me, as if to shield me from their stares.
The word “girlfriend” shot through me. I hadn’t heard someone refer to me as their girlfriend since I was…seventeen. Drew Reddy and I hadn’t even put a label on his love for me. I had never been anyone else’s anything as an adult. I had dated different types of unstable men for months at a time. My relationships were tiny love bombs—men whose instability gave me a high level of anxiety. With the uncertainty came the sweeping fireworks. When I had their attention, I coveted it. When I wasn’t in their presence, I stared at my phone like it might eat me alive. These men were gorgeous, emotionally unavailable, unable to look at the future, and/or terrified of commitment—I had never gotten myself past the DTR finish line. So of course, the first kid to call me his girlfriend would be the first adult man to call me the same. Somehow, unwittingly, Asher Reyes had marked the stability territory, and I had been waiting all this time for him to come back around and be my rock.