Whatever had happened, whatever he
did to get to this point, he was damn glad he did it. A lot of times, especially recently, he had
been wondering if he had made the right decisions, if it was him that was to
blame for all the loss of love he had experienced. But twelve hours later, just half a day, he
knew, somewhere a long the line, he had done something right. Everything in him knew, felt, believed that
this right here, watching her search through his kitchen and cabinets, looking
for things to set the table, he knew this was right. And even though most everyone he knew would
blame him for getting his hopes up, or jumping the gun, he didn’t care. He was falling in love with her.
He had never in his life been one
to classify love. He was still a
romantic and believed that with love miraculous things might happen. That day miraculous things did happen. The morning had been miserable. Waking up with a hang over, a bruised ego,
and an aching heart, he set out to work with a bad attitude. He had complained to those around him,
bitched at them, acted like he was the only one that mattered. And then he walked on set and Susan was
there. She had been sitting in her chair,
quietly looking out on set with a nervous look in her eyes.
She was beautiful. She had brightened his day.
“Where are your wine glasses?”
“I’ll get them.”
And now she was in his kitchen,
trying to make the most out of a frozen pizza cooking in the oven and a bagged
salad. He walked over to her and stood
behind her, but close, reaching up into the cabinet above for two wine
glasses. He pressed his body into hers
mainly to tease, but also because it seemed like it had been forever since he
had felt her against him, even though they had been kissing a few moments
before. He heard her sigh and lean back
against him. His search for glasses was abandoned and he wrapped his arms
around her.
He had been one of those guys that
got all mushy, would buy the Hallmark Cards and the teddy bears and the roses
and say the perfect, cliché things. He
had been the guy that poured his heart out in a poem or song. He had been the guy that didn’t give a damn,
who just wanted to hang out and fuck.
He didn’t want to be any of those
guys anymore. He wanted to be a man,
Susan’s man.
His lips touched her neck and he
felt her hand reach up and run through his hair. It was a loving moment but sensual at the
same time. They hadn’t really talked
about what was happening that night.
They had briefly mentioned it and he had no expectations from her. He honestly thought if they just ended up
falling asleep on the couch that would be fine.
But he wasn’t about to deny more, anything more.
“I need to finish this.”
He whispered, kissing up to her
ear. “I’m helping.”
“You’re distracting.” She laughed and pushed him the best she
could. “Go check on the pizza.” She pointed to the oven with the tongs she
was mixing the salad with.
“Wine glasses first.” He chuckled and reached up to the cabinet,
got the glasses and walked over to the table to set them with the rest of their
little set up. He was amazed at how she
was so quick in the kitchen. She set his
table perfectly and something that would have taken him a while to figure out
how to make romantic and classy she did effortlessly. If it was up to him, they’d probably be
eating pizza out of a box on the couch with espn on. But she knew better. Somehow along the way he had lost his ability
to care and to be that suave, sexy guy he use to know. No doubt it was still there somewhere, but something
in him over the years stopped giving a damn.
He became sloppy.
It was the reason he and Cameron
had hit it off so well. She wasn’t a
fancy girl. He liked that about
her. She could sit on the floor with a
frozen pizza and some beers and watch sports or a horror movie with him. She’d burp and fart and get along with Trace
and Marty and all the guys like a champ.
They all loved her, he loved her.
But it wasn’t the same as this.
Cameron was like one of his friends, one of his best friends who just
happened to female and attractive. But
now that he thought about it, now that he had his great advantage of two weeks
separation to cast back on their relationship, he realized that as much as he
loved that fun, relaxed, playful girl that Cameron was, he wanted a woman. He thought that a girl in her thirties would
give that to him. But she didn’t.
And here was this girl from
That’s how he felt with
Susan. She had a class about her, a way
that made him at ease and made everything special. Even spitting cherry seeds into a bowl and eating
McDonald’s fries with an obscene amount of ketchup, somehow she made it special. She even put the damned bagged salad in his
nice wooden salad bowls and was now carrying them to the table. The way she walked and the way she carried
herself, it was all exactly what he wanted, what he was craving for.
He knew she could sit on the floor
and eat pizza and hang out with the guys, but she’d still be Susan, still be
herself, still be a woman, his woman, hopefully. He liked thinking of her as his. And he was hers, all hers.
“Did you pick out a good bottle?”
“You like Chianti?” He asked and
pulled the bottle off the small wine rack he had there on his counter. He wasn’t a big wine drinker, but appreciated
it and enjoyed it and if it would loosen them both up, throw away their
insecurities and make them at ease with each other, he would love it.
She laughed and deepened her
voice, saying, “With fava beans and liver.”
“Creepy.”
“I have a bit of an Anthony
Hopkins obsession just to warn you.”
“He’s cool.” He set the bottle down when the timer went
off on the microwave, and then he walked over to the oven and opened the door
to look in. “It looks done. Do you want
me to pull it out?”
“Just turn the oven off, leave it
cracked and leave the pizza in there.”
“Ok, I’ll just open the wine.” He smiled, snatching a bottle opener from a
drawer and winking at her.
She laughed at him, a purely
divine feminine laugh, “Good idea.”
He watched her work and stood
there just staring at her. She caught
him a couple times, caught him with his gaze penetrating her, getting inside
her and trying to figure her out. Each
time he was caught, she blushed lightly, not a deep embarrassed crimson color
but a light pink, almost like that of a woman after sex. That slight glow, that shyness that he
loved.
He had always told himself he
would never, ever date a shy girl. He
liked confidence, self-assurance and strong women. Susan was strong, even if she didn’t believe
it. She was shy. And he loved it. It was weird; she was changing him and his
perception of all that he thought he wanted.
In his mind there had always been
this ideal woman he wanted to be with. A
woman who was deep, and funny, and beautiful and innocent and sexy: his ideal,
his perfect woman. Little things were in
there like the way she smiled and laughed, the way she walked and what she was
into. It was a mixture of the women he
had been with, all their most positive aspects and then all the aspects he
wanted them to have. It was his perfect
woman.
Susan was not his perfect woman. She was no where near, really. She was different. She had the southern charm and the femininity,
but she didn’t have the confidence. She
wasn’t the extremely out-going woman he had thought of. She wasn’t innocent and she wasn’t a little
dumb, not that he didn’t want a stupid girl, but he had always found a woman
who was a little ditzy as endearing and sexy for some reason.
Susan was goofy at times and
sheepish, but she wasn’t ditzy, not at all.
And he liked it. No, he loved it.
They sat there and ate salad and
pizza and drank their wine. They talked
about the movie and she asked him about his singing, if he still planned to do
that, if that was his true passion, if this was just for kicks. And when he asked her about herself, about
what she would do if she didn’t act, or if she decided this wasn’t for her, and
he asked the cheesiest question he could ask, her favorite movie. He sat there and watched her talk, watched her
face move, her mouth, her eyes brighten as she got excited about
something. He listened and watched as
she described in full detail how when she was a little girl she worshiped Julie
Andrews, how her first play was The Sound of Music and how she really wanted to
do Broadway, but that her singing voice wasn’t strong enough.
It was then when he wanted her to
sing something for him. She blushed
again but he couldn’t tell if that was because she was pouring them the last
bit of wine or because she was embarrassed to sing for him. It was both he soon found out, but he wasn’t
going to let her slide. If she thought
she couldn’t sing she would have told him she couldn’t sing worth a tune, but
she didn’t say that. He was certain that
she could sing at least something if she had done all those plays in high
school. He pushed his plate away from
him. They had devoured the pizza and
salad. He had eaten her crust.
He grabbed his glass of wine, came
around the table and used his other hand to reach for hers.
“What?”
“Come on, I wanna show you something.”
She passed him a playful
look. “What if I’m not done?”
He laughed deeply, “Susan, you’ve
been done and sitting there staring at me with that little smile for the past
15 minutes.”
“So you caught me.”
Watching her smile was making him
want to get lost in her and he had to stop himself or he knew he was going to
misbehave. So he looked away, grabbed
her hand and tugged her from her seat. “Come
on.”
He walked her from the kitchen
table to the den. They wound their way
around the couch and down a big hallway.
He kept leading her to where he wanted to take her, where he wanted her
to show him if what she said was true. “Where
are you taking me? On a tour?” She giggled and he looked back at her. She was looking up at the vaulted
ceiling.
“It’s not that impressive. It’s a huge house, too big sometimes. I almost always have people over,
though. There’s usually someone staying
here whether it’s Mom, or Trace, or some friends or whatever. But it can get
lonely when I’m by myself.”
They came to a set of double doors
that were closed and he stopped and he dropped her hand. “Well I can help you cure that.”
He looked at her for a while,
amazed. They were just starting out and
she was already that committed to him?
He didn’t quite know if she was saying she wanted to move in with him,
which frightened him but only a little, or if she was saying she wanted to be
with him more, spend more time with him and friends and his house and his
life. He was pretty sure it was the
second.
“Really?”
She laughed a little. “I’m living here now, in an apartment. Don’t get me wrong, it’s nice, nicer than
anything I had in
He leaned down and kissed her
briefly and handed her his glass of wine before pulling away, pressing down on
both door handles and pulling them towards himself to open. “This is what I
want to show you.”
It was his fancy music room with
his black baby grand piano. The room was
sleek, but definitely was the type of room his aunts and grandparents had at
their houses, usually their living rooms, not to be mistaken with their dens or
their family rooms, but the rooms only used for company, the rooms no one was
allowed in. This was the room where you
could break stuff. But his couch didn’t
have a floral print and there weren’t antique cross-stitch portraits or little
expensive looking glass bird figurines.
No, only his piano, a few of his plaques and awards and some of the
expensive artwork he had bought were in the room. A nice black leather couch with matching
chairs were in the room, but the focal point was the piano.
He loved the room, tucked away in
his house. With the doors closed he
could be in his own world and write music and not bother anyone else in the
house. With the doors open and the way
the hallways were positioned, every part of the house was filled with the notes
of the piano. He loved that. It wasn’t his favorite room of the house, or
the most used, but it held a special part of him, partly because it was his one
request and design with the house that he really cared about and really put
100% of his input into it, and partly because of the piano, the gift he gave
himself when his solo record went platinum.
“It’s gorgeous,” She said, handing
him back his glass of deep red liquid.
He took a long sip and let the wine coat him inside before walking to
the piano, pulling out the bench and sitting down on it.
“You know how to play?” He asked, setting his glass on a ledge of the
piano and patting the space beside him, hoping she’d join him. She did.
“Eh…” She shrugged and mimicked his movements with
the wine glass. He started to play
lightly, just chords, pressing down on the keys firmly, but gently.
“Well I do…” He did a scale and
kissed her quickly, puling away with a smile.
“And I want you to sing.”
“Are you serious?” She laughed at him, but he only smiled. He wanted to hear her sing, whether it was
good or bad or mediocre or pitchy or off key or anything, he wanted to hear
her. “I’m not that good.”
“But I bet you aren’t bad.” He played for a moment and she just sat
there. He could feel her looking at him,
no, giving him a look, a look that was slightly annoyed, but mostly amused. “Come
on. It’s a duet, like Sonny and Cher.”
She laughed, “Um, that might be
bad. They broke up and Sonny died.”
“Ok, then Faith and Tim.”
She laughed again and it somehow
fit in the music he was playing. “The country singers?”
“Yeah.”
“I hate country music.”
He let his hands fall roughly down
on the keys, making a jarring noise. “Girl,
you’re from
“Hey I like Johnny Cash and Dolly Pardon,
but that new pop country stuff I can’t handle.”
“Alright, alright. That’s acceptable.” He paused and started playing a soft melody
again. “Name something, or start singing
something.”
“Why are you torturing me?”
“It’s just me…” He nudged her and
smiled at her. “Don’t be embarrassed.”
“But you’re a singing god.”
He couldn’t control his
laughter. He knew he had a good singing
voice, but a singing god he was far from.
Sometimes he had bad days when he would sound as nasally and as bad as
he did when he was just first starting out professionally. “No I’m an actor. I’m just that good that
everyone thinks I’m a singing god.”
“Ok, um…” He watched her take a sip of her wine. In reality it wasn’t a sip, but a large gulp
in which she finished off the end of her glass.
She was buzzing, and he could tell by the way she set the glass down a
little too firmly. “What about my
favorite song?”
“And that is…”
“Ever listen to Van Morrison?”
He nodded, hoping she wasn’t going
to start belting out “Brown Eyed Girl.” “Old
stuff, yeah.”
“Do you know Fair Play?”
He smiled. Lately he had been getting into older stuff,
more obscure stuff, and Van Morrison had been top on that list. He messed on the keys for a moment and sang
out lightly, “Fair play to you…”
“Yeah…” She smiled.
“That.”
“Hmm…let’s see.” He hum along to the first bit of the song to
figure out the chords and key he needed to use and soon enough he was playing a
little background, just waiting for her to start singing. She was smiling shyly
and blushing.
And he had never seen her look
more beautiful.
“Fair play to you…
Killarney's lakes are so blue
And the architecture I'm taking in with my mind
So fine...”
He wasn’t going to lie; it wasn’t an Aretha voice,
or a Christina voice. But it was sweet,
soft, and reminded him of his grandmother’s and how she would hum hymns in the
kitchen as she made their family lunch after church on Sundays. But Susan wasn’t singing a hymn. She was singing a love song, one that as he
played with her and listened to her sing, made him fall deeper and harder in
love with her.
There was no point in denying it now. He was in love.
“Tell me of
Poe
Oscar Wilde and Thoreau
Let your
It's a very fine line
But you've got the mind child
To carry on
When it's just about to be
Carried on...
And there's
only one meadow's way to go
And you say "Geronimo"
There's only one meadow's way to go
And you say "Geronimo"”
He took his right hand off the keys and just
played a simple three note chord with is left hand, changing it every three
beats. Her hair was hanging against her
shoulders and he brushed it out of the way and kissed her there. “Keep singing…”
he whispered, and she did. And he continued to kiss her, from her cotton clad
shoulder to her bare neck.
“A paperback
book
As we walk down the street
Fill my mind with tales of mystery, mystery...
And imagination
Forever fair
And I'm touching your hair
I wish we could be dreamers
In this dream, ohhh
Let it dream
And there's
only one meadow's way to go
And you say "Geronimo"
And there's only one meadow's way to go
And you say...
Justin…”
“Shh…” He whispered, touching her thigh and kissing
her right under her jaw on her neck. He
had stop playing the piano moments before and completely turned all of his
concentration on her. She was a new
instrument he wanted to play, one he never wanted to stop playing. He wanted to touch her, gently, firmly, just
like he did the keys of the piano. He
wanted to make her sing, not literally, but inside. He wanted her body to be with his and he
wanted to be inside of her…sexually, spiritually, mentally….any way she’d let
him. “Just enjoy it.”
They started to kiss and he wanted
to be with her. He wanted to take that
jump, that leap, that probably painful path that he always seemed to go down
and always seemed to come to a dead end, no matter how far they had come before
then. For some reason, he just knew that
with her, there were no dead ends, only scenic look outs, and winding back
roads. Maybe a rest stop along the way,
or a grimy old gas station in the wrong part of town. But there were no dead
ends and there were never going to be any dead ends.
He was starting his life with
Susan and restarting himself. A
refreshing sense of being came over him, a sense that he hadn’t felt in a
long…long…
Long time.
He had become jaded. It dawned on him. He had become jaded and ungrateful. More concerned with the negative parts of who
he was, what he did, and the reception he got than concerned the positive parts
of life. He forgot that there were
still things in life that weren’t complicated, weren’t tainted, and that were
not out to get him.
There was Susan. And that morning, that day, somewhere along
the course of the past twelve hours he looked at her and he felt sparks. And that was it.
That was it.
Her face was in his hands as they
kissed and he let his thumbs brush against her cheeks, his fingers woven into
her brown hair. He kissed her and kissed
her and kissed her, and only pulled away when he was about to explode from the
need to tell her how he felt. He rested
his forehead on hers, closed his eyes and breathed deeply.
“Susan, I…”
“I want to be with you tonight.”
He opened his eyes and she was
looking into them. It was quiet and he
seemed not to know how to breathe or what to say. She didn’t say anything more, or explain
herself, or say explicitly what he needed to hear, that that meant they were
going to have sex. Was that what she
meant?
She bit her lip and it broke into
a grin.
Yeah, that was what she meant.
“Ok.” He smiled brightly.
“Ok.” She nodded.
He continued to look at her and
she broke into a laugh. It was a
slightly intoxicated laugh, but not a laugh that warned him that she didn’t
know what she was doing. It was warm and
comforting. He wanted to live inside her
laugh and her smile.
“Come on…” He kissed her, slow and
lingering. Then pulled away, grabbed her
hand and stood up. “I’ll show you the
rest of the house.”
He held her hand as he walked with
her through the house. He wasn’t really
showing it all to her. Didn’t show her
his basement with his gym or his studio and he didn’t show her some of his
guest rooms. It was mainly just a polite
way for him to make his way upstairs to his room. Each step they took the more his nerves
seemed to over come him. It was
confirmed that he wanted this, that he wanted her. And he was in love with her, he wasn’t just
falling anymore. He had landed, smack
down on the bottom of that canyon. It
was a gorgeous canyon, wide and deep with a blue river rapidly running through
it. But when he called out, he was alone
and his voice echoed.
It was a scary feeling being alone
in love. He was sure she wanted him, and
sure she was falling, but she wasn’t there yet.
And he wasn’t sure that something might not pull her back up top and
keep her from joining him down at the bottom.
They had paused in front of the
door to his bedroom, and he was staring off into space, thinking about how
potentially hazardous this could be.
“What’s in there?” He barely heard her and just kept
staring. “Justin…”
He sucked in a breath and turned
to her, grabbing both her hands in his. “You
sure about this, about us. Cause Susan,
I can’t take any more heart ache.”
Worry was on her face, but it soon
washed away and she shook her head, smiled and stepped close. “I’m not planning on hurting you.”
He felt her arms around him and
her head rested against his shoulder. “We’re
not going too fast are we?” He
asked.
“Justin…” He pulled back and she kissed him with a
passion he had felt back on set, back in the trailer, back when they were
having a hard time keeping their hands off each other. She pulled away breathless and spoke in a
raspy voice, a voice that let him know even if she didn’t say the words, she
was down there in that canyon with him.
They were there together. “I want
to make love to you.”
He looked into her eyes and he
knew everything was in its right place.
They were in their right minds.
And this was the right thing. No
matter if it had only been a few hours.
It could have been a few minutes and this would have been right. Susan was right for him in every way and it
felt good to be back on that path where he didn’t know where he was going but
it didn’t matter. Cause it was right.
“Then…” He laughed and little and took his hand to
the door and opened it. “…this is my
bedroom.”
The past few months, hell the past
few years had been rough on him. He had
had success beyond belief, but he had changed and he wasn’t so sure if he had
changed for the best. But today, today
had been a good day, a really, really good day.
And he was glad to be Justin Timberlake.
Not the pop star, not the sex symbol, not the wannabe actor, but Justin
Timberlake, the kid that was about to make love to the woman he was in love
with.
It was simple. It was pure.
It was right.
And that made him smile.