It wasn’t safe to fall in love with her, but you couldn’t help but fall in love with her. She was mysterious and transparent, elusive and touchable, loving and hateful. She was full of complexities and, if you pointed that out to her, she’d laugh and tell you she was the least complex person you’d ever meet.
Men followed her everywhere she went, so that she became the Pied Piper, leading them down the path to inhibition and freedom. Except she didn’t need that stupid flute.
She wasn’t a one-man type of woman. Hell, she wasn’t even the kind to want one for more than a night. It was ridiculous to think you would be the man to change her, settle her down. Make an honest woman of her.
I learned that the hard way.
I met her on a clear spring night in May, back when I was a naïve twenty-two year old. Okay, so maybe I wasn’t completely naïve, but, compared to her, I was like the child who believed that the quarters under his pillow came from the tooth fairy and not his parents. When I met her, I was convinced she had no idea who I was, that she was interested in me because I was an all around nice guy.
We were back in Orlando for a week. One week before we had to jet back to Europe and do more shows. Then, we’d come back and make a bunch of music videos and hope that, this time, our fellow countrymen would appreciate us. At that point, we were barely a blip on the radar here, so I didn’t think she knew me.
I ran into her outside of a grocery store one night that week. Nick had had a ridiculous craving for salt and vinegar chips, of all things, and that was the one junk food that we didn’t have in the house. Kevin had refused to cave to Nick’s demands because, let’s face it, the kid always got what he wanted. Giving into Nick was, for Kevin, tantamount to giving into a small child’s temper tantrum. Not that Kev was in the wrong. Howie agreed with him, and AJ couldn’t have cared less. He was busy making time with some girl he’d met the last time we were in Florida. It was cute that he wanted to keep the relationship going, but we all wondered how long it would last. Obviously, he was out of the running of people Nick would turn to and beg to go to the store for him.
Why he couldn’t go himself, I don’t remember anymore. None of that is too clear ten years after the fact. None, except for her.
She was leaning against the lamppost next to my car, her dark hair floating around her and gleaming in the glow of the lamp. Smoking a cigarette lazily, she flashed me a slow smile as I unlocked the car. At the time, I remember thinking that she might have been one of those “women of the night”—a term I’d made up in my head to refer to prostitutes. My parents had raised me well enough that I blushed using words like “whore”.
“You’re not from around here, are you?”
I can still hear those words in my head sometimes. The first words she ever said to me. In the middle of the night, even as I lay in the dark next to my wife, I can hear the echo of her words, the low, seductive quality of her voice. If I try hard enough, her scent seeps through my senses. That exotic scent that I know must be some sort of flower, but it’s one I’ve never found, though I’ve tried.
Her scent, like her, was always just out of my grasp.
To say that I was nervous when she first spoke to me would be an understatement. My palms went damp and my pulse accelerated, thinking I was about to be robbed. After all, it was close to one at night, we were in a nearly empty parking lot, and there wasn’t anyone else around. Of course, I was raised better than to ignore a lady—no matter her character.
“Actually, I’m not. Just visiting.”
My answer was the first mistake I made with her. It’s a mistake, though, that I swear I won’t regret making to my dying day because somehow, with her, I was always more alive than I’d ever been.
I saw her everyday the rest of that week before we returned to Europe. I never touched her, and she never made any advances towards me the way I’d expected her to do. I don’t know what had compelled me to show up at the address she’d given me that first night. “If you ever need anything,” she’d added as she told me.
I didn’t have a pen or paper to write it down, but I never forgot it either.
637 Cardinal Drive
So I’d shown up, and we’d talked. Just talked. It wasn’t anything amazing. Earth-shattering. Not even close. When she asked me what I was doing in Orlando, I told her I was here for business. She didn’t press for further details, and, instead, asked what a nice, decent guy like myself had been doing in a grocery store that late. I told her about Nick, calling him my business partner. I was sure that I couldn’t afford to give her more details than that. She never asked for more than I was willing to give.
The night before the Boys were to leave for Germany, I insisted on taking her out. Even if it was just to a diner. After all, she’d just let me into her home several times without asking for anything in return. So we went to a tiny diner, and I don’t think I’ve ever enjoyed a short stack as much as I did that night, with her. I loved just talking to her. She made me see things about life in a new light and made the big things seem pretty insignificant. She didn’t believe in God, but she thought it was impressive that, in a world like ours, I still did.
That night was the first time I kissed her. As she turned to get out of the car, I leaned over and tugged her back. I swear, there were dazzling lights beneath my eyelids when our lips met. It lasted less than a minute, but it’s been imprinted on my brain. I can still recall the taste of her, even though it’s been some time since I’ve seen her.
In June, when the Boys returned to the States, I looked for her. She was nowhere to be found, though. Her apartment had been rented out to someone else, and her landlord couldn’t tell me where she’d gone. I nearly went crazy. I’d waited a month to see her, hold her, just be near her. And she was gone.
The guys thought I was nuts to get like this over a woman. You didn’t even really know her, they pointed out. She obviously didn’t care about you enough to let you know she was leaving. No matter what they said, though, I was convinced they were wrong. They didn’t know her like I did. They didn’t understand our relationship.
Finally, Kevin pulled me aside and told me to snap out of it. If it were meant, I’d see her again. For now, though, he told me that everyone needed me to focus on the work at hand. We were at a crucial stage in our career, one that could make or break us. I needed to be with them one hundred percent.
He was right, and so I banished all thoughts of her and tried to focus. On the ride to one of our video shoots, I flipped through the portraits of all the actors and actresses we’d be working with. When I stopped at Leighanne Wallace’s headshot, Kevin nudged my shoulder.
“She’s pretty.”
She was. Leigh was even better in person and, over the following months, as we worked on our relationship, I knew I couldn’t have asked for a better woman.
And yet, I kept dreaming of her. She haunted my thoughts and dreams like a hungry specter, and I couldn’t rid myself of her.
I think I knew, even then, that I never wanted to be rid of her.
Nearly six months went by before I saw her again. Our success in the States had catapulted us to great heights and was beginning to make it impossible for us to step outside without being recognized. At the time, we lapped up the attention and craved more. It was something we’d thought we’d never have. It was the long sought dream that we’d all possessed, and it was finally within our grasp.
Leighanne and I had been together for a few months at that point, and, when I ended up having to stay in Los Angeles for Thanksgiving because scheduling made it hard for us to go home and come back, she flew out to spend it with me. The day after Thanksgiving, the guys decided to hit up a club, and they convinced Leigh and me to go with them. We were usually homebodies, but they persuaded us to come have fun. So we did.
I love dancing—onstage. I’m not much of a dancer otherwise, and, though Leighanne tried to get me out on the dance floor, I just wasn’t feeling up to it. I was tired and just not in the mood. I knew I shouldn’t have come, and I tried to tell Leighanne that. She let me off the hook and, after barely any persuasion from me, went off to the dance floor when Howie offered to take her out.
It was sometime in the fifteen minutes that followed their departure that I leaned over the balcony of the VIP section to look down at the moving bodies on the floor below me. I spotted AJ immediately as women always flocked to him and created a huge crowd. Nearby, Kevin danced with his longtime girlfriend, Kristin. I could see Howie and Leighanne next to them. I let my eyes rove over the rest of the floor idly, not really paying attention.
Then, I saw her, and it was as though no one else existed.
Three thousand miles and six and a half months from the last time I’d seen her, there she was. But she wasn’t alone. There were at least half a dozen men surrounding her, touching her, and she seemed not to care at all. Seeing her that way made the bile rise in my throat, and I felt betrayed. I had no right to feel betrayed as we’d never made promises and, obviously, I was with Leighanne, but I felt it nevertheless.
Somehow, whether by design or intent, she looked up. Across several yards and, despite me being a floor up from where she was, our eyes met. Locked. As I watched, helpless, that same slow smile spread across her lips. It was then that I knew she was trouble. She was trouble in a way that I’d never expected, and she was the kind of trouble that I’d always want, no matter when or where.
I broke eye contact first and leapt away from the railing as though I’d been burned, which I had, in a way. Suddenly, the music seemed too loud, the noise, the people, everything seemed too much for me to handle. Clapping a hand over my mouth, I rushed out of the club.
I got rid of my recent dinner in the alley behind the club and, after, simply leaned against the brick wall of the building, breathing heavily. I felt as though I’d run a marathon, and I felt sick in a way that watered my eyes. That’s how she found me. I was disheveled, sick to my stomach, and bone-tired. She looked incredible from her long, flowing hair to her high-heeled toes. The gray of her eyes sparkled in amusement at my current state.
“You’re a long way from Orlando, Brian.”
I don’t remember what my reply was, but I know that night was the first I spent with her. Despite my, let’s say, limited experience in intimacy, I still knew that she was more incredible than most women. With her, my heart beat in a way it never beat before, and she dazzled me. I had stars in my eyes, and, I think, probably little red hearts the way cartoon characters do when they’re in love.
When I showed up in my hotel room the next day, when Leighanne, with hurt in her eyes, asked me where I’d gone, when Kevin yelled at me for being careless, when Johnny berated me for nearly causing unneeded hysteria for the group, when they all looked at me with disappointment in their eyes, I didn’t feel guilty. I lied to Leighanne, to Kevin, Johnny, everyone. I didn’t care. I’d spent the night with an unbelievably incredible woman, and nothing they said would bring me off that high.
I think Leighanne knew, even then, that there was someone else. She never accused me, though, never said a single word to indicate that she was suspicious. But I knew she knew. Every time I came home after disappearing for a day or a night, she’d look at me with those beautiful blue eyes that begged me to tell the truth. She never uttered a single one of those questions, though.
