Collide Read online

  “I’m the only one I know,” I told her.

  “You’re the only you,” my mom said, and hugged me again.

  Later, after we’d said our goodbyes and she made me promise to call her soon, my mom left and Johnny arrived. He brought Thai food, fragrant and still steaming, and he set it out on my kitchen island while I grabbed plates and chopsticks. I poured us both hot tea and warmed my hands on it while I watched him open the cartons of food.

  He caught me staring. “What’s up?”

  “Just looking.”

  He smiled and came around the island to kiss me. “Like what you see?”

  “Oh, very much.” I squeezed his butt. “Feel, too.”

  He looked over his shoulder at the food, then at me. “How hungry are you?”

  “Depends on what you’re planning on feeding me.”

  Johnny took my hand and moved it around to the front to cup his crotch. “How about some of this?”

  “I’m so glad to know,” I said, “that even after several months of fucking me, you still can be so romantic.”

  He rubbed my hand around in a little circle while we both laughed and kissed and parted with shining eyes and wet mouths. I hugged him then, tight against me. The day had been strange. Being with Johnny made it somehow better.

  “What’s going on?” he said into my hair.

  I squeezed him harder, then pushed him back so I could look at his face. “Am I too young?”

  His brows went up, the corners of his mouth went down. “Kimmy been after you again?”

  “No. It’s not her. I want to know what you think.”

  Johnny let out a breath and let go of me to lean against the island directly across from me. “You’re young. Yeah. Or maybe I’m just old.”

  “But does it still bother you?”

  He looked at me very seriously. “Why? Is it bothering you?”

  “No.” I wasn’t really sure what was bothering me. I wanted to kiss him, maybe unzip his jeans right then and there, take him in my mouth and make us both forget I’d ever started this conversation.

  “Emm. Talk to me, please.”

  I loved that he’d insist on talking about this, whatever it was. That it was important to him not to just shove awkward silences under a rug woven of mutual pretense. I loved him for so many reasons, but they were tangled and wouldn’t lay smooth.

  “Does it bother you that I knew so much about you before we met?”

  He laughed. “You mean does it bother me that you saw me naked before you ever saw me naked?”

  “That, yes. But everything else.” He knew I’d seen his movies, looked him up on the Net, but we’d never talked about it. “Do you ever worry that I just weaseled my way into your life because of who you are?”

  Johnny laughed again and moved forward to kiss me. “Emm, I want you to want to be with me because of who I am.”

  “But not who you were,” I murmured.

  “Same person,” Johnny said against my mouth, then stroked a hand over my hair and looked into my eyes. “Do you want to know how many lovesick girls…and boys, have tried getting in my pants because of something I did thirty years ago?”

  I frowned, hard. “Not really.”

  “A lot,” Johnny said, anyway. “Are you like them?”

  “No!”

  He shrugged and traced my lower lip with his thumb before kissing me again. He tasted good. Felt good against me. I closed my eyes and let him try to distract me, but it wasn’t working.

  “I love you,” I said to him. “But…honestly, all that other stuff—the movies, the pictures, the interviews…”

  He nodded. “Yeah.”

  “That’s not why I love you now,” I said.

  “It wasn’t why you loved me then, either,” Johnny said.

  I froze. I stared at him, searching his expression for any sign he was teasing. Anything. “What do you mean?”

  “When you saw me in the coffee shop that first time,” he said, “you didn’t know all the rest of that shit, did you? So let’s face it. It was my ass, wasn’t it?”

  It wasn’t the answer I expected, not that I knew what I expected, but I burst into laughter. “Yeah. That was definitely it. Your epic fucking ass.”

  This time, his kiss really did distract me. It wasn’t until later that I thought about what he’d said. He hadn’t hesitated in his answer, hadn’t looked like he was trying to hide something.

  So why, then, did I feel like he was?

  Chapter 26

  “C’mon, you know I don’t know anything about art.” I ducked away from Johnny’s reaching hand and stepped back, almost knocking over a statue displayed on a pedestal. I caught it before it could fall. “See? I’m a menace.”

  “You have a good eye, and I want your opinion,” he said seriously. “And this is your friend’s work, so maybe you could just give me a hand here, huh?”

  “I think it looks great!” I pointed at the plain white wall where he’d already hung three of Jen’s pieces. “There’s plenty of room there for at least four more.”

  “Yeah, but which ones?” Johnny sounded annoyed.

  “How am I supposed to know? You pick.” I looked over the framed photos laid out on the gallery floor. I didn’t even want to come any closer, in case I accidentally stepped on one.

  Johnny pointed at one of Jared taken in soft light. “That one?”

  “It’s nice. It’s good, I mean.”

  He pointed at another. “This one?”

  “That one’s good, too! They’re all good!”

  He started laughing, shaking his head. “Jesus, babe, you really don’t know art, huh?”

  I feigned insult. “I told you.”

  “You just think you don’t,” Johnny said. “If you let yourself go, you’d have great instincts. See a lot. But hey, it’s okay, I can do this myself. Don’t worry your pretty little head about it.”

  I stuck my tongue out at him. “Now you’re being a turd.”

  Johnny scoffed and put up his hands. “Ooh, wow, that hurts.”

  He bent back to arranging the frames. I watched him. A few days had passed since our conversation in the kitchen, and something was still niggling at my brain.

  “Johnny.”

  He didn’t look up. “Yeah, babe.”

  “What made you decide to become an artist?”

  His hands, moving over the prints, slowed. He sat back on his heels. He didn’t look up at me for a few seconds, but then did, expression guarded.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Well…you started off in the movies and stuff, and I know you took a break before you started doing art—”

  “I was always doing art,” he said quietly. “I just didn’t show it. I didn’t try to make anyone else think I was an artist. There’s a difference between deciding to be an artist and just accepting who you are.”

  “I know.” I chewed my lower lip briefly. “So…when did you?”

  Johnny got to his feet, dusting off his hands. “I need a drink. You want one?”

  Without waiting for me, he headed for his office. It didn’t have the best memories for me, that office. I couldn’t step inside it without remembering my embarrassment about the time I’d kissed him and he’d pushed me away.

  Johnny opened a drawer in his desk and pulled out a bottle of Glenlivet. He poured out two glasses and gave me one. I sipped, grimacing, and coughed.

  “God,” I said.

  “Nope,” Johnny said. “Just whiskey.”

  He drank his back and sucked at his teeth for a second before setting down the glass. He looked at the bottle like he might pour another, but didn’t. He looked at me.

  “What is it you really want to ask me?”

  “I want to know what happened to you. What made you accept who you are, if you want to put it that way. Why you decided to start showing your art and keep doing it instead of just putting it away in a notebook.”

  His head tilted. “You know about the notebook.”