Page 14 of Love, Lines, and Alibis
“I’ll share everything I know, and I’ll make use of all my access at city hall and with the production team ofLA Misconducts, but you can’t shut me off. I need full access to your investigation. We’re working on this together.”
“What’s in it for you?” he asked, and that was a good start. He wasn’t saying no outright.
“I think there’s a script in this story,” I explained. “And I want to be the one to write it. But there needs to be an article worth adapting first. And I’m counting on you for that. Let’s work together to make all that happen.”
“And you’re willing to share all your contacts?”
“I am.”
“Dale,” he agreed. He put his T-shirt back on, and I wasn’t ready for the ease of the situation—or the sudden disappearance of a shirtless David.
“¿Sí?” I was unsure I’d heard him correctly. I sat on the chair next to the one he occupied.
“Elena, don’t make me regret this. Why are you doubting?”
“I’m not doubting. I just didn’t think you’d say yes so easily,” I said. “You’ve never let me help you before.”
“You never offered your connections before.” And there it was. It appeared I was nothing but my connections.
“So we’ve got a plan then? I help you investigate. We clear your name. You write an article. And I adapt it into a script.” I needed to make sure we were both on the same page.
“We have a plan,” David said.
I reapplied sunscreen—I may have an olive Mediterranean complexion and tan well but I was still aware of the dangers of the Southern California sun even in winter—and proceeded to tell David everything Beatrice had shared with me pertaining to the case.
“You don’t look mildly surprised,” I said once I finished my account. It was as if nothing I’d said was news to him.
“I have a source at the LAPD.”
“Ah,” I grumbled. Of course he did. What exactly was I doing there? So far, helping didn’t seem to be my thing.
“Are you going to keep pretending you didn’t send me a very explicit text?” he asked me then. I was astounded by his words—and the turn of events.
“What are you talki—” The text I had been drafting earlier popped into my brain, and I wanted to die. “No! No, no, no, no...” I took my cell phone from my back pocket, unlocked it, and went to the message history to reaffirm that I hadn’t sent that last draft.
But I had. There it was: a green bubble. David, of course, was an Android user to my iPhone. A green bubble of shame that read,Need you to make me scream like yesterday.
“I sent this by mistake when my stupid agent arrived. It was like a butt call but a butt message, only it was sent with my fingers—I think. Never mind. Can we pretend this didn’t happen?” I pleaded.
“As we’ve been pretending we haven’t been fucking each other for the last half a year?” he said. “I liked the message. Is it that terrible to tell your lover what you want?”
“Is it what we are now? Lovers?” I could feel my cheeks burning and my heart beating furiously.
“I preferloverstoformer-partners-turned-booty-call,” he said.
I had been avoiding that conversation with him since the night six months before when I took the elevator to the second floor, knocked on his door, crossed my fingers, pulled him by his T-shirt the moment he opened the door, made sure he was okay with the situation, kissed him, helped him out of that T-shirt and the rest of his clothes, undressed myself, pushed him to the sofa, put a condom on him, got him inside me, fucked him with an urgency I hadn’t known before, had a stupendous orgasm, made sure he also did, and left without saying a single word.
“Is that what you’ve been trying to talk to me about all day?” I asked.
“Not really, but since we already started. Tell me, what does Victor have to say about this arrangement of ours?”
“Nothing, we’re non-exclusive. Not that it’s any of your fucking business!”
That was a red line for me. If he really needed it, I could—reluctantly—talk with David about how, after that first night, I had kept going to his apartment, looking for sex but never for a conversation; how at some point he’d also started coming to my place; and how we’d managed to exchange keys to each other’s places while uttering no words but both understanding that would make our nightly visits easier—and perhaps more frequent.
If David needed it, we could talk about how not having any strings attached had meant a more audacious sex life than when we’d officially been a couple.
We could talk about how we were never this hot, horny, and needy for one another when we were in a formal relationship except perhaps in those first weeks when we were still friends messing around.
