ELLA
“Awash and wave?” Kam comments. “And I like the all white,” he adds before I can respond. His four fingers do a half wave as he gestures toward my hands.
“The manicurist suggested it.” I peek down at my nails as the waiter arrives with a tall skinny glass of unsweetened tea. “Thank you,” I manage to get out in time for him to give a smile and nod.
The Fooleries has been remodeled since we were last here. Seated on the outside balcony, there’s a heat lamp already blazing in each of the corners. The balcony only has three small circular iron tables, fitted with a robin’s-egg-blue tablecloth. Everything else is white. The menus, napkins and single candle burning in the center of each table.
“You really like the white?” I question before popping one of the almonds from a small bowl of mixed nuts that was on the table into my mouth. Kam loves the walnuts, so I leave all of those pieces for him.
“Very in. Very chic … Angels and virgins wear white, but I’ve always thought it looks just as good on the sinful.”
Kam’s comment gets a laugh from me. “I wasn’t sure at first,” I say and shrug, lifting the glass up, “but I like it.” The last bit comes out raspy and my fingers press against my throat before I sip the cold beverage.
When I set the glass down and peer back at Kam, his expression is riddled with concern. “How are you feeling?”
An anxiousness sweeps through my body at the realization that the pain I felt was a reminder of what Zander did to me last night. More specifically, my cries and moans for him to fuck me harder, but for Kam, it’s a reminder of something entirely different.
“Fine,” I answer easily, reaching for the cloth napkin and laying it across my lap.
“Well, you look beautiful. You look—” His words falter and I’m not sure what he planned to say, but what comes out after an exhale is only a reiteration of his first statement. “Just beautiful.”
“It was Zander’s suggestion,” I confide in him in an attempt to usher the conversation away from wherever Kam’s carefully navigating. I know my throat, my voice even, has to be a reminder of what I did while at the center. “He said I should get my hair and nails done today. This morning he handed me a credit card, then told me he made appointments and that Silas would be driving me, so I should get my ass ready to go and be pampered.” I add for good measure, “And if I wasn’t ready on time, he’d spank me.”
Kam’s movements stop midway as he was picking up his napkin and the silverware clangs on the table. I can’t help but laugh.
“Well I’m glad one of us is smiling,” he chides.
“Oh please,” I admonish him in return, a genuine smile pulling up my spirits. “Since when did you become such a prude?”
Humor lights his eyes. He even smiles as he rearranges the cutlery and places the napkin across his lap as I have. “He’s controlling.”
“Like James was,” I reply without considering what I was saying until the comparison left me. Another wave of that anxiousness comes over me, but it quickly vanishes.
“And I told you to dump his ass too.” There’s a fondness, a nostalgia in Kam’s comment.
“I remember that,” I say and my smile falters only slightly. The rawness in my throat comes back but this time it carries a prick to the back of my eyes as well.
“I mean, obviously I was wrong about that one,” Kam says offhandedly and I realize we’re speaking about him. Talking about James in the past tense. I don’t have long to dwell on the thought. “He went from a good time,” Kam adds, lowering his voice at the insinuation, “to taking all your time.”
I can’t help but smile, even if there’s a painful longing in my chest. “He took his time, though.” I roll my eyes at the thought and resort to picking up my iced tea once again. It’s tart, making my lips pucker after a sip before I reach for the sugar.
“What was it? It took him what, a year?” he asks me, and it’s easy. It turns easy, thinking about how we came to fall in love. How he went from a man I wanted and enjoyed the occasional fling with, to a man who only wanted me and who I couldn’t imagine living my life without.
“Every third Saturday for …” I trail off, peeking up past the heat lamp and spot a small blue jay on the roof. “Maybe four months it was just that one night?”
“At Monet’s, right?” I nod in response, the memories filtering back to me. It was a good time. That’s all he was. We ran in the same circles. Knew the same people. One night, after I’d been avoiding him, teasing him, leading him on …we hit it off and had a romp in the sheets. It was a fling, a damn good fling. I thought it would only be that one night, but the next month, at the same gathering, he made it known in no uncertain terms that I’d be with him again that night.
“And then it was house calls and almost nine months later is when he got in that fight with Taylor.”
Kam’s brow raises and he lifts his coffee mug and then says, “Oh yes, and that would be the moment I told you to dump his ass.”
Biting down on my lip I remember that entire ordeal as Kam continues, “He couldn’t call you his girlfriend, but he could start some shit with Taylor.” Taylor’s no one really. He’s the son of a hotshot, who’s hot as fuck himself. He got through life on good looks. He’s nice enough, but he wasn’t looking for anything more than a good time. Which was fine, ’cause that’s what I was after too. I figured James only wanted me the once, or else he would have called. He would have reached out. So I made my move for Taylor and that’s when James intervened.
With a one-shoulder shrug I remind him, “I might have been the one to start it … technically.”
Kam’s laugh is as genuine as it is enthusiastic. “That’s right,” he says and his smile is contagious. “Now I remember that reporter with the press article that we had to pay off.”
I hum at the memory. “The truth was much better than fiction.” As the waiter brings the avocado caprese salad, which looks divine drizzled with a thick balsamic vinegar, I lean back in the chair to give him room.