Chapter 1
Amelia woke up with a start. It took a second to take hold of her surroundings and to remember that she was in her house bedroom, in a small room she had shared with herself ever since she was old enough not to share it with her sister. It was her room. It was not where she thought she had been mere minutes ago, when she had dreamt of being touched and kissed in a lush hotel room. No, it was her bedroom. Someone with a good hearing would have heard her say «Thank God».
Less then a minute after her having waken up, her alarm went off and she decided that if the universe was conspiring against her being fast asleep in a dreamless state, then she might actually get up and read for work. Work.
How could she go to work today. She was sure everyone would know, that from the moment she would step out of the block of flats she was living in, people who stare and point at her. It was going to be one of those hated days when she would feel as if the center of the world, and in a no good way. Fuck.
Work. Was she really needed there, was she going to be missed … maybe, maybe not, maybe she was feeling sick, was she feeling sick, uhm, maybe if she did not wear any make up, she could pass as sick. Yes, that could be the best idea she had come up with yet. No make up, no feeling good face, and the idea that she was about to be feverish. How does one fake a fever?
Really, no one would miss her at work. no one would realise that the office is not opened when they would come in, no one would realise that no one fetched the coffee, no one would realise that nothing is prepared for the various shoots of the day. Yeah. Right. She was screwed hard. She had to go to work even if it was going to be the worst day ever.
Reading her book in the subway, she was trying to act as if it was a day like any other. It was. Really was. It had to be. Everyday is different to the next but in essence they are the same. even the day after. Especially the day after. Otherwise ackwardness was bound to ensue. Reading the adventure of a lonely woman was not the best idea, but ti kept her mind occupied. So occupied that she stopped reading after two station to finish the way to the center of town looking outside.
Snow was slowly falling on SkyCity and gave it a look of fairytale. For now. Once the car will drive through it, once the people will smash innocent looking flakes under their dirty shoes, once pollution will makes its day work, then the lovely whiteness of the flakes would turn to grey and to mush. Snow was falling on SkyCity and Amelia was wondering if it was going to be the metaphor for her life.
Living magical moments only to have life crash trhough it and dessimate the lovely thought, the happy touchs, the not so innocent laughters, and live everyone behind with a sense of having known something eutiful only to have life taken it back from them.
Sighing, she left the subway train and walked though the loud and warm corridors only to take a deep breath once outside. The polluted air of SkyCity and the cold snap behind it. She really loved this town. It was hers since birth and even if she had not been to the good part of it until quite recently, she had known most of it by heart before she had reached puberty.
A girl should not run with boys, but her gang of lady had been running with the guys for so long that only the sudden change of shape and forms had taken a toll on thei adventure. She had started to eye men with suspicion then, when the innocence had started to leave them slowly. Suspicion toward men and then the big love of her young life who had finally dumped her during her first year of university. He had discovered other girls, other bodies, other way to have sex and he had been clear. She was boring.
The key entered the hole and clicked, her fingers touched the alarm screen and deactivated the alarm. Before she knew it she had run through all the usual morning chore and was just waiting for the first assistant to arrive so she could make a dash to the coffee shop at the corner.
A medium latte. Two large americano. A double shot flatwhite with soy. A double shot latte with the syrup of the day on top. A green tea.
The good thing was that this order was well known by all parties involved and the barista knew her time of arrival at the coffee shop. Unless there was a ridiculous long queue, she was sure her order had been started before she even entered the shop. Matthew was a lovely genius who had figured out the new assistant of Josh Marshall was not to be fucked around with.
A sister, two little brothers, an army of cousins and a mother that did not care for much. Amelia had grown up knowing how to make herself heard and obeyed.
How to be touched and loved, that was another story. But she wasn’t about to enter into those line of thoughts as she greated Johan and yet another lost puppy behind him.
«What’s his favorite? - A double shot peppermint mocchachino»
Hipster where getting worse and worse in their choice of beverage but she was not paid enought to complain about the taste of Johan’s string of boyfriends.
«Okay, see you in a minute. - Can we have muffins please? or, you like doughnuts …?»
Great. Doughnuts. Right. This was going to be a very long day if even from the beginning of it hints at something that had happened the day before where spoken using a crytpic language she had no knwledge of.
«There are leftovers. I’ll get muffins. Don’t bother with the toilet, someone broke them and repair should arrive soon. Ish. That’s what they said. Don’t break anything.»
This last sentence was directed toward the newbie that would be gone as soon as he would have a coffee in his belly and a stale doughnuts from the previous day. Johan needed to find a wealthy man that would take care of him, not another starving artist who thought that earning mo,ney was for sell-outs. Those were the worst. She knew, she was enrolled at Carlyle, the local liberal uni that thanksfully was doing a reach-out programm for talented kids with no money in their parents bank account. She was poor, she had talent, and she had been accepted with a full scholarship. But it meant having to deal on a daily basis with the same kind of poeple that Johan loved to date. The worst.
Then again. Who was she to judge, with her second hand clothes and a liking for expansive silk to wrap her hair with. To each its own.
Coffee. Smell of coffee. Lovely coffee. Soon she would feel alive again.
«Gimme five and it’s all yours!» shouted the barista as she appeared in the not so crowded place. Smiling she walked to the till and asked for 5 muffins, bran, vegan, the kind she rolled her eyes at and asked for a non-vegan cupcake, the kind she would eat waiting for her coffee and then be able to fake liking the bran monstruosity. Not that they were not good, but no, she really did not like them.
The sweet smell of cinnamon made her sigh with pleasure. it was winter, it was a time she loved more than anything. People were overdressed and she liked nothing better than to see how artfully they were piling thigns on, to create a unique person under the layering.
«Hello there pretty lady, have you thought of my proposal?» George was asking her to marry him, once more and once more she was going to say «no, ask me in twenty years» and they would laugh and share a bit of gossip as to what was happening in the street, in the neighborhood. She would miss all that once she had to go back upstate for the begining of the year, she really would miss SkyCity but she had this semester in the countryside to take up first before coming back to her beloved town.
Walking back with the muffins and the coffees, plus the green tea for Josh, Amelia was smiling. She had to. She was happy even if slightly miffed at why she was happy. She really should not be happy. except she was feeling good and usually when she was feeling good, she felt happy. But why should she be feeling good. Wasn’t what she had done somethnig that good girls, normal girls, do not under any circumstances do?
The strong desire to trow her coffee to the wall and walk back to her flat, and hop in her bed to hide under the covers was very tempting. But first, first she had to calm herself down and stop over analysing things. Maybe good girls did that. But most probably not.
The team had made it while she was out and coffee round was quickly put behind her as she walked in the studio to prepare it for a family shooting; Why Josh kept on making those when he was the hottest photograph in the state was beyond her, but she wasn’t paid to think, only to do. She was not even paid to think about it.
Not hearing josh enter the room, she jumped when he whispered «Hello» in her ears and almost dumped her list.
«Don’t do that ever again Mister Marshall, or I may end up punching you in the face when you least expect it, oh don’t look at me like that, I have been known to do such things, so beware.»
Josh chuckled.
«It’s Josh, and Terrence wishes to have your number by the way. Almost gave it to him but you know, I thought I’d ask before.
- Mister Marshall, sir, as long as I am your employee I will call you Mister Marshall as I have been calling you for the apst weeks. And there is no way you are giving out my number to this charming man. Thank you for asking.
- Amelia. Please, can we talk about it, at least?
- The name calling or the phone number giving?» she gave him her best smile and turned around, going back to her duties.
That was the worst idea ever she thought. Having gone to work after the events of the day before. Worst idea ever. Damn fool that she was, thinking that everything was going to be fine. No, it was not going to be fine. Ever. Three weeks and the ordeal of having to be spending her days with John was going to be over. Three weeks. She could do it. She definitely could do it. It was not as if they had shared fluids in the office and in the studio and dropped coffee all over the floor that now had the kind of stain that would never want to leave. Yeah, three weeks were going to be an ordeal.
Chapter 2
John looked at his intern running away from him in a pace that indicated that she wasn’t running away but really was. Damn. he thought he would handle the situation well, but apparently he sucked at morning afters. Reson number one why one should not sleep with his employees. Ackwardness was going to ensue. And the kid was good so there was no way he was going to find a ridiculous reason to have her shipped away to another studio. She was efficient, intelligent, always got him his green tea without frowning at his habit and even accepted Jhan’s boyfriends for what they were. Fuck.
He had yet to look at the previous day’s picture but he was ready to bet they were good. She had interrupted a rather crowded sex act and even if he took him a while to realise that his intern what shooting them after having walked on the scene, he had seen her handle the camera like a pro she wanted to become. And because there had abeen a shoot before the whole mess they did on the floor, the lighting was perfect and the backdrop still there. He had to look at the pictures and then talk to her. He liked her, a lot. he liked her style, her no nonsense and her laugh when the mailman who was not funny tried to crack a joke or two.
Amelia was a good kid and this had just made things … complicated.
He had liked the fact that she had not called in sick, though he probably would have understood and accepted any excuse she would have felt like throwing his way. But she had done what she was always doing, she had shown profesionalism when he had not. He really had messed up by asking her to call him John. Then again, had he? he would need to call Terrence and tell him that the young lady did not want to share her digits with him. That, he was not looking forward too. But the athlete would have to deal with a little bit of human rejection, even if he hated it.
John smiled thinking of that, yeah, that would do Terry some good to have someone say no to him instead of dropping everything to answer to the demand made by his sensual mouth.
That did not tell him what he was to be doing with Amelia and the whole mess he had gotten them into. But first, he was going to have to wrok and forget for a minute his own complicated eprsonal life. On the abck of his mind he could hear his mother telling him that it was because he liked drama too much, that he could not live without a lot of it in his life, and really, really John, do you realise that you are hurting everyone with your little real life drama. There had been one person hurt alright and it had been him, after having had to go through the whole «I can not believe you think you are one of those homosexual» phase. His aprents still thought he had been on drugs and that it had tempered with his sould and brain on a scale no one could realise yes, his parents were really found of those theories and had made his life hell by trying to reverse what the public school program had done to their son.
He still could hardly believe he had managed to get out of that parental system. But once every while, his mother was popping back on the back of his mind, reminding him how much of a drama queen screw up he was and that really, John, we did not bring you up to become like them. Thank you mother.
The day went by, from a shooting to the next and a lot of the usual useless drama that was taking placein his office. The trouble with hiring high drama queens as his entourage for shoots was to drown in the crazyness that it was. Amelia was strangely well equipped to deal with it in a sense that largely seemed to be a «Are you talking to me? because if you are I’m going to punch you in the face» look that had even his most crazy volatile guy run for his life. Something hilarious to watch, until the day came when he was at the other end of the look and yeah, she was scary. Adorable and fun but scary intense when need be.
She definitely was coming as paid staff once her studies were finished.
Alone in the office John finally took the time to pause his official schedule for a moment and look at the unofficial work that had been done the night before. Black and white photographs of him, of Terry, of some of the boys that had started with them during this unexpected party, photos of hands on hands on bodies and smiles, sigh that could almost be heard coming from the screen, legs over legs and tongue on turgescent throbbing body parts. Some where not as good as they could be but there were some, some were he could feel, he could see, he could sense.
He had not let Amelia be behind the camera before then, only because she was the intern and there to learn how an office of high strung photograph was like, she was not there to take pictures on the studio time. If she had adice that were needed she could ask, but no photo time until John was to find her ready to take some. She was a second year intern, she knew the role she had to play, the rope she had to learn and she had been okay with that from the start. And john, well, John was sarting to regret his decision not to involve the young woman in his studio. She was good. There were areas that could be refined, but from what he could see was an impromptu live shoot of a sex orgy, she had done quite better than anyone could have done with a limited knowledge of the subject, the studio and the material that she was using.
He had a few projects on the side and maybe he could ask her if she wanted to come with. Nothing crazy but those kind of sexy shoot that he really liked to do on his own so that all parties were sure of who had access to the pictures. Yes, he could see her helping him, from what he could be seeing.
His phone rang again and saw it was Terry.
«Hey man. - Sooo what’s up in SkyCity? - Everything’s good, weird but good. - Ackward day after? - Slightly. How are you doing? - We made it safely to the other side of the country, game tomorrow. Coach is being an ass with me. Nothing new. Do you have new for me? - Oh boy do I have news for you. - Really? - No. I told you she would say no. She said no. Man, you are going to have to work her up if you want her number. And I told her she could cll me John and if looks could kill, I’d be singing to the Lord right now. - She said no? Why? I’m a perfect catch! - She is better than you, in so many ways. - Better than I, please explain, because last night she was like me, we were equal. - Man, you’re a cocky bastard, she is a classy lady, that’s all. - You are not even playing the wingman role you should be playing! That’s so unfair. - What would be unfair would be to play your game and not protect her, that would totally be unfair to her. Because she has no idea of who you are, I mean, you are a cool guy but you take them and ditch them and she does deserve a fabulous man, not that you are not fabulous but we both know that you are not made for a long term relationship and she is not made for one night stands. - Are you playing the big brother for little Amelia? - I am. And she doesn’t want to give you her number. - I like her. I reeeeeally like her. - Of course, you met her waht? - Doesn’t count. I swear. You know, when you see someone and you know, you know that she is the one that is going to make you feel alive? I know myself and you know who I am, where I come from, I don’t know, she made something ting inside - I trust you on your feeling, you know them better than I would, but I also know you as the get them love them throw them and your secrets that you hide so much and coud hurt you if they got out. I know. I won’t give you her number Terry. I won’t. She doesn’t want me to. But if you want to pursue her and woe her, then I will give you my ok. But one single slip and you’re history for her. - Does she have older brothers I should be wary about, I mean, beside you? - Not that I know of. - Oh maaaaan I’m screwed. Fuck. Fuck. I’m late for a team meeting. Ok. Seriously. I like her, a lot and it’s ridiculous. Tell her, ok? - You’re on your own for that, have a good night Terry. Good luck for the game, you know I won’t be watching. - And yet, sexy men in spandex, you of all men should understand the appeal. - Go to your meeting idiot.»
And so Terrence was in like with Amelia. That was going to be an interesting thing to watch. This all thing, was going to be one hell of an interesting thing to live. Playing the big brother role, he never really had to, but it seemed an iteresting role enough. And he had to coax Amelia into trying the way of the nude instead of going to get lost taking some picture she would get bored taking.
Chapter3
Flowers. Girls liked flowers. it was something his endless string of girlfriend had taught him, even though more often than not it was breaking up flower he was sending than the kind he was trying to get for his new crush.
The first time he had seen her she had ben juggling two phones and a client in front of her and he had barely realised she was a human being and not an android. She was mastering the art of being an assistant like the blonde bimbo at the agency and he was pretty sure those were androids.
She had been in and out of the office all day bringing all the coffees he and his team were requesting and she had even managed to get some papaya for him. He had fallen in love then, when she had found papayas. That and the fact that she had a delightful smile.
When he had realised she had walked on him being involved in a sex act with men, he had widely panicked, crazy panicked. That his best buddy and his assistants were involved was one thing, they had been having sexcapade together for a long time and they were not about to ditch his secret, but she was new, she was unknown and she knew who he was and he was screwed. She had entered the room, saw them, had frozen, and had proceeded to drop everything donuts, coffees and papaya on the floor. He was involved into getting a fabulous blowjob at the time but he was not as involved in the scne as he had been a minute before. She was supposed to flee, she had been supposed to flee and what she did was to grab a camera and walk toward them, clicking away and immersing herself into a voyeuristic role. He could say that the mouth of Johan had made him come but it was her hips rolling as she had moved herself toward them. The movement of her hips and he had been gone.
And then, then she had joined them. There had been a lulll once the guys had finished one another and she had run to make some tea as the coffee were out of order. Both him and Josh had looked at one another and wondered what was going to happen. It was quite unexpected, scary and exciting. She had made the tea and once je two other guys had said they were going, she had disapeared again. Doors had been closed and keys turned and as far as both men were concernend they were alone in the studio, left to their own device to rock one another’s world as they knew how to to it.
It was then he had heard the distinct sounds of lights being turned of and a huge take of breath. Fuck. Josh had looked at him on top of his tea cup. And a shoeless goddess had entered the studio, shy like je had been when he had gone to his first prostitute, but with such intent in her eyes that once again he had heard and felt that pang inside him. Second later his mouth was on her and he did not regret a single moment of their moments together. She had melted against him and he had spent too much time looking at his white hand against her dark chocolate skin, something he had never really thought he would do, having a black lady against him. It was against a lot of thing he had grow up with, but he like everything he had done since then that had deviated from his upbringing, it only brought him joy and pleasure. he had not expected Josh to join them. josh was a man’s man and had never shown any interest in women, nor into joinging him for mixed sex parties. But there he was, kissing his back and carressing Amelia’s skin at the same time.
That night, last night, had been crazy intense and Terrence was hard thinking about it. And things were a bit muddled in his mind too. he had been in lust with many a woman, had been in lust with many a man, but beside josh who had been his partner in crime for the past years, no one had sticked around longer to know him longer than a few days, a few weeks at best. They never got to know that he was a guy from the South, one of those whose family was proud to have some hardcore white supremacist in their family and that would want his skin if they know even had a hint that he liked both men and women in his bed and that now, now he had the biggest teenage crush on a small finely shaped afro-american lady with the warmest smile a mile around. Last night had been so intense that it had taken a long night of sleep and a travel accross the country with his team mate to realise the imact of what he was doing with himself.
He liked josh. And now he like Amelia. And he was an All American football player that had been selected among the five best players of the season. And fuck.
Camelia. She probably liked camelia. He could see her wearing one above her ear. Yeah. He was going to send her camelias.