“If you had taken me up on it, then you would've had your article.”

“That's what I don't understand. Why not just give it to me?”

He takes a few steps forward.

We are so close that I can feel his breath on my face. It has a slight minty fresh scent and it makes my knees weak.

“I didn't give it to you because you have to learn that you can't just get everything you want.”

I furrow my brows.

Anger rises out of me and I raise my hand.

Before I can slap him, he catches my wrist and pulls it aside.

I have no idea what came over me. I've never hit another person before, but for some reason this man knows exactly what to say to get a rise out of me.

“You think that's the kind of person that I am,” I say, pulling my wrist away from him. “You think I always get what I want?”

“I've seen where you grew up. I've seen your parents’ palatial estate.”

“Do you also see this? Do you see the studio apartment where I live? Do you smell the urine that permeates from the parking lot outside that the local homeless people always use as their toilet? I don't take any money from my parents and I thought that was clear. Not that I need to explain myself to you.”

“You don't,” he says calmly.

“Yes, you're right. I don't. So why don't you just leave?”

The expression on his face changes as he stares at me without blinking.

“You had no right to publish the article without my permission. I told you that what I said was off the record.”

“I don't need your permission to publish my experience of what happened.” I try to defend myself even though I know that isn’t right.

“Yeah, be that as it may, but I read what you wrote. It had quotes about what I said about writing, my process, and my publishing. You wrote about the money that I made and about everything that I said.”

“How secret could you have wanted it to be?” I ask. “I mean, we just met and you came out and started telling me all of these things about your life.”

Finally, I hit upon something.

A nerve.

His eyes narrow and the blank expression disappears.

“I told you those things because I thought that you were my friend,” he says, his voice is rushed and out-of-control. “I liked you and I haven't liked anyone in a long time.”

“I don't care about that,” I say, lying through my teeth.

I try to shut myself up, but the words just keep coming out without my permission.

“You wanted to sleep with me, so what? That's what women want. We shared a kiss, maybe more than that, but you had to make it weird.”

“Is that all that happened?” Liam asks after a long pause.

The disappointment on his face is the only thing I see.

“Look, I already told you that I didn't mean to write the article. I had every intention of canceling the story, except that I couldn't. I had to write it to not lose my job. I had to do something to try to save this magazine.”

“So, it was just an accident that you sat down and over a few hours wrote 5,000 words.” He challenges me. “Then you sent them to your editor and then made changes to make it a better story. You sat there at your desk for a long time working on this. You thought about what you were going to include and what you were going to exclude. In the end, you wrote it all down, every last bit. Every last bit that was off the record.”

“I don't even understand what the big deal is. You offered to give me a story in exchange for a week with you. I didn't include that part. I didn’t make you out to be a total creep.”

“That is not what I meant and that's not how I meant it. You know that.”

“No, I don't know that. We just met.”

“Yeah,” he says quietly. “I guess we just did.”

His tone of voice changes, and now it is he who looks disappointed, broken even.

Again, I wish that the words that are coming out of my mouth would just stop.

I'm angry and whenever this happens, I always say things that I don't mean.

“You did a wrong thing, Emma. Your editor is going to hear about it,” he says and turns around to walk away from me.

9

Emma

My mouth drops open and I stand here, rigid, unable to move.

I watch him walk out the door and I don't stop him.

The door slams shut and I hear his footsteps on the landing, eventually disappearing down the staircase.

Is this how it's going to end? There has to be more.

We haven't talked about everything.

I continue standing here.

I can't move. Finally, something snaps. I open the door and run downstairs, barefoot. I look up and down the street, but I don't see him anywhere. I walk over to the first stop sign and see a shadowy figure walking away from me.

“Liam! Wait!” I run after him.

It is not advisable to run barefoot in the middle of the night in downtown Los Angeles.

The street is poorly lit, but little bits of light glisten where bottles have shattered.

“Liam! Wait! I'm not wearing any shoes!”

Finally, he turns.

I slow down but continue to walk toward him. We eventually meet up next to an old beat up Volkswagen Beetle that has been parked on the same street ever since I moved in here.

I used to think that the engine didn't work, but they're pretty strict with parking tickets around here and the car is religiously moved from one side of the street to another for street cleaning.

“You can't tell my editor.” I plead with him. “You're right. You said all that stuff was off the record and that means I shouldn’t have written it. If you talk to her and you tell her what happened, they'll have to print a retraction and then they'll fire me.”

I feel my voice trembling.

The cool air feels good against my face, waking me up a little bit from my drunken stupor.

He tilts his head slightly to the side and with the streetlamp high above him, only part of his face becomes visible.

His jaw is strong and chiseled and his Adam's apple is pronounced.

He has his hands planted firmly in the pockets of his rather tight jeans, which hug his body in all the right places.

“I'm sorry that I did that. I’m really sorry. I shouldn’t have done it. I was upset with you, angry that you pulled away from me,” I admit, suddenly realizing that all of this has to do with my vanity rather than anything else.

Was that it?

Was that why I even wrote the article in the first place?

To get his attention?

“This isn’t an excuse or defense, but Alex really hurt me and when I came out there, we kissed and I really wanted you. You made me feel something that was the opposite of all this anger, disappointment, and hate that I had within me. I really liked kissing you. I wanted to take it further, but you stopped. Then you made that offer and I don't know, it just set me off.”

“I didn't mean to offend you,” Liam says with his hair falling in his face.

He looks down at the ground, shuffling his feet a little bit and then looks up at me.

“I wanted to get to know you better. That offer, that arrangement, that wasn't just some sort of sexual contract. I just wanted to spend some time with you. I knew that you were leaving and you had to go back, but I didn't want that to happen.”