stood there for a moment, gawking at each other. His eyes were striking—green at the outer edges and brown around the pupil—and I would later learn that from a distance, they appeared as a warm butterscotch color. In the moment, I was struck by their dichotomy. And his beauty. He had the kind of bone structure and facial symmetry that was rare for us regular humans—high cheekbones, angular jaw, wide mouth, and a shave that I envied. (Being of Italian descent, mine only lasted until mid-afternoon.) The man’s eyebrows settled into something that hinted at mischief.
“I’m so sorry,” he exclaimed with a smile, revealing a slight gap-tooth that only added to his appeal. Too much perfection was only so palatable.
“It’s my fault,” I told him. Luckily, I’d taken the brunt of it. I grabbed a nearby bar napkin and tried, unsuccessfully, to mop it up. My shirtfront looked like a crime scene. The man continued to apologize, and I waved off his concern while wondering if it might help if I turned my shirt inside out.
“You’re the author.” His expression was horrified but still with that impish grin as he placed one hand over his open mouth. He grabbed my arm tightly. “Come with me.”
He dragged me past the who’s who of the New York literary scene—editors, publishing house executives, agents, and several veteran authors, many who’d known my father for decades. Sprinkled in were the critics, reporters, reviewers, and more than a few of my contemporaries, some of them bitter that my pulp fiction had surpassed their literary masterpieces in the horse race that was the New York Times Best Seller List.
“Are you kidnapping me?” I finally asked him as we traveled through a doorway, above which was a sign marked EXIT.
“Maybe,” he said with a conspiratorial lift to his voice. We ended up in the stairwell. How he knew where it was located, I had no idea. The door closed behind us with a soft snick, and I debated whether a setting such as this might work well for a murder scene or if a badly lit stairwell was just too tropey.
“You didn’t have to go to such lengths to get my autograph,” I said. Murder was still a possibility, but there was an equal chance that he’d brought me here for an illicit tryst. Those chances increased exponentially as the handsome stranger began unbuttoning his shirt.
“This is better than being murdered,” I mused aloud. Even in the dull fluorescent lighting, I could see that my companion had abs for days.
“Murdered?” he said with a bemused grin. “I’m giving you my shirt.” He shrugged and the soft, blue material fell away like a robe from a lover’s shoulder. He caught the fabric in one hand and held it out to me. “Here. Take it.”
“Your shirt?” No one had ever given me the literal shirt off their back.
“Don’t you have to give a reading? You don’t want to do it with a stained shirt, do you?”
“I guess not.” He seemed more concerned with my presentation than I was, which was flattering, in a way. I gripped the soft, blue fabric in one hand. The material felt as though it were spun from clouds. “I can’t take your shirt. It looks—” I’d meant to say “expensive,” but instead of coming up with an appropriate descriptor, this wordsmith smelled his shirt.
“That’s nice,” I said.
“The shirt or the scent.”
“Both,” I admitted with a sheepish smile.
“They’re Issey Miyake.”
“I’m sorry. What?”
The man laughed, and I found myself loving the sound of it. “He’s a Japanese fashion designer. He did the shirt and the scent. I wear them together. Seems fitting.”
“Right. Of course.” The cologne wasn’t the highlight of the aroma. I got lost again in the man’s arresting eyes. He was younger than me but sure of himself in a way that seemed utterly authentic. My friends and I came from affluent families, still trying to prove we were worth the cost of our Ivy League educations—to our parents, our lovers, each other. The writers in my circle were by far the most insecure, riddled with anxiety and existential grief, our self-worth hinging on the number of zero’s in our book advances and whether the New York Times deemed our work worthy of a review.
Pretty pathetic, all in all.
“Your nipples are hard,” I said stupidly and shook my head at my slip. “I mean, you’re cold. Here, take mine.” I unbuttoned my own shirt and handed it over, thankful that I’d been exercising regularly.