Record, Rewind (2 page)

I shook my head and started climbing again.

When I finally pushed open the door to the roof, the chill of the late November night hit me. Down below, in the city, it was probably warmer, but up here the wind whistled, slicing through my hoodie as if it weren’t even there. Luckily I was inured to the cold. I couldn’t afford to heat my apartment after all, so it wasn’t like I wasn’t used to shivering.

Damien, however, cursed when the wind hit him. “Holy shit,” he said. “Why do you come up here to smoke instead of on the street?”

“It’s quiet up here,” I told him. “No one to bother me.”

“Ouch,” he said. “Sorry for intruding.”

I shot him a quick glare. “That’s not what I meant,” I said, walking around to the lee of the doorway—my favorite hiding spot from the wind. I crouched down, my back to the wall. It was definitely calmer here, and one of the vents was only a few feet away, making a pocket of distinctly warmer air.

To my utter shock, he slid down the wall next to me, so close that if I lost my balance I would fall into him. It was so... so
forward.
So unlike the respectful boy I’d known.

Every nerve on my body came to life.

...Well,
I thought.
Shit.
My inner vocabulary had taken a serious hit in Damien’s presence, just like it always had.

It’d been seven years. I’d hoped my attraction to him had dimmed in that time. The same attraction that had kept me from ever having a boyfriend because I was certain—
certain—
that the only one for me was Damien Colton. Or, as I knew him, Dalton Rooker.

My cheeks burned with something more than embarrassment, and the hood over my head was stifling, trapping the heat of my sudden desire inside my sweatshirt. I couldn’t breathe. He was so close. In the brightness of the Manhattan night, he was a statue of black and white, pale skin and dark clothes, crouching next to me all broad shoulders and powerful thighs. His messy dark hair spilled over his face and the collar of his coat, and in the cold his breath steamed hot between us.

He gave me a smile, and it was wicked and so much
older
than I remembered. “Got a light?” he asked.

I’d been staring at him. Of course I had. I tore myself away from him and rooted through my purse again. I found my lighter and another cigarette. With shaking hands, I held the cigarette out to him.

He took it from me, our fingers so close I could feel the heat of his skin against my fingertips. Popping it into his mouth he closed his eyes with pleasure.

I put my own cigarette between my lips. Cupping my hand around the end, I lit it after three tries and then handed it over to Damien. He took it from me without comment, lit up, and together we pulled on our cigarettes, held the smoke in our lungs, and then released it into the cold night air.

The zip and zing of nicotine in my veins calmed me somewhat. Cleared my head. Let me think.

This is fine, I thought. This is cool. We’ll be done with this in a couple of minutes and then it will be like this never happened.

I could ignore the raging fire under my skin. I’d been without it for years. I could last without it again.

Then Damien turned to me and said, “I don’t believe we’ve introduced ourselves.”

My throat closed and I coughed. He waited for me to finish before he reached across the space between us with a smile, extending a hand for me to shake.

Oh god.
Could I touch him without going up in flames?

Did I care?

Swallowing hard, I met his palm with my own.

Warmth enveloped my hand. Rough fingers, smooth palm, and everywhere our skin touched I felt tiny bonfires explode into flame. My heart stopped beating for a second time that night, trapping my breath high in my throat.

“The name is Dalton,” he said.

Dalton,
I thought dimly. He was giving me his real name. Might as well return the favor.

“Cassandra,” I replied. I loosened my grip, but he didn’t let go.

Instead he was staring at me intently, watching my face in the dim light.

“That’s funny,” he said. “I thought your name was Lauren.”

L
auren is my middle name, and that’s what I went by when we were in high school together.

That’s right. I had known Damien Coleton back when he was Dalton Rooker from Middleton, Pennsylvania, and he had known me. Or, probably more accurately, known
of
me. Maybe.

You know the story. I was the nerdy girl, always concentrating on her studies, and he was the popular guy—athletic, intelligent, and a voice to die for that always landed him the starring role in the annual school musical. We’d run in different circles. Our eyes had met, maybe once or twice, across a crowded hall. I’d concentrated on school, and he’d racked up the extracurriculars. I’d been the valedictorian of our class, so he
had
to have heard of me at least once because I had to give a speech at our graduation. I’d had my pick of schools, but he’d had his pick of scholarships.

We’d both been going places back then.

But only Damien had gotten there.

Of all the elevators in all of New York City, Damien Colton just
had
to walk into mine.

Now on the roof of the hotel where I cleaned up after people who didn’t know how to use modern plumbing, I wanted to quietly fold up and die.

I yanked my hand back. “I don’t go by Lauren anymore. It’s Cassie now,
Damien.”

He grinned at me. “So you
do
know me.”

“Of course I fucking know you,” I snapped. “Who doesn’t?”

Taking a drag of his cigarette, he pondered this question. “Good point,” he said, smoke fluttering from between his teeth. “Which was why it was so weird that I got on an elevator with a pretty girl my age and she pretended not to know who I was.”

Pretty girl! my brain shrieked like a parrot on crack. Pretty girl, pretty girl, he called me a pretty girl!

I told that part of my brain to shut the fuck up. It was nothing but trouble and I certainly didn’t care what a handsome, sexy, talented near-total stranger thought of me.

“Maybe she just wasn’t a fan,” I said.

He tilted his head. “Are you not a fan?” he asked. “I’m not going to be mad if you aren’t. But usually people
know.
They don’t always say something, but I can tell.” His smile returned. “You’re a bad actress.”

I scowled at him and turned away, sticking my cigarette between my lips and giving it an aggressive puff.
What a jerk,
I thought. The Dalton I’d known had been modest. I didn’t like this Damien guy.

I still found him ludicrously attractive, though, and was violently reminded of this when he leaned over and nudged me, sending shivers over my skin like ripples in a pond. “So what have you been up to since high school?”

My heated blood cooled immediately upon the sudden clenching of my stomach in shame.

“Nothing,” I said. I pulled on my cigarette again.

“Oh, come on. It’s been what...six? Seven years? Jesus, we’re almost old fogeys. Seven years. You never friended me on Facebook so I can’t keep up with you.”

“I don’t do Facebook,” I told him. “I don’t really have time for it.”

The gentle scent of pants on fire wafted past my nose.
Yeah, I have a really tight schedule of drinking a bottle of wine or two and watching whole seasons of TV shows in one go.
The truth was I was too ashamed to look at Facebook. I didn’t want everyone to see what a failure I’d turned out to be.

“So? Now you have to dish. Come on. Why didn’t you want to talk to me?”

I glared at him. The end of his cigarette flared cherry-red as he took another smug puff. I hadn’t known until now that it was possible to smoke smugly. “Probably because we aren’t friends and were never friends?” I said.

He blinked. “Oh,” he said, and I suddenly realized that this was the sort of person who thought everyone was his friend by default.

Awkward silence intruded and I tried to ignore it and smoke my cigarette as fast as possible so I could leave. Smoke burned through my throat and filled my lungs and I savored the nicotine.

“Sorry,” he said at last. “I thought that since I recognized you after all this time that we must have been friends. I mean, I remembered your name and talking to you and everything.”

I looked at him sharply, but he was just watching the smoke from the end of his cigarette slowly rise into the air, curling over and in on itself until it rose above our little alcove and the roaring wind whipped it away.

“We never spoke in high school,” I told him.

He frowned. “We didn’t?”

I would have remembered. Believe me, I would have remembered,
I wanted to tell him, but that would be admitting my huge and embarrassing crush and even seven years after the fact that seemed like a very bad idea. Besides, he was a rock star and I was the maid in the hotel he was staying in.

So I just said, “Nope.”

“That’s weird,” he said. “I could have sworn we did.”

“Well, we didn’t.”

“Oh.” He looked at me from the corner of his eye. “You seem mad about that.”

I stiffened and forced myself to scoot away from him. The heat of his body and the smell of leather and hard-living man retreated. My pounding blood subsided a little bit. “I’m not mad,” I said. “I’m just annoyed. I still have to catch my subway home and I’m exhausted after a long night’s work, so you’ll forgive me if I don’t fall at your feet like your fangirls.”

“Yeesh,” he said. “You really are mad at me. Whatever it was I did, I’m sorry.”

I had no idea how to respond to that. “Whatever,” I said. “It doesn’t matter.”

“If you say so.”

“I do.”

He was quiet for another minute. “This smoke break turned out awkward,” he said at last. “This is the least relaxing smoke break I’ve ever had.”

I couldn’t help myself. I snorted at that.
Dammit.
It’s hard to keep someone at a distance when you laugh at their jokes.

“We should start over,” he added.

I huddled down into my hoodie. My toes were starting to get cold. “Start what over?” I asked.

“Our smoke break. I swear to god, I just wanted to catch up with you.”

I blinked. “You did?”

“Yes. Well, and get a cigarette. I mean, I try not to because I have to keep the pipes in working order, but yeah. I was like, ‘holy shit, that’s Lauren Bell, what are the odds?’ And you were going up to the roof for a cigarette and I just...” He trailed off and frowned. “Now that I’m thinking about it, if you hadn’t recognized me that would be really awkward, wouldn’t it? A random guy wanting to follow you to the roof?”

“Yeah,” I said. “I don’t recommend saying that to anyone unless you’ve introduced yourself first.”

“But we know each other.”

“You could have been mistaken.”

He shook his head. “Not about you,” he replied, and his eyes found mine in the strange twilight of New York on a cloudy night.

For some reason his words made the blood leave my face.
Why not about me?

But I couldn’t ask that. “Why didn’t you say anything in the elevator, then?” I asked him instead.

To my shock, he glanced away, and I could have sworn he was embarrassed. “Well, to be honest, I wasn’t one hundred percent certain it was you until I saw you walk.”

I stared at him. Silence stretched out. From the streets below I heard a car horn blare.

He shifted under my gaze. “What?” he finally said. “You have a distinctive walk!”

I stared at him some more.

“Stop looking at me like that!”

He knew how I walked. He remembered me because of the way I walked.

He
remembered
my walk.

I had no idea how to process that information.

I looked away from him and stared at the vent in front of me. Steam snuck out from between its metal slats only to be swept away by the wind almost immediately. Taking one last drag I stubbed out my cigarette and reached for my purse.

“Please don’t leave!” Damien said, and he grabbed my arm.

Even through the thick fabric of my sweatshirt I could feel the heat of his hand, and for a brief moment I closed my eyes.

How many nights had I dreamed of his hands on me? Even when I was a naive freshman in high school, so virginal that I had only just figured out the mechanics of sex, never been kissed, and certainly never been touched by a boy, I imagined Dalton’s hands on me. He’d been born to be a star, and he was the star at our high school, the star of everything. Everyone knew him, wanted to be him, wanted to be with him. He dated girls older than him, skipped over the veterans for starting lineups and coveted spots in clubs and the fine arts, and people didn’t even mind. That’s how good he was.

He’d been in my English class that first year, and I’d spent so much time staring at him from the corner of my eye and doodling little hearts in the margins of my notes that I almost didn’t make a perfect score, even though English was my easiest subject.

And my dreaming didn’t stop when we left high school. No boy in college had measured up to him, and I’d had to focus on my studies anyway...not that it mattered in the end. The money for college had dried up and I’d taken out loans and then the economy cratered and I couldn’t get a job, and so on and so on and so on...

...and even through all that, when I should have been living it up with the conviction that it was now or never for me to have fun, because I was going to spend the rest of my life as a wage slave to pay back the money for a useless degree, I had dreamed of Dalton instead of having a good time with the boys that
did
seem interested in me. Every time a boy kissed me, I imagined it was Dalton. When his band started to shoot up the charts and was suddenly on every radio station, I would close my eyes and imagine that he was singing to me. I started thinking of him as Damien, hugged my pillow at night, touched myself and wished I’d done something—
anything
—to be with him when I’d had the chance.

I should have asked him out. I should have
talked
to him. I should have done
something.