I Love the 80s (19 page)

She still felt it now, as she lurked in the shadows outside Tommy’s personal apartment, far away from the shared accommodation at the town house in the Village. She had a feeling that the term ‘apartment’ meant something different when one was a pop star of international renown and lived in a fancy building on Central Park West. Tommy Seer, she was sure, did not maintain a bright yellow studio with a pull-out futon at such an august address. She imagined he inhabited one of those absurd New York apartments that were forever appearing on shows like
Law & Order
or
Sex and the City
– all shining wood floors, high ceilings, eat-in kitchens, extra dining rooms, and several bedrooms. Jenna had never, personally, met anyone who could afford to live in or near such places, since they probably started at four or five million dollars. Which was nothing to a rock star, of course.

Jenna had decided to watch over Tommy to see whether or not her theory was true. She’d gone over her notes again and again, and she couldn’t believe she’d never noticed it before, but there had been a pattern of incidents leading up to his death. He’d nearly been hit by a car out in front of his apartment building, and after that had had one mishap after another, all of them in the weeks leading up to that night on the Tappan Zee Bridge.

Except, what if they weren’t mishaps? What if someone had been trying to kill him that whole time?

What with the kissing and the whole time-travel thing,
Jenna hadn’t felt she could advance this theory to Tommy. Especially not when he’d spent the day in what sounded like excruciatingly boring meetings as the band prepared for their first video from the new album. The whole band had looked frazzled and hollow-eyed at the end of the day, and Jenna hadn’t had the necessary spine to grab Tommy, inform him they would not be discussing the events of the previous night, and then launch into some explanation about why she thought he might want to be extra careful crossing streets tonight.

Maybe it wasn’t that she lacked the spine. Maybe it was the fact that if she’d actually tried to tell him any of the things she suspected, he would no longer look at her with those green eyes so hot and intense. He would look at her like she was a psycho. Maybe the truth was that she couldn’t bear the thought of it.

So the obvious solution was to watch out for him herself.

Yes, Jenna was essentially stalking Tommy. Across the country in Indiana, the little girl she’d been (and was? How did this time thing work?) was no doubt weeping over her Wild Boys record collection and wishing she could be sitting outside Tommy’s apartment. Jenna remembered those tears, and the force of loving Tommy – it had taken over her whole body, like an extended flu. Jenna remembered believing with all her heart that if she could only place herself in his proximity, she could make him fall in love with her.

But life was much more complicated than she’d understood back then. Sometimes proximity was far more
confusing than it should be. Sometimes it made everything worse.

At least Tommy lived on a convenient street. Jenna could sit across from his building on a bench outside the park and stalk to her heart’s content without raising the ire or notice of the doorman. After all, this was a public park bench in Manhattan. She was free to sit there as long as she liked, enjoying the September evening. And it might well take hours, since she had no idea what time the supposed accident occurred. She only knew it happened sometime tonight.

It was beautiful out. Clear, warm, yet with that slight snap in the air that promised the coming fall. There was the suggestion of autumn in the gentle breeze that ruffled Jenna’s hair every now and again. She was comfortable in the jeans and sweatshirt she’d thrown on after work, complete with slouchy socks and Keds.

The problem was, she had nothing to do while she sat there but think, and the last thing she wanted to do was think. Because there was only one thing to think about, and she was tired of it. Because she couldn’t seem to stop herself from fantasizing, from pretending that she hadn’t stopped him last night, from wondering what might have happened if she’d stayed silent, if she’d pulled him closer rather than pushed him away …

The truth was, Aimee had been right. Jenna understood that now, and didn’t want to. She’d used the fantasy of Tommy Seer to keep herself protected, to hide. And the worst part was, she hadn’t just done it after Adam had
left her. That was understandable. Excusable. But Jenna finally realized that she’d done it long before her engagement had broken up, too. Maybe not consciously. Not deliberately. But no real, live, flesh-and-blood man could live up to the Tommy in her head. Real people were never so understanding, so perfect.

On some level, hadn’t she kept Adam at a distance? Always focused on what
he
was doing – was he going to propose? Was he coming home at a reasonable hour? Was he completely emotionally available? But where was
she
in all of that? Hadn’t she been hiding then, too? Intimacy was terrifying. Dangerous. Hard. Making their whole relationship about Adam’s flaws and needs and failures had, on some level, kept her heart safe. She had never let him penetrate to the secret core of her, the place where she hid the truest part of herself. She’d stayed out of reach, and complained that the man she was supposed to marry didn’t understand her, couldn’t satisfy her, wasn’t enough for her somehow. Who could be?

And understanding all of that, however unpleasant, made her understand Adam in a new way, too. He deserved to be a
necessity
for Marisol, the yoga instructor. Didn’t everyone deserve to be a necessity? Shouldn’t that be the point, really?

Meeting the real Tommy Seer had sent her into turmoil. She could admit it. First, he wasn’t that fantasy in her mind that she’d used as a security blanket all these years. He was real. He wasn’t anything close to perfect. In fact, he was mean sometimes. Cruel. Funny, too, and surprisingly
witty. She’d never thought about him being
witty
. Because he’d basically been nothing more than her own voice in her own head, for all those years. She had thrown herself at a man, expecting the fantasy, and she was lucky it hadn’t gone farther than it had that first night, because then she’d
really
hate herself.

But now … She wasn’t sure what game he was playing, with his behaviour lately and that scene in the hotel suite that still made her pulse pound when she thought about it. And it wasn’t as if she could think of anything else. She felt marked by him, and the craziest part was that something in her thrilled at the idea. She didn’t know what he was doing, or why, but what she did know was that she was falling in love with him, and this time it was for the person he actually was. The cranky, pissy, brooding, possibly insane person it turned out Tommy Seer was. She didn’t understand where the chemistry had come from, but it had nearly overwhelmed her in the hotel. She’d thought she’d felt the heat of him before, but that had been a pale imitation.

Suddenly, he wanted her back.

And it scared the hell out of her.

Which forced her to face another unpleasant truth – and why not, what better place for unpleasant truths than a park bench in the middle of a stalking expedition – and that was that she was as skittish about the real Tommy Seer as she’d been about the other real men she’d dated. As she’d been about Adam. Which meant, she was pretty sure, that she had severe commitment issues. Emotional
problems, as Adam himself had often accused her in their drawn-out fights. Because the fact that she was currently sitting in 1987, having met and touched the real Tommy Seer, was, to put it mildly, an anomaly. The reality was, she’d been using the fantasy Tommy as a shield. It was sad that she was only able to realize it now, while she was trying
not
to use fantasy Tommy as a shield against real Tommy.

Jenna knew with some deep, internal wisdom that if she had sex with this man, this real live living person, with all of his complications and needs and flaws, it would change her on some fundamental level. There would be no waking up the next morning and feeling
normal.
There would be no dismissing it, or minimizing it. She understood that Tommy was different –
more
, somehow. More demanding. More powerful. It had something to do with that raging chemistry that had sprung up between them, that she’d felt flood every cell of her body with the same glorious, terrifying heat.

He had marked her with no more than a few kisses. What would
sex
do? Could she survive it? Did she want to?

She was positive that she was much too afraid to find out.

And equally, recklessly certain that she wanted to do it anyway.

Hours later, Jenna was stiff and cranky and happy she had no access to a cellphone, because the situation begged for some ill-advised texting. WHERE R U, JACKASS? for example.

It was well after eleven when she saw the flashy sports car, black and sinister-looking, pull up to the kerb in front of Tommy’s building. Early, really, considering the fact that Tommy was a superstar and not a worker bee. Jenna sat up straight on her bench, ignoring the numbness in her butt and the stiffness of her limbs.

One of the doormen raced to the driver’s side, and Tommy climbed out of the low-slung car, unfolding himself with his customary grace, so unexpected and mouth-watering in such a tall man. Jenna knew she should have been able to recognize the brand of car at a glance – it was that kind of car, the sort that screamed its pedigree with every gorgeous line – but all she really saw was Tommy. As usual. He exchanged a few words with the doorman, and smiled. Then, instead of turning towards his building and heading inside, he stopped. His head swivelled around, and he scanned the darkness. Jenna caught her breath, in the shadows. It was almost as if—

He frowned.

Directly at
her.

Jenna didn’t understand how he’d known, but he was clearly looking right at her, standing with his hands on his narrow hips. He looked annoyed. But not surprised.

Cars rushed past him on Central Park West, shooting uptown and downtown in speeding packs, but he was looking across them as if he barely noticed them. And he pinned her into her seat with the force of his glare.

It was like the city faded. The lights changed, and it
was as if the street lamps were only there to shine on his dark head. The horns and the music and the hum of traffic disappeared, and there was only Tommy. Jenna drifted up and on to her feet, then over to the kerb without meaning to move, as if he’d called her somehow.

His frown deepened. He looked as if he intended to take a step, which would have put him directly in the path of oncoming cars.

And then she remembered: he was in danger.

Was this her fault? Would he have walked inside if she wasn’t there? Would he have been safe?

But she didn’t have time to think about the ramifications of
that.
She put her hands up in the international sign for STOP, and, when there was a break in the flow of traffic, ran across to him.

‘You have to get out of the street,’ she said, her heart thudding hard in her chest. ‘You have to watch out—’

‘What are you doing here? Why were you sitting on that bench?’ He shook his head, as if shaking off the strange spell they’d been under. He was muttering, and he sounded pissed off about it.

Jenna didn’t think there was time for his muttering. She took his arm and tugged. His attention was riveted on her hands, where they touched the bare skin of his wrist. She wished he didn’t generate so much heat – it was distracting.

‘I’m serious, Tommy.’ She was proud of herself for sounding it. She was hardly breathless at all. ‘You can interrogate me on the sidewalk.’

‘You don’t really think you can move me if I don’t want
to move.’ His eyebrows arched up. Heat and annoyance and humour simmered in his gaze. ‘You do, don’t you?’

‘Tommy, please,’ Jenna begged, her nerves screaming at her and making the back of her neck tingle.

Tommy laughed, throwing his head back so the strong column of his throat shone in the street lights, and for a moment everything slowed down. But Jenna was looking behind him at the headlights which were accelerating through the stoplight on the corner, and she knew this was it, that the car would hit him and it was her fault after all because if she hadn’t been there, would he still be in the street? Would he have paid attention to his surroundings rather than to her?

But then she thought,
who cares why
, and she threw herself against him with everything she had, knocking him backwards and off his feet – knocking them both over and down towards the concrete sidewalk, down as the car roared past her, so close she could feel it just beyond her skin – so close that if she had waited even one second more, it would have smashed into the both of them.

Safe!
she thought triumphantly, but that was in the split second before they smacked into the ground with all of the force she’d put into tackling him.

There was a single, silent beat as they hit the ground, tangled in each other. Her knees made contact, scraped. She felt more than heard him grunt as he crashed against the concrete. She thought maybe their heads cracked together, and she landed in an undignified heap on top
of him with their torsos on the sidewalk and their legs poking out into the street.

But they were alive.

Which was when the pain started, bursting into flames along her knees and the place on her forehead where she must have cracked into his jaw.

‘Jesus Christ,’ Tommy said thickly. ‘What the hell was that?’

And then the yelling started, and things got
really
crazy.

Of course, Tommy insisted on taking her home.

He worried that maybe the bump to his head had been harder than he’d thought, because the moment he’d informed her – not asked her, informed her – that he would be taking her home, he knew it was a bad idea.

The night was already absurd. The press taking pictures, the cops summoned to listen gravely to the story of a near hit-and-run no one would ever be able to solve, an unnecessary trip to the hospital for exactly two stitches on the back of his head and bandages for Jenna’s scraped knees and bumped forehead, and there he was at two in the morning announcing he would escort her home like they’d been on a date.