A Fresh Spark: Part Two

A/N: I originally said smut would happen in part two, but it turns out we needed more plot unfolding first. However, there is definitely smut in part three. Enjoy!

Vinnie is leading me away from the bar area and toward the elevators that lead up to the guest rooms. My eyes linger on him in a hate-to-see-you-go, love-to-watch-you-leave kinda way. I reel that in quickly when he turns his head and catches me with my eyes still below his waist. But really, can ya blame a girl for staring when she’s only ever seen a guy from the shoulders up? Moreover, when the guy has the build of a New York Yankee? I bite my lip and make a lightning-quick plan to play it off like I was interested in his fashion choices (is that a tailored suit?), but before I get to ask, he is grinning at me in a way that makes my brain melt.

Then he turns forward, and the moment passes, but the interaction lingers on. A new vibrational frequency hums between us as we step onto the elevator, which is mercifully empty.

I see him press the button for the top floor, and I lift a quizzical eyebrow in his general direction.

“Are you showing me the penthouse suite?”

He laughs. “Penthouse is P,” he says, pointing to a button I somehow didn’t notice, and I realize that he actually selected the floor just below it. 

“And anyway, you think I could afford that?”

“How should I know? We haven’t seen each other in five years, for all I know, you have like 20 Bitcoins or something.”

His laugh is so infectious. I want more of it.

“For real, you could be a niche internet micro-celebrity in the crypto world and I would have no idea!”

“You make a very strange point, Annabelle… but, no,” he says as the elevator doors open and he motions for me to step off ahead of him.

I take the opportunity to sway my hips as I go, and I don’t slow down to wait for him to walk beside me. Without looking, I can tell where his own eyes have gone, and it sends a shiver up my spine. I hear him clear his throat just before he falls into step next to me.

“Are we allowed to be up here?” I say in an almost whisper.

“Technically, I don’t think so, but they only block elevator access to the top floor, so,” he says with a shrug as punctuation.

“So, are you taking me to your room?” I say, then immediately cringe at the way it came out. “I mean, like, is the thing you wanna show me in your room?”

I bring my fist to my mouth and make a small, choked sound as I realize I have unintentionally said two suggestive things in a row and now wish to dissolve on the spot. I will become one with the sparkly cream-colored wallpaper lining the hall. Wallpaper becomes her.

He doesn't comment on this, and I can’t tell whether that makes it better or worse.

“My room is on the second floor,” he says through a smile, though I hear rather than see it because I can’t bring myself to look at him.

Thankfully, we have reached the end of the hall, and he busies himself with holding his ear to a door marked Employees Only.

“Okay, we are definitely not supposed to—” I begin, but he cuts me off with a shush while holding a finger to his lips.

I almost throw some faux offense at him for the shushing, but he’s so focused on what he’s doing, I decide to hold out for a more captive audience.

Meanwhile, Vinnie is gingerly turning the handle, pushing the door open, and motioning for me to follow.

Five minutes later, and we have tiptoed up the staircase, climbed a questionable ladder, and hoisted ourselves up onto the rooftop of the hotel. To be clear, not even hotel employees are allowed up here, as was made perfectly clear by ample signage. This is exclusive HVAC guy territory, and we are trespassing in the extreme.

Now ask me if either of us gives a shit about legalities. Smirk!

Standing side-by-side, we are both entranced by the view. We’re in the Wall Street area at the Southern tip of Manhattan, and the entire city is sprawled out with every recognizable skyscraper seemingly peering back at us. Nearby, the stock exchange building glows bright, and big groups of tourists gather in front of it to take photos.

I look over at Vinnie, and the way he’s staring around with his lips slightly parted in awe causes a surge of affection in me.

“I was up here earlier, during the day. It’s somehow better at night,” he says.

“Do you make it a habit to try to get on illicit roofs in big cities?” I say with a chuckle. “Like that crazy guy on TikTok.”

Suddenly, he’s biting his lip and I can’t tell why. Then, he looks up at me with a sheepish expression, and I’m even more confused.

“What?” I say, and it comes out almost like a demand.

A second later, he takes his phone out of his pocket, unlocks it, and taps the screen a few times before turning it to face me.

“GET THE FUCK OUT,” I say, grabbing the phone from him without asking. “You’re AManWithAView?! NO FUCKING WAY!”

I click around on his account just to ensure this isn’t some elaborate prank, and sure enough, the most recent video is from earlier that day, on this roof.

“DUDE!” I exclaim, navigating back to his profile page. “You have millions of subscribers AND you’re completely anonymous?! That’s the dream!!!”

With a laugh, he says, “Is it?”

“Well, it is to me! I think I’d do much better online if no one knew who I was, but unfortunately, that doesn’t really jive with the life of a novelist.”

“I mean, I think plenty of people with under pseuds.”

“Yeah, true. I guess I could go that route. Particularly because I don’t wanna share the details of my pathetic personal life with an audience at the moment.”

“It’s not pathetic,” he says with a bite in his tone.

I look up at him. His face is set.

“It’s not?”

He shakes his head. “You’re starting over after making a really hard decision. You’re continuing to do the work you love. You… look like you’re taking care of yourself,” he says after trailing his eyes over me, then he clears his throat, looks away, and puts his hands in his pockets. “Nothing pathetic about it, really.”

“Thanks,” I say quietly, and join him in gazing once again at the view.

After a few beats, I say, “I guess I could blog about it all, but it just seems so passé. The internet doesn’t need one more oversharer, y’know?”

He shrugs. “Wouldn’t need to be oversharing. You have a knack for including just enough real-life anecdotes in your blog to make you seem human without the reader feeling like they need to be your therapist.”

“Oh, that’s right! You read my blog, you creep!”

“Hey, you’ve been creeping on me online!”

“Yeah, but I didn’t know it was you!”

“Well, neither did I at first!”

I throw him a look of utter confusion, and he hastens to explain.

“That one piece of yours that went viral, the one about AI and the whole surrendering to our robot overlords.”

“Oh my gosh, you saw that?!”

I feel my cheeks heat. Technically, it was something I never intended to post, but I’d had a weed gummy and let my inner chaos gremlin run wild. It was a piece of fiction, which I don’t usually post on that blog, catastrophizing the advent of AI-assisted writing to an absurd degree. I mean, I redefined the word unhinged with this piece, and really, it was only intended as a way for me to blow off steam. I never admit this, but I actually hit post on it the following morning while stone-cold sober, so I can’t hold the gummies entirely responsible.

While my head is spinning in an effort to digest the fact that this was the way Vinnie discovered my blog, the man in question is heartily laughing.

“Everyone in my office saw it. Apparently, one of my colleagues is a fan of your writing, and she sent it around. It wasn’t until after I’d read the whole thing that I noticed the byline.”

After a beat, I open my mouth to ask why he didn’t reach out, before realizing that that’s a question I don’t know if I want to hear the answer to. Somehow, he answers it without my having asked.

“I would have reached out, but I wasn’t sure if that would be okay.”

Wouldn’t be okay because it might seem stalkerish, or wouldn’t be okay because he was old-flame status, and as far as he knew, I was still married?

Unclear.

And I am not about to inquire about the actual reason. Instead, I simply nod as if I know exactly what he means, and he clears his throat once again.

Eventually, the silence feels defening and I start to speak at the same time he does. We bought chuckle, then engage in a brief “you go,” “no, you go,” exchange.

“I was just gonna ask what you’re doing these days for work,” I say.

“Marketing copywriter for a tech startup,” he says.

I take this in, trying to formulate another small-talky question, but he interrupts before I can.

“Belle, I know we’ve never talked about it… about how we stopped talking.”

My body goes into a stress response immediately, but writer brain kicks in to save me by formulating a witty comeback.

“Well, it makes sense, right? I’m pretty sure that’s how not talking works.”

Okay, almost witty. More snarky, and not even that clever, damnnit.

Vinnie is not diverted.

“Belle,” he says, and leaves it at that.

I turn to him and take a deep breath.

“No, we never talked about it. Is there anything to talk about, though?”

He shrugs. “I guess not, but… I don’t know, I felt like fading into the background of your life was a better move than trying to make it a whole… thing.”

“Yeah, no. It was.”

“I just always kind of worried I hurt you, when that was the exact opposite of what I wanted to do.”

“You didn’t hurt me,” I say, turning to him and reaching out my hand to take his. Despite the chilly temperature of the air, his skin is warm against mine. “I mean, that’s not to say it didn’t hurt to… to not have you in my life.”

He nods, then looks down at my hand in his as he says, “ Same.”

His thumb is stroking my skin.

“But it was for the best,” I manage to say. “I was… not in the best place. And I needed to stop distracting myself from dealing with it.”

We stand there for a long moment, our hands still entwined. The sounds of honking car horns and the cacophony of voices on the street are only a dim presence in the background.

“I imagine you’re still not in the best place now?”

His question feels both caring and accusatory. I mean, I myself, just moments ago, said that the current state of my life is “pathetic,” which he argued against. And yet, the comment still stings.

At the same time, I know he’s just trying to be cautious and respectful. I process all of this at warp speed, as I usually do, but it doesn’t bring me any sort of clarity on how to respond.

Instead, I find myself releasing his hand.

“I guess I’m not.”

His hands go quickly into his pockets, and he nods down at his shoes.

Suddenly, the chill in the air hits me, and I shiver, hugging myself.

“Let’s get you back inside.”

* * *

An hour later, I am in my hotel room, which I did not let Vinnie walk me to for reasons undefined. Maybe, like most acts of chivalry offered to me by men, I balked out of habit.

Or maybe I just felt I needed to be alone as soon as possible. To think. In reality, to stew.

I stewed all through my shower, all through unpacking and finding my comfy sweats, and all through attempting to work on the latest chapter of my novel, which I promised to end to my editor by the end of the weekend.

No writing is actually getting done, however, because my mind is a whirlpool of conflicting thoughts.

If I’m honest, I was annoyed at him for fading into the background without talking to me about it. I know I just completely lied to his face, but my people pleaser kicked in, and the story I had been telling myself about it for years tumbled out of my mouth without my consent.

We were like best friends. I know it was brief, but it was intense. It was too intense! That was the problem! He needed to go, but that didn’t mean I wasn’t devastated by it when he left.

Some part of me wished I had been the one to pull the plug. That maybe I would have felt differently if I had made the decision myself. Or perhaps that’s just my petty side speaking. The side that always wants to feel in control. The side that has been losing every battle she fights in recent memory.

I slam my laptop shut for the third time and toss it to the foot of the bed.

Crossing my arms, I let out a huff. I’m just generally annoyed now, and there’s nothing to be done about it. I’ve already decided not to get drunk, I have no weed gummies, and even if I did, they wouldn’t kick in for an hour or more.

I reach for the remote to turn on HGTV, which I only ever watch in hotel rooms, but in the process, I knock over the conference badge I picked up at the Friday night check-in. The main event starts in the morning, but for anyone arriving early, they had a small reception. A reception I didn’t stay at for very long, seeing as it was populated mainly by old men in tweed jackets and I had other things on my mind.

A fresh wave of annoyance comes over me as I realize that running into Vinnie derailed my plans for the evening.

And okay, sure, my plans were not going according to plan when he came into the bar, but still!A new, even fresher wave of irritation cascades through my consciousness as I realize I never even asked Vinnie what he was doing in New York City. As far as I could recall, he didn’t live or work here and never wanted to.

After picking up my badge off the floor and tossing it onto the bedside table, I snatch up my phone and open TikTok, deftly navigating to his page with as few keystrokes as possible. Jamming my thumb into the screen like it done did me wrong, I begin noting the locations of the various rooftops. 

Some of them are international, so he has clearly traveled. Perhaps his marketing job allows for remote work. But I realize quickly that the vast majority of the roofs in question are in…

“Chicago,” I say aloud through gritted teeth.

I’m not even sure what I’m angry about, just that I am angry. He’s visiting New York for what? The same conference as me? Possible, I suppose, although it’s specifically for fiction writers. Maybe he still writes fiction on the side? And was his meeting me in the bar a total coincidence, or did he somehow know that I would be here? Is he stalking me? Why didn’t I think to ask him any of these questions?!

Now I’m annoyed at myself, and I toss my phone next to my laptop with a grunt. Then, I’m standing from the bed, jamming my feet into my Sketchers slip-ons that I traveled in, and grabbing my hotel keycard. Without pausing to question what I’m doing, I charge out the door of my room, and, foregoing the use of the elevator (I need to move), I take the stairs instead.

I stomp down two floors, which feels excellent. Once in the hallway, I locate the room number signs, and in my haste, I charge in the wrong direction for a good fifteen seconds before noticing. With a growl of irritation, I spin on the spot and charge the other way. Doors and sparkly wallpaper fly by like scenery on the Garden State Parkway. Finally, I am standing outside of room 222, and my fist is banging on the door.