had no idea where I was and were probably worried to death about me; the fact that my entire family had apparently been lying to me this whole time, not to mention keeping me from seeing my reflection — I couldn’t keep my stomach from giving a massive, angry gurgle at the word eat. The truth was, whoever I was… I was starving.
Everyone heard it. Brandon put a hand on my wrist — or should I say Nikki Howard’s wrist, which, now that I was looking at it, looked nothing like my own wrist, being both bony and devoid of not only a yellow Live strong band but also the forever bracelet Frida had made for me last summer when we’d both been camp counsellors — and said gently, ‘Come on inside and we’ll get you some food.’
‘Yeah,’ Lulu said, suddenly seeming to perk up. ‘There’s some leftover blackened sea bass from Nobu. Your favourite. I just have to pop it in the microwave.’
The next thing I knew, we were crossing a colossal marble lobby – Lulu Collins and Nikki Howard, it turns out, share a loft in a converted nineteenth-century police station in SoHo, not five blocks from my own apartment building — and getting into a brass and mahogany elevator, with a uniformed lift operator, who tipped his gold- braid-trimmed hat at me and said, ‘Miss Howard. Nice to see you. Been awhile.’
‘Yeah,’ I said queasily. It was a really good thing Brandon Stark was holding on to my arm, because otherwise I was pretty sure I’d have fallen down. Not just from hunger, but because I was so completely freaked out by everything that was going on.
Not to mention the fact that I was walking around in someone else’s body. Barefoot. In a hospital gown.
Which the lift operator didn’t seem to find at all unusual, if the way he threw open the door when we got to Lulu and Nikki’s loft and went, ‘Have a good night, Ms Howard, Ms Collins and Mr Stark,’ in a totally nice way was any indication.
And then my bare feet sank into deep, impossibly soft white carpeting. And I found myself standing in a gargantuan loft space, with a huge marble fireplace (fire unlit) at the one end and a high-tech kitchen — all black granite and stainless steel — at the other, with ceilings that towered ten feet over the top of my head, and windows all along both sides, looking out over the rooftops of SoHo on one side and the Lower East Side on the other.
The overall decor theme seemed to be expensive. And modern. Above the fireplace was a massive flat- panel TV that was showing a video of the inside of an aquarium, to make it look like the TV was really an aquarium and not a TV. Scattered throughout the place were long white couches that looked as if they’d swallow you whole if you sat on them. On the coffee tables in front of the couches were magazines. On the cover of each of the magazines was Nikki Howard’s face.
Or, should I say, my face.
Brandon steered me towards one of the couches and then gently pushed me down on to it. Immediately I was engulfed in softness.
‘Sit right there, Nik,’ he said concernedly. ‘Lulu, you got something for her to eat?’
‘Coming right up,’ Lulu said, pulling open the door to the Sub-Zero refrigerator.
‘And maybe something hot to drink,’ Brandon added, looking down at me. ‘She’s shivering.’
Brandon looked around, then found a cream-coloured blanket that had been tossed down at one end of the couch. He pick it up, then settled it over my shoulders, gently tucking it around me. It felt soft as dandelion down. I glanced at the tag attached to one end of it.
One hundred per-cent cashmere.
It figured.
As he arranged the blanket around me, I looked up and happened to meet his gaze. He really was extremely good-looking. I mean, if you happened to like the totally cut, perfect-looking type, which I myself do not. I prefer the loose-limbed, long-haired, computer-genius type. At least, I always thought I did. I had to admit, though, that Brandon Stark’s eyes, in the light from the crazy modern chandelier overhead, looked very appealingly green.
‘Hey,’ he said to me softly, when our gazes met. ‘Hi.’
I had no idea what was about to happen next. That’s because no guy had ever been that close to me before… except Christopher, of course.
But Christopher has never thought of me as a girl. And then there was also Gabriel Luna.
But that had been a hallucination. Hadn’t it?
In any case, how was I supposed to know that when a guy leans in that close, he’s planning on trying something? I just assumed I had something on my face that Brandon was going to brush off.
Except that I didn’t. Unless he was planning on brushing it off with his lips. Which suddenly landed on mine. Since the next thing I knew, Brandon Stark was kissing me.
Kissing me? I’m sorry. Brandon Stark was performing mouth-to-mouth resuscitation on me.
Which I found, to my surprise, that I thoroughly enjoyed.
Or at least, Nikki Howard’s body thoroughly enjoyed it. How else can I explain the fact that I was totally kissing him back? And I had never even kissed a guy before.
Still, I could totally see why everyone was so crazy about kissing. In the romance novels that Frida left lying around the apartment all the time (and which I occasionally picked up when I had nothing else to read), the heroines were always going on and on about what it felt like when the guy they were in love with kissed them. They talked about their mouths burning like ‘liquid fire’, and their loins being all aflame.
My loins definitely didn’t go up in flames when Brandon kissed me. And my lips didn’t burn like liquid fire (whatever that was).
But they felt pleasantly toasty. Really pleasantly toasty.
And I wasn’t even in love with Brandon. Imagine what it must feel like to be kissed by someone you actually liked. Imagine what it would have felt like if, say, Christopher had kissed me…
Which was when I realized, however much my body — or Nikki’s body — might have liked what was going on, I totally couldn’t let it go on a second longer. Especially since it seemed like kissing could very, very easily turn into something else if I didn’t put a stop to it, tout de suite.
‘Mmph,’ I said, pushing Brandon away so hard our mouths disconnected with a sucking sound.
And Brandon ended up losing his balance and almost careened face first into the sofa.
‘What?’ he asked, looking hurt as he stumbled back to his feet. ‘I missed you! Is that so wrong?’
I guess for a lot of girls, getting kissed by Brandon Stark — who is, admittedly, a known heart-throb — would be a total thrill. Frida, for instance, undoubtedly would have freaked (in a good way) over Brandon kissing her. She’d even have enjoyed being kidnapped by him too, I’m sure.
And I wasn’t unappreciative of the fact that Brandon was super handsome, and seemed really very interested in me.
But that was the problem. He wasn’t. Interested in me, I mean.
He was interested in Nikki Howard.
And I wasn’t interested in him.
‘I… I’m sorry,’ I said to him confusedly. Because I did feel sorry, when I saw his hurt expression. And also when I felt the rush of cold air that swooped in between where our warm mouths had been attached. A part of me wished I had just let him go on kissing me. Because kissing? Totally not overrated. At all. ‘It’s just that… I don’t even know you.’
‘We’ve been going out for two years,’ Brandon cried, looking even more hurt. ‘I mean, on and off. How can you not remember?’
I pulled the blanket around me more tightly. I didn’t know what else to do. Or say. My mouth felt all weird from where his lips had been pressed up against it. His stubble had felt all scratchy. It kind of hurt.
But like… in a good way. There was no denying that my lips felt super tingly where his had touched them. And I was sort of starting to detect some fire in my loinage area now.
Oh my God! Nikki Howard is a total slut! Or maybe I am, and I had just never had an opportunity to discover it until now!
What is wrong with me? Why had Christopher never made a move on me before, the way Brandon just had? We could have been making out this whole time, instead of playing of stupid Journeyquest!
Oh, wait… did I just think that? God! What’s happening to me?
Fortunately, Lulu appeared just then, holding a pile of clothes.
