Page 28 of Paparazzi

“What bomb? It’s a dinner, which I don’t know if you noticed, but she said no. I didn’t ask her to marry me.” The nervous laughter coming from my chest makes me think it would have been better if I hadn’t come tonight.

“Honestly, it’s like you did.” The smirk on Michael’s face floors me.

“It’s just a damn dinner!” I snap, annoyed.

“It’s a dinner with the only people you consider family. It’s like you asked to introduce her to your parents without even taking her out on a date.” Damian’s voice is calm, but it doesn’t hurt any less to hear the mention of my parents.

“You’re reading way too much into something that really doesn’t matter.” I try to defend myself. I never took anyone out to dinner. I never felt the desire. This is new for me too, and it scares me to death because without realizing it, I have reached the point where I am thinking about the future and haven’t noticed it.

“Look, there’s nothing wrong with falling in love.” Lilly’s voice is sweet, and she has all good intentions, but I don’t want to hear that word.

“I’m not in love, and I have no intention of being so in the future.”

She looks at me with a creased forehead and an irritated look. “What the hell is wrong with growing up and settling down with a family? It’s not so bad being in a relationship, you know?” She’s scolding all of us.

I look up at Damian and Michael and see that they’re putting as much thought as I am into her question. “I can’t speak for them, but I have my reasons for not being in one.”

“What are they? What could possibly be the reasons why you categorically refuse to open your heart to a woman? If it’s because you’ve been in prison, I can assure you that that’s something you get over in a relationship. You’re not criminals.”

I appreciate her optimism and stubbornness, but my story has nothing to do with Iris and the fear of losing her. It has to do with me and my past with women. I didn’t want this dinner to get so depressing. “It’s hard to trust again when the only woman you’ve ever fallen in love with is also the one who destroyed your life. Do you know how I ended up in prison?”

Lilly shakes her head, and I can see from her expression that she’s preparing for a painful story. After Damian’s story, she knows our past was anything but easy.

“I was thirteen when I met Rita. She was a beautiful girl, two years older than me, and she had her eyes on the loser boy with pimples, me. It was a dream come true, she French kissed me, let me feel her up...Christ, I wasn’t even fourteen, and she fucked me in her bunk bed one afternoon after school. I was in love with her, I felt invincible. I would do anything to keep her and literally did everything...including handing over drugs to drug dealers on behalf of her brother. I wasn’t even fourteen, and I became a drug mule. I’d carry packages of cocaine and heroin in my backpack and come back with wads of money the size of an encyclopedia. I did it for her because I thought she loved me for doing it. She made me feel important, indispensable to her life.

“Until they caught me, two years later, at an age when I could go to juvie. And you know what I found out when they locked me up? She had four other kids around, all my age. She made us so crazy over her so we’d do anything for her. I loved her. I trusted her completely, I put my life in her hands, and she made me into a criminal.” I look up at Lilly, tearing up, feeling my pain. “That’s why I find it hard to imagine I’ll ever fall in love again.”

Lilly moves toward me and hugs me hard. I feel the love she pours into the gesture, causing the knot in my throat to melt a little.

“Well, at least you didn’t ask her to come to the Metropolitan Museum’s Christmas fundraiser with you,” Michael blurts out, laughing and trying to lighten the tension.

I turn to him, and my embarrassed face betrays me.

Lilly’s eyes grow as big as the plate in front of her. “Don’t tell me you did. That’s a huge step— it would mean making your relationship official to the whole world. The paparazzi will be all over you.”

Events like Christmas at the Met are the hunting ground for gossip. Officially, you show up for an evening dedicated to a particular charitable cause. There’s endless small talk, toasts so fake they sound like movie quotes, and you give an avalanche of money to help someone you’ll never meet, making only your accountant happy because he can deduct it from the pile of taxes you have to pay. These are events advertised to exhaustion, where everything has to be perfect, from the way you’re dressed to the person you decide to take. Inviting Iris would have meant saying to the world, ‘Look, this is my girlfriend, and she’s beautiful as hell.’

“No, I didn’t invite her.” I chuckle nervously.

“But you wanted to do it, didn’t you?” Damian says, laughing.

“I thought I’d do it after this dinner...” I admit with incredible embarrassment.

“Christ, we lost him too,” Michael teases me amid everyone’s laughter.

“Stop, you two! You’re bad friends. Can’t you see how much he’s taken with this girl?” Lilly scolds them. “Maybe she felt embarrassed because I offered her the interview with the Red Velvet Curtains, and she doesn’t know how to manage the relationship outside the workplace. Or maybe she just felt floored by your proposal, you haven’t known each other for a long time... Or she was afraid to make you look bad with your friends, girls sometimes become so paranoid. You have to consider that you’re rich and famous and she’s a normal girl. Maybe she thinks that we’re used to glitzy dinners or something, and she feared feeling out of place.” She tries to cheer me up while my two friends just go on laughing.

“Lilly, don’t worry about me. She said no to dinner. It’s not a tragedy. And you arranged that interview because you’re as curious as a monkey and you can’t wait to meet her, so you’re going to ask her yourself why she refused. Don’t think I believed your ‘we have to reach out to fans who don’t read traditional newspapers’ story.” I laugh and try to calm her down.

“But you’re hurt. I can tell!”

“I’m just a little disappointed with her answer, but she didn’t stab me in my back. I’ll survive!” I smile.

“But it bothers you that she didn’t give you a chance.” Michael’s observation and careful scrutinization of the situation are out of character.

I think about it, trying to formulate an answer that doesn’t make me look crazy. “No one likes rejection. Yes, I was hurt, because I had assumed that she’d accept. It’s my fault.”

Damian frowns. “And she didn’t give you any explanation?”

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