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About the Author

MEGAN HART is the bestselling and multi-published author of more than thirty novels for Spice and MIRA Books. Megan lives in the deep, dark woods of Pennsylvania with her husband and two children, and is currently working on her next novel for the Spice line.

You can contact Megan through her Web site at www.MeganHart.com.

Author’s Note

I could write without listening to music, but I’m so glad I don’t have to. Here’s a partial playlist of some of the music I listened to while writing Collide. Please support the artist through legal sources!

“Breathe Me”—Sia

“Bulletproof Weeks”—Matt Nathanson

“City Lights”—Mirror

“Closer”—Kings of Leon

“Collide”—Howie Day

“Damn I Wish I Was Your Lover”—Sophie B. Hawkins

“Don’t Pull Your Love”—Hamilton, Joe Frank and Reynolds

“Dream a Little Dream of Me”—The Mamas and the Papas

“Ghosts”—Christopher Dallman

“Goodbye Horses”—Psyche

“I Think She Knows”—Kaki King

“I’m Burning for You”—Blue Öysters Cult

“If”—Bread

“If You Want to Sing Out, Sing Out”—Cat Stevens

“Incense and Peppermints”—Strawberry Alarm Clock

“Je t’aime moi non plus”—Serge Gainsbourg and Jane Birkin

“Joy to the World”—Three Dog Night

“Kiss You All Over”—Dr. Hook

“Labor of Love”—Michael Giacchini’s Star Trek

(Music from the Motion Picture)

“Lascia ch’io pianga Prologue”—Antichrist Soundtrack

“Life on Mars”—David Bowie

“Purple Haze”—The Cure

“Shambala”—Three Dog Night

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Megan Hart

www.spice-books.co.uk

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First, to JNB—HAYYY GURLL HAYYYYY!

Thanks for the late-night streamin’ marathons

and the mutual appreciation of all the things that

make us a pair of duty hooahs.

To DPF for putting up with me.

And, of course, to Joe. Without you this book wouldn’t exist.

Chapter 01

Oranges.

The smell of oranges drifted toward me. I put a hand on the back of the chair nearest me and searched the countertop for fruit in a basket. Something, anything, that would explain the smell, which was as out of place in this coffee shop as a Santa suit in the sand. I didn’t see anything that would explain the scent, and I drew in a deep breath. I’d learned a long time ago there was no point in trying to hold my nose or my breath. Better to breathe through this. Get it over with.

The smell passed quickly, gone in a few blinks, a couple of heartbeats, replaced by the stronger odor of coffee and pastries. My fingers had tightened on the chair but I didn’t even need the support. I oriented myself before letting go of the chair to finish moving toward the counter where I’d been heading to add sugar and cream to my coffee.

It had been almost two years since my last fugue. That one had been equally as mild, but the fact this one had been barely a blip didn’t offer much comfort. I’d had periods in my life when the fugues had come hard and fast and often, essentially crippling me. It was too much to hope they would go away, but I didn’t want to go back to that.

“Hey, girl, heyyyyyy!” Jen called from the booth she’d snagged just inside the Mocha’s door. She waved. “Over here!”

I waved and finished adding the sugar and cream, then wove my way through the jumble of chairs and tables to slide into the booth across from Jen. “Hey.”

“Ooh, what did you get?” Jen leaned forward to peer into my coffee mug as though that would give her some idea about what was in there. She sniffed. “German chocolate?”

“Close. Chocolate Delight.” I named one of the two featured coffees. “With a shot of vanilla-bean syrup.”

Jen smacked her lips. “Mmm. Sounds good. I’m going to choose mine. Hey, what did you get to eat?”

“Blueberry muffin. Should’ve gone with the chocolate cupcake, but I thought maybe that would be too much.” I showed her the plate with the muffin.

“Too much chocolate? As if. Be right back.”

I stirred my coffee to distribute the syrup, extra sugar and cream, then sipped, enjoying the extra sweetness most people didn’t like. Jen was right. I should’ve gone for the cupcake.

Jen had picked the wrong time to get in line. The midmorning rush had begun, customers lined up four-deep, all the way to the front door. She threw me an annoyed look and a shrug I could only laugh at in sympathy.

The coffee shop had been pretty empty when I entered, but customers who were put off by the line had started snagging tables while they waited to take their turns. I waved at Carlos over in the corner, but he had his earbuds settled deep and his laptop already open. Carlos was working on a novel. He sat in the Mocha from ten to eleven every morning before he went off to work, and on Saturdays, like today, he sometimes stayed longer.

Lisa, her backpack bulging with textbooks, took a table a few seats away and wiggled her fingers at me without noticing Jen’s semifrantic waving for me to ignore her. Lisa sold Spicefully Tasty products to pay her way through law school, and though I’d never found her sales pitches annoying, Jen couldn’t stand them. Today, though, Lisa seemed preoccupied, focusing on setting out her books and notepad, already clicking her pen as she shrugged out of her coat.

We were the Mocha regulars, like some sort of club. We met up in the mornings before work, in the evenings on the way home and on the weekends, bleary-eyed from the nights before. The Mocha was one of the best parts of living in this neighborhood, and though I’d only been a part of the club for a few months, I loved it.

By the time Jen got back to our booth with her tall cup of something that smelled both minty and chocolaty and her plate of something oozing and gooey, the crowd had settled. The regulars had found their usual spots and the people who’d just stopped in for takeout had bought and left. The Mocha was full now and buzzing with the hum of conversation and the click-clack of keyboards as people took advantage of the free Wi-Fi. I liked the hum. It made me conscious of being there, present. In the moment. This moment.

“She didn’t try to hit you up for some sort of cream-cheese spread today, huh? Maybe she got the hint.” Jen offered me a fork, and though I wanted to resist, I couldn’t help taking just a taste of her brownie.

“I actually like Spicefully Tasty stuff,” I said.

“Pffft.” Jen laughed. “Get out of here.”

“No, I do,” I insisted. “It’s expensive but convenient. If I ever really cooked, it would be even better.”

“You’re telling me. All that money for a bunch of spices I can buy two for a buck at the dollar store and mix together myself. Not that I do,” Jen added. “But I could.”

“Maybe next month.” I sipped more rapidly cooling coffee, savoring the richness of the cream. “Once I get some bills paid off.”

“You’ll have better things to … oh. Niiiiice. Finally.” Jen’s voice dropped to a murmur.

I turned to look where she was staring. I caught a glimpse of a long black duster, a red-and-black-striped scarf. The man carried a thick newspaper under one arm, which in these times of smartphones and webnews was a strange enough sight to make me look twice. He spoke to the girl at the register, who seemed to know him, and took his empty mug to the long counter where all the self-serve carafes of coffee were.

In profile, he was gorgeous. Sandy-blond hair tousled just so, a sharp nose that wasn’t overpowering. Crinkles at the corners of his eyes, the color of which I couldn’t see but suspected were blue. His mouth, lips pursed in concentration as he filled his mug and added sugar and cream, looked just full enough to be tempting without being too lush.

“Who’s that?” I asked.

“Girl,” she said in a low, breathy voice. “You don’t know who that is?”

“If I knew, would I be asking?”

The man in the black coat passed us so close I could smell him.

Oranges.

I closed my eyes against that second wave of scent, the taste of coffee so strong on my tongue it should’ve blocked out everything else but didn’t. I should’ve smelled coffee and chocolate, but I smelled oranges. Again. I bent my head and pressed my fingertips to the magic spot between my eyes that worked swell for headaches but did nothing for fugues.

But no swirling colors seeped around the edges of my vision as I opened my eyes again, and the scent of oranges faded the farther away he got. I watched the man in the black coat take a seat facing away from us. He shook out the paper, spreading it open across the small table for two, and put his coffee down to take his coat off.

“You okay?” Jen leaned forward into my range of vision. “I know he’s fucking hot and all, but damn, Emm, you looked like you were going to pass out.”

“PMS,” I said. “I get a little woozy this time of month.”

Jen frowned, looking skeptical. “That sucks.”

“You’re telling me.” I grinned to show her I was okay, and thank God I was. Not a hint of even a minor onset like the one that had hit me earlier. I’d smelled oranges because that man smelled of them, not because of some misfiring triggers in my brain. “Anyway. Who is he?”

“That’s Johnny Dellasandro.”

My expression must’ve been as blank as I felt, because Jen laughed.

“Garbage? Skin? The Haunted Convent? C’mon, not even that one?”

I shook my head. “Huh?”

“Ooh, girl, where’ve you been? Didn’t you have cable TV growing up?”

“Sure I did.”

“Johnny Dellasandro was in all those movies. They showed them a lot on those late-night cable shows like Up Past Midnight. They were slumber party standbys.”

My mom had always been too nervous about me spending the night at someone else’s house. I’d been allowed to go to the parties so long as she picked me up at bedtime. I’d had slumber parties at my house, though. “Sure, I remember that show. But that was a long time ago.”

“Blank Spaces?”

That sounded a little more familiar, but not enough. I shrugged and looked over at him again. “I never heard of that one.”

Jen sighed and looked over her shoulder at him, then leaned forward, lowering her voice and prompting me to lean closer to hear her. “Johnny Dellasandro, the artist? He had that series of portraits that became famous back in the early eighties. Blank Spaces. Sort of like the Mona Lisa of the Andy Warhol era.”

I could maybe have picked out a Warhol painting in a museum if it had been lined up alongside a Van Gogh, a Dali, a Matisse. But other than that … “Was that the guy who did the soup cans? Marilyn Monroe?”

“Yeah, that was Warhol. Dellasandro’s work wasn’t quite as kitschy, but it did go a little more mainstream. Blank Spaces was his breakout series.”

“You said ‘wasn’t.’ He’s not an artist anymore?”

She leaned forward a little more, and I followed. “Well, he has a gallery on Front Street. The Tin Angel? You know it?”

“I’ve been past it, yeah. Never been inside.”

“That’s his place. He still does his own work, and he has a lot of local artists there, too.” She gestured around the Mocha, hung with samplings of local art, some of her pictures among them. “Better stuff than this. Every once in a while he has some big name in for a show. But he keeps it real low-key, low-profile. At least around here. I guess I can’t blame him.”

“Huh.” I studied him. He was flipping pages of the paper so slowly it looked like he was reading every single word. “I wonder what that’s like.”

“What?”

“Being famous and then … not.”

“He’s still famous. Just not in the same way. I can’t believe you never heard of him. He lives in that brownstone down the street, by the way.”

I tore my gaze from Johnny Dellasandro’s back and looked at my friend. “Which one?”

“Which one.” Jen rolled her eyes. “The nice one.”

“Oh, shit, really? Wow.” I looked at him again. I’d bought one of the brownstones on Second Street. Mine, though it had been partially renovated by a previous owner, still needed a lot of work. The one she was talking about was gorgeous, with completely repointed brickwork, brass on the gutters and a fully landscaped yard surrounded by hedges. “That’s his place?”

“You’re practically neighbors. I can’t believe you didn’t know.”

“I barely know who he is,” I told her, though now that she’d been talking about it, the title Blank Spaces sounded more familiar. “I’m not sure the real estate agent mentioned him as a selling point for the neighborhood.”

Jen laughed. “Probably not. He’s a pretty private guy. Comes in here a lot, though I haven’t seen him lately. Doesn’t talk a lot to anyone. He keeps to himself.”

I drank the last of my coffee and considered getting up to take advantage of the bottomless refills. I’d have to walk right past him, and on the way back I’d get a full-on view of his face. Jen must’ve read my mind.

“He’s worth a peek,” she said. “God knows all of us girls in here have made a trip past him a few times. So has Carlos. Actually, I think Carlos is the only one he’s ever talked to.”

I laughed. “Yeah? Why? Does he like guys?”

“Who, Carlos?”

I was pretty sure Carlos was straight, judging by the way he checked out every woman’s ass when he thought they weren’t looking. “No. Dellasandro.”

“Oooh, girl,” Jen said again.

I liked the way she called me that, like we’d been friends for a long time instead of only a couple months. It had been hard moving here to Harrisburg. New job, new place, new life—the past supposedly left behind and yet never quite gone. Jen had been one of the first people I’d met, right here in the Mocha, and we’d fallen into friendship right away.

“Yes?” I studied him again.

Dellasandro licked his forefinger before using it to turn the page of his paper. It shouldn’t have been quite as sexy as it was. I was letting Jen’s excitement color my impression of him, which had been really too brief for it to be so intense. After all, I’d only had a glimpse of his face and had been staring at his back for less than fifteen minutes.

“You have to come over and watch his movies. You’ll see what I mean. Johnny Dellasandro’s like … a legend.”

“He can’t have been that much of a legend, since I’ve never heard of him.”

“Okay,” Jen amended. “A legend in a certain crowd. Artsy people.”

“I guess I’m not artsy enough.” I laughed, not taking offense. I’d been to the Museum of Modern Art a few times in New York City. I definitely wasn’t the target audience.

“That is a sad, sad shame. Really. I’m pretty sure watching Johnny Dellasandro movies ruined me for regular boys forever.”

“That’s not exactly a compliment,” I told her. “As if there is such a thing as a regular boy, which frankly I’m beginning to doubt.”

She laughed and dug again into her brownie with another glance over her shoulder. She lifted her fork, heavy with chocolaty goodness, in my direction. “Come over tonight. I have the entire DVD box-set collection, plus the earlier ones, and what I don’t have we can stream from Interflix.”

“Ooh, fancy.”

She grinned and bit off the brownie from her fork. “Girl, I will introduce you to some seriously good shit.” “And he lives right here, huh?”

“I know, right?” Jen glanced over her shoulder one more time.

If Dellasandro had any idea we were so scrutinizing him, he didn’t show it. He didn’t seem to pay any attention to anyone, as a matter of fact. He read his paper and drank his coffee. He turned the pages one at a time, sometimes using a finger to scan down the print.

“I wasn’t sure it was him, you know? I came in here to the Mocha one morning and there he was. Johnny fucking Dellasandro.” Jen gave a happy, entirely infatuated sigh. “Girl, I seriously almost surfed out of here on a wave of my own come.”

I’d been drinking when she said that, and started laughing. A second later, choking when the coffee went into my lungs instead of my stomach. Coughing, gasping, eyes watering, I put my hands over my mouth to try and shield the noise, but it was impossible to be entirely quiet.

Jen laughed, too. “Hands up! Put your hands up! That stops coughing!”

My mom had always said the same thing. I managed to get one hand halfway up and the coughing eased. I’d earned a few curious looks, but none, thank God, from Dellasandro. “Warn me before you say something like that.”

She blinked innocently. “Like what? Wave of my own come?”

I laughed again, this time without the choking. “Yeah, that!”

“Trust me,” Jen said. “After you see his movies, you’ll understand what I mean.”

“Okay, fine. You have me convinced. And pathetically, I have no plans for tonight.”

“Girl, if not having plans on a Saturday night makes you a loser, I’m one, too. We can be losers together, eating ice cream and squeeing over old soft-core art movies.”

“Soft-core?” I looked past her to where Dellasandro had nearly finished his paper.

“You wait and see,” Jen said. “Full frontal, baby.”

“Oh, wow. No wonder he doesn’t want to talk to anyone here. If I were famous for dangling my dingle I might not want anyone to notice me, either.”

It was Jen’s turn to burst into laughter. Hers turned more heads than mine had, but still not Dellasandro’s. She drew a finger through the chocolate on her plate and licked it off.

“I don’t think that’s it. I mean, I don’t think he likes to brag about it or anything, but he’s not ashamed. Well, he shouldn’t be. He made art.” She was being serious. “I mean, for real. He and his friends were known as the Enclave. They’re credited with changing the way art movies were viewed by the general public. They made art movies that actually got shown in mainstream theaters. X-rated theaters, but even so.”

“Wow.” I didn’t know anything about art but that sounded impressive.

And there was something about him. Maybe it was the long black coat and the scarf, since I’m a sucker for men who know how to dress like they don’t care what they look like and yet manage to look damned good. Maybe it was the way he’d smelled of oranges as he passed me, not a scent I normally liked—in fact, one I despised because of the way it usually preceded a fugue. Maybe it was the lingering effects of the fugue itself, minor though it had been. Often after experiencing one I found the “real” world went brighter for a little while. Kind of intense. Somehow, even when the fugues were accompanied by hallucinations, coming out of them was even more intense. I hadn’t had one like that in a long time, hadn’t had even a hint of anything similar in this last one, but the feeling now was much the same.

“Emm?”

Startled, I realized Jen had been talking to me. I didn’t have a fugue to blame for my inattention. “Sorry.”

“So, tonight? I’ll make margaritas. We can get a pizza.” She paused, looking distraught. “That is sort of pathetic, huh?”

“You know what’s pathetic? Getting all dressed up and going to a bar hoping to get hit on by some loser in a striped shirt who smells like Polo.”

“You’re right. Striped shirts are so 2006.”

We laughed together. I’d gone out with Jen to the local bars a couple times. Striped shirts were still pretty popular, especially on young frat boys who liked to buy Jell-O shots from scantily clad girls because they hoped those girls would think they were playahs.

Jen glanced at her watch. “Crap. Gotta run. Meeting my brother to take our grandma out grocery shopping. She’s eighty-two and can’t see well enough to drive. She makes our mom crazy.”

I laughed again. “Good luck.”

“I love her, but she’s a handful. That’s why I need my brother to come along. See you tonight, my place. Around seven? We don’t want to start too late. Got a lot of movies to watch!”

I couldn’t imagine wanting to watch more than one or two of the films, but I nodded, anyway. “Sure. I’ll be there. I’ll bring dessert and some munchies.”

“Great. See you!” Jen stood and leaned in close to say, “Dare you to get a refill now! Quick, before he leaves.”

Dellasandro had folded his paper and stood. He was putting on his coat. I still couldn’t see his face.

“I dare you to casually wait until he leaves and you go out just after so he has to hold the door for you,” I said.

“Good plan,” she said. “Too bad I can’t just casually wait around for him. I have to dash. You do it.”

We both laughed and Jen headed out. I watched her go, then watched Dellasandro return his empty mug to the counter. With his paper tucked under his arm, he headed for the restroom in the back of the Mocha. It was a good time for me to get a refill, since I’d paid for them, but I wasn’t really in the mood for more coffee. I had no plans—the day stretched out before me with nothing to tempt me away from the Mocha, and yet I’d forgotten to bring something to read or even my computer to surf the Net. I had no reason to stay and a house full of unpacking and cleaning to finish. I probably had a message from my mom to return, too.

I put my own mug on the counter and let my lustful gaze roam over the pastries. I’d bake some brownies at home instead. They’d be better from scratch, anyway, even if the ones at the Mocha did come with a half-inch-thick layer of fudge frosting I had no idea how to replicate. My stomach rumbled despite the muffin I’d had. Not a good thing.

“Get you something?” This was Joy, one of the tersest people I’d ever met. She certainly didn’t live up to her name.

“No, thanks.” I hitched my purse higher on my shoulder, thinking I’d better head home and make myself an egg salad sandwich or something before I got hypoglycemic. Going without food not only made me cranky, it could tempt a fugue, and after the one this morning I wasn’t about to do anything to bring on another. Caffeine and sugar helped fend them off, but my empty stomach was effectively counterbalancing the oversweetened coffee.

Dellasandro reached the Mocha’s front door only seconds after I did. I’d pushed open the glass-fronted door, making the brass bell jingle, and felt someone behind me. I turned, one hand still holding the door so it wouldn’t swing shut, and there he was. Black coat, striped scarf, wheaten hair.

His eyes weren’t blue.

They were a deep green-brown hazel. And his face was perfect, even with the crinkles of time at the corners of his eyes, the glint of silver I could see now at his temples. I’d thought he was maybe in his late thirties, a few years older than me when I’d first seen him, though obviously his career in the seventies meant he was older than that. I wouldn’t have guessed it even now, knowing. His face was beautiful.

Johnny Dellasandro’s face was art.

And I let the door slam right in it. “Jesus Christ,” he said as he stepped back. His voice, pure New Yawk.

The door closed between us. Sun reflected off the glass, shielding him inside. I couldn’t see his face anymore, but I was pretty sure I’d just pissed him off.

I pulled on the handle as he pushed it open, the door’s sudden give making me stumble back a couple steps. “Oh, wow, I’m sorry!”

He didn’t even look at me, just shouldered past with a low, muttered curse I couldn’t quite make out. The edge of his paper hit my arm as he passed. Dellasandro didn’t pay any attention. The hem of his coat flapped in a sudden upswell of wind and I gasped, breathing in deep, and deeper.

The scent of oranges.

“Mom. Really, I’m fine.” I had to tell her this not because it made her worry less, but because if I didn’t say it, she’d definitely worry more. “I promise. Everything’s fine.”

“I wish you hadn’t moved so far away.” My mom’s voice on the other end of the phone sounded fretful. That was normal. When she started sounding anxious, I needed to worry.

“Forty minutes isn’t far at all. I’m closer to work now, and I have a great place.”

“In the city!”

“Oh, Mom.” I had to laugh, even though I knew it wouldn’t make her feel any better. “Harrisburg’s only technically a city.”

“And right downtown. You know I heard on the news there was a shooting just a few streets over from you.”

“Yeah? And there was a murder-suicide in Lebanon just last week,” I told her. “How far is that from you?”

My mom sighed. “Emm. Be serious.”

“I am serious. Mom, I’m thirty-one years old. It was time for me to do this.”

She sighed. “I guess you’re right. You can’t be my baby forever.”

“I haven’t been your baby for a really long time.”

“I’d just feel better if you weren’t alone. It was better when you and Tony—”

“Mom,” I said tightly. “Tony and I broke up for a long list of very good reasons, okay? Please stop bringing him up. You didn’t even like him that much.”

“Only because I didn’t think he could take good enough care of you.”

She’d been right about that, anyway. Not that I’d needed as much taking care of as she thought. But I didn’t want to talk about my ex-boyfriend with her. Not now, not ever.

“How’s Dad?” I asked instead, so she could talk about the other person in her life she worried about more than she had to.

“Oh, you know your dad. I keep telling him to get himself to the doctor and get checked out, but he just won’t do it. He’s fifty-nine now, you know.”

“You act like that’s ancient.”

“It’s not young,” my mom said.

I laughed and cradled the phone to my shoulder as I opened one of the large boxes I’d put in one of the unused bedrooms. I was unpacking books. I wanted to make this room my library and had set up and dusted off all my bookcases. Now I just needed to fill them. It was a task I knew I’d be glad I’d done after I finished but had managed to put off for months.

“What are you doing?” my mom said.

“Unpacking books.”

“Oh, be careful, Emm, you know that can kick up dust!” “I don’t have asthma, Mom.” I pulled off the layer of newspaper I’d laid on top of the books. I’d packed them not in the order I’d arrange them on the shelves, but just so they’d fit best in the box. This one looked like it was mostly full of coffee table books I’d picked up at thrift stores or received as gifts. Books I always meant to read and yet never did.

“No. But you know you have to be careful.”

“Mom, c’mon. Enough.” Now I was starting to get irritated.

My mom had always been overprotective. When I was six years old, I fell off a jungle gym at the school playground. Those were the days before schools used recycled tires as mulch, or any kind of soft material. Other kids broke arms or legs. I broke my head.

I was in a coma for almost a week, suffering a brain edema, or swelling, that doctors hadn’t been able to relieve by standard methods. My parents had been on the verge of agreeing to an experimental brain surgery when I’d opened my eyes, sat up and asked for ice cream.

The lack of coordination or loss of limb use the doctors had predicted never happened. Nor did memory loss or any discernible brain damage. If anything, I had trouble forgetting, not remembering. I’d suffered no long-term affects—at least, not physical ones. On the other hand, I’d learned to get used to the fugues.

She and my dad had thought they’d almost lost me, and nothing I could ever have told her about that time in the darkness could persuade her I hadn’t even come close to leaving. I’d tried once or twice, when I was younger, to reassure her. To get her to let go, even just a little. She refused to listen. I guess I couldn’t blame her. I had no idea of how it felt to love a child, much less fear you’d lost one.

“I’m sorry,” she said.

The good thing was, my mom knew when she was getting out of control. She’d done her best to make sure I didn’t grow up a stilted, fearful child, even if it meant biting her nails to nubs and going gray before she turned forty. She’d allowed me to do what I needed to for my independence, even if she did hate every second of it.

“You could come up once in a while, you know. I’m really not that far. We could have lunch or something. Just you and me, a girls’ day.”

“Oh, sure. We could do that.” She sounded a little brighter from the invitation.

I didn’t think she’d actually take me up on it. My mom didn’t like to drive long distances by herself. If she did come, she’d bring my dad along. Not that I didn’t love my dad, or want to see him. In many ways, he was easier to get along with than my mom, because no matter what anxiety he had, he kept it to himself. But it wouldn’t be a girls’ day out with him along, and he tended to get cranky about staying too long when he wanted to be home in his recliner watching sports. I didn’t even have cable yet.

“I saw him a couple days ago, Emm.”

I paused with a large book on cathedrals in one hand. I’d have to adjust the shelves in one of the bookcases if I wanted to stand this book upright. It was meant for a coffee table, for display. I flipped through the pages, considering if I should just sell on Craigslist. “Who?”

“Tony,” my mom said impatiently.

“Oh, for God’s sake, Mom!”

“He looked good. He asked about you.”

“I’m sure he did,” I said wryly.

“I got the feeling he was wondering if you’d … met someone.”

I paused in unpacking, with another heavy book in my hands, this time one called Cinema Americana. Another yard-sale find. I was a sucker for a bargain, books my downfall. Even ones about subjects I had no interest in. I guess I always had the notion I’d tear out the illustrations and put them in frames to hang on the wall. Proof I really did have no appreciation for art.

“Why would he even think that?”

“I don’t know, Emm.” A pause. “Have you?”

I was about to say no, but a flash of striped scarf and a black coat filled my mind. The floor tilted a little under me. I gripped the phone tighter. The book was suddenly too heavy in my sweating hand; I dropped it.

“Emm?”

“Fine, Mom. Just dropped a book.”

No swirling colors, no citrus scent biting at my nostrils. My stomach churned a little, but that could’ve been the leftover Italian food I’d had earlier. It had been in the fridge a little too long.

“It wouldn’t be such a bad thing. For you to meet someone. I mean, I think you should.”

“Yeah, I’ll make sure every guy I meet knows my mom thinks I shouldn’t be single. That’s a surefire way to get a date.”

“Sarcasm isn’t pretty, Emmaline.”

I laughed. “Mom, I have to go, okay? I want to finish unpacking these boxes and do some laundry before I go to my friend Jen’s house tonight.”

“Oh? You have a friend.”

I loved my mother. Really, I did. But sometimes I wanted to strangle her.

“Yes, Mother. I have an honest-to-goodness friend.”

She laughed that time, sounding better than she had when the conversation started. That was something, anyway. “Good. I’m glad you’re spending time with a friend instead of sitting home. I just … I worry about you, honey. That’s all.”

“I know you do. And I know you always will.”

We said our goodbyes, exchanged I-love-yous. I had friends who never told their parents they loved them, who’d never said the words after elementary school. It was something I was glad I’d never grown out of and that my mother insisted upon. Even if I knew it was because she was afraid not saying it would somehow mean she’d have lost her chance to tell me one more time, I liked it.

The book I’d dropped had opened to someplace in the middle, cracking the binding in a way that made me sigh unhappily. I bent to pick it up and stopped. It had opened to chapter called “Seventies Art Films,” on a full-page, glossy black-and-white photo of an unbelievably gorgeous face staring directly at the camera.

Johnny Dellasandro.

Chapter 02

“Which do you want to watch first? What are you in the mood for?” Jen pulled open the door on what proved to be a cabinet full of DVDs. She ran a fingertip along the plastic cases with a ticka-ticka-tick and stopped at one, looking over her shoulder at me. “Do you want to ease into it or plunge right in?”

I’d brought along the Cinema Americana book to show her and it lay open on the coffee table in front me, opened to the page of Johnny’s gorgeous face. “What’s this picture from?”

Jen looked. “Train of the Damned.”

I looked at it, too. “That picture is from a horror movie?” “Yeah. Not my favorite of his. It’s not very scary,” she added. “But he does get naked in it.” Both my brows raised. “Really?”

“Yeah. Not quite full frontal,” she said with a grin as she bent and plucked a movie from the shelf. “But, man, those seventies foreign movies were pretty graphic sometimes. It has a lot of blood and gore in it—will that bother you?”

I’d spent so much time in hospitals and emergency rooms that nothing much bothered me. “Nah.”

“Train of the Damned, it is.” Jen pulled the DVD from its case and slipped it into the player, then tuned the television to the right channel and grabbed the remote before taking a place beside me on the couch. “The quality’s not so good, sorry. I found this one in the bargain bin at a dollar store.”

“You’re a super Dellasandro fan, huh?” I shifted to keep the bowl of popcorn from spilling and leaned to take another look at the picture.

I hadn’t told Jen about letting the door slam in Johnny’s face, or how I’d already spent an hour staring at this photo, memorizing every line and curve, dip and hollow. His hair in the picture was pulled back into a thick tail at the base of his neck, longer than it was now. He looked younger in the picture, of course, since it had been taken something like thirty years ago. But not much younger.

“He’s aged well.” Jen peered over my shoulder as the first wobbly sounds of music filtered from the TV’s speakers. “He’s a little heavier, has a few more lines around his eyes. But mostly, he still looks that good. And you should see him in the summer, when he’s not covered up with that long coat.”

I sat back against the couch and pulled my feet up beneath me. “Haven’t you ever talked to him?”

“Oh, girl, hell, no. I’m too afraid.”

I laughed. “Afraid of what?”

Jen used the remote to turn up the sound. So far, the only thing on the TV screen had been a title dripping blood and a shot of a train chugging along a dark track winding through tall and jagged mountains. “I’d word-vomit all over him.”

“Word … ew.”

She laughed and put down the remote to grab a handful of popcorn. “Seriously. I met Shane Easton once, you know him? Lead singer for the Lipstick Guerrillas?”

“Um, no.”

“They were playing at IndiePalooza one year down in Hershey, and my friend had scored backstage passes. Ten or fifteen bands, something like that. Hot as all hell. We’d been drinking beer because cups were a dollar fifty and the water was four bucks a bottle. Let’s just say I was a little drunk.” “And? What did you say?”

“I might’ve told him I wanted to ride him like a roller coaster. Or something like that.” “Oh, wow.”

“Yeah, I know, right?” She sighed dramatically and popped the top on a can of diet cola. “Not my most shining moment.”

“It could’ve been worse, I’m sure.”

“What would be worse is if instead of never having to see him again I bumped into him all the time at the coffee shop and the grocery store,” Jen said. “Which is why I’m keeping my mouth shut around Johnny Dellasandro.”

The train—I assumed it was of the damned—let out a shrill whistle and the movie cut to an interior scene of people dressed in the height of late-seventies fashion. A woman in a beige pantsuit and huge hair, gigantic glasses covering half her face, waved a hand heavy with rings at the waiter pouring her a glass of wine. The train shuddered, he spilled it. It was Johnny.

“Watch what you’re doing, you damned fool!” The woman spoke in a thick accent. Maybe Italian? I couldn’t be sure. “You spilled on my favorite blouse!”

“Sorry, ma’am.” His voice was dark and thick and rich … and totally out of place in the movie with that New York accent.

I giggled. Jen shot me a look. “It gets better when he takes her into the sleeping car and bangs her.”

We both giggled then, and ate popcorn and drank cola, and made fun of the movie. As far as I could tell, the train became damned when it entered a tunnel that had somehow become connected to a portal to hell. There was no explanation for why this happened, at least none that I could figure out, but since at odd times the movie shifted into Italian with badly translated English subtitles—with Johnny’s voice being oddly dubbed in a much higher, swishier voice—I might easily have missed something important.

It didn’t matter, really. It was entertaining, with lots of blood and gore as Jen had promised. Lots of eye candy, too. Johnny ended up stripping out of his waiter’s uniform to battle foam-and-latex demons. Shirtless and covered in blood, his hair slicked back from his face, he was still breathtaking.

“I said, ‘Get the hell back to hell!’”

It was a classic line, delivered in Johnny’s thick accent and accompanied by the blast of his shotgun exploding the demons into tiny, dripping bits. And followed, incongruously, by a long, explicit love scene between him and the woman in the pantsuit, set to bouncy porn music and ending with the woman somehow getting pregnant with a demon baby that tore up her insides and tried to attack its father.

“So … Johnny was … the devil?”

Jen laughed and scraped the bottom of the popcorn bowl. “I think so! Or the son of the devil, something like that.”

The credits rolled. I finished my drink. “Wow. That was something.”

“Yeah, bad. But the sex scene. Hot, right?”

It had been. Even with the porny music and stupid special effects, even with the discreetly placed cushions that blocked even a glimpse of Johnny’s cock but left the woman’s hairy bush in full view. He’d kissed her like she was delicious.

“Good acting,” I said offhandedly.

Jen snorted and got up to take the DVD out of the player. “I don’t think it’s acting. I mean, I think he’s a much better artist than he ever was an actor. And the way he kisses … he fucks someone in just about every movie he’s in. I don’t think there’s much acting going on. It’s all pure Johnny.”

“When did he make all these movies, anyway?” I got up to stretch. The movie had been short, only a little over an hour, but watching it had felt like much longer.

“Dunno.” Jen shrugged. “He made a bunch in the seventies, then stopped for a while. Fell off the face of the earth. Then came back with the art and, so far as I know, only acted in one or two things after that. Mostly guest spots on TV shows. He was on an episode of Family Ties, if you can believe that.”

“Did he fuck someone?”

“He did!” Jen laughed. “But I don’t think they showed his cock. For that you have to watch … this.”

She pulled out a DVD with a plain red-and-black cover, one word on the front. Garbage. She was already putting it in the player as she talked.

“Okay. I’m not going to tell you anything about this movie in advance. I don’t want to ruin it.”

“That sounds scarier than Train of the Damned!”

She shook her head. “No. Just watch. You’ll see.”

So we watched.

Garbage had even less of a plot than Train of the Damned. From what I could tell, it was about a group of misfits living in an apartment complex a lot like the one on the TV show Melrose Place. The kind seen in so many movies shot in California—a few buildings painted teal or green surrounding a pool. In this movie, the complex was called the Cove. Run by an office manager who I was pretty sure was a three-hundred-pound man in drag, the Cove’s other residents included the slutty heroin addict Sheila, mentally disturbed porcelain figurine collector Henry, unwed mother Becky and a bunch of other random characters who didn’t seem to have names but came and went in the background no matter what else was going on.

And, of course, Johnny.

He played … Johnny. Male prostitute. The tattoo on his arm had been crudely drawn, probably inked with a homemade tool: Johnny.

“I wonder if his name’s Johnny in every movie?” I said, and was promptly shushed.

It wasn’t a good movie, if I were going to judge by the acting or writing. In fact, I couldn’t be sure there was any writing at all. It seemed mostly ad-libbed, which meant there wasn’t much acting, either. It looked more like a group of friends had gotten together one Saturday afternoon with a camera and a bunch of weed and decided to make a movie.

“I think that’s basically what happened,” Jen said when I told her my theory. “But fuck me, look at that epic ass.”

Johnny was naked for most of the movie. Something happened with a trick gone wrong, a drug overdose, a miscarriage. A body in the pool and then put into the garbage. I couldn’t have told you what happened if you’d held me down and threatened me with a live tarantula.

All I could see was Johnny Dellasandro. His ass. His abs. His pecs. His delicious nipples. He was built like an Adonis, muscular and lean … and golden. God. He was naked and sun-burnished, with just enough hair to make him manly and not so much it looked like you’d have to get a Weedwacker to get at his cock.

And he really did fuck everyone in the movie.

“Look at that,” Jen murmured. “I swear he’s really fucking her.”

I tilted my head to get a better angle. “I think … wow. That’s … Is he hard? Omigod. He’s got a hard-on! Look at that!”

“I know, right?” Jen squealed, clutching at me.

I hadn’t been this excited about an erection since my first boy-girl party in eighth grade, when I got to go in the closet for Seven Minutes in Heaven with Kent Zimmerman. My stomach dropped the way it does just before that first hill on a roller coaster. Heat stole up my chest and throat, into my cheeks.

“Wow,” I said. “That is … just whoa.”

“Girl. I know. Can you believe it? And just wait … there! Yesssss,” Jen said, falling back onto the cushions. “Full frontal.”

Just briefly, but there it was. Johnny’s cock in all its glory. He was talking as he walked and I couldn’t decide if I wanted to try and listen to what he was saying or just accept my utter, complete perviness and stare at his dick. The penis won out.

“That is some peen,” I said, my voice filled with admiration.

“You know it.” Jen sighed happily. “That man is fucking beautiful.”

I tore my gaze from the TV to look at her. “I can’t believe you’re so into him and you’ve never talked to him. Word vomit or not. It has to be worth a try.”

Jen shook her head. Johnny wasn’t on-screen at the moment, so we weren’t missing anything important. She gestured toward it.

“What would I say? ‘Hi, Johnny, I’m Jen, and by the way, I love your cock so much I put it on my Christmas list'?” I laughed. “What, you think he’d mind?” She gave me a look.

“Is he married?” I asked the more practical question.

“No. I don’t think so. Honestly, aside from the movies I don’t really know all that much about him, personally.” Jen made a frowny face.

I laughed again, harder this time. “Some stalker you are.”

“I’m not—” she hit me with a pillow “—a stalker. I just appreciate a nice body, is that so wrong? And I do like his art a lot. I bought one of his pieces,” she added, like she was sharing a secret.

“Yeah?”

She nodded. “Yeah. His gallery is really cool. Lots of neat little pieces, nothing too expensive. And in the back room he has different collections. A couple years ago he was showing his stuff. He doesn’t always. I mean, he usually has his stuff included among all the other pieces, and he never displays it like it’s a big deal, you know?”

I’d never been in an art gallery, so I had no clue, but I nodded, anyway. “Can I see it?”

“Sure. I, um, have it in the bedroom.”

I laughed yet again. “Why? Is it dirty?”

I hadn’t known Jen all that long, just for the few months since I’d moved to Second Street. I had not, as yet, seen her look embarrassed about anything, or shy. She was pretty up front with everything, which was why I adored her. So when she couldn’t meet my eyes and gave that little, shameful giggle, I almost told her I didn’t need to see what had made her feel like she couldn’t share it with me.

“No, it’s not dirty,” she said.

“Okay.” I got up and followed her down the short hallway to her bedroom.

Jen’s apartment had been decorated in IKEA chic. Lots of spare, modern pieces that all matched and maximized the small space. Her bedroom was the same, painted white with matching teal and lime-green accents on the bed and curtains. Her apartment was in an old building, with walls that weren’t always quite straight. One, in fact, was curved, with big-paned windows reaching from floor to ceiling and overlooking the street. On one wall she’d hung several of her own paintings. On the opposite wall she’d hung several framed posters of prints even I, the art idiot, recognized—Starry Night, The Scream.

In the center of those was a black-and-white photograph, maybe an eight-by-ten, in a thin red frame. The artist had painted over the photo with thick, three-dimensional strokes, highlighting the lines of the building I recognized as the John Harris Mansion from down on Front Street. I’d spent time looking at a lot of what people had determined art and wondered why on earth they thought so, but I didn’t have to spend a second pondering it about this picture.

“Wow.”

“I know, right?” Jen walked to the wall to stand in front of it. “Pretty cool, huh? I mean, you look at it, and it’s not like it’s anything special. But there’s just something about it… .”

“Yeah.” There definitely was. “And it’s not even dirty.”

She laughed. “No. I just like having it in here where I can look at it first thing in the morning. Does that sound lame? Oh, God, that sounds totally lame.”

“No, it doesn’t. Is this the only piece you have by him?”

“Yeah. Original art’s expensive, even though he’d priced this pretty reasonably.”

I had no idea how much pretty reasonable was and it seemed a little nosy to ask. “It’s nice, Jen. He’s really good.”

“He is. So you see … that’s another reason why I don’t talk to him.”

I looked at her with a smile. “Why? Because you like his art and not just his ass?”

Jen snickered. “Well, yeah.”

“I don’t get it. You think he’s superhot, you’re a big fan … why not just say something?”

“Because I guess I’d rather have him take a look at something I’ve done and think it’s good without me gushing all over him. I’d like him to respect me as an artist, and that’s not going to happen.”

I walked to the wall featuring her paintings. “Why not? You’re good, too.”

“And you don’t know anything about art, remember?” She said it without malice, following me to look at the pictures. “They’ll never hang in a museum. I don’t think anyone will ever make a Wikipedia entry about me.”

“You never know,” I told her. “Do you think Johnny Dellasandro knew when he was making those movies that one day he’d be famous for showing off his ass?”

“It’s a pretty epic ass.”

“Let’s go watch another movie,” I said.

By two in the morning we’d only made it through one more because we’d paused and rewound so many scenes so many times.

“Why didn’t you start with this one?” I demanded after the third time we’d watched Johnny slide down a naked woman’s body with his mouth.

Jen shook the remote at me. “Girl, you have to build up to this shit. You can’t just go in full force on this stuff, you might give yourself an aneurysm.”

I laughed, though the fact I probably did have an aneurysm that could kill me at any time, no matter what the doctors said, made the joke a little less funny. “Play it again.”

She reversed the DVD half a minute and played it again. Johnny called the woman a dirty whore, and in his accent it came out sounding like “duty hooah.” It should’ve made me laugh.

“So fucking wrong,” I said, rapt as Johnny-on-the-screen moved his mouth down her naked body again, over her thigh, then moved up to grab a handful of her hair and turn her around. “I should not like that, right?”

“Girl, just give in to it,” Jen said dreamily.

In the movie, he called her a hooah again. Told her she was dirty, filthy. That she deserved to be fucked like that, didn’t she? That she liked it, being fucked that way, by him.

“God,” I muttered, squirming a little. “That’s …”

“Hot, right?” Jen sighed. “Even with the funky seventies sideburns.”

“Definitely.”

We made it through to the end of the movie and I had no idea what the plot had been, just that Johnny had been naked for over half of it and he’d had sex with most of the other characters, men and women. Oh, and that I was in desperate, urgent need of some “alone time.”

“Another?” Jen was already getting up, but I stood, too.

“I need to get home. It’s really late. And if we sleep in too late tomorrow,” I added, “we won’t make it to the coffee shop. We might miss him.”

“Oh, Emm.” Jen blinked, looking solemn. “I’ve infected you, haven’t I?”

“If this is a disease,” I told her, “I don’t want to find a cure.”

Jen lived close enough to me that walking was no problem, at least during the day or in good weather. But in the middle of an oddly frigid Pennsylvania winter and in a neighborhood that was a little dicey, I’d driven the couple blocks. My normal spot was taken when I got home, probably by the girlfriend of the guy who lived across the street. Grumbling, eyes heavy, I drove down to the next block to take someone else’s spot and hoped I didn’t come out to find a nasty note on my windshield. Since there was very little off-street parking, the jockeying for spots could get brutal.

It was something like serendipity, however, because when I got out of my car I realized I’d parked almost directly in front of Johnny Dellasandro’s house. There was a light on upstairs, the third floor. Most of the houses on this street had the same floorplan, so unless he’d done some major reconstruction inside, that light was shining from a bedroom. In my house, someday, I intended it to be the master bedroom with an attached bath. He’d done enough work to his place that I suspected that’s what his was.

Johnny Dellasandro in his bedroom. I wondered if he slept naked. I wasn’t quite sure I was up to Jen’s standard of surfing down the street on a wave of my own come, but it was close there for a second. I definitely had a clit pulse. I fantasized happily all the way down the block and into my own house.

There’s never been any rhyme or reason behind why the fugues come. The things that set off seizures or migraines or bouts of narcolepsy in other people are only haphazard triggers for me. This is good because it means I don’t have to avoid intense emotion, or chocolate, or any of a dozen other common triggers. It’s bad, of course, because whatever causes the fugues hits me randomly and without warning, and even if I wanted to avoid whatever caused it, I couldn’t.

I hadn’t had a fugue in nearly two years, and now the scent of oranges told me I was going to have a third in less than twenty-four hours.

In the bathroom. Brushing teeth. Staring at my reflection in the mirror but seeing Johnny’s face as he made love to a woman with hair the color of mine. My eyes. My breasts under his hands, my clit beneath his tongue.

Staring at the mirror and then, like Alice … through …

“Watch what you’re doing! You spilled my coffee.” I say this in a thick accent, not my own voice, but it doesn’t feel put on. It feels right on my tongue and teeth and lips. It feels sexy.

“Sorry, ma’am.” The waiter dabs at my thighs with a white towel. His fingers brush too close to my belly, linger too long. “Lemme get that cleaned up for you.”

“I think you need to compensate me.” I say this with a straight face and flip my thick, dark hair over my shoulder.

“Ma’am?” He’s not stupid, this young man in the white waiter’s coat.

The train rocks beneath us.

“Come to my cabin later tonight and make sure you’re prepared to adequately compensate me for the ruin of my slacks.”

His only answer is a smile. I finish my meal with my own smile, making it difficult to enjoy the food. I’m not hungry any longer, anyway. Not for dinner.

In my cabin I wait for the knock at the door, and when I open it, there he is. Not in his waiter’s uniform now, but a pair of dark trousers and a yellowed white poet’s shirt. Peasant wear, but I don’t care. Peasants make great lovers.

“Just look,” I say, pointing to the dark stain on my white slacks. I’ve deliberately done nothing to clean them. “See what you did, you clumsy man?”

“I can pay for them, ma’am… .”

“That won’t do at all. These pants are pure silk, made by my personal designer. They’re irreplaceable.”

“Then what?” He’s properly challenging.

He has long, thick, dark blond hair clubbed into a tail at the back of his neck. When I loosen it from the tie, it falls over my fingers and hands. It’s rougher than silk.

“Clean them.”

With a sullen look he pulls a handkerchief from his back pocket and, with a flourish, pushes me a few steps until the backs of my knees hit the edge of the bed, which has been turned down for the night. He swipes at the stain on my pants without looking away from my eyes. I shudder at his touch.

“No,” I say, low and throaty. “Use your mouth.”

He goes to his knees so slowly it’s like watching butter melt. He’s smiling, but his eyes are hard. He closes them just before he puts his mouth to the stain.

I can feel the heat of his breath through the thin cloth, and I shudder again. My knees want to buckle, but I put my hand on the wall to keep myself standing. I can feel the train’s vibration in my fingers and palm.

His hands move up to grab my ass and hold me still. He looks up at me, his face inches from my crotch. I wonder if he can smell me.

“That good enough?” he says.

“No,” I tell him. “Not nearly good enough.”

His fingers grip and pull. Silk shreds. I’m suddenly bare from the waist down, my slacks torn and dangling in his fists. I have only a moment to react before his mouth is on me again. My bare flesh this time. My pussy. He sucks at my clit, nuzzling, and I cry out. He slaps my ass lightly, and I don’t know if it’s to keep me still or make me cry out louder. Then I’m on my back and he’s over me, his cock pressing my lips.

“Take it,” he says. Brutish and cruel. My cunt throbs and I turn my face. He grabs my hair, holds me still. Then, gently, softly, he rubs his cock over my pressed-closed lips. “Take it.” And I do.

All of it. Thick and hot, hard. Down the back of my throat. I suck him in, greedy for it. I suck and lick and stroke, and he fucks my mouth like it’s my cunt, and I swear I get as much pleasure from it.

He’s not even touching my clit and I feel the buildup there of pleasure. Like electricity. Like fire. I’m pumping my hips and moaning around his cock. My hair is in my face and he strokes it back, then grips a handful of it to set a slower pace.

I want him to touch me but I don’t need him to touch me. I’m going to come in a minute or two. I can feel it. And then he’s pulling away, stealing that delicious cock from me, and I do more than moan, I cry out.

“Lookit you,” he says in a voice full of triumph and yet tender, too. “Lookit you. Begging for it. Such a whore.”

I love the way he says it, like it has two syllables. Suddenly, I don’t know why we’re on a train, why he’s a waiter and I’m some sort of … countess? Or duchess? Some sort of rich bitch with too much money and an itch. Everything that made sense when this started is now a jumble.

All I know for sure is that I don’t want this to end. His hand comes down to caress my cheek. His thumb slips between my lips and I suck it gently before biting. He laughs, pulls me up, settles me onto his cock like I weigh nothing. Now there’s nothing between us and he’s inside me, all the way.

The train rocks us. He rocks us. His hands, strong hands, grip my ass and move me. His mouth takes mine. We kiss for the first time, and I want to drown in the taste of him. His tongue strokes mine. Our teeth bump. He laughs again.

“You like that?”

“I like that,” I tell him. I don’t have an Italian accent anymore.

When I look in the mirror, I don’t see my face. I don’t even see our reflection, fucking so prettily on this sleeping-car bed. The mirror is more like a window, only it doesn’t look out to the passing scenery. Instead of mountains, I see walls. I see a woman.

The woman is me.

She is there, I am here; we’re the same and I look into the eyes of my lover, this waiter whose name is …

“Johnny.”

I came out of the fugue with his name on my lips and the smell of oranges so thick and cloying in my nose and mouth I leaned over the sink and gulped water straight from the tap. I stood, heart pounding, eyes wild, face dripping. I looked at the mirror, but all I saw was myself.