The Cutting Room. Jilliane Hoffman
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time. She used to think she’d marry a dentist until she realized a lot of them actually had terrible teeth. What was that proverb? Physician heal thyself? Dentist fix thy overbite. As Gabby studied Reid’s rugged, fair face, set against the backdrop of a raucous Spring Break-aged crowd, she thought perhaps his very best feature right now was the fact that he wasn’t twenty-one. She guessed late twenties, but didn’t want to ask, because she didn’t want to be asked that very same question and then watch for the disappointment on his face. Demi Moore might’ve broken ground with Ashton Kutcher, but for most female earthlings who didn’t have movie-star looks and a celebrity-sized bank book, it wasn’t so easy to bridge even a small age gap with a handsome guy. And definitely not in a place like this. Most men heard ‘twenty-eight’, swore the woman said ‘thirty’, and pictured the thought-bubble above her smiling, anxious head that read, ‘Looking for marriage, a house and a baby!’ That’s when they excused themselves to use the bathroom and you never saw them again. Maybe she was being silly and down on herself, but tonight she didn’t want to take any risks with having fun. She just wanted to have it. ‘I’m an accountant with Morgan and Tipley,’ Gabby replied. ‘It’s a really small firm in Midtown. Lex and Forty-third. You’ve never heard of it, trust me. I’ve been there a couple of years now. I like it.’
‘Accounting … ooh. Sooo not what I pegged you for and sooo not my strong suit. I’m good with my money — not so sure I’d be good handling other people’s. I might get jealous.’
‘You don’t actually get to touch it, which takes away some of the temptation.’ Gabby sipped her drink. ‘Interesting. What did you peg me for?’
‘Oh, I don’t know … an astronaut? A rocket scientist? A nuclear physicist?’
‘Do I look that smart? It’s the suit, I tell ya.’
‘Nah. I really thought that you might be a lawyer or a paralegal. Something with the law. Maybe an FBI agent or a cop or maybe a spy. Just a wild guess. You look too fun to be an accountant.’
‘Accountants can be a lively bunch. The life of the party. Especially on April sixteenth.’
‘Really? Mine’s named Sy, he works for H&R Block, and I don’t think he’s been to a party in a few decades. So tell me, what do you like about it, Gabby? Accounting?’
‘Hmmm … good question. Let me think. Well, for starters it’s not subjective, like a lot of careers are. My friend’s a writer and I could never do what she does, because she never knows if it’s good. I mean, there’s always someone telling her what she wrote sucked, even if a hundred other people tell her she’s the bomb. It makes no sense. She ends up banging her head against the wall. Same for my friend who’s a publicist. Someone always second-guesses what she did. Claims they could have done it better. And that they would’ve had a better result: more people at a premiere, a better photo from a better model, whatever. But accounting, you know, is predictable. It always works out, if you do it right. And if you really do it right, you can make people very happy. Numbers don’t lie and they don’t care what other people think of them.’
‘Interesting …’
Gabby had never had to explain why she liked accounting to a guy before. She wondered if she’d given the ‘right’ answer. No matter how you phrased it, accounting never sounded thrilling. ‘What do you do, Reid?’ she asked.
‘I’m a filmmaker.’
Gabby’s heartbeat sped up a bit. Filmmaker was up there with surgeon in both the excitement and good-catch departments. ‘That’s really cool,’ she said.
‘Well, I’m working at it. It’s not an easy profession to crack. Lots of competition. You have to be real original to stand out.’
‘What kind of films do you make?’
‘Okay, now don’t get too excited, because you’re not talking up the next James Cameron. I, well … I make documentaries.’
‘I still think that’s exciting.’
He smiled. ‘I do, too. I think real life is much more interesting than make-believe, actually. Real people having real reactions, expressing real emotions. It’s capturing those moments on film that can be difficult. But … well, it doesn’t bring in much money, unless your name’s Michael Moore.’
‘I still think it’s exciting. Money isn’t everything, you know.’
‘Hmmm … didn’t you say you were an accountant?’
Gabby laughed. ‘I’ve done taxes for a lot of people that make a lot of money, but their lives are still a mess and they’re not happy. No, money isn’t everything.’
‘I agree. There’s a lot more to life.’
Gabby gestured to her ear. It was getting really loud.
Reid leaned in closer, placed his hand firmly on her back and whispered in her ear. She felt his warm breath on her neck and it gave her a shiver, as his strong hand massaged her lower spine. ‘So tell me more about yourself, Gabriella. I wanna know more about you.’
She smiled coquettishly. To think she had almost walked out and gone home all alone again to her cat and a bad movie on Lifetime. Her luck was definitely changing; she could feel it. And so over two lemon-drop martinis, as he stroked her back and played with the ends of her hair, she told him everything he wanted to know.
3
God, she liked the way he said her name. Gabriella. And she liked that after a few drinks, a lot of meaningless conversation and, perhaps most importantly, after a few more short-skirted, long-legged stiletto packs had wandered by en route to the Ladies’ room, that he still remembered it.
Reid moved a strand of hair off her face and leaned in close. ‘Listen,’ he whispered, his mouth on her ear. ‘I don’t normally ask girls back to my place. I don’t, but …’
She nodded. ‘Yes.’ The room was spinning.
‘Yes?’
‘Yes, I’d like to go home with you. You don’t normally ask, and I don’t normally say yes, but here we are. Yes.’
He smiled. ‘Great. I don’t live too far.’
‘Great.’ Gabby reached for her purse under the table and the world went belly-up. She put her hands on her head to get it to stop spinning. And she said a prayer that her stomach would settle back down. She definitely shouldn’t have had that fourth martini. That was what put her over the edge. And that’s why she was making such an impetuous, crazy-ass decision to go home with a total stranger. It was the alcohol; it had definitely made her horny and her overactive pheromones weren’t helping the decision-making process. What was worse was that she was still sober enough to recognize what she was doing was stupid but she was gonna do it anyway. Damn … She was definitely missing sex, no doubt about it; it’d been almost a year since she’d been with anyone. And it had been three years since she’d had anyone serious in her life. It wasn’t like she was thinking Reid was ‘the one’ or anything, or even that this relationship might go someplace past tonight — no, that would require lucid thinking. On the other hand, he did have a great smile and he made freaking movies for a living, which was a total turn-on. Plus, when his hand had traveled up her skirt underneath the table it had given her tingles in all the right places. Perhaps saying yes was a much easier decision than it should’ve been, but, as Daisy would say if she were here, ‘You only live once …’
Thankfully, her legs worked when she stood up. Reid put his arm around her and led her protectively by the elbow past the tightly packed bodies that surrounded the dance floor and the bar and out of the club. On the sidewalk outside, a chattering line of minimally dressed people had formed and was wrapping around the side of the building. For them, the night was just beginning. It would end only when the sun came up.
The cold, damp, night air was refreshing. It sobered her up a bit and