Chances Are

CHANCES ARE

As soon as she turned the corner, she looked terrified at Leicester Square with the breath caught in her throat.

"Holy Shit!" - She thought - "I have traveled in time and I was catapulted into a Beatles concert?"

In front of her, the square was full of people, who looked like a shapeless mass of bodies, possessed and with no brakes.
She was usually quite aware about any event in the city, but apparently this time she lost something. She scanned quickly those that could be options.
Excluding immediately a movie premiere. There wasn't any movie output able to gather so many people. Not after the final chapter of Harry Potter a couple of years ago.
Some awards ceremony? Yes, it could be!
Or a concert? Why not! And given the age of the crowd she was walking towards, it could just as well be one of those teen idol so popular between the kids and that caused acute attacks of urticaria to her.

Her phone rang while she was still at a safe distance.

"Please tell me you're coming?"

George was waiting for her at the Milord, an elegant French restaurant away only a few tens of meters. Unfortunately on the opposite side of Leicester Square!

"Excuse me, but have you seen how the square is in this moment? How the hell do I cross it ...? " - She looked around, searching for a way out. - "I will be forced to change direction and take a side street ... maybe go to Charing Cross ..."

"I don't care ... but you have to be here in five minutes!" - George cut short. He was very upset and she could imagine his reason very well. - "You know that Greyshott Institute could be one of our most important sponsors?" - He hung up the phone without adding other words.

He made ​​it easy! Suddenly she felt an unbearably hot assailing her. And she didn't approach the crowd yet. Again, she gave a long look at the two sides of the square. No! She could not deviate. It would have taken at least half an hour, changing the way! Her eyes went back again to the crowd of kids. Of course if she was passed there, in the middle, who knows how she would look like, reached the other side? She shuddered at the thought.

She was reflected a moment in a shop window. She was just straight out of work, but she was pretty dressed in anticipation of the dinner at Milord. Cute, at least according to her canons. A bright olive green silk blouse, tight black skirt knee-length, a pair of dark high heels, embellished with glitter, 70's style. After all, it was a business dinner! She could not show up in jeans and t-shirt as usual. Although perhaps, given the situation, at this time it would have made ​​her more comfortable.

She could not linger over, so decided to move. She lined the square, the side facing south, trying to keep as far away from the crowd. Yes, probably it would take more than five minutes, but with a little bit of luck, she could come on the other side safe.

For a few tens of meters the good fortune had decided really to assist her. Zigzagged here and there, among girls in tears and large electrical cables that crawled on the pavement as anacondas. There was television too, then! What was that about? Had they set up a special show of X-Factor Live from Leicester Square?

Suddenly she didn't felt the asphalt under his feet anymore, but caught up by a mysterious centrifugal force and began to fluctuate without a definite goal. She didn't imagine that crowd surfing could be so sickening.

She found herself screaming with all her might, begging to be put back on the ground, but in vain. In the hands of that enthusiast ones, she had the same relevance of a plastic bag tossed by the wind. The river of people was overflowing in all directions, as not even the Thames could have done. Sooner or later the river would lead her somewhere. She didn't have anything to do but drifting ashore.
With the corner of an eye she caught a glimpse, on her left, of a row of dark cars parked, dangerously approaching, and felt the first impact. The crowd had just slammed her against a car, causing her a slight knock to the arm. She didn't even have time to absorb the blow that the pressing and not required flight had already begun. She bobbed against several other cars before being deposited for a few moments beside the umpteenth luxury sedan with tinted windows.
This time it didn't take her unprepared. As she felt to have regained freedom of movement, she grabbed the door handle, flicked it, and jumped in, kicking her legs towards those monsters that could suck her once again.

"Fuck! This is a private car! " - A voice shouted, visibly irritated.

In the heat of the moment, she didn't even realized there was someone in the car and that she even sat on him. She turned around to respond in kind, urging him to be kinder towards a poor miserable, searching for a safe haven, given the out of control situation besetting the square. But when her eyes met the man who had just scolded , the words stuck in her throat replaced by a wide grin stupidly.

"I cannot believe it!" - She managed to whisper, as he gazed fixed her with his eyes, deep and insightful as molten metal.

He needed just a fraction of a second to recognize her. He thought of her often over the past few months. Maybe too often! Considering that, between them, there was just a little bit more than nothing. But the memory of the bold touch of her hand on his 'magic wand', the taste of her mouth and her skin, were really difficult to erase. And now here she was, in his car, on his lap. Even more inviting than he remembered her, now that a lighter and less inhibitory dress took the place of the heavy clothing with which he had met her, last winter.

"I cannot believe it!" - He replied, smiling. - "You didn't have to organize all this just to see me?"

They both laughed openly, while he, like a true gentleman, lowered her from his knees and sit her beside him.

"What the hell are you doing here?" - She asked, trying to adjust her clothes to the best, crumpled by the thrusts of the crowd. - "You're not gonna tell me that all the mess out here is because of you?"

He stared at her for a moment. Then he closed his eyes and leaned his head back, sighing.

"Of course not!" - Ruled, in a faint voice. - "I would hang myself if it was so!"

She didn't understand what he meant but didn't ask for more. She waited for him to go on his own.

"There's a special evening in honor of Justin Bieber, at the Auditorium."

Ah! That's it! Now things were beginning to make sense.

"And you're here to assist?" - She asked again, couldn't help to hold back a laugh.

He opened his eyes toward her. She was fortunate that still flushed from fatigue so he could not realize how she was blushing.

"It's a kind of tribute to the boy." - The man snorted, without taking his eyes off her. - "In some interviews, I had the unpleasant idea to let go unnecessary statements about him. And my label set me up in this thing .... You know? I am ... in promotion with the new album! And so … "

"What kind of statements?"

To avoid his gaze, she turned three-quarters on the seat, one leg bent under her body while the other knee was dangerously in contact with the leg of him.
He looked away, for just a moment, from her eyes, directing towards her bare knee, asking only to be touched by his fingers.

"The kind that I feel like I'm his foster father!"

Her clarion laugh woke him up by the thought of where he would have been able to get his fingers, climbing higher and higher. They had a score to settle, after all!

"I told you once that you should be more careful about what you say in public!" - Why she always laughed at him in the key moments? - "You'll end up to put you in serious trouble, one time or another."

He shook his head and smiled. He knew she was right. Didn't he repeatedly cursed himself for the very same reason? He turned in three quarters, mimicking her position.

"And you? Don't tell me you're here for him?" - He asked, going back to look at her straight in the eye.

"You caught me!" - She replied, spreading her arms in surrender. - "I confess! I can't live without Bieberon!"

"Seriously! What are you doing here?"

"I have got a dinner date in Cranbourn Street." - She took a quick look through the tinted window. - "That is beyond the square! Unfortunately!"

"Lucky for you, you mean? Because now you're here with me!"

He took advantage of her momentary distraction and put his hand on her knee. She turned quickly, taken aback by his gesture. But, rather than pushed it aside, as he himself would might expect, she smiled. She also remembered too well the feeling of the warm soft touch of his hand.

"Romantic date?"

"Yes! Me, George, and two old ruin men from the Greyshott Institute." - At her response, his hand began to wander slightly around her knee, making really difficult for her to keep talking. - "It's a foundation that preserves our historical memory ... and George ..." - She paused for a moment to hold an imperceptible moan. - "... hopes ... they'll finance the distribution of his ... film."

His hand stopped. - "I saw it! It's beautiful!" - She stared at him in amazement. - "Yes! I've really seen it. At DocNyc. Is it about the battle of Bosworth, right? Very interesting!" - Her gaze was more and more puzzled. - "Hey! Don't make that face! You, English folks, judge us always rude and ignorant, just because we are Americans!"

"How are we touchy! ... I just didn't think you'd come up with watching all the films in competition at the festival! ... A super busy man like you!"

His fingers went back to play with her ​​knee.

"That's right! I have not seen them all ... in fact, to be honest, I've only seen yours ... " - Winked at her and she smiled back with a mischievous smile. - " ... but don't fool yourself! I only saw it because I'm the guinea pig of your science experiment!"

She buried her face in the back of the seat to hold as much as possible the sound of another laugh.

"By the way! How your studies are going? "

The girl turned slightly, just to rest her cheek to the back, and took on a mock pout.

"I would say pretty bad!" - She said serious, but only for a few moments. - "I knew I would not be equally favored by the Goddess of Fortune .... You know, Mick Jagger is seventy and Pete Doherty is just too unbalanced to provide reliable results for my studies!"

As she spoke, the man's hand, with a slow and studied movement, got up along her thigh, causing her little shivers that were appropriately counteracting with the heat of her skin, now lit by summer temperature, by the human vortex of a few minutes before, and especially by the excitement never died for that contact.

"Do you ever wonder what might have happened that night?" - He asked, continuing the delicate dance of his hand. - "If your friend didn't not stop us?"

Did she ever wonder? She thought of nothing else but it for weeks, maybe months!

"Sometimes!" - She said, simulating a natural indifference.

"So? What ... what do you think?"

She looked at him again, unable to suppress a satisfied smile on her lips. He was more beautiful than ever! His latest movie maybe left too much signs upon him. His face was still rather dug and small furrows appeared around his indescribable eyes. And, although he had regained a few pounds of meat upon his enviable bone structure, his thinness was still excessive. All this things shocked her even more. This man could really torture himself in unimaginable ways and always be so damn seductive!

"We'd never get to the bottom!" - She decreed.

He froze at her answer, and stopped the movement of his hand.

"Why do you say so? You didn't seem so insensitive to my charms!"

The girl's eyes widened in disbelief.

"I was not! I'm made ​​of flesh ... much more than you!" - She said, pointing a finger at his chest, skinny but toned. - "But you'd be pulled back!"

Now it was he startled eyes pop. How could she say such a thing?

"I don't claim to know thoroughly ... actually don't know you at all!" - She continued. - "But I know you probably play this game for what ... twenty years? ... I guess you already taken all possible satisfactions! ... I will not suppose now that you're too old for this kind of entertainment ... or that you're devoting to a monastic life of abstinence ... don't get me wrong! But I don't think a quick bang with a stranger woman, in a private room of a theater, would really satisfied you! Unless the unknown ... was a beautiful model with a stunning body, able to charm you at first sight! "

She talked so fast that her words had not even time to enter his ears and were immediately driven into his brain. She was right! On almost everything! It was just a game to him? Yes, most of the times! Would he get to the bottom with her? He could not answer!

"Am I wrong?" - Insisted the girl.

"No! Probably not!" - He said, finally raising his hand from her leg. With the displeasure of both.

He wondered if she would expected a different answer? He spied her with a quick look while she was returning to a more normal sitting position. It was a bit of disappointment that he could see in her eyes?

"You, then, you'd get to the bottom?" - He asked, just whispering the words.

She looked at him from top to bottom. She was firmly convinced of what she had just said, but even if she was wrong, if his game had continued as expected, would she accept being reduced to a mere pawn on his chessboard? Knowing herself the answer could be only one!

"You'll never know!" - She whispered in turn, laughing happily.

"Won't you ever give up to laugh at my face? You have ... the ability to make me feel like an idiot! "

He didn't understand why he did it, but put his arm around her waist and pulled her to him, making her put her head on his shoulder and tightening her with the other arm. She knew neither why she let him do it.

"There is only one thing you are wrong about!" - He told her, by blowing over her short and straight hair.

"Weird! I'm never wrong! "

He approached her and whispered in her ear slightly. - "You didn't need to be a beautiful model with a stunning body to charm me!"

Her phone rang, shattering the magic of the moment.

"Bloody hell!" - George cried on the other end of the phone. - "May I know where the hell have you gone? It is half an hour past, I'm waiting for you. "

She regained the clarity needed to make her understand that her life was waiting for her out of that dark car, and Leicester Square. She glanced toward the window on the side of him and saw a slender corridor of open road between cars and buildings.

"I'll be there in a few minutes! Don't be afraid!"

She hung up and turned to the man, who still had one arm tight around her waist. She smiled at him.

"I've got to go! Or George will have another of his awful attacks of andropause!"

She climbed on him to get out of his door, but, as soon as she was over, he stopped her on his legs. And brought her closer to him to kiss her. In depth and expertly. In return, she explored his mouth, trying to impress in her mind every little detail, from the shape of his tongue to the smooth surface of his teeth. Then she pulled away, reluctantly.

"I don't want to wait to run into you in an elevator next time!" - He told her softly, slightly pouting his pretty face.

"Fate has already been quite kind to us, isn't it?"

"Maybe there are still a few things that you don't know about me!" - He touched her nose with his lips. - "First, I am a terribly impatient man!" - His lips went up along her front. - "Secondly, I am a perfectionist! ... I hate to leave something unfinished."

She pulled away again before he could even get off on her mouth.

"Ah! Then we have a few things in common! 303 ... Walcot Road, internal 7! " - She let a kiss full of promise on his lips. - "Goodbye, Jared!"

She opened the door and got out.

"See you soon, Francesca!"

He greeted her, before she closed the door behind her back and disappeared from his sight, once again.