Kiss Me Like You Mean It

I saw Oliver pull up in front of the shop at 8:52, and I couldn’t help but notice the ridiculously fancy car he was in—a brand new, black Porsche Cayenne Turbo. I wasn’t so much of a car buff, but I knew that model in particular went for well over $100,000.

I finished closing the store up a few minutes after nine and did my best to ignore Oliver’s luxurious car, but as I crossed the sidewalk afterwards and got close enough to see the perfect paintjob, I almost grew anxious over the idea that I could possibly put a fingerprint on it. I’d never been in such a fancy vehicle before. In fact, I’d never had anything to do with something that fancy before at all.

“Hey.” I greeted him with a smile as I settled into the passenger seat, carefully placing my purse on the floor by my feet.

He simpered back at me. “How was your shift?”

I reached into my purse and pulled out another CD I’d thought of giving him after he’d walked out earlier. “I got this for you.” I just couldn’t resist buying it for him once I’d thought of it.

His face stretched into a full grin. “Under Soil And Dirt by The Story So Far, yeah?”

I nodded. “Track two is my favorite.”

Without saying anything else, he ripped the plastic off the case, stuck the garbage into the pocket of his coat, and pushed the disc into the CD slot. The guitar and drums of the song began playing as he drove off, and a moment later, the singer shouted one of my favorite lines—Give up and go home, alone, and suffer some more. This head of stone lets no one in anymore. My effort is never enough.

“Have you ever listened to these guys before?” I asked as he pulled to a stop at a red light.

He shook his head. “I think the name might be familiar, but I’m not quite positive.”

“What kind of music do you listen to, anyway?” I asked him, smirking. “You know, besides the three albums I’ve picked out for you and You Me At Six.”

He pursed his lips, seriously thinking for a moment. “I listen to a lot of classic rock and metal, some old school rap, and a bit of pop and dance. I’ve tried getting into classical and country, but I can’t seem to stick with it.”

“I’ll have to remember that,” I mused.

We continued our car ride in silence for a long while—at least three songs—before he finally spoke again. “I suppose I owe you an explanation, then, yeah?”

“For what?” I asked.

“You brought up my wife this morning, and I brushed you off.” He glanced at me, probably trying to gauge my expression.

“Oh, yeah.” I shrugged. “Don’t worry about it.” I was used to guys blowing me off when it came to anything serious.

“We’re separated,” he explained anyway. “We’ve been separated for the past two months.”

I just pursed my own lips because I wasn’t entirely sure what to say to that.

“How do you have a brand new Porsche and no way of listening to anything other than the radio or CD’s?” I finally questioned.

After learning about his separation, I was beginning to wonder if he’d only come into Sam Goody to pick me up for a rebound—and I definitely wasn’t about that life, no matter how good looking he was.

“I abandoned my phone after transferring my music into the system, so when the system got stolen, all my music went with it.” His story sounded believable, at least—I had to give him that.

“So you have no phone and no personalized music anymore?”

He shook his head. “No personalized music other than the CD’s you’ve so kindly given to me.” He offered me a smile at that.

“That hardly counts as personalized—at least not for you.”

He shrugged. “Well I appreciate your kindness, regardless. You’re really the friendliest person I’ve met here;” and just like that, we were off the curious topic of his mysterious, estranged wife once again.

“That’s because I’m not from here,” I replied. Everyone I’d met that had been raised in New York City had a severe attitude problem. Only the transplants were bearable, and even that was often debatable.

“Where are you from, then?”

“New Jersey—but the suburbs, so it’s different.” City dwellers in New Jersey weren’t much different from city dwellers in New York, but the suburbs were a whole other world altogether.

“Why did you and your wife separate?” I suddenly blurted before he could ask me anything else. I almost felt bad for pressuring him into telling me his history because I could only imagine how hard it was, but I was so curious. It was a compulsion. I didn’t even like talking about my ex-boyfriends, though, so I could empathize with how much more difficult an ex-wife had to be—well an almost ex-wife.

I watched his grip tighten around the steering wheel from the way the skin on his tattooed knuckles whitened, but I was surprised that he still answered in a halfway decent tone. “I had a problem, and I thought that getting married would keep me on the right path. I fell off the wagon, though, and she’d always said she would leave if I did—so she left.”

“What drug?” He was trying to dance around it, but I wasn’t stupid.

“Ketamine.”

I nodded in response, trying to think of something to say. I could relate almost perfectly, and I had still yet to figure out how to deal with it.

“She actually left, like for real?” I finally asked. She sounded pretty heartless to me. If I was really in love with someone, I couldn’t imagine leaving their side when they needed me the most.

He nodded, tightening his jaw. “She warned me that she would, though. I can’t blame her.”

“No,” I argued, shaking my head. “That’s like really shitty, dude. If you love someone, you don’t leave them in their time of need. Don’t wedding vows even say through illness and health?”

“In sickness and in health,” he corrected absentmindedly.

“Addiction is considered a sickness, you dummy.” I swatted the side of his head to try and knock some sense into him. “How are you sitting here blaming yourself for that?”

He just took a deep breath but said nothing.

“And you don’t even seem dumb, either,” I mumbled. I didn’t mean to come off so harsh on him, but I just felt bad for his predicament—that was all. He seemed like such a sweet guy, and I didn’t think he deserved to be putting himself in that position.

He peered over at me with a small smile while waiting at another red light. “What about you, anyway? How many shambles is your life in that you can comfort me in mine?”

I half snorted and half laughed. “Maybe I’ll tell you about it some other day.” That was his cue to drop it.

“Some other day it is, then;” and just like that, we were silent once again.


I wasn’t sure what Oliver did for a living or why he’d evaded my question when I’d asked, but whatever it was, he had to have made crazy money. I was pretty sure there was no bank in the world that would’ve loaned out enough money for him to buy a Porsche Cayenne Turbo and take me out to The Modern—a French restaurant best known for its average plate cost of over $125 per person.

When our waitress returned with our drinks—a water for him and a Coca-Cola for myself—I couldn’t help but ask him again. “Are you sure you wanna eat here?” We’d fought about it for at least ten minutes in the car after parking out front because it was an unnecessary expense to me and a seemingly well worth luxury to him.

He rolled his eyes. “If I wasn’t sure, I promise I wouldn’t have suggested it in the first place.”

“I just don’t understand how you can afford to drive a Porsche Cayenne—a Cayenne Turbo, nonetheless—around New York City and buy dinner for a stranger at one of the most expensive restaurants in New York City.”

“I make a lot of money, Violet—don’t worry about it.” I loved the way my name sounded with a British accent. It was almost enough to distract me from the topic at hand.

“What do you even do?” I still pressed, regardless. “Your car alone is like over a hundred grand. I’m dying to know how you live like this—and how you haven’t made any friends here yet. Literally, all you’d have to do is give somebody a ride to the train station or something. One look at that car, and they’d be your best fucking friend for life, just for the crazy road trips if nothing else.”

He took a long sip of his water. “Those aren’t true friends.”

“No shit, but it’s still company to keep you occupied.” It was rare to find true friends, anyway. What difference did it make?

He pursed his lips. “I’m a musician,” he finally informed.

“Musicians have old Ford Econolines and Vans slip-ons.” He was wearing a pair of nice, black, leather, lace-up ankle boots.

He knit his eyebrows together. “My band is signed to Columbia.”

Just before Columbia had left his mouth, I’d been taking a sip of my Coke, and just as it left, I almost spit it out in his face. Instead, to avoid such embarrassment, I inhaled it back and started coughing violently.

“Columbia?” I finally choked out. Artists like Adele and One Direction were signed to Columbia. What band could he have possibly been in that was signed to such a famous record label, and how did I not know who he was?

He nodded. “My mates and I have been very lucky.”

“What’s the name of your band?” I almost demanded; “and why the hell wouldn’t you open up with that—like, ‘Hi, I’m Oliver; I’m British; and I’m in a famous band. Wanna sleep with me?’”

He chuckled at that, but I was being serious. “We call ourselves Bring Me The Horizon.”

I shook my head vehemently. “No way.” My old roommate from college had been obsessed with a band called Bring Me The Horizon. I’d never listened to them personally, but I’d just finished restocking their space in the store with an album titled That’s The Spirit about a week before meeting Oliver.

To prove my point, I pulled out my white iPhone 5C from the pocket in my leather jacket and typed Bring Me The Horizon into the Safari search engine. As soon as the pictures at the top of the screen loaded, though, I was sure I’d died. His face was plastered right in the center of all the photographs.

“You have got to be kidding me,” I cried, glaring at him and throwing my phone into my purse. “Why wouldn’t you tell me that?” I was almost yelling at him, but he was famous—and not just locally famous. He was famous worldwide.

He rolled his eyes, sighing. “It’s not a deal-breaker to me,” he muttered, clearly annoyed at my freak-out. “I don’t like basing my friendships on it.”

“Yeah, but that’s like a really big deal, dude. My college roommate was obsessed with you. Like, that’s weird—is that not weird to you? Because that’s really weird to me.” I was basically hyperventilating—but seriously, nothing exciting ever happened in my life.

“Violet.”

I knew he was trying to get my attention, but I couldn’t stop. “I just stocked your band’s CD’s last week. That’s weird—it’s so weird. I don’t even know how to handle this—that’s how weird it is.”

“Violet,” he repeated.

It was just so weird, though, and he didn’t seem to get it. “You guys played Warped Tour; I went to Warped Tour. This is a really big deal, dude—like a really big deal. People know you all over the place. How has no one run up to you begging for a picture yet? How do you not have any friends?” I shrieked the last question, so loud that almost the entire restaurant filled with its uptight dinner guests was gaping at me from my lack of class. I’d shown up in a cropped, maroon sweater, ripped black jeans, and a seriously faded leather jacket, though—what did they expect?

“You’ve gotta have friends,” I continued, still half yelling and half whispering. “All famous people have friends, and it’s not like you’re even boring—”

“Can you shut up for a second?” he suddenly hissed.

I stopped midsentence because the lack of manners caught me off guard. I thought British people were classy, like they never said shut up—that kind of classy.

Granted, though, I was going a bit overboard with the freak-out.

“This is why I don’t tell people,” he groaned. “It changes things.”

I shook my head at that. “No, this doesn’t change anything in terms of the way you mean it. You still need good music to listen to, and I still work at a CD store where you can get good music to listen to. What it changes is the level of excitement in my life. It only makes you a little cooler than you were before—but not by much.” I offered him a large smile in the hopes of cheering up his spirits because after gaining some sense back a little bit, that had to be pretty shitty—never knowing who your real friends were because of your career. I knew I wouldn’t have liked it, at least.

He simpered back to me, his shoulders noticeably relaxing. “Well, thanks.”

“You’re still not cooler than me, though,” I added.