"I can't believe you! How could you give that guy my number?! Did you not once think about why I wasn't going to give it to him?!"
"You should have, though—that's a nice one, Sophia. How does it fit?"
"Will you listen to me?!"
"I am, hold on."
Sam walked away from her angry and annoyed friend to the dressing room where the little girl had walked out of, wearing an adorable ensemble of a pink and black striped halter, long-sleeve shirt with a pair of white jeans. Her black hair seemed to blend in with the shirt, and her fare face just seemed to glow with the outfit. Sam leaned down, placing her two fingers under the halter straps, seeing how tight they were, and then feeling along the hem of the jeans, seeing how loose they were. She smiled at the girl, standing back up to face her.
"It fits pretty good. Do you like it?" she asked her.
"Yeah, it's cute! I think Emily will like it, too!" Sophia cried happily.
"You know not to be sharing your clothes with your friends, right?" Alli interrogated the girl softly, who nodded seriously. "Alright, it does look cute. Take it off, and try on the other ones. We'll get that one."
Sophia turned and walked back into the dressing room, leaving the two women to argue outside the door amongst themselves, while she merely toned out from it. She had learned to do that when she was really little.
"Will you calm down, Alli? It was just a number. Chances are he might forget about it or throw it away," Sam told her, flipping her shoulder-length dark red hair back over her ears. She took out her blue and white striped headband, and then readjusted it to pull her bangs back.
"What if he doesn't? What if he was serious about having it? Do you honestly think I'm going to cheat on Julian like that?" the fearful woman confronted her friend, her hands shaking despite the fact she had them folded together in front of her.
"Allison, relax, okay? You're not cheating on Julian by giving this guy your cellphone number. You haven't gone out with the guy, you haven't slept with him, so you're not cheating. If he calls you, be nice, be sweet, you can even flirt, just don't try and develop a romantic relationship with him. Be his friend, if you have to," Sam explained to her. She looked at her friend, reading the expression of fear plastered across it—Sam always seemed to have X-ray vision through the mask she always wore. "Unless you like him."
"Shut up, I do not!" Alli glowered at her friend, who only laughed triumphantly from the look.
"You do! You like him! I mean, who wouldn't? He was fucking hot! I mean—DAMN! If I could sleep with him, you know, I would," Sam waved her hand in front of her face as she swooned for the man named Christopher as nasty and X-rated images and thoughts came to her mind.
"You're a slut, you know that?"
"And you're in denial," Sam accused her friend. "Just admit, you like him. Okay, even if you don't like him, you have to admit it, he was hot! H-O-T! Hot!"
Sam and Alli stared at each other, trying to see which one would break before the other said anything. Alli was never good at this game, as Sam was always triumphant at knowing the truth, however disgusting and incredulous it may be.
"Alright, he was." The girl turned her gray eyes away, trying to hide the faint blush rising on her face.
"And he had that 'bad-boy' look you always crave. And he was…built! God, you could see those muscles flex and everything! I bet you money Sophia even has a small crush on him now! Damn, he was so fucking hot!"
"Sami, watch your language!"
Alli and Sam cracked up laughing when Sophia walked out of the dressing room—looking cute, as always, trying on a new outfit—and having the expression on her face of having overheard what they were saying. The child beamed at them, but her green eyes were condemning the older woman standing next to the door. Sam turned to her, smiling in submission.
"You're right, Sophie, I shouldn't curse. Bad Sami, bad!" she made a gesture of slapping herself on the forehead, and the little girl giggled. Alli just merely watched as Sam examined her new outfit, seeing if it fit well and if she liked it, before telling her to try on another one—they weren't going to buy this one as the top was practically slipping off her shoulders.
"What are we going to do when she gets older and she starts liking boys?" she asked her friend pleasantly, changing the topic.
"She's already starting to like boys. She likes this little boy in her class already—"
"No, I don't!" Sophia yelled out from behind the dresser door. Sam only beamed.
"Yes, you do. You told me about him. You're little friend, David!"
"David's a friend, just a friend! I don't like him!" Alli could just imagine the child's blushing face from behind the door, having been exposed for liking one of her own classmates. She remembered being her age and crushing on boys, but becoming embarrassed and denying those feelings whenever she was confronted with them. It was nice to see bits of her own childhood from a different point of view—from her mother's point of view.
"Okay, what are we going to do when she gets older and starts dating?" Alli quickly changed the topic from liking boys to dating boys.
"That's never going to happen. Not until she's eighty and is too old to date," Sam was starting to sound a lot like a father now. How ironic, as she was the one dating five different guys at once.
"I'm never going to date! Boys are gross!" Sophia cried out from behind the door.
"They're not all gross. Some are actually pretty cute," her cousin corrected her.
"Eww! Allison, you actually like boys?"
"Of course. Julian is a boy, isn't he?"
"More like a bastard."
Alli cast her friend a dark glare, having read the words that her friend had mouthed. Sam looked at her, shrugging innocently, but that scowl only grew sharper and deadlier. Sometimes her friends had forgotten about the fact she could read lips. Her friend merely acted like she hadn't said anything, but Alli knew what she had said.
"Is this one alright?"
It was her older cousin's turn to measure and see if it fitted right. This time she was trying on a dress with little flowers on it, a summer dress that seemed to look almost too adorable on her. It fit perfectly, it looked perfect, and Alli felt like taking pictures afterwards. After Sophia had tried on five more outfits, they decided to stop and purchase them. They then went to the car and drove home, where the child was asking questions about what they were going to do the next day.
"I can't believe Michelle got tickets to go see a magic show! That is so cool! Thank you for taking me, Allison!" the little girl cried out from the backseat.
"Don't thank me yet. Thank Michelle after the show. She was the one I had to convince to take you," the cousin responded. She played with her strawberry blond hair a little, watching the cars roll by.
"Did she say what the show was called?" Sam asked from the driver's seat, keeping her eyes peeled on the road.
"It said on the ticket 'Mindfreak.' I've never heard of that show before, though."
"Neither have I. Want to look it up when we get home? You could use my computer," Sam offered.
"I think I'll do that. It wouldn't be a bad idea to know what we were going to see," Alli explained, and she grinned a little as she thought of the show that she was going to see, and wondered, being the "magician" that he was, if that man named Christopher was going to be there seeing it.
Samantha's room was the messiest Alli had ever seen, her friend never developed the habit of keeping things clean and tidy around people. Even when they were younger and she would go over to her house, her friend's room was always a disaster. It was surprising you could find anything in this room, let alone her computer. But she did. Sam was the only one out of the three of them with a computer, a Dell laptop that she acquired after high school, and it worked fast and perfectly, though the files that she kept on it Alli wouldn't dare wander into. She actually had to stay in here and watch over the child when she got on it, just in case she might wander into one of the chat rooms that Sam was well favorite with. Alli had to step over the piles of dirty clothes—some not even belonging to either of the girls in the apartment, not even belonging to any girls at all—the strange toys and devices that her friend kept, along with workout equipment that she seemed to use daily to keep a fit body—I really need to think about working out with her someday. Her bed was a mess, blankets and sheets rummaged and knotted in ways that made it almost a shame to look at, her dresser drawers open and clothes practically falling out of them, whereas the closet was an omniscient closed door that she was afraid to open, whereas she might be buried alive by a tsunami of items and clothes that her friend piled in there.
She came to the computer and turned it on, watching it load to the desktop screen—an image of a sexy, beautiful, rather suggestive angel with a tattoo on her butt was the wallpaper—and she opened up the Internet Explorer. Immediately, she typed in the URL for Wikipedia, and instantly came to the site's homepage. She typed in the word "Mindfreak" in the search engine, and instantly came a page with description and information of the show. She read the first paragraph, taking in the information of it.
"Mindfreak is a show distributed by A&E Network. It debuted in 2005, and centers on unusual stunts and street magic acts by illusionist Criss Angel…."
Alli looked at the paragraph, and her rain eyes traveled down towards the image they had posted towards the right of the screen. She clicked on the image, and her mouth dropped, eyes widened, and her entire body froze as she recognized the face smiling back at her wickedly.
"Sam? Sam! Samantha!"
"I'm coming!"
The woman appeared at the threshold, looking startled and confused. She scanned the girl sitting at the desk, wondering what the hell was wrong.
"What is it?" she asked.
"Take a look at that picture. Who does that look like to you?" Alli pointed with her thumb to the picture on the screen. Her friend walked over to the desk, stumbling over things she had left on the floor—an understatement—throwing complaints in the air.
"This better not be some trick, Alli," she threatened before she laid eyes on the picture. "Ooh, who's that sexy devil?—Oh, my God!"
Both Sam and Alli stared at the picture on the screen, stunned and afraid that the person scowling at them, the person that was posing as the star and host of this show was the same person who had performed the trick for them.
"That…that can't be him, can it?" Sam asked, her voice trembling and her body shaking. Had they really met a celebrity earlier?
"It has to be him. I mean, look at him! Look at those eyes, that hair, that face! Oh, my God, it has to be!" her friend cried out.
"Click on the link. Click on his name. Maybe they have a profile for him or something."
Alli hovered the mouse icon—an actual mouse on the screen, that's just like Sam to be so literal—and clicked on the highlighted name, "Criss Angel." It went to another page with new information on it, but it showed a picture that allowed the girls to see him a little better.
"There's no doubt, that is him. Look at his name," Alli looked at the first paragraph on the page, and read it aloud.
"Christopher Nicholas Sarantakos, born December 19, 1967, better known by his stage name Criss Angel is an American magician, musician, mentalist, hypnotist, escapologist, stunt performer, and actor. He is best known for starring in his own television show, Criss Angel Mindfreak."
"Damn, that is him. No one can be that hot," Sam exclaimed proudly, staring at the picture posted in the same place as it had been on the page before. Alli wasn't listening to her, she was reading the rest of his bio.
"He was married," she muttered softly.
"What?"
"He was married. Look….'He married, in 2002, JoAnn Winkhart, an actress and daughter of Richard Winkhart; his wife filed for divorce in June 2007, according to the International Herald Tribune, Newsday, and People.'" Alli read it aloud to her friend, whose face seemed to stretch with a cunning grin upon it.
"Well, you know what that means," she implied.
"What?"
"He's on the market. He's single. He's yours for the taking."
"Are you insane?"
"Possibly. Depends on if those psychiatrists were right," Sam winked at her.
"He's twice my age!"
"Age isn't everything."
"He's a celebrity!"
"Hey, you got your Cinderella-story to tell."
"He was married!"
"And now he's not. He's single."
"I'm not!"
Both women stared at each other, that sensitive topic having been brought up so suddenly, and the air seemed to tremble when the thoughts of that man came to them both, taunting and mocking them both. However much as Sam didn't want to admit it, Alli was right. Because she currently was in a relationship, it would be wrong to pursue another man behind Julian's back. Besides that, what would happen if she did, and he found out? She would be putting her life on the line.
"So? Leave Julian, go after this guy. He's what you've been waiting for. Your knight in shining armor, your prince…your bad-ass, sexy, hot, muscular prince," Sam purred a little as she looked at the picture of the man.
"Would you rather go out with him? I'd be happy to let you go," Alli accused her friend, who glowered at her sardonically.
"I'm not the one whose number he asked for. I'm not the one he tried to hit on."
The girl opened her mouth in protest, but she shut it, unable to come up with a response to it. She just turned back to the screen, staring at the picture, staring at the man who had disturbed her…mesmerized her on the bus. The man who had been teasing and mocking her in her dreams. The man who had impressed little Sophia earlier that day. The man who had asked for her number. The man who kept dancing in her hand, grinning arrogantly at her, grinning as if he was the most spectacular person in the world. The man…the gorgeous, sexy man named Christopher. He was so attractive, Sam was right. He was hot, he was her ideal bad-boy, he was the exact incarnation of everything she had dreamed of her dream boy possessing. All those boys she used to date, all those guys that she crushed on and pursued in her lifetime, they were nothing compared to this man. He was so….Goddamn it, why was she crushing on him? She was in a relationship! But she couldn't help it! Damn….
"Well, I guess we're going to see him tomorrow. How cool will that be, seeing your boyfriend up on stage, performing magic?" Sam teased her, but Alli didn't hear her. She was staring at the picture, unable to take her eyes off of him. It was only a crush, nothing severe, nothing strong enough for her to be unfaithful to Julian. But, if she could…she would….
"Well, I guess we're going to see a magic show tomorrow."
(A/N: Sorry I haven't updated the story sooner. My computer's been fucking up lately, and I had to wait five days before a family friend came over to figure out what the problem was and fix it. I'm probably going to do some drawings of the characters, so if you're interested, I'll give a link to the pictures in the future. I hope you enjoyed this chapter. Peace!)