I don’t think I can talk her out of it. “Okay, fine.” Diana is going to love this.
Chapter 18
I meet Marcus, Caroline, and Kade at Murphy’s and it all feels a little like déjà vu, except this time I’m not the third wheel, though strangely I wish I were, especially if it meant Blake were here.
Caroline introduces me to Kade, a decent-looking guy with a forgettable face and a very expensive suit. I notice when he shakes my hand he glances down at his Rolex, forcing my eyes to follow. “Nice to meet you, Kade,” I say.
“You as well,” he replies. No kiss on the cheek, no gesture of warmth.
We all sit down and Marcus calls the waiter over and orders a nice bottle of wine. Murphy’s isn’t that fancy. Marcus and Kade both seem out of place in their suits and ties, but Caroline doesn’t seem fazed by it. She’s much more comfortable in her skin now, sporting an infinity scarf, rocker tee, ripped jeans, and booties. I think Marcus likes that about her. She now has her own style that isn’t just office wear 24/7.
We make small talk. Kade asks how I know Caroline, and I tell him the long story that has been the last few months of my life.
I ask what he does and he replies, “Law.” Simple as that. “So you shop for a living?” he asks. Here we go.
“Well, I actually own a styling and matchmaking business with Caroline’s aunt.”
He chuckles. “Matchmaking, huh? Do you have a back-up career?”
I don’t reply. This guy is already irritating me. I order tequila because the wine and/or maybe Kade are giving me a headache.
Marcus and Caroline are giggling and hitting it off naturally right next to me, while Kade and I are searching for something to say to each other.
“So you’re single but you own a matchmaking business?” Now he’s really pissing me off.
I order another tequila. “Yeah, I had a long-term boyfriend. Since then I’ve been dating nothing but moronic apes.” Oh my god, did I say that?
When our food arrives, it finally occurs to me that we both ordered the salmon. It reminded me of that night with Blake—except Kade is already complaining.
“Fish is dry. Nothing worse than dry fish,” he says.
I think it’s delicious, but don’t say that. “You can send it back,” I tell him.
He smirks. “I know I can send it back. Thanks, sweetheart,” he adds with condescension.
I’m trying so hard to keep from screaming. “So, Kade, where did you go to college?”
“Harvard.” He doesn’t look up when he says it. He’s still eating his dry fish.
“Of course,” I say but he doesn’t catch my sarcasm.
“What about you, Hayden, where’d you go to college?”
“Emory.”
“Aw, good school. What was your major?”
“Sociology. But then I dropped out to become a person who shops,” I launch at him.
“That where you picked up the tequila habit, at old Emory?”
I start chuckling loudly, as if I think he’s the funniest person in the whole world. “Oh, that was funny. You are a clever man, Kade.” I notice that Caroline is finally catching on.
“Well, I’m going to have to ask you to excuse me, gentlemen and Caroline. I must go powder my nose.” Never in the history of the world would Hayden Fox ever say powder my nose, but I just did.
As I get up, I scan all the exits for an inconspicuous escape route. Caroline is close behind me when I head to the restrooms. “I’m so sorry, Hayden. I had no idea he was such a pompous ass.”
I turn to face her and lean against the wall near the women’s restroom. “It’s not your fault. You were only trying to help.”
“Marcus won’t mind at all if I take you home. I know you’ve had some drinks and you probably just want to get out of here.”
“I can get an Uber, Caroline, really. Will you just tell him I got ill? Say it was the salmon. He’ll probably buy it.”
She looks at me for a long time. “You can do so much better than Kade. This was a bad idea. He’s so into himself, it’s gross.”
Caroline’s newfound confidence is shining through so hard I feel like shouting, My work is done here!
“Thank you, C. I’m proud of you and happy for you and Marcus. You’re my best client yet.”
“Friend,” she says.
“Friend,” I repeat.
We hug and I escape through a side door. I look across the street and see that sign Blake had taken photos of. When my Uber arrives, I get in and dial his number. I can’t believe I’m doing this.
Chapter 19
“Hey you,” he says.
“Hey.” I pause. He waits. “So, I’m in an Uber after just escaping a very bad date that Caroline set up for me.”
He laughs. “Oh, no, I’m sorry. You poor thing. Did you really have to escape?”
“Yes, I fled from the side door at Murphy’s.”
“That good ol’ side door.”
“Yes, when I left, I looked across the street at that sign we photographed, and I wondered what the hell you were up to.”
“Well, I’m sitting on my couch with my foot propped on a pillow and I’m watching Game of Thrones. Guess who’s about to be violently—”
“Don’t tell me. I’m only on the second season.” I couldn’t believe I was right. That’s actually what he’s been doing this whole time! Geez. It seems like deep down I knew exactly who he was all along. I don’t know why I ever doubted that we were right for each other.
“I won’t spoil it if you get yourself over here and watch it with me. I have tequila.”
“Is this like a booty call?”
“You called me, silly girl.” He thinks I’m funny. “So that would make you the booty caller.”
“That’s right.” I’m embarrassed, but I can find the humor in it. Suddenly emboldened, I ask, “So why haven’t you called me, Blake?”
A moment of silence passes. “I was waiting for exactly the right amount of time to pass for you to realize how much you missed me.”
He’s playing. “Who’s taking care of you these days?”
“You want to take care of me, Hayden?” His voice is low and sexy but it makes me laugh.
The driver must think I’m insane. “No, I mean, who’s helping you?”
“I’m actually okay. On stupid crutches, but my knee is fine enough. I’m fully operational in other ways, though.” I can almost see him smirking.
“Blake,” I scold. “I don’t want to know how many times you’ve tested that theory.”
“Not a theory—a fact. And anyway, I’m just saying, I can make a mean bag of microwave popcorn. Get your cute little face over here.”
“You think now that you and Caroline are broken up you can unabashedly flirt with me?”
“Yes,” he says simply.
My little hormones are dancing around quietly on one shoulder and my miniature mother is presently absent from the other. “What’s your address?” I ask.
He tells me, I relay it to the Uber driver, and then I’m on my way to Blake’s. Just like that.
“He says it’ll be twelve minutes,” I tell Blake.
“Twelve minutes? Shit. Ladies!” he yells. “You have to scram. Girl of my dreams is coming over.”
When I pull up to his condo, he’s standing in the doorway on one crutch, smiling at me as I get out of the car.
Walking toward him I say, “So where are all the girls?”
He just laughs. When I reach the doorway, he leans in the best he can and kisses both cheeks. “Come on in.”
I walk into his two-story loft-style condo. It’s so different from Caroline’s. It’s charmingly messy. There’s art everywhere. Paintbrushes and canvases and photo books, prints, negatives, everything you can imagine that Blake needs to be creative.
He’s wearing jeans, low slung, sans belt, and he’s barefoot. There’s something about a man barefoot in jeans.
I’m looking around, mesmerized. He’s watching m
e, leaning on his crutch. There’s wonder in his eyes. “This is amazing, Blake,” I say.
“It’s kind of a mess right now. I’m a little wobbly still so I haven’t picked up.”
“No knee brace anymore?”
“Nope.” He grins. “I just have to hobble around on this thing for a bit more.” He raises the crutch and his foot at the same time. “I have metal in my body now. I’m, like, bionic.” He wiggles his eyebrows. “Which means you have no chance of winning the ultimate champion title back from me.”
“I’ll take you up on that challenge when you’re ready. I’m very confident. So…I smell the popcorn, but where’s the TV?”
“It’s in my bedroom. The loft up there.” He glances up the stairs. “Is that too weird for you?”
“No. I’m pretty sure I can still outrun you. Game of Thrones?”
“Let’s do it.” He catches the innuendo right away. “I mean, let’s watch TV, Hayden.” We both laugh.
He hops up the stairs and I follow. I can’t help but notice his grace and coordination even though he’s injured. The hormone gang is laughing at me. Mini Mom is still absent, thank God, because if he kisses me, I’m not stopping him.
At the top of his stairs my focus is drawn to the art covering the walls. I want to fill my apartment with it. He has a giant king-size bed with an all-white duvet that looks like a heavenly cloud.
The TV is on pause. It’s small in size compared with the art on the walls, telling me it’s not something he fixates on. He sits down on the front edge of the bed. There’s a giant bowl of popcorn to his right. He pats the space to his left. “Wanna sit?”
I look around, down at his feet, his legs spread, his hair tousled sexily like he just rolled out of bed. He’s looking up at me.
“You’re beautiful, Hayden. Whoever that guy was tonight, he was an idiot.”
I nod. I feel tears prick my eyes. Instead of sitting next to him, I walk to the corner floor lamp and dim it, and then I walk back and stand between his spread legs. I’m wearing a sweater dress that hugs my curves. Blake makes me feel confident and sexy without even touching me. But then, finally, he does touch me, and I don’t stop him.
His hands are on my hips. He slides them up toward my waist, the hem of my dress riding up my thighs. His head is tilted. He’s staring at me.
“Ready for TV?” he asks, eyebrow raised.
I lean my head down and kiss him. I kiss him. And then my hands are in his hair. We’re kissing more frantically. He’s sucking at my lip, tugging and pulling my body closer to his. I’m afraid I’ll hurt him and he senses it.
“You won’t hurt me. I’m bionic, remember?”
He lays back and I move to straddle his waist. My dress is practically up to my hips. I try to avoid his leg, but he seems unfazed by our frantic movements.
“I’m still operational,” he whispers.
His mouth moves to my neck. He’s kissing and sucking and I’m moaning and moving and pressing myself against his hard stomach. I can feel his hand sneaking up the inside of my thigh, and I feel like I’m going to break apart into a thousand tiny shards of light. It’s been way too long. The hormone gang is already sated and passed out on my shoulder. It was enough for them but not for me.
He pauses, and then pushes my dress up and pulls it over my head. I’m sitting on top of him in a lacy bra and panties that leave nothing to the imagination. He takes me in. “Breathtaking,” he breathes. “I want you.”
I become resolute. Clothes are flying through the air. We are only slightly cautious of his leg. I lick his stomach and he laughs. He’s touching me everywhere and I can’t take much more. I grip his wrist and pull him away. He’s trying to read me. “Do you want to just cuddle naked? I can literally cuddle naked with your body until I die of old age.”
“Do you just want to cuddle naked?”
He looks down at his own body. “Does it look like it?”
I catch his eyes and find I can’t look away. I’ve wanted him so badly. This feels right. Finally, this is right.
I move closer and he’s saying things near my ear, but I can’t understand English anymore. I think I hear him say, “I’ve adored you since the moment I met you,” but I could be dreaming. This feels like a dream, anyway.
I’m moving, and his hands are everywhere—in my hair, on my hips, grasping my hands. I don’t want him to let go.
When I wake up, it’s the morning. For a moment I’ve forgotten what happened the night before, but then I remember. I sigh and catch myself, because I don’t yet know what any of it means. When I start to get dressed, Blake stirs.
“Can I get anything for you before I leave?” I ask.
“You’re leaving?” he says.
I nod. I don’t want to be presumptuous—what if this happened because we were both lonely? What if he doesn’t want to be with me after all?
“I have something to tell you. I have this—” I think he’s going to tell me he’s already seeing someone, or that he can’t do this because of Caroline. And I can’t hear that. It would hurt too much. So I interrupt.
“Don’t, Blake. Not right now. Last night was great. I needed that. I really did. Thank you.”
“You needed that? Thank you?” His eyes go wide. “Hayden—”
I get up and start to walk toward the stairs, pulling my dress on as I do.
“Hayden, I have a lot of work to do, but—”
“No need to explain, Blake. I just dropped in on you.”
Literally.
“No, wait,” he’s calling to me as I walk down the stairs. “Are you free Saturday?”
“I’m not sure. Call me.” I laugh. “You know that phone thing we use to communicate?”
When I’m at the bottom, I look up and see him standing at the top of the stairs, gloriously naked, looking vulnerable and wounded.
“Are you worried about what Caroline will think?” he asks.
I shrug. “Maybe a little.” Maybe a lot.
“Really? We deserve this,” he says with conviction.
“Do we?”
I turn to leave and he yells, “Don’t make plans Saturday. I need to show you something.”
I walk out the door, waving without turning around. If I turn around and meet his eyes, I’ll lose it.
This was a mistake.
Chapter 20
For the next five days I get a slew of text messages and voice messages from Blake that all say about the same thing: Please come to my show this Saturday, down in Little Five Points. You have to be there.
I guess that’s what he meant by a lot of work. His art. It was my idea for him to use the phone to communicate, I guess, and Blake is taking it to the extreme. He even makes up a song inviting me to his show and sings it on my voicemail. He has a good voice, of course.
Throughout the week I lay low and try to avoid Caroline, but Diana catches on by Wednesday. We’re in the office when she asks, “What’s eating you, darling?”
I tell her the whole story, details and all, and she doesn’t look even remotely surprised. “Ha! Of course that happened. Blake is strikingly handsome and kind, and he’s got that free spirit thing that practically spills from your own damn pores. You’re a match made by Diana. If only I could really take credit for it.”
“But what about Caroline? Then she’ll know…all along, that—”
“My goodness, you don’t think she knew? Caroline is far from naïve, honey.”
“I don’t know. I’m scared. Maybe I’m Blake’s rebound?”
She laughs. “I’ve been in this business way too long. I’ve seen this a hundred times. Trust me, if you met Blake five years ago, you might have been a rebound. That relationship has been over for a long time.”
I can hear everything she’s saying. My hormone gang is sitting on my shoulder expectantly like they’re waiting for me to make a decision that will either send them to their death, or free them forever.
While I’m on my lunch break, my mom calls.
“How have you been, Mom?”
“Wonderful, Hayden. I wanted to tell you that I finally got promoted to manager at the store. I want to repay you.”
No wonder her little mini me hasn’t been hanging around my shoulder lately. “Congratulations, Mom! But what about your retirement?”
I can hear the shock in her voice as she recounts, “They’re providing me with a 401(k) and adding retroactive pay to it. They wanted to reward me for being such a devoted employee.”
“Mom, that’s wonderful! You don’t have to pay me back. Seriously, really good things are happening for me.”
“Maybe for all of us. Your brother landed his dream job, apparently.”
“Geez, is that dimwit ever gonna call me?”
She laughs. “I want you all home for Thanksgiving. I’m going to do it like I used to when your dad was around.”
It feels like a knife when she says that because I have no memory of it. All these years she couldn’t do Thanksgiving or be home with her family because she had to work, to provide for us.
“Grandma gonna be there?” I say.
“Oh, hell, no, Hayden. We don’t need Grandma there counting our calories.” It’s like everyone is waking up from a fog at the same time. My mom has always known what my grandmother was like? Maybe she even went through the same thing when she was young.
“Okay, Mom. That sounds great.”
“Bring anyone you’d like. If you have a friend or someone special…everyone is welcome.”
I’m almost in tears when I hang up. It feels good to know my mom is finally looking out for me. She deserves to be happy. We all do.
Back in my apartment, I’m going through my mail when I find a postcard advertising Blake’s show. There’s no return address.
Boy, he’s really trying every possible platform, isn’t he? What’s next? A singing telegram?
I guess I’m going to show up after all…
Chapter 21
The gallery is filled to the brim with art appreciators and reviewers. I spot him from across the room, talking to a large group.