Wooing Cadie McCaffrey

by Bethany Turner

  He showered to the soundtrack of his Old School Rock playlist. Songs from Pearl Jam and U2 cut through the steam-filled room—the water as hot as he could stand it and the stereo as loud as it would go in an attempt to drown out his thoughts, which seemed resolved on turning negative.

  He was bound and determined to get her back, but a day of not seeing her and a night of not sleeping had left him feeling much less confident that he had any idea how to go about that. His mind kept wanting to slip from thoughts of “This is how I’ll get her back” to “But when that doesn’t work, I’ll have to find a way to survive.”

  As he shaved he sang along with Bono and tried to comfort himself with the thought that at least he would no longer be forced to listen to the Carpenters and Barbra Streisand or any of Cadie’s other horrible music choices in the car when they drove to visit her parents on Long Island.

  Come to that, at least he would no longer be forced to visit her parents on Long Island. After his most recent time spent with Oliver and Nessa, he was quite grateful to not have any reason to ever see them again.

  Thinking of that wasted, infuriating twenty minutes spent in Syosset, ten days prior, caused a visceral response. Will was glad he was done shaving. It wouldn’t have been a good idea to still be holding a razor in his now-shaking hand. He looked in the mirror at the steam coming off his shoulders. He knew it was caused by his body still being warm from the maybe-a-little-too-hot shower and the quickly cooling temperature of the bathroom, but he also couldn’t help but wonder if his blood was actually boiling.

  He walked to his closet and pulled out a crisp, light blue button-up and a darker blue tie, and began getting dressed. His playlist ended, and silence filled the room, and immediately Cadie’s voice was on his heart like a fresh stab wound.

  “What if God won’t forgive our sin because you aren’t sorry?”

  He scoffed at the memory of her words. Yep. Without a doubt, those words represented the influence of Nessa McCaffrey, one way or another.

  But the words aren’t really the point, are they?

  He’d been reaching for his wallet and cell phone, to grab them from his dresser and put them in his pockets, but his hand froze in midair. He heard that question in his mind with all the clarity of the one before it, but the voice wasn’t Cadie’s. And he wasn’t completely sure it was his own.

  The churning inside of him—his incessant foe, all night long—returned.

  He rubbed his face in his hands and attempted to shake it off, attributing the uncomfortable question to a lack of sleep. Dressed and ready to go by 6:25, he finally grabbed his phone and wallet, took one last look in the mirror, put on his coat, and prepared to leave the apartment a full twenty minutes earlier than usual. Typically, he would brew his own coffee and fill a travel tumbler to drink on the commute, but every little bit of penny-pinching he’d been doing suddenly seemed pointless. It was a good day for an overpriced latte.

  “Dude. Do you always leave this early?” an unexpected voice greeted him as he grabbed his keys from the hook by the door.

  “Hey, Sam,” he said as his eyes adjusted to the darkness of the room enough to spot his roommate. Even so, staring straight at him, it took Will a moment to register what exactly he was looking at. He flipped the light switch by the door and then immediately wished he hadn’t.

  Sam was hanging upside down from an inversion bar in his bedroom’s doorway, wearing only gravity boots and exercise shorts. Will was exhausted just watching him pull-up and crunch and whatever else he was doing, but Sam was still somehow able to carry on a conversation without getting so much as winded.

  “I’m running a little earlier than normal,” Will said, finally answering the question. “But this is pretty much my usual time. I don’t think I’ve ever seen you up this early. Hope I didn’t wake you with the music.”

  “Nah. I’ve got an audition at 8:30. Who schedules anything at 8:30? It’s ridiculous. But my agent pulled a lot of strings to get me in.”

  “That’s . . . brutal,” Will replied as he looked at his watch and realized if he didn’t get out the door soon he wouldn’t have a chance to grab that latte and still get to the office by his usual arrival time of 7:30. “Well, good luck with the audition.”

  “Break a leg,” Sam grunted as he held on to the bar, unlatched his boots, and hopped to the ground in one fluid motion.

  “I’m sorry, what?”

  “You don’t say good luck, you say break a leg.”

  “Ah. Sure, sure.” Will wished he hadn’t turned on the light so that he could roll his eyes without being spotted. Why did he always end up with struggling actors as roommates? “Then break a leg.”

  He grabbed hold of the doorknob and turned it, but he didn’t move quickly enough.

  “Hey, so, if it’s all right with you, I was thinking of having a few people over tonight, to celebrate this audition—”

  “The audition you haven’t gone to yet?”

  “I don’t believe in celebrating the destination. I celebrate the journey.” Sam grabbed a clear blender cup full of a nasty-looking green concoction from the floor by the doorway and began guzzling.

  “By all means. Celebrate your journey. I’ll steer clear—”

  “No, I wasn’t saying you should stay away. You should come. I’ve lived here three months and we haven’t hung out once. And bring your girlfriend. Sadie, right?”

  “Cadie,” Will corrected him and then took a deep breath before correcting him once more. “But we’re not together anymore.”

  “Aw, dude. That sucks. Well, bring another girl—”

  “We literally just broke up this week. . .”

  “Or some friends, or whatever.”

  Will opened the door and took one step into the hallway. “That’s nice of you, but—”

  “I’m serious. Let’s hang out. I insist. Bring home some friends from work. You’re, like, a science and math guy, right?”

  “Research,” Will corrected him, but he quickly realized Sam thought he had just confirmed that he was a science and math guy.

  “So, you work in a lab or something?”

  Sam walked to grab his T-shirt from the back of the couch and mercifully put it on. Will was surrounded by some of the greatest athletes of all time on a regular basis, so he had certainly gotten to a point where he did not intimidate easily. But it was as if his roommate’s six-pack had been worried it might get thirsty, so it had brought along an extra six-pack of its own.

  “Not really a lab. Look, I need to run . . .” Will was watching his overpriced latte disappear, and that had really been the only thing he was looking forward to—in the morning, in the day, and at that point, in his entire life, really.

  “Okay, well, bring home some lab guys. Or lab girls, if that’s a thing.”

  Will was one foot out the door, but he just couldn’t let that one hang in the air. “Did you seriously just say ‘if that’s a thing’? As if you don’t know if women work in labs?”

  “Oh, dude! No, that sounded bad. I just don’t know if you work with any women. And that’s the point. We don’t know anything about each other. I don’t know what kind of lab you work in—”

  “Not a lab.”

  “I auditioned for this TV pilot one time where these aliens created this force field thing to keep women from entering normal places they would go. Like, work and their houses. Men were forced to carry on alone, and they could only be with women in this bubble thing that was safe from the force field.”

  Will felt as if there were a force field keeping him from his latte. “Well, rest assured, my workplace is an alien-free zone.”

  “I think it was actually a good thing that pilot never got picked up. It was ahead of its time,” Sam continued. “It kind of had a Glee vibe—”

  Will interrupted. “Did you just say Glee?”

  “Yeah. The aliens were inhabiting the bodies of the people who worked at this singing telegram company.”

  “As in big teddy b
ears singing ‘Love Me Tender’? Stuff like that?”

  Sam laughed. “Wow. Someone hasn’t gotten a singing telegram since 1954.”

  Will had known better than to engage. With a shrug he said, “I didn’t even know those things still existed.”

  “Oh yeah, man! There are some pretty good companies, in New York, especially. Lots of Broadway sorts, waiting for the next gig, so you actually get some decent talent sometimes. I’m sure you can even get a big teddy bear, if that’s your thing. I’ll warn you, though. Your higher quality singing telegram performers aren’t going to put costumes and masks like that on their heads. I can’t even tell you how gross those things are.”

  Will had only been half-listening through most of that, but once they entered the bacteria portion of the morning, he decided it was time to check out completely.

  “I’m sorry, Sam, I really have to go. Break a leg!” he called out over his shoulder as he hurried into the hallway and closed the door behind him.

  The words aren’t really the point.

  This time, the voice in his head was his own, but it wasn’t making any more sense than Cadie’s or the unrecognizable voice had.

  It did, however, make more sense than any single thing he’d ever heard his roommate say.

  “The words aren’t really the point,” he repeated, this time aloud, as the churning morphed into an ache. “Then what is the point?”

  And suddenly he knew.

  It didn’t matter what his thoughts were on Cadie’s two-person repentance theory, and it didn’t even matter if Nessa had influenced her daughter’s thoughts or not. The point was, Will still hadn’t asked God for his forgiveness.

  “I am sorry,” he whispered, looking up toward the desperately-in-need-of-rehab ceiling tiles above him. He looked around the hallway and down the stairwell to make sure no one was around. He wasn’t ashamed of his faith, he just really didn’t want his prayer interrupted by Ted from next door asking Will if he was a Mets fan, as he did every time he saw him, or by Fabiola from the second floor, doing lunges up and down the stairs as part of her daily workout.

  Satisfied he was alone, he leaned against the windowsill, bowed his head, and closed his eyes.

  “I am sorry, Lord,” he said softly. “Please forgive me. I’m sorry about what Cadie and I did, and I’m sorry I hurt her. Please help her to know how much you love her.” Please help her to know how much I love her too. “And please forgive me for taking so long to bring this to you. I love you, Lord, and I’m so grateful that you love me too. I don’t deserve it.”

  Will definitely hadn’t been talking to God enough lately, but he felt secure in his faith. His heart was open, and he was giving it all to God—even if the words were simple and few—and he trusted that he was forgiven. He knew he had a bad habit of putting his desires first, and when he did, God tended to end up on the back burner. That needed to change. And making that change would undoubtedly mean more to a future with Cadie than any mistake of the past.

  He stood up straight and glanced at his watch, accepting the reality of having to say goodbye to the promise of espresso, once and for all. Of course he wouldn’t trade his couple of minutes with God for all the lattes in the world. His time with Sam, on the other hand . . .

  But somewhere in the midst of the most nonsensical conversation he could remember ever having with his roommate, he’d accidentally stumbled upon not only renewed motivation to get Cadie back but an actual place to start.

  He’d just have to be sure to avoid the disgusting teddy bears.

  “Cadie always said you weren’t very observant,” Darby said several hours later as she stormed into Will’s office and shut the door behind her. She placed her hands on the edge of the desk and leaned over to confront him. “What was that?”

  “What was what?”

  “That hip-hop debacle that just took place in the accounting suite, of course!”

  He jumped up from his chair. “They’ve been here already? How did it go? Did she sing along? I just know she sang along. Did she figure out it was from me?”

  “Why in the world would she have sung along? We are talking about Cadie McCaffrey, right? The woman whose ringtone is ‘Snowbird’ by Anne Murray? How in the world would she know a song called ‘Sista Big Bones’, and why in heaven’s name would you ever have anyone sing it to her?”

  “I don’t understand.” He sank back down into his chair, confusion giving way to fear that something had gone horribly wrong. “She’s obsessed with Hamilton. You know that. I was never able to get her tickets. You know . . . since I like to eat and have electricity and all. I wouldn’t normally send her anything from NYC Hip Hop Grams, of course, but when they said they were running a special on Hamilton tributes, I thought . . .”

  Darby stared at him in confusion for several seconds before laughter overtook her. “You lovable dum-dum!” she exclaimed through her laughter. “It wasn’t a Hamilton tribute. It was an Anthony Hamilton tribute.”

  “Who’s Anthony Hamilton?”

  “A rapper, I think.” She could barely get the words out through her giggle fit. “Or a producer. I don’t know, exactly, but apparently he sang ‘Sista Big Bones’, which isn’t quite the Cadie McCaffrey romance bait you might imagine it to be.”

  Oh no. “I told them I didn’t want a card or anything. Maybe she hasn’t figured out it was from me.”

  “Yeah, maybe she wouldn’t have . . . if they hadn’t ended the song by saying, ‘Will loves you, girl, and he wants you back, real bad.’”

  “Oh no.” Will’s arms folded across the desk in front of him, and he slammed his head down onto them.

  Her giggles faded away, and Will was grateful that she was too kind and humane to continue finding humor in his moment of complete and utter humiliation.

  “So, talk to me, Will,” she said as she sat down across from him. “What were you trying to do?”

  “I was trying to get her back, of course,” he muttered into his arm.

  Darby sighed. “I know it’s going to take you some time to get over her, but when it eventually happens—”

  “It’s never going to happen, Darb,” he said—softly, with surprising calm.

  “You feel that way now, and that’s really romantic. It is. But—”

  Will shrugged as he raised his head and looked her in the eye—equal parts determination and resignation. “That’s not some stupid line I’ve come up with, like in those ridiculous romance movies you and Cadie love so much.”

  He ran his fingers through his hair, not sure how to communicate what was in his heart—and not entirely sure why he was putting in the effort.

  “I made the commitment to love her forever,” he finally said, repeating the line he had spontaneously spewed to Ellis and Kevin. “That commitment doesn’t go away just because she’s not in on the plan.”

  She tilted her head and bit her lip, her eyes never leaving his. He maintained eye contact with her as long as he could, until he began to feel uncomfortable.

  “What? Why are you looking at me like that?”

  “That was a really good line, Will. It was ridiculous romance movie caliber, actually.”

  “Well then . . . I guess that makes it all okay.”

  She continued looking at him with that disconcerting intensity that he’d never seen on her face before, and then she abruptly tore her eyes away and swiped a legal pad and pen from his desk.

  “What are you doing?”

  Without looking up from whatever she was frantically scribbling, she answered, “I’m helping you get her back.” The words were accompanied by a sigh heavy enough to convey she’d just agreed to drive the getaway car in Will’s heist. “But listen, my relationship with her is my priority. If this goes sour—”

  “What are you talking about? ‘If this goes sour’? Are we kidnapping her? Are we about to cut out letters from Sports Illustrated and send Oliver and Nessa a ransom note?”

  “I’m just saying I’m doing this because I l
ove her, and I happen to think you’re what’s best for her. And clearly you can’t handle it on your own.”

  He stood from his chair. “Hey, today was just a stupid mistake. That certainly doesn’t mean I can’t handle it. I’ve been thinking about some things she said a long time ago and figuring out what she’ll like. I’m working on some grand, spectacular gestures.”

  The pen froze mid-word as she looked up at him. “Really? Like what?”

  After several seconds of stammering and saying nothing, he finally asked, “So what do I do?”

  Darby flipped to another blank page in the legal pad and quickly wrote a few big block letters. She tore it out and handed it to him.

  “Research?” he asked as he read it. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “Research! It’s what you do!”

  “I’m aware, but—”

  “Look, Will, you and Cadie have some really big issues to work out. Even if you can get on the same page somewhat, there are still some big things in play.”

  “Such as?” The look of exasperated disbelief in her eyes made him instantly regret the question.

  “I told you you’re clueless.”

  “I know I am.” He collapsed back into the chair. With a heavy sigh he said, “Can I ask you something?” She nodded that he could, and Will continued—uncomfortably. “If we hadn’t . . .” He paused as awkwardness washed over him, and then he realized he needed to verify that he wouldn’t be the one giving away secrets. “Hold on. You do know that Cadie and I . . . you know . . . that we . . .”

  Darby’s eyes flew wide open. “Yes. I know. But I am not talking about that with you!”

  “No, no . . . I don’t want to talk about it. I just . . .” He sighed again. This was not a conversation he wanted to have, but he knew that no one else apart from Cadie herself would know the answer to his question. And he really needed to know. “Were we okay until we . . . ?” His eyes began to sting, and he could feel them turning red. He was so tired of feeling that way. “It had felt like things were off for a while—”