Wooing Cadie McCaffrey

by Bethany Turner

  I didn’t miss everything, of course. If I had the option to go right back where we were at the end and not break up with him, I wouldn’t change a thing. Leaving him was the right decision. But oh my goodness, I missed him. At first, I thought I missed having someone. Even in our worst times he was there for me. With me.

  My inner contrarian began debating. Except he was always working. He was always late. He was distracted. He was distant. All of those things were true at the end, which is how I knew I didn’t just miss someone. I missed Will.

  I’d been missing him for a very long time.

  I raised my head to look at my friends and was greeted by attention on their faces and compassion in their eyes. “When I ran into him in the lobby, there was something different. He was different.”

  “How so?” Larinda asked.

  “He was so complimentary. So attentive. He . . . I don’t know how to explain it, really. He was a little bit flirty, but not casually so. You know what I mean? Maybe flirty isn’t a good word for it. More . . . I don’t know . . .” I was afraid to say the thought aloud, uncertain as to whether acknowledging it would dilute its power or just embolden it further in my memory.

  “Spit it out,” Darby insisted with a knowing smile.

  I bit my lip and prepared for the onslaught of romantic overanalyzation that I knew awaited me.

  “It’s just that all the things he spent weeks doing, attempting to get me back . . . it wasn’t that. This wasn’t part of a plan. This time it was just Will. It was like he couldn’t help but look at me like I was . . .”

  My voice trailed off and I began blushing at the memory of him taking in the sight of me, head to toe and back again before locking in on my eyes, as if they contained what he found most appealing.

  “What?” Darby and Larinda asked in unison.

  I couldn’t stop the corner of my mouth from turning upward as I said the word. “His.”

  All of that had been difficult enough to put into words, but finding an adequate way to express the rest of the thought would be impossible. He hadn’t just looked at me like I was his—he had also looked at me like he was mine. I’d seen something in his eyes that I hadn’t seen in a very long time. Maybe I’d never seen it.

  “Here’s the thing.” I stood from the stool and began walking around the massive kitchen as I allowed the thoughts that had been mingling and battling in my mind for hours to be spoken aloud. “I know he thought I looked pretty good tonight, but I don’t think it was just because I looked pretty good. He was totally into me, you know? Does that make sense?”

  Larinda laughed warmly. “Of course that makes sense! That man has always been into you.”

  “Even if that’s true, I can’t remember the last time he looked at me like he did tonight.”

  Like he was in love with me. Like he had always been in love with me, and always would be. Maybe even like he loved me enough.

  I groaned and rubbed my eyes in an attempt to sort out the clutter and decide what I could say aloud and what I needed to pretend I’d never thought, even for a moment.

  “And there was this brief moment when I thought . . .” Ugh. Don’t go there, Cadie. “Never mind.” I shook my head and laughed as I returned to my seat at the island.

  Darby grabbed my arm and squeezed gently. “No! You don’t get to do that. There was a brief moment when you thought what?”

  Getting everything out was one thing, but indulging in fruitless fantasy was another thing entirely.

  “Seriously, never mind. It’s not worth—”

  “There was a brief moment when you thought there was a chance for the two of you?” Darby asked, completely ignoring my too-little-too-late diversion tactics. “When you thought that maybe losing you was all it had taken for him to realize he would do whatever it would take to hold on to you?”

  I wanted to laugh. I wanted to make fun of her for getting caught up in impossible romantic scenarios that only occur in John Cusack movies. I wanted to tell her she had completely misunderstood where I was heading with the conversation. But I couldn’t laugh, and I couldn’t make fun of her. She’d understood perfectly.

  “See?” I asked, throwing my arms into the air. “It’s the same old thing. I’m never going to be happy unless John Cusack is running around Manhattan with his one cashmere glove, searching used bookstores for my phone number.”

  I thought back to my thirtieth birthday, when I decided that my romantic standards were too high. I had given up on ever finding Cary Grant, and then Will Whitaker walked into my life and I got more carried away by the fantasy than ever. And look where it had gotten us. It wasn’t Will’s fault that life was not a John Cusack movie any more than it was my fault that I wished it were.

  Darby leaned in and got her face inches from mine, forcing me to look at her. “And that’s what he’s been trying to give you. Yes, he’s been doing it badly, but he’s trying. Maybe if you would just talk to him—”

  “I tried, Darby!” I sat back down on the stool and buried my head in my arms on the island as my tears began their torrential downpour. “That’s what I was doing. What I was starting to do, anyway. And then . . . Anna.”

  Darby placed her hand on mine and softly said, “I’m sorry, sweetie.”

  We sat in silence for a moment, apart from my sobs and sniffs, until Larinda said, “Who’s Anna?”

  I lifted my head slightly, so my voice wouldn’t be as muffled. “She’s the girl I was talking about. She works in accounting and—”

  She shook her head. “No, I mean, if Will’s looking at you like you’re his, why are we worried about this Anna? This clearly isn’t a matter of it being too late, and it sure doesn’t seem like it’s a matter of him not being in love with you. From what I can tell, it’s simply a matter of you deciding whether or not you want to spend your life with this man—and what it might take to do that.”

  We sat wallowing in my sad silence for several moments until we heard footsteps approaching the kitchen. “That’s strange,” Larinda whispered as she stood from her seat and walked to the door. “Honey? Is that you?” she called out as she walked.

  “Oh, sorry, babe,” he said from outside the door. “I was upstairs and didn’t hear you come in.” Darby and I looked at each other and smiled at their sweetness as we heard them kiss in greeting. “How was the concert?”

  “Great. That man can still put on a show.”

  I giggled softly at Darby, who was nodding enthusiastically at Larinda’s statement. I had created a Manilow monster.

  Larinda continued as they entered the kitchen. “I didn’t think you’d be home for hours.”

  Kevin looked positively shocked to see us. Panicked, almost. He looked straight at me and said, “You’re here. What in the world are you doing here?”

  “Um . . . is that okay?” I asked nervously, though I had no idea why I should feel nervous.

  “Of course that’s okay, Cadie,” Larinda answered, no doubt as surprised by his reaction as I was—but handling it in a decidedly more no-nonsense way. “I ran into them at the concert and we decided to come back for some coffee and girl talk.”

  Kevin chuckled and looked around the room. I’d never before seen him appear at such a complete loss. “I’m sorry.” He spotted and quickly grabbed a permanent marker from the kitchen counter and stuffed it in the pocket of his pants. “I must just be tired.”

  Larinda placed her hands on her hips and cocked her head to one side. “Have you been drinking? What are you doing with that marker?”

  He chuckled again as he pulled out his phone, appeared to send a quick text, and then put it away once more. “Nope. No drinking. I just . . . I’m sorry, McCaffrey. I just really didn’t expect you to be here.”

  It was my turn to cock my head and furrow my brow.

  “Why? Where should I be?”

  21

  At the End of the Day

  Will was beginning to feel like he should’ve thought things through a bit more. As he left
Kevin’s house almost an hour earlier, he’d been fueled by love and enthusiasm, and quite possibly the fumes from the markers they’d been using. They’d all been so certain that the one-two romance punch he was packing would do the trick that he’d taken off running, unintentionally throwing a little When Harry Met Sally into the mix. After all, once you figure out you want to spend forever with someone, you get going right away. Or whatever Billy Crystal said to Meg Ryan at the end of that movie.

  Running through the streets of Manhattan, from Tribeca to the West Village, had seemed very romantic and not at all daunting. It was only about a mile, door to door, and he’d have spent more time boarding trains or waiting for cabs. But as he ran down Greenwich St., and the December air off the Hudson River mixed with the more-than-usual exertion to make him feel as if he’d swallowed an entire tank of helium, the doubts began creeping in.

  For one thing, Billy Crystal hadn’t run through the city with poster board under his arm and a gigantic eighties-era boom box in his hand.

  But still, he’d run. It would be worth it, he knew, to see the look on Cadie’s face when she appeared at her window. It wasn’t as if he expected her to be immediately won over, of course. Thus, the one-two punch. And still it might not be easy. But he would get her to open the door, and he would get her to talk to him. He would get her to listen.

  If she ever got home.

  He didn’t get Kevin’s text that Cadie was at his house until he rounded the corner onto Bleecker Street. After telling Kevin to text him the moment she headed home, he turned around and walked a couple blocks to a Starbucks that, ridiculously, closed at 8:00. He made his way into a pizzeria that stayed open late, but he quickly remembered that he had no money with him, and most trendy West Village hot spots didn’t look too kindly on patrons ordering water and taking up desperately needed tables.

  He’d wandered around the Village, keeping moving so as not to turn into an icicle, until Kevin finally texted. He computed the amount of time it would take her to get there, via car or train, and then gave her fifteen additional minutes, just in case she missed a stop or got caught in traffic.

  But now, after all of that, he had been outside her apartment for twenty minutes—alternating between the middle of the street where he knew she’d be able to see him best, and the sidewalk, where there was less chance of him being run over by a car. He’d lost most of the feeling in his fingers, but thankfully the boom box seemed to be frozen to him, so it wasn’t going anywhere. It was four degrees in the Big Apple, and Will was increasingly convinced there was no way Lloyd Dobler in Say Anything had held the boom box over his head for as long as Will had. In the movie, you get the impression that one performance of Peter Gabriel’s “In Your Eyes” had been enough, but Will had now heard it four times, which felt like forty.

  At least Cadie’s neighbors seemed to think it was romantic. A crowd had been gathering for a while—New Yorkers who were surprised by nothing but who had the opportunity to see a real, live romantic comedy moment play out right before their eyes. A few of them had shouted out lines from the movie or begun singing along. A couple of men recognized him from ASN, a couple of women said things like, “If she doesn’t show up, call me.”

  He’d borrowed a tan overcoat from Kevin. It didn’t exactly complete the Dobler trench coat look—it was Hugo Boss wool and dwarfed Will like a little boy playing dress-up—but it was close enough to convey the idea. And it was warm, thankfully. Not warm enough to keep him from getting hypothermia, of course, but beggars can’t be choosers.

  He held the poster board between his knees and balanced the boom box on his shoulder so that he could look at his watch. It was nearly midnight. He wasn’t sure how much longer he could stay out there.

  Lloyd Dobler hadn’t been acknowledged by the object of his affection either, he remembered, but Lloyd had attempted his serenade on an unusually sunny day in Seattle, during summer vacation. And the only thing Lloyd had to do the next day was practice his kickboxing.

  It was time to execute the second part of the plan.

  Will pulled out his phone and turned off the Peter Gabriel song—Sam had managed to track down a boom box, but a working one would have been too much to hope for on short notice in the 21st century—and clicked on the MP3 of Christmas carols.

  “Okay, Rick. Let’s do this.”

  He couldn’t remember the character’s name in Love Actually and hadn’t really tried to remember it. There were so many characters in that movie that he didn’t know how anyone was supposed to remember any of their names. But he did know that he was played by the same guy who played Rick Grimes on The Walking Dead, so nothing else mattered.

  Once he was certain that his pieces of poster board were in the right order, he rang Cadie’s doorbell and felt his heart race when a light turned on inside. He had to admit to himself that he hadn’t even considered the possibility that she’d slept through his Say Anything homage. If so, that was a serious bummer. Can it work in reverse if I need to repeat Dobler? he asked himself. He was pretty sure it could. Lloyd was supposed to be the appetizer and Rick was the main course, but maybe he hadn’t thought it through properly. In the end, maybe Billy running through Manhattan was actually the appetizer—even though Cadie wouldn’t know about that until later. Rick was still the main course—obviously—and Lloyd would be dessert. It would work.

  It had to work.

  He heard the lock grind and the doorknob begin to turn, and he took one last look at his sign to make sure it wasn’t upside down.

  “You’re perfect to me too, Will,” a droll and unexpected—and far too masculine—voice greeted him after reading his sign.

  His eyes flashed upward in a hurry and were met by an apparently amused Oliver McCaffrey.

  “Oli—” he began, but that felt too informal, though it never had before. “Mr. McCaffrey. Sir. I’m sorry . . . I thought . . . I mean, I was just . . .” He stopped and exhaled. He was pretty sure it couldn’t get any worse, but he didn’t see any reason to tempt fate. “Is Cadie available?”

  Oliver crossed his arms and feigned disappointment. “You mean this isn’t for me?”

  Will wasn’t going to do it. He couldn’t do it. He had never wanted to see Oliver McCaffrey again, and on the night when he was determined to do whatever he had to do to convince Cadie to give him another chance, he wouldn’t allow her father to stand in the way. Not again.

  “Cadie!” he yelled into the apartment, and Oliver looked startled. Will didn’t care. “Cadie, I need to talk to you. Just give me five minutes, okay? That’s all I—”

  “Will, stop!” Oliver placed his hands on Will’s shoulders with force, most likely in an attempt to stop him from barging in. “She’s not here, but the cops probably will be soon if you keep this up.”

  “Oliver? What’s going on?” Nessa appeared from the bathroom. Great. “Will? What in the world are you doing?”

  “She’s really not here?” Will muttered, his romantic fervor quickly giving way to embarrassment.

  “She’s really not,” Oliver confirmed. “I don’t know when to expect her.” He took a deep breath and then asked bluntly, “Do you think it’s best that you’re here when she gets home? I’m happy to call you a cab.”

  Will’s eyes began to burn with indignation. “I know you’ve never liked me. I know you never thought I was good enough for her. But don’t you think she needs a chance to make that decision for herself?”

  Nessa appeared behind her husband. “That’s not true, Will. We’ve always liked you.”

  He laughed bitterly. “I’d hate to see how you treat the boyfriends you don’t like, then.”

  Oliver cleared his throat. “I think you need to calm down—”

  “Twice I asked for your blessing to marry her, and twice you told me no!” he shouted. He couldn’t remember ever being as angry or as cold in his life, and he wasn’t sure which was causing him to shake. “Now I’ve lost her, and all I want is a chance to convince her that we
’re supposed to be together. So, yes. I think I should be here when she gets home. I’m just not sure you should be.”

  Oliver and Nessa looked at each other. There were tears in Nessa’s eyes, and Will was immediately filled with regret. He didn’t regret a single word, but appearing erratic wasn’t going to do him any favors. He didn’t care what they thought of him, but he knew that Cadie did.

  Otherwise, he never would have bothered to seek their blessing to begin with.

  “Why don’t you come in?” Nessa asked kindly, taking him off guard.

  “Okay,” he replied, partially because he didn’t know what else to say, but primarily because his hot head wasn’t thawing the rest of his body out quickly enough.

  It felt strange walking back into Cadie’s apartment, and even more strange to be there with her parents. The bed in the middle of the room taunted him, a reminder of things gone wrong. He set Rick and Lloyd’s props down beside the wall and sat on the couch at Oliver’s urging. Oliver grabbed two chairs from the kitchen table and placed them across from Will.

  As he and Nessa sat in the chairs, Oliver began speaking. “Will, I think we owe you—”

  “Do you have any idea how much I love your daughter?” he asked, overwhelmingly aware that he had some things he had to say before he could possibly be ready to listen. “All I’ve ever wanted to do is protect her and love her and care for her. And I know that I can’t give her the type of life that you’ve given her, but I don’t think you realize that she doesn’t want that type of life anymore. Sometimes I’m not even sure that she realizes it. You got in her head.” He scoffed and looked down at his feet, ashamed of himself. “Just like you got in my head, I guess.”

  Even in the heat of the apartment he was too cold—and too irritated—to sit. He stood from the couch and began pacing the length of the space, as he’d done on occasion and seen Cadie do so many more times.

  “If I’d asked her to marry me a year ago, more than a year ago, when I first planned to, I think she would have said yes.” Self-doubt filled him as it always did when he thought of the reality of Cadie actually choosing to spend her life with him, but this time he shook it off. At the time, he’d known the moment had been right—and he knew it still. No matter how much effort he’d gone to in order to try and convince himself otherwise. “Do you know how stupid I felt, giving her a box as a gift?”