Happily Ever After: A Romance Collection

by Amelia Wilde

  Jane moved back to the couch and waited patiently as I continued about my routine. I avoided her suspicious gaze. It wasn’t until I had poured us both mugs full of tea, doctored them up with milk and honey, and found a seat on the sofa next to her that I finally continued. My best friend was patient, but she was also tenacious.

  I relayed the rest of the story: my mistake of wandering into the house above Ana’s apartment, seeing Sterling with the group of people, being chased through the snow, and his eventual invitation to stay the night.

  “Wow, Sky,” Jane finally said at the end. “I think he might be in love with you, girl.”

  I choked on my tea. “Doubtful. He wasn’t even there this morning. Ana gave me a little breakfast and sent me on my way. It was…awkward.”

  Jane, however, wouldn’t be deterred.

  “No way,” she said. “Rich guy like that? If he was really feeling altruistic, he would have just put you up at a hotel. There are literally five within a block of his house. And people like that don’t usually just invite strangers into their homes.” She took a long sip of her tea and shook her head. “Definitely into you.”

  “I don’t know, Jane. I think maybe he’s just lonely. I mean, the place is huge. I only saw a few rooms in it, but there are at least four stories, maybe more. All for one person.”

  “Didn’t he walk in with friends?”

  I shrugged. “I don’t know who they were. I didn’t ask. They were laughing, but they looked like colleagues or something from his office. When I came back to the house with him, they were gone. There was this one chick who looked complete daggers at me, but he didn’t seem to notice.”

  “Ah, so she wants him,” Jane concluded with satisfaction. “Is he hot?”

  I shut my eyes for a moment, recalling the chiseled lines of Sterling’s face, the ridiculously bright blue eyes, and the way his five-o’clock shadow had lit up in the firelight.

  “Wow,” Jane said, pulling me out of my momentary stupor. “That good, huh?”

  I pulled my phone out of my skirt pocket and Googled him. Several pictures popped up, mostly from the firm, but a few from Boston society pages. The other interns must have already done this—they were always twittering about getting a look at him. He was a benefactor of several organizations, I saw, including the Boston Symphony. I selected one of him in a tuxedo and held it out to Jane.

  “Ooh,” she cooed. “Yeah, he’s a fuckin’ sundae, girl. You should get on that pronto. How old is he?”

  I looked back at my phone. “Google says thirty-seven. Huh. For some reason, I thought he was older.”

  “Does Google tell you anything else about Daddy Warbucks?”

  “Jesus Christ, Jane, don’t call him that. He’s already got eleven years on me.” I skimmed through his Wikipedia page, which stated his age and birthplace (also Boston), but revealed little else beyond his profession. I felt uncomfortable researching Sterling on the internet; it felt too close to spying.

  “Doesn’t look like it. Too bad.” I set the phone down on the coffee table and turned back to her. “Anyway, I don’t think it really matters. It would probably be a disappointment anyway.”

  “Oh, come on, Sky, that’s just pessimistic.”

  I focused on my tea. This was a familiar conversation. Jane was always trying to get me involved with various men. Unlike me, she was one of those girls who seemed to have life-altering orgasms if a guy sneezed next to her. I had lived with Jane long enough to get somewhat used to her screams. She never understood why I generally found most sexual encounters less than satisfying.

  “How long has it even been?” Jane prodded.

  “Jane, don’t start.”

  “No, seriously, hasn’t it been, like, seven years or something like that?”

  I rolled my eyes. “You’re such a drama queen. It’s only been six months.”

  Jane raised one eyebrow.

  “Okay, eight,” I admitted.

  The brow only rose a bit more.

  “Okay, fine, ten!” I threw a pillow at her, which she caught neatly and tucked behind her head.

  “That’s all I’m saying,” she said with a satisfied smirk.

  “Whatever,” I pronounced. “I doubt I’ll ever see him again. I’m done at the firm at the end of next week, and then the semester begins. Which reminds me, I have a pile of depositions to get through before Monday.”

  I brought my mug back to the kitchen and put the kettle on for another boil. While the water heated up, I went to my bedroom to change out of yesterday’s work clothes and into a pair of jeans and one of my dad’s old sweaters. Outside it had started to snow again. It was a good day to curl up on the couch with a hot drink and a good book. Or in my case, a bunch of court documents.

  When I returned, Jane had already poured more tea for both of us and had resumed her reading.

  “When we get to a good stopping point, we should probably head over to the bookstore and get our textbooks for next term,” she said. “It’s supposed to snow like this the rest of the day, and my professors have already sent out reading assignments.”

  That meant mine had too. A full week before classes even started.

  “Damn. No rest for the weary,” I said, settling next to her with my messenger bag and grabbing one of the depositions I still had to summarize. “Well, I won’t have time to shop this week anyway, and I think I’m going to go down to New York next weekend before the term starts.”

  “Nice,” Jane said absently as she pressed a yellow Post-it into her book.

  “I should probably get a thank you card too. You know, for Mr. Sterling.”

  Jane looked up from her book and tipped her glasses down her nose again to peer at me.

  “I know how you could thank him,” she taunted. “Bring it up to his office, drop it on the floor and be all like, ‘Oh! Mr. Sterling, I’m sorry, let me get that for you! Oh my goodness, is that my ass I just backed into your hands? I’m soooo sorry!’”

  She laughed as I kicked at her half-heartedly.

  “That would be sexual harassment, Jane,” I informed her primly. “Pretty sure it’s not office appropriate.”

  “Oh, whatever, you prude,” she joked, turning back to her book. “You know you want to. ‘What’s that, Mr. Sterling? My blouse just happened to fall open? Oh, no! I didn’t mean to shove my rack in your face!’”

  “Jane!”

  The thing was, it was a little too easy to imagine myself in that fantasy. Laid across the big desk I imagined Sterling had. My shirt ripping, buttons flying. I already knew what his big hands felt like on my feet…maybe they would slide higher up…

  I shook the image away and bent to my work. I didn’t have time for pipe dreams. The quicker I could get fantasies of Sterling out of my head, the better.

  Typical of the weekend before classes began, the COOP was bustling with undergrads and grad students shoving their way around the tall stacks of books. With class lists in hand and plastic baskets over our wrists, Jane and I made our way to the law section and started loading up on textbooks.

  “Fucking vultures,” Jane mumbled under her breath as she heaved a copy of Constitutional Law into her basket. “Did you see how much this cost? Two hundred motherfucking dollars!”

  I chuckled as I put an equally expensive book into my basket. We went through this exact routine at the beginning of every semester.

  “Jane,” I said. “If you don’t want to pay COOP prices, why don’t you just buy them online?”

  Like always, I was rewarded with a massive eye roll.

  “Oh, they’d like that, wouldn’t they?” Jane grumbled. “It’s the secret test of HLS, how they separate the shitty students from the good ones, you know. Only give us a week to order textbooks so that the ones who are willing to pony up retail prices can get ahead by reading early. Natural selection by way of student budgetary restrictions, the opportunistic bastards. Ooh! A used copy!” She snagged another book, this one well-worn, and turned to me with a wide p
arody of a smile. “Look, Ma, I saved ten bucks off a hundred twenty!”

  “At least they only assign one or two books,” I said. I wasn’t that good at comforting, but then again, Jane was just looking to vent. “Really, we spend as much as anyone else, just on fewer texts.”

  “Yeah, but you forgot to factor in the readers.”

  A male voice interrupted our exchange, startling both Jane and me. We glanced around to find one of our classmates, Jared Rounsaville, standing behind us.

  “Hey, Jared,” I greeted him.

  Jane raised a hand and went back to muttering further obscenities at the stacks. It seemed her Advanced Criminal Procedures course was a particularly expensive one this semester.

  “Hey, Skylar,” Jared said, sidling up to me. “Have a good break?”

  I nodded. “Yeah. I finished that internship at Sterling Grove. You?”

  He whistled at my accomplishment.

  “Nah, I just went home,” he said. “I had a clinic last semester, so I figured I was good on the experience stuff.”

  Jared was the typical Harvard legacy. He was smart, but it was hard to tell how much of that intelligence was breeding and how much was innate talent. I didn’t know him well, but I knew that his dad and grandfather had both attended HLS and that his dad was a sitting congressman. He had a position waiting for him at his grandfather’s firm. Between his pressed chino pants, his blue polo shirt, his straight, light-brown hair, and his pin-straight nose, his looks were about as waspish as it got. His smile, however, was genuine, and his straight, tall build made him a common target of a lot of the girls in our classes. Even in law school, some girls were only there to get their MRS degrees.

  “So, I’m pretty excited,” he said as the three of us made our way to the registers. “I managed to score tickets to one of The Starfoxes’ shows next week. They were sold out, but my dad’s campaign manager was able to hook me up.”

  I could feel, rather than see, Jane roll her eyes next to me. She hated what she called “privileged soccer mom music,” which was usually anything that was on regular rotation at Starbucks. This band definitely qualified. It didn’t matter that she was the daughter of a privileged white man herself. She would just shout one of the few vulgar Korean terms she’d picked up from cousins on her mother’s side and throw the nearest soft object at me.

  “That’s nice,” I said neutrally as we stepped into line, Jared in front of Jane and me. The line wound around several stacks of health and lifestyle books, but it was moving quickly. “I’m sure you’ll have a good time.”

  “It would be better if you took the other ticket.”

  Just before Jared turned around for my answer, Jane’s eyes shot open wide before she brought them back to an even, neutrally curious expression.

  I blinked. I hardly knew Jared and hadn’t really interacted with him much socially. He was cute, but I had just told Jane I thought dating was a waste of time. Not to mention I didn’t really like this band either. I was pretty open to different styles, but whiny, pseudo-folk music wasn’t really on my radar.

  “Um…” I said, trying unsuccessfully to stall. “I’m going home next weekend.” I exhaled. It was a good excuse and one that was mostly true.

  Jared nodded. “Okay. Another time then.”

  The line moved up, and one of the cashiers flagged him forward. Beside me, Jane grabbed my arm and jerked me around.

  “You should go out with him,” she said.

  “I am actually going home next weekend,” I told her. “And I don’t even like that band.”

  “Oh, no, that band sucks balls, big-time,” she said. “They’re the musical equivalent of IHOP. But another time, I mean.”

  Another cashier waved me forward, and Jane followed with her own basket. The cashier frowned at the two of us approaching together, but said nothing as she started to ring me up.

  “You don’t think he’s a little...I don’t know. Uptight? My dad doesn’t even wear pants that pressed,” I pointed out.

  “Whatever. Your dad doesn’t even know what an iron is,” Jane retorted. “And that doesn’t mean Jared wouldn’t be good for you. He’s nice. And you deserve nice after what fucking Patrick––”

  “Four ninety-two, eight-seven,” the cashier proclaimed. I handed over my credit card while addressing Jane.

  “I do not want to talk about him,” I said vehemently.

  With eyebrows raised, the cashier handed me back my card and receipt, which I signed with flourish. Jane placed her books on the counter with a bright smile.

  When I first started at HLS, I was still dating Patrick Harlow, otherwise known as the world’s second worst person. Patrick was a certified asshole and investment banker I had met at Goldman. We dated for almost a year before I left for law school, and continued seeing each other on weekends before a surprise bout of chlamydia informed me that he was sleeping with other people. When confronted, he shrugged and told me he was “sorry about the clap, but we never decided to be exclusive.” I had slapped him in the face and gone straight to the pharmacy. Ten weeks of antibiotics cleared up the STD, but I had never quite healed from the damage he had done to my heart.

  Jared was waiting by the door for Jane and me. I caught his eye, and he waved and stepped out of the way of other students. With his toggle-front parka and nicely combed hair, he looked the definition of safe.

  It had become clear over the past year and a half that one-night stands weren’t my thing. And, despite the way a certain tall, blond god kept creeping into my thoughts, there really weren’t any other prospects on the immediate horizon. I would be lying if I said I wasn’t interested in, well, someone. Maybe the key wasn’t chemistry, but intimacy. Jared and I were sort of friends. Maybe I needed to start there.

  Jared stood to the side, holding the door open in a way that demonstrated his good manners.

  “Thanks,” I said as Jane and I stepped out into the snow-covered street with him. “So, I can’t go to the show next weekend, but would you want to go out another time?”

  Jane was barely able to contain the boomerang-like double take and face-smashing grin, so she scampered ahead of us to offer some privacy.

  Jared looked down at me and smiled brightly. “Yeah! Do you still have my information from study group?”

  I nodded. “Yeah, it’s in my contacts. I’ll call you when I get back from New York. Maybe after we settle into classes, okay?”

  He smiled again and nodded. “Sounds good. I’ll see you around, Skylar.”

  With a brief wave, he turned and left. I watched his straight-backed form for a moment before turning to Jane, who was practically jumping up and down next to me.

  “Don’t. Say. Anything,” I warned her, but we both grinned as we started back to the warmth of our apartment.

  5

  “Well, well, well. If it isn’t the other castaway! Lemme guess, you and Eric were up to no good.”

  Steve greeted me with uncomfortably loud hoots and hollers when I arrived at the firm Monday morning. Like most of the other interns and junior associates, I generally made a point to be at the office at least ten minutes early. It was seven forty-five.

  I dropped my messenger bag on my desk. The blizzard that had coated Boston with another two feet since Friday made snow boots and my parka essential. Shearling boots over wool cigarette slacks wasn’t the best look, but luckily, I wasn’t alone in my style in Boston.

  I stripped off my outerwear, then put on the cheap black pumps I kept in my desk. I dearly missed my Manolos, but they were now at the cobbler, being treated for the salt stains that had persisted despite Sterling’s careful treatment.

  Just the thought of his hands on my feet made me shiver. The sad truth was that I hadn’t been able to get the encounter out of my head, no matter how many briefs I’d read. I doubted Sterling had been as affected, but I had never known the brief touch of someone’s hands—large, slightly callused hands—on my toes could be so erotic. Then, of course, there was the way
he worked those pants…

  “So how was he, counselor? As good as he looked? Or at least the way his overpriced suit looked?”

  I snapped out of my daydream. “What?” God, could he know?

  “You know, the investment asshat you were chatting up at the bar,” Steve said. “Cherie and I saw him follow you out. What was his name? Rico Suave? Was his apartment massive and full of high-tech gadgets?”

  Steve waggled his eyebrows jokingly, but I could hear the note of hurt in his voice. He was the kind of guy who would comment on another man’s expensive suit precisely because he couldn’t afford it. I had sympathy for the guy, but that didn’t mean I wanted him commenting on my sex life.

  I rolled my eyes as I stood to hang up my coat. “A, his name was Trevor, not the name of a shitty one-hit wonder. B, I have no idea, as I went home after leaving the bar. And C, counselor, even if I did, it’s none of your damn business who I do or do not go home with!”

  Steve rubbed his face with a “Touchy!” under his breath. I smoothed the lines of my favorite suit as I sat back at my desk, careful to avoid his sad eyes. Steve’s crush wasn’t exactly a secret; I felt a pang of guilt at the insinuation that the reason I didn’t reciprocate was because of his background. I had felt that kind of classism myself more than a few times at Harvard once people heard what my father did for a living.

  “I couldn’t bring a guy like that home anyway,” I said more generously. I pointed at myself with my thumb. “Garbage collector’s daughter. Trust fund brats need not apply.”

  In return, I got a grin and a wink. “Ha! Good for you, Crosby,” Steve chortled before ducking back down into his cubicle, dignity intact.

  I couldn’t quite cop to the lie. In all honesty, I had to admit that I’d put in slightly more effort than usual getting ready that morning. I had just “happened” to wake up an extra fifteen minutes earlier than normal, and just “decided” on a whim to straighten my wayward red waves down my back instead of tucking them into a practical twist. I wore my favorite gray herringbone suit, a crisp white shirt, and emerald studs that matched my eyes. The cut of the ankle-skimming pants flattered my swimmer’s legs, and the matching jacket complemented my waist with a trim, yet professional hourglass shape.