by Nella Tyler
“It doesn’t take long to go soft, huh?” She dropped the smile as she narrowed her eyes, studying me so closely it made me uncomfortable. She checked the rest of the aisle, waiting for a woman to get her pasta sauce and leave before whispering, “Did you get some, Carter Mills?”
I blinked and her grin sprang back onto her lips, her eyes widening again.
“Oh my God, you finally did it. You slept with Sophia.”
I was too stunned to speak, let alone deny it. And the way my face flooded with hot color only confirmed what she’d suspected anyway. She must’ve been fucking clairvoyant, or I wasn’t even half as smooth as I’d hoped I was.
“You’ve been tense your whole life,” Lisa said, explaining the question I hadn’t been able to put into words through my surprise. “Even back in high school. It’s from wanting something you can’t have. Now that you’ve had it, you’re relaxed. It’s pretty awesome.” She truly seemed happy for me, which was awkward, considering she’d been trying to sleep with me less than a week ago.
“I…I don’t,” but I couldn’t figure out what to say, which seemed just fine by Lisa, who butted right in.
“I’m happy for you, Carter. Those must’ve been some serious blue balls.” She laughed as my face darkened even more, my cheeks tingling hard.
“How do you even know about this?” I forced out. Sophia and Lisa had never been friends, and no one else knew about what had happened between us. Yet. I couldn’t wait to scream it from the rooftops… Maybe not the sex part, but just that we were together.
She gave me a look, one sculpted eyebrow lifted high. “A woman knows. It’s in the way you look, the way you walk, the way you hold your shoulders. I’ve never seen you like this. And you had a stupid smile on your face when you were looking at the pasta. Who does that unless he’s just gotten a piece of ass?”
My face twisted a little, not really liking the description of the woman I loved as a piece of ass.
“Yeah, okay,” I said, admitting it because she already knew too much for me to deny it. “We got together.”
She pulled me into another hug, her tight little body a live wire against mine as she rocked me back and forth. “That’s so great, Carter. What are you two planning now? You live on opposite sides of the country.”
I was actively trying to avoid thinking about that at the moment, but hearing Lisa ask what had been troubling me since our parents’ wedding night only slammed the point home again. I gave a sheepish laugh and a response that would hopefully lead her to another subject.
“I’m worried about cooking the perfect romantic dinner for her at the moment. That other shit is going to have to wait.”
Her blue eyes lit up. “Tell me what you have planned and maybe I can help.”
It was an odd offer considering our history, both ancient and recent, but I was happy to just have something to talk about besides the crushing disappointment of leaving Sophia again in less than a week. So, I went over the meal I’d planned, from appetizer to dessert.
“I’m just coming up short on how to make it more romantic,” I said.
“I have a few ideas,” she replied, without really needing to think for long. She counted them out on her long fingers as she listed them. “Candles, romantic music, flowers, serve her like she’s your queen, rub her feet.” She laughed at my puzzled expression. “Women love that, especially if they spend all day cutting hair. Shit, rub her shoulders, too. Mine are tense as hell by the end of the day.”
“I don’t think my dad has any candles,” I said, thinking aloud.
“They have some nice ones marked down from the holidays. Come on.” She didn’t wait for me to follow, just grabbed me by the front of my jacket and dragged me along. We found the discounted candles in an aisle full of holiday decorations and candy, all of it fifty percent off. She pointed out the ones I should buy.
“Those smell the best, like cinnamon and spice.” But she didn’t give me the opportunity to act. She just jumped in front of me to pick up several and then dump them into my basket. “That should be enough. Now let’s go check out the flowers.” She didn’t have to grab me this time; I followed her obediently across the store to the produce department where some flower arrangements were kept in an open, refrigerated case. She plucked a bouquet of twenty four blood red roses from the case and gave them to me to cradle the way she still was cradling her lone loaf of bread.
“Why are you helping me?” I asked as I took the bouquet.
She looked up at me, her pretty face flawless and smooth looking under all the perfectly applied makeup. “Carter, you’re a great guy. And, you deserve to be happy. You’ve wanted Sophia for as long as I’ve known you. I just want the best for you. Sophia seems nice, despite the fact that she’s always hated me.”
I opened my mouth to deny that, and Lisa only held up her hand, grinning again.
“It’s fine. I get it. She has the hots for you and thought I was a threat. No hard feelings.”
I watched her for a moment, the warmth spreading through my chest as my throat tingled. I felt like I might burst into tears. This visit had been a nonstop emotional rollercoaster. Not one damned person was who I thought they were before getting here.
“You’re pretty amazing, Lisa.”
She shrugged that compliment right off, refusing to let it stick. “Don’t get all sappy on me, Mills. Let’s finish getting the stuff for your perfect evening.” She turned on her high heeled boots and hurried off. After a second, I ran to catch up.
Sophia
The Same Afternoon
I’d been at my laptop since Carter dropped me off in the afternoon, trolling the website for the British Museum and dreaming big, anxious dreams. Willem had sent me a long email, detailing the reasons he thought I should apply for this job. I agreed with everything he’d said and responded to tell him so.
He called me immediately and we came up with a plan: I would fill out the time consuming application and cross the bridge of moving overseas if I was invited to do so. It was pretty hubristic to assume I was getting the position, though Willem seemed damned sure I would after the conversation he’d had with his friend.
Now, I was trying to focus on a particularly detailed part of the application, but my mind kept wandering. Just filling out the easy parts of name, address, etc. had filled me to the brim with a host of worries, the primary of which involved the man I couldn’t wait to see later tonight.
I’d spent a lifetime wanting him, and now that I had him, I was considering a job that would take me across the Atlantic Ocean. Things were bad enough as they stood, with him on one coast and me on the other, but we could make that work if we tried. Negotiating international travel just felt like a complete deal breaker. I was back in the same place I’d been when we went off to college. I had no right to try to keep him to myself considering I was the one moving so far away.
The front door opened and closed downstairs, drawing me out of the nest of my troubled thoughts.
“I’m home!” Lacey bellowed, like she always did.
“I’m upstairs!” I called back. I’d managed to walk down to Carter’s for a romantic interlude, get back, and shower in the time it had taken her to run around town. I wasn’t quite ready to tell anyone about how things had changed between Carter and me. Not yet. Not until I figured out the mess with this British Museum position.
Lacey clomped up the steps in her boots and appeared in my open doorway a few seconds later, a grin on her lips, her face red from the bitter wind howling outside. I’d nearly keeled over walking in it earlier, and I’d only had to go a few blocks. I was just so used to walking places in Manhattan and was full of nerves that I’d wanted to work out with physical exertion.
“What’s up?” Lace asked, scrunching her face at me as she pulled off her gloves, then her hat, then her jacket, tossing them in a pile on the floor to pick up later. We were all enjoying the relaxed rules of not having Mom around for a bit. She was a serious neat freak.
> Sighing, I sat back in my chair and folded my hands in my lap.
“Uh oh,” she said. “That looks serious.” She invited herself in and took a seat on my unmade bed. I twisted in my chair until I was facing her again. “What’s going on?”
“Willem called me the night before the wedding and told me about this job he’d heard about at the British Museum,” I explained.
Her eyes widened. “He’s leaving?”
“No, the job would be for me, if I was even accepted.”
Now she was grinning. “That’s amazing, Soph! That’s your dream museum.”
“I know,” I replied. “It’s an opportunity I didn’t even consider as a possibility until I had a good ten to fifteen years of working in the field under my belt, even then it was a long shot.”
“Then what’s wrong? You should be doing backflips over this chance, not looking like you’re the only girl in your class without a prom date.”
I shrugged a single shoulder. It was too soon to tell her about Carter, but I had other concerns about picking up and moving my life across the pond. I could start with those.
“I don’t know if I’m ready to move out of the country. What about you and Mom? And Willem?”
“You haven’t lived in Wisconsin in over four years,” she shot back. “Plus, Mom just got married. I think we’ll be okay.” Lacey’s dark eyes brightened as she sat up a little straighter on the mattress. “I’ll have an excuse to travel over to England, too, and a free place to stay!”
I rolled my eyes, but couldn’t keep the smile from my lips. “Well, as long as you’re getting what you want out of the deal…”
“Exactly,” she said, giggling. “Problem solved.”
“I don’t know if I want to leave Willem,” I said. I really didn’t, but in this conversation, I’d let him be a placeholder for Carter. I just had to watch how I talked about him so Lacey didn’t get the wrong idea that something funny was going on between us. I definitely thought of him as father, not boyfriend material. And even when I’d briefly considered him as potential boyfriend material, it was for Mom.
“But he’s the one who found you the job,” Lacey replied, dark eyebrows coming together.
“I know, and he really wants me to take it if I get it.” I sighed miserably and looked up at the ceiling. “I really want to take it if I get it. But I’m scared to death at the same time.”
She made a thoughtful little noise, drawing my eyes to her. “You just said it. You’re scared. Now tell me of what.”
It was a long list. First, I was afraid of losing a man I’d been in love with since I was twelve years old, had thought I lost because of my own dumbass mistake, and only just reconnected with. That was the biggest fear, but I couldn’t tell Lacey about that. Not until I figured out what the hell I was going to do. So, I went with the other legitimate, but secondary fears that were plaguing me whenever I considered taking a job at the British Museum.
“I’m just getting settled into the museum in New York. And, it’s such a great place to work. There’s a lot that I can do there in the next few years. I don’t want to leave it, and Willem is a dream mentor. I’ve never met anyone as smart and capable. I have so much more to learn from him.”
Lacey nodded. “There are definitely some risks to flying to a country you’ve never even visited before and starting a new job.”
“What if I get over to England and my boss hates me? What if I’m not good enough for the job? What if I hate it there?” I shook my head. “There are so many things that could go wrong.”
“But what could go right, Soph? I think we have the negatives covered.” She could be a royal pain in my ass, but this was one of those times when she felt more like the older sister than the younger one. She was way more pragmatic than I was, and I loved her for it, even when it drove me up the wall.
I took in a deep, calming breath as I considered her question. There were many obvious positives. I’d been so busy freaking out about cutting off the newly resurrected connection with Carter, that I’d barely considered them after the wedding night.
“It would put me more than a decade ahead of my professional plan that I laid out for myself after landing the internship with Willem last summer,” I admitted. “I’d be working in an environment that I can’t even really fathom. I’d have access to some of the most accomplished people in my field. I could probably work on my Master’s, as well.” I smiled less than boldly. “I’d also be at my dream museum in less than a year after undergrad. That’s unheard of.”
“Sounds like there are some solid pros to this plan,” Lacey remarked.
The smile left me as a fresh wave of misery crashed into the momentary elevated mood that list had bolstered. “I’m still not sure what I want to do.”
“This might be the only chance you get at this,” she said, eyes shaded with real concern. “In a few years, you might be married with kids that you don’t want to uproot and move overseas. You’re free right now. You can do whatever you want.”
She had no way to know that my heart was locked up tightly, and only Carter had the key.
“I say put in your application and go for it.”
“That’s what Willem said, too,” I replied.
She shrugged. “There you go. That’s two against one.”
I laughed, helplessly, but in my gut I knew this was going to mean trouble for me, no matter how it went. I’d either lose the one shot at my dream job or leave my dream guy behind just when I thought I finally had him.
Carter
The Same Day, Early Evening
I set the ingredients I needed out on the counter and retrieved all the pots, pans, and other kitchen gadgets that I’d use to cook the spaghetti. It was actually a pretty quick dish, so I cut up the lettuce, carrots, cucumbers, and green pepper, and tossed them in a glass salad bowl, mixing everything together with my hands. I put the salad in the fridge to keep cool and then opened my cans of unseasoned diced tomatoes. I liked to make my own sauce. The store-bought stuff just didn’t compare. I dumped all the ingredients into a waiting saucepan, mixed in my seasonings, and set it on a low heat to simmer and thicken.
I set the table for two next, including several of the candles Lisa helped me pick out, both between the place settings and around the table itself. I’d lower the lights right before Sophia arrived to create the perfect romantic atmosphere.
Speaking of atmosphere… I went to my dad’s top of the line stereo — he loved all kinds of electronic gadgets — and after only a little bit of fiddling with it, started some romantic music playing — Tony Bennett and Michael Buble, as Lisa had suggested earlier.
Then I took the bouquet of sweet smelling roses and started to pluck the petals from the stems, sprinkling them from the front door to the dining room where the main attraction would be waiting for her. Lisa said women hated just getting flowers straight up, but loved inventive shit like this — her words — so I figured I’d give it a try. If it made Sophia smile, it’d be worth it.
I couldn’t believe I’d been given this opportunity. After so many years of unhappiness, all that lost time that we could have spent with each other, we were finally getting the chance to truly enjoy each other’s company. I knew that she loved me, and she knew I loved her. It was ridiculous that we’d been so close growing up, and yet it had taken this long for us to open up about our feelings. I knew from my side, I’d been terrified of rejection, and it sounded like she’d felt the same way.
Now we had each other, and I’d been plotting all afternoon and evening, coming up with ideas for how we could stay together despite the fact that we lived on opposite sides of the country. But I was certain that if our love could survive radio silence for the last three years, it could survive this, too.
I had about thirty minutes until my date was scheduled to arrive — I wanted to pump my fist and howl in triumph every time I called Sophia that — so I started the water boiling and then prepared the garlic bread by slicing the French ba
guette in half, buttering each side liberally, and sprinkling garlic salt and Italian seasoning on top of that. I put the oven on a low heat, put the two halves of the bread together, wrapped them in foil, and tossed them into the oven.
As soon as the water was boiling nicely, I dumped in the pasta, stirred it, and set the timer for five minutes. That gave me just enough time to walk through the house, checking to make sure every detail was perfectly in place for Sophia’s arrival. The timer went off in the kitchen, and I ran back in there to drain the pasta in the colander waiting in the sink. I put the noodles back into the pot, then mixed in the sauce, some parmesan, a few extra seasonings, and a handful of fresh chopped parsley. I stirred it, put the lid on the pot, and left it on the lowest heat setting.
I ran upstairs, changed out of the long sleeved t-shirt I’d been wearing, and put on a nice sweater. I went into the bathroom to put on some of the expensive cologne I’d started using since moving to California; Jason swore by it, telling me that girls were powerless to resist dropping their panties once they’d smelled it. I wasn’t sure about all that, but it did smell nice. I combed my hair straight back from my forehead. I inspected myself in the mirror, checking my face and clothes. I usually didn’t care too much about what I looked like, but I wanted every detail to be perfect for Sophia.
I had a plan for tonight.
I wanted us to thoroughly discuss the plan for the next year, if I could get her to commit to looking that far out. I’d put together a calendar that we could fill out with possible dates to visit each other. I’d also emailed my boss about the possibility of working remotely a few times a month — that would help create extra-long weekends that could be used to visit Sophia. I hadn’t expected an answer until after the holiday, but she responded within a few hours, telling me that she was more than happy to discuss the possibility once I returned to work in the New Year. Everything was happening just as I’d always envisioned. All we needed to do was ride out this distance until we found a time to be together. I had so much hope for the future, for us, for the life we would build together.