Give Love a Chai (Common Threads Book 2)

by Smartypants Romance

  When he applied light pressure on the back of my neck, I swayed … an inch … another inch … until I could feel his breath against me. A whispered hello.

  In a husky voice, Andrew said, his words caressing me, “I missed you.”

  “No!” Panicked, I pushed him away. Oh no, no, no! Whatever spell I was under, it was broken with his confession. I was fully back to reality. What in the world was I doing? With him, of all people?

  I looked at Andrew. His hair was tousled. I groaned internally, knowing that my hands had been playing with those strands just moments ago. His eyes were still looking at me tenderly, if a bit confused by my outburst.

  I hadn’t felt this bone-deep passion and craving for anyone … not since Andrew. And that scared me.

  The full weight of what I had almost done came crashing down on me, suffocating me with guilt and self-disgust. Where had my brain, my sense of self, my self-control been? I wasn’t a lust-driven teenager anymore, so I had nothing and no one to blame but my own stupidity.

  I was the worst person to lead him on. Especially, when I was not in a position to be having a dinner date or starting a new relationship, or continuing an old relationship, whatever it was that we were in. Remorse filled me. It was too late to take my actions back.

  “I can’t do this, Andrew,” I whispered, shaking my head, steeling myself from the hurt that I saw in his eyes. “This was a mistake. I’m sorry.”

  Not waiting for his reaction, I ran away.

  Chapter Four

  Andrew

  October 14, 2008

  Dear Ting,

  I’m keeping my promise and writing you another letter. I still think email would be faster, but here you go.

  Where do your parents think you’re going when you visit? Whatever it is, I’m glad you’re coming this weekend. I put in extra hours at work this week, so I don’t have to work this weekend. We can do whatever you want—I’ll even go see that ridiculous rom-com that you mentioned on the phone.

  Yours,

  Andrew

  I took a deep breath, checked the nameplate by the door and knocked. It had been almost two weeks since I had last seen Tia. I gripped the bag in my hand tighter—the contents were pretty lame excuses for a visit, but I was grasping at anything.

  When Tia fled my house, I had been too shocked to react. By the time I pulled myself out of the clouds, she was already speeding away in her ridiculous, lime green Beetle as if she was running from some villain in a James Bond movie. Unfortunately for me, Tia had cast me as the villain.

  In the years that we had separated, I had consciously forced myself not to google her. I had avoided going back to our hometown in Colorado, because everything there was a painful reminder. It was easier to pretend that we hadn’t been married. After seeing her again, my mind was stuck on the possibility of something between us.

  Two weeks after she had shown up on my doorstep, I finally gave into my curiosity. It was with some trepidation I typed “Tia Wang” into Google. Quickly, I ruled out Tia Wang the Australian figure skater and Tia Wang the cruise ship singer easily. The Ting Ting that I knew was clumsy and had a singing voice that, for the sake of all ears, should be kept far away from microphones.

  After an hour of reading about a dozen Tia Wangs, I clicked on a link for the MIT computational science staff site. Her smiling face popped up above an article about her joining the department as an assistant professor, specializing in using natural language processing and machine learning platforms to predict healthcare interventions. I didn’t know what the hell that meant, but MIT plus professor sounded big. I beamed with pride.

  So what if a tiny part of me would have loved to have been by her side, cheering her on as she achieved success? There wasn’t much I could do about the past.

  I was wholly focused on the present and seeing if there was even a chance for us. If only she answered my calls. Or opened the door to her office.

  I knocked again. No response.

  This group of offices was in a newer yet crowded wing of the MIT campus. Behind me, students rushed through the hallway. I was about to start banging on the door, just in case she couldn’t hear me above the noise, when the door opened abruptly.

  “Hold on, please, I’m just wrapping up with some students and—”

  Shocked brown eyes stared into mine. Tia looked different from when she showed up at my house. No longer in jeans and a fitted sweater, she was all professional today. Damn, she looked good in that pink top and tight skirt. She had probably meant to look conservative, but with that almost-kiss still on my mind, my brain went somewhere not appropriate for public hallways.

  Pulling my brain out of the gutter, I said, “Hi. Miss me?”

  With a look of panic, her eyes darted behind me before she dragged me inside her small office. Two very confused students stopped in the middle of typing notes on their laptops to stare at me. Hands waving, Tia turned to the students. “C’mon, you must be late for your next class.”

  One of the students blurted out, “Professor, we don’t have any more classes for the day.”

  “Yes, well, I’m sure you have lots of homework,” Tia replied, gesturing to the door.

  The other student said, “Actually, we don’t. Ryan and I just finished up everything in the library before coming to your office.”

  “Go on. Out. Now. I’ll see you tomorrow in class.” Tia shoved their laptops at them and all but pushed them out of the office.

  Closing the door behind them, she turned back to me. She looked cute when she was frustrated. I grinned at her like a fool. Being around her again was, I don’t know, weirdly comfortable yet exciting.

  Hands on her hips, Tia hissed at me, “What. Are. You. Doing. Here?”

  Oh man. Clearly, she wasn’t as thrilled to see me. I wiped the smile from my face and opened up my duffel bag. “You forgot your coat when you ran away. And your shoes.”

  Groaning, Tia covered her face with her hands. “Ugh. I looked ridiculous at the airport. You should have heard the TSA folks and flight attendants telling me that I still had time to go back to security to grab my shoes. They sell the most ridiculous things at the airport, like twenty different kinds of shot glasses. Why don’t they sell useful things, like shoes?”

  I chuckled. I had missed her self-deprecating humor. When she smiled tentatively at me, it felt as if we were still best friends. More than anything, I had missed having Tia as my friend. She had a knack for making light out of situations.

  “Andrew, you know you could have just shipped these back to me,” she began, walking around her desk to sit down in her chair. “You didn’t have to personally deliver them.”

  I frowned at the physical distance she was deliberately putting between us. “I know. I wanted to see you again, and you refused to answer my calls. That moment in Chicago felt unfinished.”

  Red colored her cheeks, and she looked down at her hands. “I thought we wrapped it up pretty well,” she said, twirling a pen frantically around her fingers. “I expressed my wishes, and left, giving you some time to read the document carefully before signing. I was going to have my lawyer check with you soon.”

  In disbelief, I sat down in the chair facing her. “Did you miss the part where I suggested we try again before signing? Who knows, it might be different this time. What do we have to lose?”

  “You’re not serious, right?” Her eyes widened as her hands nervously stacked papers on her crowded desk.

  This conversation was not going the way that I had hoped. It wasn’t as if I’d expected her to hop into my arms in delight. Okay, maybe I had.

  Seeing Tia again, experiencing feelings for her that had been buried—yeah, that scared the shit out of me. I assumed that she felt the same seismic shift as I did when we touched, the same sparks when we talked. I had flown to Boston, hoping her curiosity was stronger than her fears of repeating the past.

  Now, I wasn’t sure I had read the situation correctly. She had freaked out, but maybe not
for the reasons that I had assumed. Fuck. I hated, fucking hated, making a fool out of myself and here I was, looking like an ass.

  Stalling for time, I asked the one question that had been bugging me since I saw Tia outside my house. “Why did you come find me now? We thought we had been divorced for ten years. What prompted you to dig into this?”

  Tia looked around her office, a frown marring her beautiful face. A pit opened up in my stomach. She looked as uncomfortable and guilty as I had ever seen her.

  I followed up, needing to know. “Did you show up in Chicago just to serve me divorce papers? Was that the only reason?”

  Say no. Say you were curious about me too. I was surprised at how much I cared about her answer.

  “I’m sorry, Andrew,” Tia said, her voice wavering, her eyes finally meeting mine. Her brown eyes were large and apologetic. “I’m getting—”

  “Hey, Tia!”

  Both of us whirled around at the newcomer. If the newcomer was surprised to see us, he hid it quickly. Then again, Clayton Davenport had always been unfailingly polite and unflappable. That mantra was likely tattooed into his blue blood by some ancestor.

  “Andrew, how’s it going?” Clayton reached out his hand, his smile friendly.

  Without thinking, my hand shook his. I noted the horrified expression on Tia’s face. A poker player, my Tia was not. She stood up and shook her head in alarm, while backing away from us in her tiny, cluttered office.

  Thump.

  Tia smacked into the window behind her desk. Startled, she jumped sideways. Right into a very full coat stand.

  “Tia!” Clayton’s voice called out as I leaped over some plant to try to get to her. For a comical second, Tia’s arms flailed, and she was suspended in air, teetering in some horrific ballerina pose.

  Thud. Ba-dum. “Oof!” Thud. “Ow!”

  Leaning over the heap that was Tia, I offered my hand to help her. Swatting it away, Tia pushed off the offending coat stand. Sprawled on the floor, her dark hair coming out of a bun underneath a fallen hat, she looked more like a student after a drunken night of revelry than a respected professor.

  “How … how do you two know each other?” she asked accusingly, using an umbrella to help her stand.

  Cross off hungover student. She looked like an avenging Mary Poppins, waving that umbrella wildly between Clayton and me. Clearly, Tia Poppins did not appreciate the humor of the situation, as she jabbed me in the chest. It wasn’t as if I was laughing at her.

  Not much.

  Just a tiny facial tic.

  While I was rubbing my chest—you try being poked with something sharp—Clayton shook off his shock and hurried over to Tia. Stopping him with a wave of her umbrella, she pointed at me. “Do you know him? Why did you shake his hand?”

  Clayton looked back at me, as if expecting to see some horrible monster judging by the vehemence in her voice. He said evenly, “Andrew? We went to law school together and were associates at the same firm in New York right after graduation.”

  Shocked eyes met mine. Frowning, Tia asked, “The same law firm that you and Pippa used to work at? You went to Yale Law?”

  Annoyed at her surprise, I said, “Geez, thanks for the vote of confidence, Tia. Guess they do accept mere mortals whose names are not on buildings.” Wincing, I turned to Clayton. “Sorry, man.”

  He shrugged and joked easily, “How else would people know you were rich if your name wasn’t on some stodgy, old building?”

  It was an unintentional reminder of how wide the gap had been between me and my classmates. I had a full-ride scholarship, supplemented by working a couple of side jobs. On the other hand, my classmates came from families who funded scholarships. I was the potato next to a basket of heirloom-whatever-grapes champagne was made out of.

  “But I’ve visited Pippa at your firm, and I never saw you there,” Tia said to me.

  “I was probably holed away on a case,” I said in an effort to mask my shock. One, I was stunned that my Tia hobnobbed with these heirloom champagne grapes. Two, my mind couldn’t wrap around the fact that Tia had visited my former office. I wasn’t close to Clayton or Pippa. Still, we had known one another for years, and now, to hear that they knew Tia—it blew me away.

  So close. What would I have done if I had seen her? Would she have run away, or run to me? Would I have wanted her to run to me?

  Clayton stepped forward.

  “Oh shit,” I whispered under my breath, realization twisting me upside down.

  “What are you doing in Boston? I thought you had moved out to Chicago,” Clayton asked, oblivious to my torment. As if it was the most natural thing in the world, he draped an arm around not-my Tia’s shoulders.

  “Here for some business,” I replied robotically.

  Of course. Him.

  He was exactly the kind of guy Tia’s parents wanted her to be with. Upstanding, dependable, too boring for skeletons. For fuck’s sake, his family had come to America on the Mayflower. He was the blue-blooded American prince that Tia’s immigrant parents had never made a secret of wanting her to end up with. And he was so nice that I couldn’t despise him.

  Law firms were notoriously competitive, churning out associates and pitting them against each other to see who floated to the top. Everybody played office politics, except for me and Clayton. I didn’t know how, even if I had cared enough to try to butter up to a partner or sabotage another associate. And Clayton had enough old-money confidence and connections that he didn’t need to. We didn’t meet for beers outside of work or play golf, but I had grown to grudgingly respect his professionalism and intelligence. Which was not helpful in this situation.

  Fuck. They must be serious, if she needed a divorce. I should have known that the girl from my past wouldn’t just show up at my front door, ready to magically erase our years apart. There had been a hundred clues that I had missed. Asking for a divorce? Running away? The nervousness and anxiety?

  Stupid me. I should have seen this coming. People like me did not get second chances.

  Clayton must have finished whatever he was saying, as he was looking at me. Was it my turn to exchange silly pleasantries? What was I supposed to say, “Congrats, good luck with my wife?”

  I glanced over at Tia. She stared at the floor, as if she was trying to disappear into it. I willed her to reassure me. To smile in that way that said everything was going to be okay, that this was a joke, and that we’d laugh about it later. Instead, she stayed silent.

  Clayton asked, “How do you know each other?”

  “We were best friends growing up,” I answered at the same time as Tia said, “Acquaintances.”

  If Clayton was confused by the conflicting answers, he ignored it. He asked, “So you two grew up together in Colorado? How nice that you stayed in touch.”

  “Ha, funny story,” I began, itching to wipe the friendly smile from his face. “Tia showed up—”

  “Andrew!” cried out Tia in alarm. “I don’t think Clayton has time right now for stories of our childhood.”

  “Actually, I took the rest of the afternoon off,” said Clayton. “I’d love to hear stories about you growing up.”

  Miserable, Tia pleaded, “Maybe later? Let’s grab some food before my next class starts. I’m starving.”

  Clayton smiled warmly at Tia and nodded. Looking at me, he asked, “How long are you in Boston? We’re throwing a small party this Saturday to celebrate the engagement. If you’re free, you should stop by.”

  Still in denial, and still an idiot, I asked, “Whose engagement?”

  “Mine.” With that one quietly whispered word from Tia, my mind went blank.

  Chapter Five

  Tia

  November 28, 2009 (never sent)

  Andrew,

  You probably guessed this already, but I hate running with a passion. There is no part of running that I enjoy. It does not clear my head, I don’t look cute in sweats, and it’s deathly boring. I only joined track because you were on the team
. That and my parents were convinced that I needed to do some sort of sports to get into college.

  You were fast. State champ your senior year!

  When I left, why didn’t you run after me? You could have caught me. I was ready with excuses for you, if you had run after me.

  Ting

  This was what I got for going to see Andrew in Chicago. For trying to bottle up my guilt for the past two weeks. Even though no physical lines had been crossed, it didn’t feel that way. Not when I had thought about Andrew nonstop since.

  At this time of the day, I could get to the airport in twenty minutes and be on my way to some place far away. Without cell service. Or Wi-Fi. I could hunker down in some cute cottage until Andrew got bored and signed those stupid papers. It wasn’t really hiding from my problems per se, just removing myself from the situation until it resolved itself.

  My heart was ready to give out from all of the stops and starts. Back in college, I had tried Red Bull for the first time right before a final. Bad choice. Instead of helping me focus, I spent the entire two hours during the test wondering if my heart palpitations were going to lead to a heart attack.

  Once again I was worried for my cardiovascular health. Only instead of Red Bull, it was Andrew giving me heart palpitations. His reentry into my life. His presence in my tiny office. Him and Clayton in my tiny office. Ai ya ya, Clayton.

  Of course they would know each other. I had been a fool to rely on the impenetrable wall that I had painstakingly crafted between my past life and my current one.

  Of course, ever-so-nice Clayton was now inviting my soon-to-be ex-husband to our engagement party.

  Of course Andrew was confused. I was still his wife, at least in name. I couldn’t even claim ignorance on the marriage, as I was the one who had told him that we were still married. I felt an overwhelming need for him to not hate me.