“I know how a meme works, Bryan,” I teased.
He grinned. “Hey, you asked me if I was going running, while I was standing in my running shoes, five minutes after I said, ‘I’m going for a run.’ So a little less sass, Captain Obvious.”
“Is Jess still in LA?” I asked, remembering his parents had moved there with his younger sister after he started college.
He nodded. “Yes. She’s in college now. Premed. Still brilliant, and she’s putting herself through school taking photos of celebrities.”
“That’s right. You once said she had stars in her eyes.”
“Yes. That’s Jess. She loves movies too.”
“What about you? What are your favorite movies?”
“Just in case the guys’ committee is listening, I’ll tell you The Fast and The Furious or The Hangover.” Then he lowered his voice and whispered, “But I’ll admit to you, only you, that it’s actually Casablanca.”
Pinch me now, I thought. Wake me up from this dream. Because right then I closed my eyes and watched that perfect film unfurl in front of me, a romance that left you breathless no matter how many times you’d seen it. I could feel myself sinking into that heady state, like I was under a spell, transfixed, and I could touch the scenes, feel every sensation the characters felt zip through me.
“They’ll always have Paris,” I mused. “How can a bittersweet ending be so perfect?”
“Because Rick is thinking of the right thing to do, the right thing for the Resistance and the right thing for—”
He broke off so suddenly that I looked around to see if he’d seen something. Did I have a guilty conscience or what?
I closed my eyes and flashed back to my parents, to the store, to my plans. Then to Professor Oliver, and his wife, and my business. Everything else was much more important than a mere feeling. I just wanted to ignore reality a little longer.
“I could sit here until they close this café, just talking to you,” I said.
“That would be nice. But I’d rather take you out to dinner. Then we could walk around the city . . .”
“You know, mentors and mentees have meals together all the time, I’m sure. They have to eat.”
“I don’t think I could spend an entire evening with you without everyone who looks at us knowing what I’m thinking.”
I felt lightheaded, like I’d just taken a painkiller and gotten that warm flush where it kicks in and spreads throughout your chest and belly. The little hairs on my arms were standing on end.
“Definitely too risky,” I said.
“Definitely. Not just because of the lawsuit. I don’t want anything to look bad for you, or for Made Here, or for the school. But the lawsuit makes me extra paranoid. I didn’t even want to email you all the things I’ve been thinking these past few weeks.”
My heart melted. When I looked up at him, his lips were so, so close. “You could call me,” I said.
“Tonight?”
I was a pinball machine, buzzing and humming, saying yes, yes, yes. Then I remembered the name of the vendor.
“I would love that. And you may want to try Geeking Out in the Red Hook. Great guys, and super speedy with parts.”
He shook his head appreciatively. “Do you have any idea how hot it is that you are this damn business savvy?”
“No. Are we talking broiling, boiling, or scorching?”
“Smoking.”
We behaved ourselves, except for some secret smiles, scooting apart once I put my tablet—and the excuse for sitting so close—away.
I didn’t want the moment to end, but it wasn’t truly ending. We had plans, in a way, for that night.
16
Kat
Present Day
My phone mocked me, a hard brick reminder that I was waiting for a call. I curled deeper into the dented corner of the mustard-colored couch, laptop on my thighs as I worked. Jill was my mirror image, sitting cross-legged on the other end, tapping away on her computer too. Her hair was twisted up and held in place with a red chopstick, and a few dark-blonde strands framed her face. “Finished!”
“Did you finally master Candy Crush?”
“Why, yes, I did. I also finished my list of recommendations for my group of Upper East Side mommies on their training and diet for the next few weeks before the New York City Marathon.” Jill was making headway as an actress, but she still took on jobs on the side as a running coach. She operated a few running clinics and clubs, especially for men and women who wanted to tackle marathons for the first time, as well as 5Ks and 10Ks.
“And I deserve a kombucha, but we have none, and that makes me sad.”
“Gross. But to each her own.”
“Kombucha makes me strong.”
“Kombucha makes me gag, but here you go.”
I stretched my arm out to the coffee table, grabbed Jill’s wallet, and tossed it to her. She caught it in one hand, placed her laptop on the couch, and went on an expedition to the nearest Whole Foods.
I wandered into the kitchen and reached for an apple inside the three-tiered silver-looking wire basket that hung by the side of the kitchen sink. I only kept it because it reminded me of the one towering with fruit—apples, oranges, nectarines, and lemons that threatened to spill out—that my parents had in our home in Connecticut. I washed the apple and then headed into the living room, where I sat on the windowsill and took a bite.
This probably sounded crazy, but my parents really are that couple. As in those people you can’t believe still love each other madly after all these years. They’ve been together for thirty years, and my mom still makes breakfast for him every morning. She’ll set the table with the same green-and-white checkered plates and the same matching cloth napkins that we’ve had since I was in high school. Then Dad will come downstairs, give her a kiss on the cheek, and they’ll have breakfast together. He’ll do the dishes and clean up, and they’ll walk to the store holding hands. It’s lovely.
When my mom admitted earlier tonight on the phone that the online daily deal had bombed, my heart withered a bit for them. “I’m so sorry, Mom.”
“Well, you know, you’ll just have to keep me stocked in chocolate, my Katerina.”
“I will. I promise. Even though I know it won’t come to that.”
I took another bite of the apple, thinking of them. When my phone finally rang, I pounced on it.
“Hello?”
“Hey. It’s Bryan.”
My heart leaped. I was the girl in high school waiting for the quarterback to call. Fine, I’d never dated a football player, and I didn’t even care for most sports. But I bet the zing I felt was precisely the same.
“Hey. What are you up to?”
“Talking to you.”
I rolled my eyes even though he couldn’t see me. Now we really sounded like teenagers again.
“Same to you,” I said as I placed the half-eaten apple on the coffee table.
“What’d you do tonight?”
I gave him the rundown, then asked the same of him.
“Work, work, and more work. I heard back from the city of Paris on the padlocks. They said they’re trying to make some arrangements for a deal, so that’s good. But the best part is this amazingly brilliant MBA student I’m working with may have saved the day for us.”
I bounced on my toes. “Really? Did Geeking Out come through?”
“They’re putting a competitive bid together tonight. I should have it first thing in the morning, but they said they could meet the timeline.”
“Damn. I rock.”
“You totally and completely rock.”
“Where are you right now?” I asked as I walked down the hall to my bedroom. I didn’t know when Jill would return with her kombucha, but I didn’t want to be interrupted.
“My apartment. Finally. Car just dropped me off.”
“Calling me was the first thing you did when you got home? Nice.”
“I walked in two minutes ago.”
“I d
on’t even know where you live.” I shut the door to my bedroom and lay down on my bed. The one luxury I afforded myself was the bedding. A shimmery purple duvet covered the bed, with pillows in rich shades of red and dark blue.
“Sixtieth and Park.”
I wanted to whistle in admiration. I pictured the block perfectly, seeing it on a rain-soaked night, the quiet street glistening, lined with beautiful brick brownstones. He probably lived in one of those buildings. Double doors, four stories, hardwood floors, white-paned windows that opened onto the kind of street that romantic comedy heroines strolled down, holding hands with their lovers.
“What’s on tap the rest of the night? More work?”
“I’m calling it a night on the work front. No more email, no more reports. I’m just kicking back on my couch talking to this girl with my cell phone pressed against my head. I’m probably getting a brain tumor, but c’est la vie.”
“You’re not one of those AirPod people? You haven’t been walking around like an Apple commercial all evening?”
“Hey now! I lost my AirPods,” he admitted a little sheepishly. “Three pairs.”
I laughed. Something about a man who made cuff links and tie clips losing his AirPods hit me in the funny bone. “Your Achilles’ heel.”
“They are my downfall, yes. Anyway, now that you’ve finagled my AirPod secret from me, what else do you want to know?”
I shifted onto my side and played with the tassel on one of my purple pillows. What did I want to know about Bryan? “I got it. Shoes on airplanes. On or off?”
“On, of course. As if I would ever take my shoes off on a plane.”
“Totally agree. Why do people do that? Stretch their big stinky feet out in front of them and even walk up and down the aisles without their shoes.”
“I’m telling you, there should be a regulation against removing shoes on planes. And from clipping your nails in public.”
“That definitely seems like a health code violation to me.”
“You know what I like to do on planes?”
“No. What?”
“Sometimes I go a little wild and leave my cell phone on.”
“It doesn’t work up there.”
“Right, but instead of turning it off when we take off, I just go crazy and leave it on silent. And then I like to see how far up we can go before it stops getting messages, and then I like to see how high we are when it starts picking them up again on the way down.”
“You renegade.”
“I know, Kat. I’m not afraid to be a bad boy like that.”
“Are you though? A bad boy?”
He didn’t answer right away. He must have been weighing the question and what I really meant. I wasn’t even sure what I really meant. “Do you want me to be a bad boy?”
I rested my head on the pile of pillows. “I don’t know,” I answered honestly. “I just want you to be yourself.”
“I am. With you, I am definitely myself.”
That was one of the best compliments I could imagine anyone giving me. From Bryan, it was even better.
We talked like we had five years to catch up on, talked about everything and nothing until I couldn’t stop yawning. And finally, we said good night.
“Sweet dreams, Kat.”
How could they be anything but sweet?
17
Bryan: Good morning.
Kat: My morning is indeed excellent so far. How is yours?
Brian: I don’t think I can top “excellent.” What does that involve? Birds making your bed? Mice bringing your slippers?
Kat: Are you implying I’m some kind of princess?
Bryan: Only the good kind. A postmillennial self-rescuing kick-ass princess.
Bryan: With superpowers.
Bryan: And a talking horse.
Kat: Better quit while you’re ahead.
Bryan: I’m not a quitter, but I’m not stupid either, so . . . changing the subject. Did you sleep well?
Kat: I did. But I dreamed I walked around New York City all night. Or maybe I actually sleepwalked around New York City. I think I stopped at a bakery and picked up a carrot cake.
Brian: Please tell me that if you sleepwalked all over this city, you did not do it to get a carrot cake.
Kat: Well, not specifically to get the cake. That was incidental.
Bryan: Then tell me it was something besides carrot cake.
Kat: Because carrot is something that should never go in cake?
Bryan: Exactly.
Kat: So maybe it was a nightmare about carrot cake.
Bryan: Let’s not talk about nightmares. Let’s talk about dreams.
Kat: Fine. I slept perfectly and had very sweet dreams.
Brian: My dreams were anything but sweet.
Kat: Aw, poor baby.
Bryan: I didn’t say they weren’t good dreams.
Kat: Oh. So they were sweet dirty dreams?
Bryan: They were definitely on the dirtier side.
Kat: Do I want to ask what they were about?
Bryan: Depends. Do you want to know what they were about?
Kat: How would I know that until I know?
Bryan: I’ll help you out. If you want me to say they were about you, you want to ask.
Kat: I guess that is the question. Do I want you to say me?
Bryan: I feel like this is going in a “Who’s on First?”
direction.
Kat: For the record, I find “Who’s on First?” hilarious.
Bryan: Noted.
Kat: But not before coffee.
Bryan: I wouldn’t do that to you, Kat. I’m not a barbarian.
Kat: What, not even a little bit?
Bryan: Maybe if you ask nicely.
Kat: Hey, Bryan . . . I absolutely want you to say me.
18
Kat
Present Day
Bryan was a fortune-teller. Over the next month, Wilco filed his wrongful termination suit against Made Here, Bryan’s board freaked out about it, and we were the absolute model of a mentor and protégé. I knew the Wilco thing was bothering him, though, not because he was worried about the lawsuit, but because he thought he knew the guy. They’d been business partners for years, and Wilco had betrayed him twice: once with his behavior and again with the lawsuit.
It was one of the many things we talked about on the phone. We talked more on the phone in a month than I might have in my whole life—not counting the parents, which should not count.
We met once a week on purpose at the coffee shop where we’d met serendipitously the first time. Once mentor-protégé talk was done, we’d discuss life—ours and in general—and talk about his sister, my brother, the movies, the theater, living in New York. Sometimes we’d argue about what was funny and what wasn’t. I suspected he took the opposite opinion from mine to keep things interesting.
And we flirted sometimes. He’d give a little innuendo, and I’d react accordingly. Or sometimes not—to keep things interesting.
We met there on the day we had an appointment for our midterm check-in with Professor Oliver. Bryan had tried again to predict my coffee order, but I’d kept him on his toes. “Come on, Bryan,” I teased. “Admit I’m not that predictable.”
He shook his head stubbornly. “I’m going to get it eventually. Who’d have thought you’d be so hard to pin down?”
I caught his smirk at the end there and answered in the same spirit. “You’re bigger and stronger than I am, so it wouldn’t be that hard.”
Groaning, he held the door for me as we left the shop. “You’re killing me, Kat.”
It was a lovely day—the sun was out and it wasn’t too cool or too muggy, so I wasn’t surprised when Bryan gestured up the street. “You want to walk?”
“Of course.” I smirked at him. “Some of us are used to our feet taking us where we want to go.”
He held up his hands. “I concede. You win this round.”
We set off toward campus. When Bryan had first started worki
ng, we’d walk everywhere when I came to visit him—though we’d strolled then, and now we strode purposefully like proper New Yorkers. The more time I spent with Bryan now, the less anger and instead the more confusion I felt when I thought about the breakup. I’d enjoyed seeing New York with him, and I’d thought he’d enjoyed himself too. I wasn’t brave enough to ask him about it though. If his explanation—if he had one—made me angry, it would be back to awkward AF working with him. If he melted my heart, that would cause problems, too, because we absolutely could not have a relationship.
In his office on campus, Professor Oliver pulled three chairs into a circle. Bryan and I sat next to each other, inches apart, our eyes never straying from Oliver.
“Ms. Harper, tell me about the business challenges you’ve weighed in on at Made Here.”
“I’ve been able to devise solutions for some of the supply chain complications that have arisen, from new time frames to replacement suppliers,” I said, and then shared more of the details of the projects we’d worked on.
The Second Chance Plan (Caught Up In Love: The Swoony New Reboot of the Contemporary Romance Series Book 3) Page 9