by Lila Monroe
“Do you have the gossip on all of these people?” I ask, impressed.
“Possibly.” Justin offers me a rakish wink. “You have to amuse yourself somehow at these things, right?”
“You should start writing a gossip column for the Gazette,” I tell him. “Talk about improving circulation.”
Justin laughs. “The number one rule of these things is what happens at the country club, stays at the country club.”
“I’ll add it to my list of rich people rules,” I say, mock solemn. “Along with kissing on both cheeks, and never asking, ‘What do you do?’ ”
But the guest list isn’t all Buffy and Muffy here tonight. Justin introduces me to a famous restauranteur I’ve seen from the Food Network, and the curator of a downtown gallery I love. He seems more relaxed away from the snooty crowds—especially because nobody asks after his father. Finally, he nods at the poker table. “What do you say?” he asks with a devilish grin. “Want to play a few hands?”
“Sure,” I tell him, grateful for an activity. “I mean, it’s for charity, right?”
Justin nods. “You know the rules?” he asks. “I can teach you, if you need.”
I quirk an eyebrow, I can’t help it. “I think I remember.”
* * *
Twenty minutes later, I smile at Justin over a stack of poker chips so high I can barely see the dealer. “I think I’m ready to cash out,” I say sweetly. “You think you could teach me how to do that?”
Justin laughs. “You hustler,” he says, grinning.
“Thank you,” I reply with a grin. I never claimed to be a novice, but it’s possible I forgot to mention the part where this wasn’t exactly my first time at a poker table. “I’ve played a little before.”
“Clearly,” he smirks. “Where’d you learn?”
“My dad used to run a poker night with the other guys in his union,” I explain. “I really like corn nuts, so I used to hang around the table all the time. Picked up a few tricks.”
“I see that,” Justin says. He plucks two more glasses of champagne off the tray of a passing cater waiter, offering me one before raising his own in a toast. “We should celebrate.”
I raise my glass in a toast, then catch his eye. I pause. He’s looking at me with an expression I haven’t seen since that day in the elevator: intense and almost wolfish. If I didn’t know any better, I’d say it was lust.
I blush and look away, disconcerted by the shot of adrenaline coursing through me. Just because he looks damn good in a tux, doesn’t mean I need to melt all over this fine, polished floor.
My panties, however? Might be getting just a little bit twisted.
We drink our champagne, help ourselves to bites of smoked salmon and quiche the size of silver dollars. Justin was right—I do in fact have access to all the crab puffs I can eat—but still my stomach is rumbling, and he must be able to tell. “OK,” he says, glancing at his watch. I think he’s about to cut me loose, but he smiles. “I think I’ve officially shown my face here long enough. You want to get out of here and find some real food?”
If you’d told me a week ago that all I’d want to do on a work night is go for a late dinner with the Grim Reaper of the New York Gazette, I’d have asked you what drugs you were smoking. Tonight, though, I feel myself nod.
Real food . . . real kissing . . . real torrid nights tangled up in his designer sheets . . . I’ll take any and/or all of the above, please and thank you.
“Come on,” I say, downing the rest of my champagne before I can choose the safe way out. “I know just the place.”
8
Justin
Is this a bad idea?
As we leave the party, my head says yes, but my body disagrees.
Strongly.
Because damn, if Natalie isn’t dressed to kill tonight. Are these the “unexpected rewards” my horoscope told me about? She’s always gorgeous, but in that tight black dress and heels, I have to fight to play it cool. Leaving the safety of the party to strike out on our own?
Danger, temptation up ahead.
I manage to keep my shit together. Natalie takes me to cute, charming diner tucked onto a side street uptown. Not one of those hipster places, but a quintessential New York joint, the kind of place with deep polyester booths and a revolving dessert case and waitresses who have probably been working here longer than I’ve been alive. We order giant burgers with thick-cut fries and a side of onion rings to share, Natalie asking for a chocolate milkshake at the very last second. “We’re celebrating, right?” she asks with a grin, and on second thought I order one too.
“This place is great,” I tell her, tearing my eyes away to look around at the other patrons—a group of rowdy college kids soaking up all the booze in their systems with high towers of pancakes, a pair of iron workers with their hardhats on the table beside them, an old woman wrapped in an elegant fur coat and sipping a gin martini at the counter. Corny-in-a-good-way ’70s rock plays over the speakers, the Doobie Brothers and Steely Dan.
“Really?” Natalie asks, happily slurping her milkshake. “I know it’s probably not your usual kind of hangout.”
“Definitely not,” I deadpan. “I usually prefer my burgers covered in gold leaf.”
“Topped with caviar,” she laughs.
“That is actually delicious, I tried it once,” I admit, and Natalie throws a French fry across the table in my direction. I laugh and pop it into my mouth, and she grins. She’s got an incredible smile, with full pink lips and a sparkle in her eyes. I haven’t been able to take my eyes off her all night.
Well, I haven’t been able to take my eyes off her for weeks, honestly, but the way she looks in that dress—summer-tan shoulders, her lush curves in all the right places—definitely isn’t helping the situation. It’s all I can do not to lean across the table and press my mouth against hers. Hell, it’s all I can do not to yank her clear across the table and into my lap.
She’s your employee, I remind myself firmly. Nobody likes a pervy boss.
“So, is that what your entire childhood was like?” she asks me, tucking into her burger. “Caviar and brie?”
“Kind of,” I admit, faintly embarrassed.
“And your dad giving you the brush-off over speakerphone?”
I blink—surprised at her forwardness, though I guess I ought to be used to it by now. I know I should feel defensive, should tell her she has no idea what she’s talking about, no idea what it’s like to be a Rockford . . . but instead I find myself nodding. “Something like that.”
Natalie pops a pickle into her mouth. “That sounds hard.”
“It can be, I guess.” I pause, self-conscious now. “It can be lot of pressure, living up to the name.”
“I get it,” she tells me. “I mean, I’ve never had a caviar burger, but the parental pressure thing . . . I get it.”
“You do?” I ask, interested. “Are your folks hard on you?”
She thinks about that for a moment. “It’s not that they’re hard on me, exactly,” she says. “They’re great—warm, welcoming. A little crazy, but in a mostly good way. But my mom dropped out of college to marry my dad and have me. She gave up her dreams in order to have a family, and it’s not like she regrets it, exactly? At least, I don’t think she does. But it’s always been super important to her that I don’t make the same sacrifices she did—that I put my career before anything else.”
“Is that how you got to be so tenacious?” I ask, unable to keep myself from smiling. “Your mom?”
“She taught me everything I know,” Natalie says with a nod. “Back when I was in college she used to give me mock job interviews at the kitchen table.”
“After you were done playing Woodward and Bernstein, of course.”
“Exactly.” Natalie grins. “She reads all my clips, and she’s always full of career advice.” She smirks. “She wouldn’t like me barging into my boss’s office and mouthing off all the time, that’s for sure.”
I hold her g
aze across the table, steady. “Lucky for you, turns out your boss doesn’t mind.”
Natalie looks back at me for a moment, her cheeks gone faintly pink, and now I know we’re both thinking about that day in the elevator. I’ve done my best to put it out of my mind for the last few weeks, but now it all comes flooding back at once: the warm wetness of her tongue and the way she sighed as she arched against me, how her body felt against mine.
What I wouldn’t give to repeat-play that memory. Over, and over, and—
“How are you two doing?” Luckily the waitress comes by to check on us just then, so I clear my throat and drag my mind back to the present.
“We’re great, thanks,” I tell her. Once she’s gone, I take another gulp of milkshake to cool down. “So how did you find this place, anyway?” I ask. “We’re pretty far from Brooklyn.”
Natalie grins, launching into a story about being stuck uptown with her friends during a blizzard as we finish our milkshakes. She’s easy to talk to, asking questions about Charlie and Luce and regaling me with funny stories about her brother and his girlfriend, who’s had their entire wedding planned since the Obama administration. I tell her about my grandma’s penchant for horseracing, and how Charlie and I got secretly tanked on mint juleps at one of her epic Kentucky Derby parties when we were teenagers. It’s been a long time since I had a conversation like this, lazy and winding and surprisingly familiar, and I find I don’t want it to end.
There aren’t many people I can talk to like this. In fact, I can count them on the fingers of one hand.
And I don’t want to kiss any of them the way I’m craving a taste of Natalie’s lips right now.
But I know it’s getting late, and I don’t want to burden her time any more. Or risk crossing a line. Finally, I pick up the check and we head out into the chilly night, the streets emptying out and the city taking on that private, late-night quality I love so much, more small town than bustling metropolis. “Here,” I say, shrugging out of my jacket when I catch Natalie shivering in her slinky dress. “Take this.”
She shakes her head. “I’m fine.”
There she goes, stubborn as ever. “So you’d prefer a bout of pneumonia?” I ask. “Honking, and coughing, and sniffing—”
“OK, OK!” Natalie laughs. “Enough with the snot, thank you very much.”
I drape my jacket over her shoulders, and put my hands in my pockets, before I can try and reach for hers.
“This is me,” she says a block or two later, nodding at the subway stop on the corner. “I’ll see you tomorrow at work.”
“I can ride with you,” I hear myself offering. “I’m headed in that direction anyway.”
Natalie raises her eyebrows, clearly not buying it—and why would she? She knows exactly where I live. “You think I can’t look after myself?” she asks.
“Nope,” I say immediately, since I’ve already seen how stubborn she can be. “It’s the rogues and criminals of New York I’m worried about. If one of them got the bad idea to try something with you, who knows the damage you’d do?”
She laughs, shooting me a flirty grin. Or maybe that’s just how I want to read it. “Fine,” she agrees. “For their sakes, you can see me home.”
We head down to the platform, and board the next train. The car is empty except for a woman in medical scrubs scrolling her phone at the other end, but Natalie and I sit together anyway, her warm thigh pressed against mine as she tells me about learning to navigate the train lines back in elementary school, a city kid through and through. Once we get into Brooklyn, the train rises above ground and there’s a view of the skyline that’s breathtaking for how unexpected it is.
Her neighborhood is still bustling with late night revelers, spilling out of bars, and we pass new hipster coffee shops, alongside butcher shops and bakeries that have been here forever. “I could never afford to live here,” she explains with a smile as we make our way down the tree-lined street. “And definitely not alone. But the apartment is rent-controlled. My landlord is this tiny old Italian lady who calls me Natalia. She and my Grandma used to go to the same church, which is how I managed to nab this spot as soon as it opened up.”
“This is on your father’s side, right?” I check, trying to keep track of her family.
“Right.” She smiles. “My nonna, not my abeula. The two of them actually get along great, until it comes to the question of whose chicken is best,” she adds. “Then . . . well, we hide the kitchen knives.”
I smile. Her family sounds like a lot of fun, and a world away from my own staid, emotionally repressed relatives. “I can’t imagine either of my grandmothers even stepping foot in a kitchen,” I say. “Coming to blows over the proper arrangement of silverware? Maybe.”
Natalie laughs, then stops in front of a charming brownstone. “This is me,” she says, then slips out of my jacket and hands it back to me. “Thanks again for tonight,” she says. “I had fun.”
“You sound surprised,” I tease.
She grins. “Maybe I am. I didn’t know you had it in you.”
Our eyes catch, and something sizzles in the air between us.
Damn. I want her.
“There are a lot of things you don’t know about me,” I say, taking a half-step towards her without even thinking. It’s like I’m drawn to her, like I can’t keep a safe distance between us with my blood suddenly pounding and desire surging hot in my veins.
“Like what?” Natalie asks, her gaze still locked on mine. She wets her lips, and suddenly, this craving is way too strong.
Tread lightly, my horoscope said, but fuck it, this attraction is way too strong.
“I broke my arm when I was twelve,” I tell her, taking another step. “I know all the words to the last Drake record. I like pistachio ice cream best,” I murmur, finally reaching her. “And I’ve been wanting to do this all night.”
I take her face in my hands and kiss her.
Ever since our encounter in the elevator, I’ve told myself that I must be misremembering, turning it into something it never was to begin with. That if I were to kiss her again, there’s no way it could have been as amazing as the movie in my head.
Turns out I’m right—it’s not that good.
It’s better.
I pull her close, loving the taste of her, traces of chocolate and salt. Natalie kisses me back eagerly, wrapping her arms around my neck, our tongues sliding together as her fingertips ghost along the collar of my shirt. I back her up against the wrought-iron railing and work a knee between her thighs right there on the stoop, wanting her as close as humanly possible, and she moans against my mouth. The sound sets my entire body on fire.
Finally, we come up for air. And then I see it on her face: the exact moment her brain switches back on, and she goes from “hell yes” to “what the hell have I done?”
I let go of her in a hurry. Shit. Shit.
Why did I have to do that? Way to ruin what could have been the start of a beautiful friendship. Never mind the messy workplace issues!
“So . . . Uh,” I scramble for something to say. “I should, um, go. Now. Have a great night!” I add—wanting to save us both from the inevitable awkwardness, the conversation about keeping things professional and why this was a terrible idea.
I raise one hand in an awkward wave before turning around and all but sprinting back down the block in the direction of the subway—or at least, what I think is the direction of the subway. All I know is I’ve got to go, and fast.
God, how could I have been so stupid? We agreed to keep things professional, but I just had to go tempting fate: inviting her out in the first place, let alone taking a romantic midnight stroll . . .
I just can’t help myself around her. Call it chemistry, or connection, but every time I see her smile, I just want more.
More talking, more laughing, and definitely more makeouts.
Which is a lawsuit waiting to happen, I remind myself. What part of “off limits” don’t I understand?
I’ve passed the same old-fashioned fish market three different times before I finally admit defeat. My brain is so scrambled I’m liable to wind up in Yonkers, so I dig my phone out to order a car, then sit down right there on the curb to wait for the driver to show up. It occurs to me that my father is right about one thing, at the very least:
I have no idea what I’m doing.
9
Natalie
Pisces: A long-held dream moves closer to reality. With the moon rising, now is the time to act. But beware of risky endeavors, and prepare for rain.
* * *
I spend the entire night staring at the crack on the ceiling of my bedroom—tossing and turning, my legs tangling in the pale-gray sheets. By the time I hear the familiar clank and rumble of the garbage truck grinding its way down our street, I’ve hardly slept at all.
All I can think about is that kiss.
That kiss!
If I thought our elevator hookup was newsworthy, this was a front-page scoop—a five-alarm blaze, a million-dollar heist at the Fed in broad daylight. I can’t get the press of Justin’s lips against mine out of my head. I roll over on the mattress, eyes still closed, replaying the brush of his fingertips on my neck and how strong his arms felt. After the sexual tension that had been building between us all night, it was an explosion. I was fully about to ask him if he wanted to come upstairs, make a night of it . . .
But then he bailed.
My eyes pop open, my R-rated memories washed away in a flood of confusion and embarrassment.
The whole thing was a mistake to him, obviously. He made that much pretty clear when he took off at a dead run down Court Street in the complete opposite direction of the subway in his mad dash to get away from me as fast as humanly possible. They say you can always read the signs, but it doesn’t take a genius astrologer to figure out what that means.