I jolted at the sound of the buzzer ringing and Bridget’s doorman calling, “Delivery.” Since Jonathan had picked up our food, the three of us glanced at each other with confused expressions until Bridget said, “Send him up.”
“I wonder who it is,” Bridget said.
I looked up from my e-reader. “You’ll find out soon enough.” I was reading Tearing at the Seams during commercials and brought my eyes back to where I had left off on the assumption whatever was being delivered wasn’t for me. It was probably some home-office gadget one of them had purchased online and forgotten about.
Hannah had provided just enough backstory in Tearing at the Seams to avoid confusing people who hadn’t read Cut on the Bias in a while or were reading the sequel as a standalone, but not too much history to feel repetitive. I was impressed—with both the book and my ability to compliment Hannah without wanting to throw up in my mouth. How far I’d come.
When the commercials ended, I placed my e-reader on my lap to return my focus to RHOC, and I didn’t look up when the doorbell rang. Although I faintly heard Bridget thank the guy and close the door, I paid no attention until she stood before me, blocking my view of the television set. “What’s up?”
Holding a vase of assorted pink flowers, she gave me a closed-mouth smile. “These are for you.”
My eyes opened wide, and I repeated, “For me?” My brain directed me to stand up, but my butt remained glued to the couch.
Standing up from next to me on the couch, Jonathan raised an eyebrow. “One guess who these might be from.”
Bridget walked toward the kitchen island and gestured for me to join her. “Open the card. I’ll cut the stems and put the flowers in water.”
My body cooperating at last, I lifted myself to a standing position and followed Bridget into the kitchen, the soles of the rainbow-colored fuzzy slippers I had borrowed from her scratching against the wood floor with each step. Grasping the small white envelope, which contained the card, I leaned my head into the combination of roses, hydrangeas, dahlias, and ranunculuses, all in various shades of pink, and inhaled deeply through my nose. It smelled like the Botanical Gardens after a rainy day.
“They’re gorg,” Bridget said, nudging Jonathan.
He jerked away from her. “What?”
“You don’t bring me flowers…anymore,” Bridget sang, sounding nothing like Barbra Streisand.
“Break up with me, and maybe I will,” Jonathan threatened.
“Not gonna happen,” she said, throwing herself into his arms.
Wishing they would take the PDA into the bedroom, I ripped open the envelope and read the card, my heart beating in rapid succession.
Dear Kimmie,
I love you more than you love pink.
Please come home.
Love,
Nicholas
I swallowed back a tear. I loved pink a lot.
“What did he say?” Bridget asked. “Unless it’s pornographic, and in that case, what did he say?”
“Nicholas is too classy to ask a florist or a One Eight Hundred Flowers customer-service rep to write a pornographic note,” Jonathan said. Then he grinned sheepishly as a film of pink blanketed his face.
I beamed at Jonathan. “That’s so nice of you to say.” I had no idea he thought so highly of Nicholas.
Jonathan shrugged. “Read the damn note, Long.”
“You don’t have to be embarrassed over your bro crush on Nicholas,” Bridget teased.
Quite enjoying the opportunity to mock Jonathan, I smirked at him. And then I remembered a bromance between Nicholas and Jonathan wasn’t so cute now that we wouldn’t be double-dating and did as he asked—I read the note out loud.
“Short, sweet, and to the point,” Jonathan said, nodding knowingly. “Classy.”
Bridget put a hand to her heart. “He loves you, Kimmie. Are you going to make up with him now?”
After placing the envelope on the counter, I walked back to the living room and reassumed my position on the couch. “We’re not in a fight. We don’t need to ‘make up.’” I turned the television back on.
Bridget sat down next to me, removed the remote from my lap, and muted the TV. She didn’t say anything, but she didn’t need to. We had perfected our nonverbal mode of communication years ago.
“The point isn’t whether he loves me or not, Bridget. The issue is since we’ve been living together, he’s put work ahead of us—way ahead of us—and he’s too blinded by his daddy issues to see what’s happening. And then he shrugs off all of my attempts to take an interest in what he’s clearly so passionate about.” More passionate than he is about me. “He claims he doesn’t want to bore me.”
“It’s pretty boring,” Bridget said, tapping her feet on the floor.
“But I’m making an effort, Bridge. If Nicholas is going to be so wrapped up in his work, he should let me decide if it’s too boring. I know he loves me, but he’s so obsessed with not letting his father down that letting me down is a lesser evil.” Motioning toward the kitchen where the bouquet was displayed prominently on the island, I said, “The flowers are beautiful, and I appreciate the gesture. I really do. But his note said nothing about working on us. Neither have any of his texts or voicemail messages. Nicholas just wants to kiss and make up and return to normal. Well, I hate our new normal and want a revised one. I don’t think Nicholas can give it to me.” I cocked my head toward her. “You know?”
Bridget nodded. “I hear you, K. It sucks more than sixteen-year-old Hannah at a high-school party.”
Too depressed to agree with or dispute Bridget’s statement, I stood up and removed my phone from the coffee table.
“Where are you going?” Bridget asked.
“I should thank him for the flowers. You mind if I use your bedroom?” I glanced at Bridget and then at Jonathan. They lived in a one-bedroom apartment, and I would be sleeping on the very couch we were sprawled out on. I was grateful to be taken in by my best friends, regardless of the conditions, but I needed a private space to talk to Nicholas.
“Of course not,” Jonathan said, frowning. “Sorry, Long.”
I shrugged and then headed toward the bedroom.
I knew thanking Nicholas was the right thing to do, but I didn’t know what to say to him. I couldn’t say what he wanted to hear—that I was coming home—even though I really wanted to. I could jump in a cab and be in his arms in twenty minutes, and I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t tempted. Nicholas would undoubtedly give me his undivided attention for the night. He might even turn off his phone, but he’d probably have to put in more face time at work for the next week to make up for all the texts and emails he ignored. The flowers were a temporary bandage for our relationship, but underneath the gauze was a deep wound.
Chapter 36
As it turned out, if I had hurried downtown upon receipt of the flowers—pent-up passion waiting to explode in response to Nicholas’s “grand gesture”—I would have rushed into an empty apartment, since when I called Nicholas to thank him, it came up in our brief conversation that he was still at the office. He claimed being in the apartment was too painful without me there. I believed him, but I also had no doubt the main reason he was working late was because he almost always worked late. Anyway, I told him as gently as possible the flowers were lovely, as was the sentiment, but I needed time to mull things over.
I almost pined for my earlier relationships—when it was easy to walk away when the going got tough or when asking for space was a deliberate ploy to get some power back. But my relationship with Nicholas had reached a level never attained in the past—one I hoped would lead to marriage. Acknowledging the reality Nicholas might not be “The One” hurt with a ferocity I had never experienced before, and I couldn’t fathom the possibility of falling harder for any other man walking this earth. The part of me that feared what I had with Nicholas
was probably as good as it was going to get implored me to pack my bags and go back to him before he stopped asking. But the memory of how well we had managed to meld our busy schedules for the first several months we dated made it impossible for me to accept as permanent the sour direction he had allowed our relationship to take.
“Kim!”
My body twitched in response to the boom of Daneen’s voice. I looked up from my computer, where I had been entering Rob’s time while simultaneously mooning over why I finally met the man of my dreams only for him to go and ruin it, and met her annoyed gaze. “I didn’t hear you. I’m sorry.” This was my least favorite phrase when it came to communicating with Daneen, but pondering why God hated me was not part of my job description, and she was within her rights to raise her voice in response to being ignored. But if she so much as mentioned Nicholas as it related to the two of us as a couple, I would pluck every perfectly groomed hair from her eyebrows with my bare fingers. Since she was close to a foot taller than me, I’d have to stand on my tippy toes and maybe even jump to reach, but I’d make it happen.
Daneen dropped a pile of assorted butterfly-clipped documents on my desk. “We need these scanned to the W drive. Open a new folder under Dalton Exhibits, and file them there. Return the originals to me when you’re done.” Without so much as a “thank you,” she walked away, but I would prefer a lack of gratitude over a dig aimed at my doomed love affair with Nicholas ten times out of ten.
After scanning the documents, I returned to my desk to save the attachments to the W drive as I was told. I had gotten as far as creating the Dalton Exhibits folder when my cell phone rang, and Felicia Harrison appeared on the display. My hands shook as I removed the phone from my desk and swiped my index finger across the screen to accept the call. This was the first I’d heard from Felicia since she informed me she’d be pitching A Blogger’s Life to publishers, starting with Three Monkeys Press. I’d been tempted to follow up several times, and in fact, had two unsent emails in my drafts folder gently asking her for a progress report, but I didn’t send them due to fear of coming across as a stalking client. If Felicia had something to tell me, she would have reached out, and if she had nothing to say, sending her periodic reminders wouldn’t change things. My life was chock full of other “distractions” at the moment to keep me from obsessing too much, but the day had arrived: Felicia was on the other end of the phone line, potentially ready to deliver life-changing news.
Breathing heavily, I answered the phone. “Hi, Felicia.” My heart went thump thump thump.
“Hi Kim,” she said, her voice quavering.
My stomach dropped, as I couldn’t imagine the words “We got an offer” would follow such a taut greeting.
“I have some news.”
I swallowed hard, bracing myself. “Yeah?”
“Three Monkeys passed on A Blogger’s Life.”
My stomach sank. “Did they say why?” I asked the question before contemplating whether I wanted to hear the answer.
“The editors thought the characters were credible, the plot good, and the pacing well-executed. This is good news, Kim.”
“But they passed.” I might not (ever) be a published author, but I was sufficiently versed in the English language to understand that “passed on” when uttered in the current context was the equivalent of a rejection. “How can a rejection be good news?”
Felicia sighed. “They don’t want to acquire more romantic comedy right now because they’re overloaded in the genre. But they liked the book. It’s merely a matter of timing.”
With one sentence, she had crushed my dream. There was nothing “merely” about it, but I swallowed back my tears. There was no crying in publishing—at least not while I was on the phone with my agent pretending to be a confident author worthy of her representation. All bets were off after we hung up. Trying to sound chipper, I said, “Well, that’s something. What happens now?” Please don’t fire me. Please don’t fire me.
“I have several other worthy houses in mind. Bigger ones than Three Monkeys. Don’t fret, Kim. We’ll find a home for A Blogger’s Life.”
I dabbed my eyes with a tissue. “Thanks for not giving up on me,” I said, my voice wobbly. Pursuing my writing dream coupled with falling in love had turned me into such a crybaby. I momentarily longed for the days when I convinced myself being a secretary/part-time blogger and calling my ex-boyfriend for whom I had no feelings for a booty call made me happy. Dream-chasing Kim was killing me.
“Kim. If I dropped every author whose book I wasn’t able to sell to the first house I approached, I’d have a very small client list and a lot less money in the bank.”
“I think I love you,” I said, meaning it.
Felicia laughed. “If you love me now, you’ll want to marry me when I’m done with A Blogger’s Life. Now keep writing your next book, and leave the rest to me.”
I chuckled. “You got it.” I hung up the phone with a smile. Today would not be the day I updated my Facebook status to announce my book had been sold to a publisher, but Felicia seemed confident that day would come. I wasn’t thrilled to be rebuffed by the publisher who housed Hannah’s books, but sharing an agent and a publisher with Hannah Marshak was a closer relationship than I (or Bridget, I suspected) could handle, anyway.
After I attached all of the exhibits to the Dalton file I created, I reluctantly went to return the original documents to Daneen. When I passed Nicholas’s old office, I was hit with a wave of homesickness. For an instant pick-me-up, I flipped my shoe to catch a glimpse of its red sole. I rarely wore my Christian Louboutins, but they were an instant mood elevator for when my life was falling to pieces. Between missing Nicholas like mad and the news of Three Monkeys’ rejection, it seemed I chose the perfect day to match my favorite shoes with a stylish fitted black zip-front long-sleeved dress. My high-fashion exterior was a perfect disguise for my inner disarray.
When I reached Daneen’s office, I knocked gently on the open door until she looked up from her computer. “Yes?”
I approached her desk and handed over the documents. “Here you go. Scanned copies are on the W drive.”
“Thanks, Kim.” Daneen’s lips curled up, resulting in an expression with which I was not familiar, at least when directed at me.
The facial tic combined with her declaration of thanks rendered me temporarily speechless, but after a brief hesitation, I croaked out, “No problem” and turned around for a quick escape. Before I made it out the door, I heard her say, “Oh, Kim?” to my back.
I should have known it wouldn’t be so easy, and my shoulders sank. I closed my eyes for half a second before doing a one-eighty and facing her once again. “Yeah?”
She handed me another document. “Can you please scan this to Nicholas?” She paused for a beat. “I would ask you to deliver it in person, but I heard you moved out of his place.” She shook her head sympathetically, but her eyes shone with glee.
With supersonic speed, I leapt onto her desk and yanked a fistful of her hair while simultaneously kicking her pointy chin with the heel of my shoe.
Daneen stared at me in horror, her hand clutching her chin while blood seeped onto her winter-white cashmere sweater.
Okay, so maybe resorting to physical violence was too much even for Daneen. But in an alternate universe, it would be fun.
With the self-restraint of someone three times my size, I removed the papers from her hand and smiled. “No problem, Daneen.”
I was choking back tears by the time I reached my cubicle. The girl was high-school Hannah on crack, and she manipulated me into a false sense of security before pouncing. I was especially impressed with her subtle reference to “his” apartment. I could have imposed a gag order on her with the simple yet honest statement that it was my idea to move out of our apartment, but it wasn’t worth it. Sure, it would feel good to put Daneen in her place, but at the end of the workd
ay, I would still go home to Bridget and Jonathan instead of Nicholas. On the bright side, my scanning the documents to Nicholas was preferable to Daneen handing them to him in person over drinks and deep conversation.
I dropped my head onto the rough exterior of my desk, wishing I had a fluffy pillow.
“Kim?”
I muttered, “Mmph.”
“I don’t speak that language,” Rob said.
I lifted my head. “Sorry. Do you need something?” I hoped he wouldn’t respond with a smart-alecky comment like, “Yes, I need you to do your job.” But I couldn’t blame him if he did.
Rob furrowed his thick dark eyebrows. “I was going to ask you to make me a lunch reservation for tomorrow, but it can wait.” He pointed toward his office. “Let’s talk.” When he turned his back on me and walked away, I assumed he wanted me to follow him, and I begrudgingly complied.
I sat on one of his visitor chairs and sighed.
Sitting in his chair across the desk from me, Rob crossed his arms behind his head. “What’s bothering you?”
“Let me count the ways,” I said emotionlessly.
“Start at number one.”
I gave him a rundown of my “break” with Nicholas. “And Daneen threw it in my face. I can’t believe Nicholas told her. What are they, BFFAEUDDUP?”
Rob regarded me in confusion before shaking his head. “It didn’t happen that way. If anything, it was my fault. Since you were so elusive in your voicemail, I asked Nicholas where you ran off to. When he said you were in Florida, I asked if you wanted to join us for dinner. And when Nicholas said you were with your parents in Boca Raton, I dropped the subject.” He gave me a wry smile. “Not that I have no interest in your whereabouts, but it didn’t seem important at the time.”
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