Ice straightened, sobering. “He did hurt you. Let me see.”
“Not like that.” I’d been reduced to waving impotent fists in the air. It would have been better if I’d just gone to bed and plotted my revenge in secret. “But it wouldn’t have happened at all if not for Marcia and her jealous, vicarious, repressed virgin complex.”
“Yes!” Marcia shouted back. “Crucify me, but of course I’m jealous of you, Charley! You toss aside men I only wish would look at me. And then this great guy falls for you and isn’t daunted when you blow him off without even noticing him. He only wanted to meet you! You didn’t have to go along with any of it. I didn’t make you fuck him! All of that’s on you. And you know what? You can still walk away and leave him in your dust, like you always do. Do you know what I’d do for a chance to have love like that? No—because you don’t even appreciate what you’re throwing away. You make fun of me for being a coward, but at least I know it. At least I own it.”
My retort caught in my throat. Far too close to home. Marcia sat on her bed, clutching her pathetic stuffed toy and sobbing as if her heart was broken. Amy sat beside her, rubbing her back. Suddenly I felt like shit. Was I a coward?
“Tell us what happened,” Ice insisted.
I just couldn’t. I wanted to crawl into bed and pull the covers over my head. “I can’t talk about this anymore. I’m out of here.”
Ice blocked my path. “Nuh uh. You wanted to have this out now, we’re all awake and listening. Finish it.”
“Let me go, Ice.”
“If it were any of us, would you let it drop? If it were me?” She stared me down and I lost all of my fire, sagging onto the other end of Marcia’s bed, on her rosebud-sprigged comforter. A poster of a fairytale castle in Germany stared back at me. “I don’t even know what to tell you.”
“Tell the story in order.” Julie sat next to me and put an arm around me. Ice watched me with a mixture of compassion and speculation.
They listened without interrupting—I omitted the humiliating crying-jag thing—staying silent for a long minute after I related what Daniel had said before the cab pulled away.
Finally, Ice said, “I can’t believe you gave him your phone number unsolicited.”
“Right?” Amy pointed at her and then at me. “Now that is definitely against the Rules.”
“Shut up,” I muttered. “Jules made me do it.”
“Because you were letting your pride get in the way of a potentially great relationship,” Julie returned evenly. “Which, I might point out, you are still doing.”
“This isn’t about pride.” Maybe the bit where I left out the weeping was, but no way in hell would I tell them about that. Coward.
“Isn’t it?” Ice asked. “Be honest.”
“What are you saying, Ice?”
“I’m saying you made up the Rules for me, to save me from myself, and I’m grateful for that. They’re good standards, which is why Amy, Jules, and Marcia also signed on.” They nodded in agreement, even Marcia, who blew her nose loudly. “But now you’re hiding behind them and you’re using all of this as a reason to run away.”
“I didn’t run away!”
“From your story, you were already upset when you picked the fight with him,” Julie said, squeezing me a little.
“Because he got to you.” Amy nodded solemnly. “That’s what makes him so eligible.”
“He’s on that stupid list because he’s the right age, single, rich, and photogenic,” I informed her. “That’s all.”
“Ohhhh.” She rolled her eyes. “Is that all?”
“You fell for him,” Marcia finally spoke up again, wrecked and accusing both. “You totally fell for him, like you’ve never fallen for anyone. He said he thought you could be the one—now he could be it for you, too.”
“There is no such thing as one right person for anyone.” I truly believed that.
“Maybe not,” Marcia said, shredding her tissue. “But there aren’t millions either.”
“Thousands?” Amy wondered.
“More like hundreds,” Julie decided. “Maybe less than a hundred.”
“What if he’s one of your less than a hundred?” Marcia’s reddened eyes glowed with renewed romantic fervor. “You wouldn’t have gotten so emotional if he hadn’t been different.”
“Sure sounds to me like you fell for him,” Ice said. “These last few weeks you’ve been having fits about this guy.”
“I don’t have fits over guys.” I sounded sullen, even to myself.
“You haven’t before,” Julie said. “This one is special.”
“A five-pointer,” I said. “Special by definition.”
“More than that,” Marcia corrected, in a surprisingly firm tone. “That extra sixth quality.”
“Like extrasensory perception?” Amy sounded dubious.
“Personality,” Julie said. “Charm. Compatibility.”
“That falls under chemistry,” I insisted.
“Even chemistry doesn’t cover everything.” Ice shook her head. “You can put all the chemicals together for creating life and still nothing happens. There’s more. You found more with this Daniel. That, my friend, is why you freaked. He doesn’t fit the Rules. The rest is an excuse.”
Shit. I had freaked. Was still totally sidelined by everything. I sagged, then gave in and fell sideways, burying my face in Marcia’s pillow. It smelled like lavender. Who had lavender-scented pillowcases? “I don’t know what to do. I fucked everything up.”
“I know what you’ll do.” Ice yawned and looked at Marcia’s bedside clock, a pink and blue castle with tiny gold fairies. “It’s already six-thirty, so none of us are going back to sleep.”
“I am.” Julie stood and stretched, grinning at us. “I don’t have to be at the restaurant for prep until three. Booyah, bitches.”
“I hate you.” Amy glared at her and then me. “Not only did I miss my run, I have to be at the studio by seven-thirty. I’m first in the shower.” She hugged me on the way out. “I’m so happy for you. I get to design your wedding dress, remember.”
“Ha ha.”
“At least I can study a little more.” Ice sounded resigned. “Charley, go glam yourself up. You’re going to work with Marcia.”
“Work with Marcia?” My brain wasn’t firing on all cylinders. Coffee. I needed either coffee or sleep.
Marcia was nodding. “Yes! I can do that. I have to leave by seven-thirty, but once I check in I can take you to Daniel’s office.”
Whoa. “No. No fucking way. I am not going to Daniel’s office.”
“Yes you are.” Ice stared me down. “You’re going to talk to that man and apologize for being a freaky bitch and ask him to give you another chance. You know I’m right.”
No. Oh no. I could not face him. “I’ll think about it.”
“No you won’t. You start overthinking and you get paralyzed.”
“That’s why I leave the thinking to you,” I shot back.
“Good. Then this is what I think you should do. You don’t have to marry him—though, if you do, we know Amy means it about the wedding dress, and I’m calling Maid of Honor right now—but you owe it to him, yourself, and Marcia to give him one more chance.”
Marcia wouldn’t look at me. Do you know what I’d do for a chance to have love like that? Yeah, I was still mad at her, but I had also been a bad friend. I hadn’t really thought through why she made the choices she did.
“I have his number still. I’ll text him,” I said.
“After you subjected him to your full diva meltdown?” Ice snorted. “No, you’re going in person if I have to skip my exam and drag you down there myself. Think of it as payback for the Andy Incident.”
“Think of it as practice for when you get to play Scarlett O’Hara,” Marcia suggested.
“You don’t have to look so pleased about this. You’re still in the doghouse.”
Marcia tried to look repentant, but she still shimmied a little. “I can’t
help it—I love a happy ending.”
“We don’t know that’s how this will end,” I grumbled and glared at Ice. “This could end with me on landing on my ass when he kicks me out.”
“If he does,” she said softly, “then you won’t have to be scared of it anymore. You’ll know what it’s like and that you can survive it.”
My heart clutched. “How did you know I’m scared? I didn’t know it.”
She smiled and hugged me. “We’re all scared—just in different ways. You saw it in me and made up the Rules. Time for me to return the favor.”
“You could have just given me your crimson pashmina.”
“You can borrow it on your next date with him, if you pull this off. Now, put on your big-girl panties and deal with the mess you made.”
I laughed. “I cannot believe you’re making me do this.”
“I love you, too, honey.”
~ 13 ~
I dragged my feet walking through the lobby of the gleaming Holt building, only partly to punish Marcia. I might feel guilty about having been blind to her pain, but she’d screwed up by manipulating me and I would not let her off easily. A perfect plan for restitution and revenge brewed in the back of my mind. Mostly though, I really did hate the whole business environment. It gave me hives just being there. There’s a reason I didn’t do the corporate thing. You said corporate drones automatically get no more than one point. I winced at the memory of that.
“Come on. I’m going to be late.”
Raising my brows at Marcia, I gave her a cool look and she subsided.
“Okay, okay. I deserve to be punished. But your share of the rent will go up if I lose my job.”
“You could always start a match making service.”
“How long are you going to be mad at me?”
“I don’t know. It depends on how quickly I can take my revenge.”
“Oh God. My life is over.”
“You wish.”
Glumly she stopped in her cube and turned on her computer, waving to her supervisor. She worked in the perfume division of Holt and hoped to be a “nose” someday, which meant the person who helped sort out the scents and what-all. Total niche work. Until then she mostly did research and support.
“Okay, his office is in the other tower. I’ll take you.”
“You could just point the way.”
Marcia gave me a hopeful grimace, a strange combination on her round face. “Ice made me swear that I’d see you got there.”
“Oh. My. God.” I planted my hands on my hips. “Do I have to march down to the corner grocery and tell kindly old Mr. Jones that I shoplifted a lipstick too?”
Her mouth rounded in horror. “Charley—you did not do that!”
“I was twelve. What you’ve never stolen anything in your whole entire life?”
“No.” Then her pious smile dissolved. “That’s your plotting face. Remember that the punishment should fit the crime.”
“Oh, it will. Believe me, it will.” I let her continue to think I was plotting my revenge as we walked to the other tower, but mostly I concentrated on not being nervous. Okay, not being so fucking scared.
I hated that Ice saw through me and called me on it. Daniel had that knack, too. Did he know? Afraid to hear the truth as much as you were afraid to face how you felt when we made love… Oh yeah, he’d called it and I hadn’t listened. Hell, I didn’t remember half the things I’d said to him.
Which was fortunate, since the things I did recall made me cringe. He was going to throw me out and I’d deserve it.
Maybe he wouldn’t be in. He hadn’t slept either. Surely he’d have wised up and called in sick.
A pretty receptionist glanced up as we walked through a set of glass doors and smiled. “Hi Marcia! Here to see Daniel? He’s got a nine o’clock, but he’s free now. Head on back.”
“Aren’t you two just besties?” I muttered under my breath, and Marcia had the grace to look chagrined. She knocked on the frame of an open door while I hung back out of sight and considered making a run for it. What could Ice do to me? Nothing if she couldn’t reach me. I could move to New York. Or, hey! Los Angeles. Hollywood could be good to me. I edged back a few steps.
Stop being such a stinking coward already.
“Daniel?”
“Marcia! I was going to stop by your office. Have you seen Charlotte—is she okay? We, ah, didn’t part well.”
“Um, yeah. About that…”
It felt like the first time I made myself walk onstage. The first solo performance. Like every time I wasn’t sure of my lines. At least the gut-wrenching nerves were familiar. I’d done all that; I could do this.
I squared my shoulders so I wouldn’t look like the scaredy-cat I was, pushed past Marcia, and walked into Daniel’s office with my best Vivien Leigh sashay.
I’d taken him by surprise, so there was that. He gave me a bemused stare, rubbed his eyes, and looked at me again. I smiled, giving him the full glamour. Still here, slick.
“Charlotte.” He looked significantly over my shoulder. “Brought the cops personally, did you?”
“What? No. Oh right—cops. Ha ha.” Jesus, I was no damn good at this. I should have researched groveling roles. Scarlett, indeed.
“Look, Daniel—I”
“Charlotte, I—”
We both broke off at the same time. Tempting as it was to let him plow ahead and make it easier, I knew I shouldn’t. My mother never apologized for anything. Always with the excuses. All the hair dye and singing lessons in the world wouldn’t keep me from becoming that woman on the sofa. Who knew—maybe I’d build some character doing this.
But it wasn’t going to be a public performance. For all I knew, Marcia was hanging out in the hallway wearing a wire.
“Hang on,” I told him and shut the door. “Is that okay? You won’t get in trouble with the open-door hall monitor or anything?”
He cocked an eyebrow at me. “I am the owner’s nephew.”
“Yeah, I’ve heard some things. Mr. Eligible Bachelor and Holt scion. You’d think they’d give you a better office.”
“My family believes in working your way up. I’ll earn a better office on my own, in good time.”
“Because you’re a patient planner like that.”
He sighed, scrubbed his face, and sat behind his desk again. Yeah, he hadn’t slept either. “Is that why you’re here—because you found out I’m not a psycho, that I’m more eligible than you originally thought?”
Ouch. Did I seem that shallow? Well, yeah. Probably. “Why didn’t you tell me Marcia introduced us? Before.”
“She told you that, huh?” He swiveled back and forth in the chair, contemplating me. “Because you barely noticed I existed and it seemed inadvisable to remind you of that, as you so clearly didn’t remember me.”
“I thought you seemed vaguely familiar.”
He huffed out a laugh. “Oh no, don’t pander to my ego now, especially since you’ve demonstrated that you tell it like it is. I know there wasn’t even the faintest glimmer of recognition. Do you really tell all the guys you sleep with that their cocks are the biggest?”
I winced. Resisted the urge to fidget with my hair. “I’m sorry for that. I was pissed off, which I know is no excuse, but…”
“Why were you so angry?” He asked softly. “One second we’re basking in the most amazing afterglow. the next you’re locked in the bathroom and growing an extra head.”
I wandered over to the window and looked out. Decent view of the river. I wished I had better lines than Scarlett’s. Stupid example anyway. After all, look how that ended. I didn’t want to hear how Daniel didn’t give a damn, richly as I might deserve it. I made myself face him where he’d turned in his chair to watch me.
“Okay, I have a confession to make. First off, I’m going to lay it out there that this isn’t easy for me, and I’m adlibbing, so cut me some slack.”
“Not everything is a role, Charlotte.”
“Tell
that to Shakespeare.” I took a steadying breath. “I wasn’t pissed. You had it right—I was scared. Am still. Scared shitless. I’m not proud of my behavior and I’m here to, well…” Shit, turns out you really can choke on a word. My voice wavered and everything. “Apologize.”
“All right.” He waited. I scowled at him, and he made an encouraging motion. “Don’t you have to actually say that you apologize, not simply reference the possibility?”
“You know what? I take it back. I don’t apologize.” I pointed at him. “And your cock is not the biggest.”
He threw his head back and laughed, that full-throated deep full-of-life one I’d heard at the Pier. Standing up, he advanced on me. “Now you sound more like my Charlotte.”
“I’m not your Charlotte.”
“No?” He settled his hands on my hips. “Would you like to be?”
“I don’t know.” I wet my lips, totally not deliberate but because my mouth had gone dry. What had he said to me? “I’m out of my depth here.”
“Gives us one more thing in common.” He leaned in, but I put a hand on his chest to stop him. “No?”
“You’d just let me off the hook, wouldn’t you?” I said. “Give me another chance and forget all those things I said, how I freaked out.”
“I would,” he replied solemnly. “I was sitting here trying to figure out a way to corner you again, then back-tracking and realizing that’s what got me into trouble in the first place. I should have been straight with you to begin with.”
“No, you shouldn’t have.” I sighed out a long breath, my chest tight. “I am sorry, Daniel. I’m sorry that I was too caught up in my own shit to see you properly and I apologize for being a freaky diva bitch. Would you…. go out with me sometime?”
He smiled, tender and warm, like he had when he was inside me, and I felt like the Grinch, my heart popping open those bars I measured it with so carefully.
“I would love to.” He leaned in again, paused to see if I’d pull back, then kissed me when I didn’t. It felt good, pulling on that gooey soft center I’d thought I didn’t have. So many times I’d pretended at love on stage without knowing it had equal parts pain and misery mixed in with the warmth and starry eyes. Look at me, getting all grown up.
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