I lurched forward when a pillow hit me from behind.
“What was that for?” I turned sharply to see a smile on her face and the glimmer in her eyes.
“You’re jealous.”
“Am not. If he can further your career, that’s great.” I didn’t believe a word of any of that.
“He’s taking me to a benefit with him next weekend. James, do you have any idea how big this could all be for me? This man produces greats. And for whatever reason, he chose me.”
It made me a dick to think he’d chosen her for her physical assets and not those that could benefit his company. Drake was notoriously single, and while he didn’t do it often, when he did take a female under his care, he took them all the way under. I’d read the stories and seen the reports. I’d even listened to the female who’d accused him of inappropriate behavior in exchange for that one-on-one attention—right before she’d agreed to a hefty out-of-court settlement along with an air-tight non-disclosure.
This guy was trouble in my world whether Cora saw it or not. He took far too much interest in her for it to be so casual. Picking her up, escorting her places, taking her to fancy dinners in the name of charity. It was all great, but in my opinion, he should have been taking a date, not my girlfriend.
In my mental tirade, I’d slid right over the fact that she’d said next weekend. “Cora, we’re supposed to go with Hannah and Neil to see Elton John next weekend.”
She stopped what she was doing and came back to me. Putting her hands on my hips, she stared up with her neck craned. “James, I can’t turn my boss down.”
Normally, I would have caved, but I’d spent a fortune on these tickets and had been looking forward to an actual date with my girlfriend. Penciling time onto the calendar had gotten old. “Yes, you absolutely can. I can’t believe you didn’t realize you already had plans.”
Her lips met the side of my neck, the one that made me weak with her touch. Although, this time, I pulled away. I wasn’t letting this one go so easily.
“Don’t be that way. We can go see Elton John another time.”
“Oh yeah? Like when? It’s not like he tours annually, Cora.”
I hated fighting with her, but I was holding firm. She was going to have to pick. I wasn’t giving her an out and letting it go. I’d done it countless times since she’d gotten back from Paris. At some point, I had to stand up and hold my ground.
“James, it’s a concert. This is my future.”
“I remember when I was your future,” I grumbled the words under my breath as I turned away, not realizing I’d said them loudly enough to be heard.
Her hand snagged my belt loop. “What?”
“Nothing, Cora. If that’s what you want to do then so be it. I realized months ago how little you care about how your decisions affect us.” It was a low blow—one I shouldn’t have taken.
Her face dropped and what had been excitement that lifted her cheeks earlier now weighed heavy in her expression. “That’s not fair.”
“The truth’s not always nice, but the truth is still the truth.” I just couldn’t stop myself. Even though I was saying things that would elicit an argument, the filter on my mouth seemed to be on sabbatical. And it dawned on me that not only was I trying to goad her into a fight, it felt good to have her direct any emotion toward me—even if it were negative. We’d been on autopilot for so long, I’d forgotten what passion felt like.
“How about this for the truth? I’ve never been with anyone else, James. No one. You’re it. And when we met, I was in a vulnerable place that you happened to land right in the middle of. Losing my parents wasn’t all I lost that year…I lost myself.”
I stared at her taking deep breaths as my heart thundered in my chest, and the air I sucked in whistled past my slightly parted lips. My eyes narrowed while I wondered where she was going with this.
Her hands dropped to her sides in tightly balled fists that turned her knuckles white, and her jaw clenched just before she swallowed hard, and then she opened her mouth to speak. “I lost the fire I had inside me, the do or die, the stop at nothing, the leap-and-soar mentality—all of which were who I was at the core before I left that concert. Never would I have followed some guy to college, much less back to New York—”
The whistling stopped and my lungs burned with the breath I held. There was no way I’d let her pin her decisions on me. “You made a choice, Cora.”
“You’re absolutely right. I did. I made a choice to go to Chapel Hill. And another to follow you here. And now I’m making a choice to follow my dream.”
“No one says you have to choose. I’m just wondering when we get back on the same path. When the us becomes as important as the when. When we decide that we have to have the happily ever after we’ve promised each other.”
“We’re not even engaged, James. It’s pretty hard to keep making life plans based on a fairy tale that I seemed to have conjured up in my head.”
“You wanted to wait until after graduation!” I hollered in her face, somehow making my lack of moving forward her fault. I had the stone, I had just never found the ring. Maybe that was just some twist of fate that was destined to keep us apart. Or maybe it was me stalling. Or maybe it was me not being certain this was right. It seemed no matter which way we turned, another obstacle moved in front of us. I couldn’t dodge them all, and she’d quit trying.
“Undergrad, James. That was almost two years ago. We’re twenty-four years old, and we’ve been together since we were seventeen. At what point do you know it’s right? Because if you haven’t figured it out by now, then maybe there’s nothing to figure out.”
I jerked my head back, not believing what she said. “Is that what all this is about? The fact that I haven’t proposed, yet?”
Her chin dropped to her chest, and a melancholy sigh escaped her lips. I waited in silence, unsure of how to proceed. The words we were dancing around were heavy and life changing. And something I never thought the two of us would consider.
“That’s just it, James. There never should have been a timeline. When it was right, it should have just been right. Don’t you think?” The resignation in her voice, the loss of fight…it sent up bigger red flags than the words out of her mouth.
I stomped over to my dresser and pulled out the top drawer. Digging through the socks and boxers, I found the velvet box. But when I presented it to her, it had the opposite effect I’d assumed it would. Instead of the smile returning to her pouty lips, or the glimmer dancing in her eyes, I’d sealed my fate.
“What’s this?”
“The diamond I bought months ago to put in your ring.” I knew where this was about to lead, and no matter how hard I tried to think of words to draw us away from it, my mind went blank.
“What happened to the ring?”
“I couldn’t decide on one. And then I decided to have one made.”
“Hard for a jeweler to make a ring when you have the stone in a box in your underwear drawer.” Her voice was soft and defeated. When she handed me the box back, her teeth worried her bottom lip—she was about to throw my life completely off course.
“We’ve both had a lot going on, Cora.” I was desperate for her to see how much I loved her, to feel the depth of my emotion in the way I looked at her. Except when I met her stare, all I saw was sadness.
“Exactly. If it had been a priority, you would have made it happen.”
She sat down on the edge of the bed, and I took a seat next to her. I didn’t want to be the one to speak next. Words would be messy, and I wasn’t sure I could handle anything she had to say.
“I’ll always love you, James. Maybe our lives are just going in different directions. Maybe we need to follow our own paths to see where they take us. One where you’re not inhibited by having a shadow, and one where I’m free to follow a path I might have to walk alone.”
I slowly bobbed my head, unsure of how to get her to reconsider without pleading. “This doesn’t sound like it’s open f
or discussion any more than the benefit Drake is taking you to next weekend.”
“Don’t you need to breathe? Just a little? Try things out—spend time in a new city as a single, adult male?”
“No, Cora. I don’t. Since you walked into my life, I haven’t had any desire to live a day without you. I dropped the ball on the ring, but that didn’t mean you weren’t and haven’t been my top priority. I guess I always thought everything I was doing, I did for us—our future.”
She inhaled through her nose and released the breath through her mouth. “Maybe the best thing for our future is to spend some time apart.”
And that was it, she’d chosen him over me.
7
Part Two
James
I hadn’t heard from her since the day she’d left. My goal had been to give her time to miss me and realize she’d made a mistake. However, as the days turned into weeks without any communication, my willpower waned, and I thought my sanity would follow shortly behind.
Two shots of tequila turned into four at a bar down the street from our house. I’d become quite the regular in an attempt to avoid my apartment, my best friend and his perfect romance, and the room I’d shared with the only woman I’d ever loved. And after the fifth shot, the drunk dialing started to take shape, and the closer I came to resembling a blubbering idiot than James Carpenter.
“Don’t do it, dude.”
I had my phone in my hand, studying it as though it were the holy grail and held the secrets of life. Instead of staring at the screen, daring myself to dial her number, I peered up at Rex, the bartender who’d listened to more of my personal hell in the last few weeks than a priest heard confessions.
“Let her go. Don’t call her. Especially not when the liquor is thinking for you. That’s almost as bad as letting your pants do the talking.” He wiped the bar off, but before I could respond, he got called away to help another lonely sap living his dreams out of a bottle.
Me: I hope you’re doing okay.
I hit send before my shrink behind the bar could advise against it again. It was harmless. It wasn’t a phone call, and she didn’t have to respond. She could read it and know I was thinking of her without actually replying.
Cora: I hope you’re okay, too.
The message came through like she’d had her phone in her hand waiting for me to reach out. I hadn’t expected it, and certainly not so soon. I hadn’t thought this through. Now that I had her attention, I didn’t have another move lined up. I’d opened a door without any plan for what to do on the other side.
Me: How’s work?
There was something that riled every woman into a lively discussion. I rolled my eyes at my own stupid question. This was painful even for me, and I’d started it.
Cora: Great. I graduate in a couple weeks, and then I’m off to France.
Me: Another rendezvous with Drake?
Cora: No, I’m relocating to train in a new office Halifax is opening in Paris. I’m moving.
And five shots turned into ten before Rex cut me off and poured me a cup of coffee.
I’d lost her.
I hadn’t fought when it mattered, and now I was too late. She’d seized the opportunity in front of her.
When she was in Manhattan, the possibility of fixing us was still real. With her halfway around the world, there was little point. I didn’t bother responding. And when I finally dragged my drunk-ass home, I vowed to start living tomorrow as though Cora Chase had never existed.
She’d chosen her path, and now I’d blaze mine.
***
I quickly realized that in the two years we’d lived in New York, I hadn’t managed to make a single friend I could hang out with. The four of us had been perfectly content to hang out together like we always had. The girls had met people at school, but they only saw them between classes. Neil and I hadn’t ventured outside of the office, and the only other people we worked with were women. That would have been a recipe for disaster, and it was one I’d never considered out of respect for Cora. However, now that I had time on my hands and my best friend was still in a committed relationship, being the third wheel wasn’t all that appealing—not to mention, Hannah was like a damn parrot who repeated everything she heard.
I hadn’t dated anyone other than Cora since I was a teenager. I didn’t have a clue how to meet people in a city this size, and I didn’t have a wingman to work the social scene. Regardless of the fact I’d never lacked for confidence, this town was daunting when flying solo.
“Are you going out after work?” Neil sounded like a broken record. Every day it was more of the same. He didn’t understand why I wasn’t hanging out at home the way I always had.
“Yeah, just going into the city to see what I can find.”
“What are you looking for?”
I shrugged as I cleared my desk and then shut down my computer. “Something different.”
“Different than Cora?”
“Different than life.”
“Maybe you should give yourself some time to process the end of a long-term relationship, Carp. You don’t have to be with someone to be happy.”
“I’m not trying to find a wife, Neil. But sitting around the apartment I shared with her while watching you and Hannah make googly eyes at each other doesn’t do much for my self-esteem or my mental clarity. Do you realize we haven’t made any friends in two years?”
“No, we’ve been trying to salvage an unhealthy business. That’s what being an adult is.”
There was no way in hell Neil was going to give me the responsibility speech. “The role of an adult is not foreign to me. And I’m not waving off my responsibility or doing anything stupid. I’m simply trying to meet some people.”
He held up his hands in surrender. “Okay. I’m not trying to push. Just know that you don’t have to go racing into the sunset. You’re allowed time to grieve, and Hannah and I are around to help you—if you’ll let us.”
“Should I get you some Midol? Maybe some chocolate? Give me a break, Neil. I’m not grieving. I just broke up with my girlfriend and realized I haven’t made any friends.”
“Fair enough.”
I closed my door after he left and proceeded to shed the suit and tie for a more casual look. And then I headed to Manhattan. The great thing about New York was that there was always someone up, and there was always something open—if I wanted cookies delivered at two in the morning, there were people who’d make it happen. If I wanted to chug beer until midnight on a Tuesday there were places for that, too. Yet finding one that fit me was like trying to find Cinderella after the ball.
Every night I went somewhere different: I liked the brew but wasn’t interested in the patrons, or the place was dead, or the bartender sucked. I had yet to make a repeat stop at any of my destinations and hadn’t found a single person—male or female—to connect with. I spent money faster than I could withdraw it and got nowhere in the process.
Until I found Sideways Shots. I wasn’t sure how I’d even ended up here. It wasn’t my intended destination for the evening, yet here I stood just the same. Everything about this place was different than those I’d visited in the last couple weeks. Located off a side street on a corner, the heavy, metal sign hung like a banner calling to me. Lit from above, the blue glow of the neon against the hammered steel seemed a tad funk, a little modern, and right up my alley.
The inside didn’t disappoint. The house band that could be heard from the street played an eclectic mix of rock and alternative original music, and the people inside appeared to be a white-collar crowd—who I guessed to be late twenties to mid-thirties. While it wasn’t packed, there was a steady stream in and out the door, and most of them were friendly.
“Hey, what can I get for you?” A saucy brunette stared me straight in the eyes with one slightly closed, hinting at something I wasn’t sure was there. Her glance begged me to ask for her phone number, but then I realized this was how she brought in tips—that little glimmer
would catch any straight man’s attention. And if it didn’t, her cleavage would.
“New Castle. Draft if you have it.”
She grinned and winked before turning around. The brunette delivered my beer and then passed four other people to take the order of a guy who could be my brother. While the men serving drinks dealt with the ladies, the other two females each had their own set of male customers. I watched with piqued interest as I downed my cold brew.
When I finished my first pint, the brunette raised her brows at me—she was waiting on someone else, yet I had her attention. I gave her a nod, and she delivered another chilled glass, just like the last. There was no “hi,” no “bye,” no “thank you very much” or “I’d love to suck your dick”—she just dropped off my drink and then turned to the newest person in the queue. When the crowd waned, she came by to ask if I wanted another glass.
“Yeah, thanks.”
When she returned a minute later, she leaned forward with her elbows propped on the bar and her chin in her hands. “You’re new here. How’d you find us?”
“Just trying some places out.”
“New to New York or just the social scene?”
“Social scene.”
“I’m Bridgette. Glad you wandered in.”
“James. My friends call me Carp.”
She got called away to do her job, and an unassuming woman slid onto the barstool next to me. I’d been sitting at the corner slightly turned to watch the crowd, so noticing her wasn’t difficult. The girl was cute, with short, red hair most women couldn’t have pulled off. Actually, she looked like she should be with the band and not at the bar. Her fitted shirt, tight jeans, and combat boots were better suited for rock-grunge than happy hour.
“I’m Collette.” She stuck her hand out in an introduction, completely throwing me off.
“Carp. Nice to meet you.”
Unexpected Arrivals Page 9