Emily looked a little surprised by my hostility.
“I’m impervious to knives,” William said.
“How do you figure that?” I asked.
“Because I’ve never heard of a rich person stabbing someone. That means the person holding the knife could be bought. Boom. Impervious.”
“Want to give me a knife and test your theory?” I leaned closer so only he could hear me. “Butt out. Seriously.”
He wiggled his eyebrows. “I’m more of a butt in kind of guy, thank you very much.”
“Come on, Emily.” I took her hand and pulled her out of the elevator. She followed me up the stairs until we reached the correct floor, and then through a long hallway lined with what looked like conference rooms behind frosted glass windows. At the end of the hallway, the only fully private room waited, and it matched the room number on the key he’d given me.
“This one is yours.” I unlocked it and stepped in, but froze in the doorway. The window at the back of the room was covered by a silky red curtain and the only light was provided by two dozen flickering candles. There was a four-poster bed with a mirror on the ceiling above it.
I backed up, forcing Emily away from the door as I did before she had a chance to see inside. I closed it and locked it tight. “Actually,” I said. “I think I must have the wrong room.”
“What?” she asked. “The key worked though. Right?”
“Just, uh,” I tried the door of an empty conference room across the hall and it opened. “Why don’t you get set up in here and I’ll go let William know you’ll be in this room instead. Sound good?”
She looked at me like I was crazy, but smiled. “Sure. I’ll get started.”
I found William in his office. He was stroking his chin like he fancied himself as some kind of evil genius.
I threw my hands up in the air once I closed the door. “A mirror on the goddamn ceiling? Candles? Four-poster bed? Did I miss any of your genius touches?”
He frowned in thought. “Did you see the flavored massage oils under the bed? Or the quick-start BDSM kit in the closet? Oh, and I had them put in a ridiculous sound system yesterday. You could’ve rocked half the building with some Barry White if you’d wanted. He’s the one people like to fuck to, right? I don’t need music, but I’ve heard that some guys do. I figure you’re probably rusty, so—”
“Are you seriously trying to set us up, or are you trying to sabotage any chance of Emily and I ever getting together? Because I’m having a hard time figuring it out.”
"I'm hurt that you're even asking me. I want you two lovebirds to bump uglies A.S.A.P.—sorry, that’s high up business jargon for ‘as soon as possible.’”
“I know what A.S.A.P. means.” I clenched my jaw and paced in a circle, wishing I had something I could break to satisfy my frustration. “Did it ever occur to you that I might have a reason for avoiding relationships? That maybe you’re not helping me by trying to set me up?”
“No?”
“Well, I don’t want a relationship, William. I’m trying really hard to keep things professional with this girl, and you’re not helping.” The words didn’t ring true, even to me, but I was too irritated to care. If I was going to make a mistake by taking things too far with Emily, I wanted it to be my mistake, not his.
He grinned. “So you’re saying it is working." He twisted in his chair to literally pat himself on the back. "Watch out, Cupid."
“Cupid? Cupid would use his stupid little bow and do something subtle. You’re more like Arnold Schwarzenegger with a bazooka.”
He nodded in appreciation. “Thank you, man.”
“It wasn’t a compliment.”
“Agree to disagree.”
“Look,” I snapped. “Emily is taking the conference room next to the one you set up. The one without the bed and the BDSM kit. And nothing is going to happen in there.”
He winked. “Got it. The one with the big windows, you dirty dog. If I knew you liked an audience, I wouldn’t have had them cover the windows yesterday.”
I pointed my finger at him, but couldn’t even think of a response that would get through his thick skull. I let my hand drop to my side and left. Trying to change William’s mind was pointless. All I could do was be prepared for his next stunt and do my best to avoid it.
9
Emily
I shoved the last of my supplies into my bag at the retirement home and fought a useless battle against a huge yawn. All the students except Grammy had already filed out. Thankfully, she was wearing her own dentures today.
I’d been teaching them to sculpt pottery, and Grammy’s looked suspiciously like a very large penis and balls. She was sitting behind it with a proud look on her face. When I’d confronted her, she claimed it was a butternut squash modeled after her uncle’s prize-winning entry when she was just a girl. I didn’t believe her or the little twinkle in her eye for a second.
“Is something wrong?” I asked. “You don’t usually let Earl get out of here on his own.”
“Earl has one foot in the grave.” She dismissed the idea of him with a wave of her hand. “I’m more worried about the living, today.”
I raised an eyebrow. “You’re worried about the living on the night before Halloween? I feel like you have it backwards.”
“I haven’t seen your little love buddy around here in weeks. I could smell the hormones from the back of the room. I was sure he’d have put a couple babies in you by now.”
I shook my head. “It’s just a business partnership kind of thing. We get along fine, but I’ve mainly been working on a project for him. He’s throwing a party tomorrow, and I made these posters and some props for the party. Frankenstein statues of clay, some ghosts, you know.” It wasn’t exactly true. I left out the part where the sexual tension had been thick enough to spread on toast.
“You can spray paint this green and use it for a zombie penis, if you want,” she said. She ran a hand down her penis sculpture.
“I thought it was supposed to be your uncle’s butternut squash?”
“It is,” she said with a wink.
I felt my head reel back a little as I winced. “Uh, well, I’m not sure that’s the kind of atmosphere he’s going for, but thanks anyway.”
Grammy popped out of her chair with all the energy of a twenty-year-old and came to lean on the desk in front of me. “Listen, sweetie. I know my job as the oldest lady in the room is supposed to be saying something prudish. But that’s not how I roll, fam.”
“Did you just say—”
“Oh yes. I’ve been on the Instagram. I know all the new slang you kids are using.”
I grinned. “Okay…”
“I like to think of myself as a relationship expert. Know why? Because I can recognize when a penis belongs in a vagina. And honey, that man’s penis belongs in yours.”
“Wow. Okay, I don’t know if I’m really comfortable talking about all of this.”
“Comfort is for the weak. Do you think anyone ever became a badass by doing what was comfortable? Be a badass, you little whippersnapper. Go get that dick.”
She patted me on the cheek and gave me an exact replica of the typical, sweet old lady smile.
I watched her go with a stunned expression. If mental whiplash was a thing, she’d just given me a bad case of it.
A few minutes later, Hailey stuck her head in the door. “Hey, have you seen Grammy?”
I’d met Haily a handful of times, usually at William’s side. I’d also seen her cooking show on TV and thought she was adorable. I felt a little starstruck, but nodded. “She was just here. I think her last words were, “go get that dick.”
Hailey covered her smile and slipped into the room. She gave me an appraising look. “I don’t know if it’d be comforting to say it’s not just you, or if that would only make it more weird.”
“Something told me it wasn’t her first time giving relationship advice.”
Hailey sat down at one of the tables and smiled at s
ome memory. “No. Not her first at all. She has a little bit of a fixation on sex. Penises. Vaginas. All the gory details. She loves that stuff. I think she loves it even more because she knows people don’t expect to hear her talk about it.”
I nodded. “I can see that.”
“So who is she trying to set you up with?”
“This guy named Ryan.”
Hailey perked up a little at that. “Ryan Pearson?”
I nodded. “I guess I’m not surprised you know him, since he’s William’s friend.”
“Ryan is the one who set William and I up in the first place. Kind of.”
“Seriously?”
“Yeah. It’s almost ironic that Grammy is trying to set you two up now.” She raised an eyebrow and cocked her head. “Almost like fate.”
I laughed. “Okay. Stop it with that. I leave the country for art school in January. Fate wouldn’t be a big enough jerk to make me fall for some guy right before I have to leave.”
“Oh, definitely not. I’ve heard fate is completely fair and definitely respects your plans.”
10
Ryan
Steve was loading up his duffel bag with cleats and all the stuff he needed for practice, and for once, he didn't have a woman over from the night before. It was the day before Halloween, and I'd celebrated with a ridiculously long marathon of horror movies the night before that left me feeling a little bleary-eyed and tired. I'd fought the urge to text Emily and invite her over for another try at date night with a movie marathon. In all my holiday movie watching sprees, I'd never had a problem watching by myself. But last night, I'd spent most of my time distracted and remembering how sweet and soft Emily had smelled, or how her mouth had hung open in an unflattering but adorable way when she fell asleep. She'd even snored a little. She was real, not like some of the women I'd tried and failed to make it work with in the past.
I’d thought about what set her apart instead of paying attention to Friday the 13th, and I’d ended up thinking of the perfect test. If you gave a woman a thousand dollars to spend however she wanted, what would she buy first. Without fail, almost every girl I’d dated in the past would’ve bought clothes, makeup, beer, or maybe even drugs. Emily though? I didn’t even know what she’d buy. Probably some stuff for her art, or maybe she’d just take a spontaneous car ride and see a little bit of the world. She might even do something ridiculous like buying a thousand pounds of chocolate. I realized that it didn’t matter what she’d do with the money, not specifically. What mattered was that she wasn’t like the women before. She didn’t fixate on how she looked or buy into the materialism that was so rampant in New York City.
She was real, and so were the feelings I’d felt growing for her since we first met. Instead of my desire to be with her cooling off like I’d expected, it’d been steadily getting more intense until it had started to feel like an out-of-control bonfire.
I’d even ended my horror movie marathon with the last movie Emily and I watched, The Shining. It was already one of my all-time favorites before our not-date, and it was one of my most nostalgia-filled experiences. I’d watched it for the first time at a drive-in movie theater. I sat in the back of a van with some of my friends from the neighborhood and had nightmares for weeks. It was perfect.
Steve straightened and tossed his bag over his shoulder. “So?” he asked.
“So what?” I was playing dumb, but I knew exactly what he was asking. I’d been avoiding Emily ever since showing her the workspace at William’s office as much as possible. I had a brand new couple that I’d been working to get started on their Bubbly Baker franchise. I didn’t know the next move with Emily, so I’d used it as an excuse to bury myself in work, but the party was coming, and it was time for me to check on her. I’d known I couldn’t avoid it forever, but I’d hoped some time apart would’ve helped me feel more level-headed. Instead, I felt like a lovesick puppy that had been apart from my crush for years. This wasn’t going to be good.
“That girl who was doing posters for you,” Steve said, “I haven’t seen her around or heard you talk about her. William said you’ve been avoiding her and him. We had a genius plan drawn up, too. Next time you came to the office, William was going to lock you guys in the stairwell together and we had this intern girl who was going to do a thing kind of like The Ring. You know, hair over the face and all that.”
I sighed. “I’m trying to decide if I should bother asking why you’re helping him.”
“I’ve been helping him because I want to see you get with a girl you like, man. Hell, I want you to be with a girl. Period. You’re a good guy and I can tell you’re not really satisfied. You just run around all day making deals or whatever Wolf on Wall Street shit it is you do, and you come back here drained and dead. Last time I saw you look like you were in a good mood was when that girl came around.”
“I appreciate it, but I’m good. Seriously. It’s like I told William. I’m not looking for a relationship, and you knuckleheads forcing me into one isn’t going to help. It’s just going to make things messier.”
Steve sighed. “Have you tried listening to your penis?”
I frowned. “What?”
“Your penis. I know all those corny movies say listen to your heart, but I’ve always listened to my penis. And you know where it leads me? Love, man. It’s like a thick, perfectly sculpted, eight-inch, throbbing arrow that points me to love. Every time.”
“I think you’re confusing love and lust. I’ve got no problem with lust. My problem is with what happens after the chemicals stop pumping and people have time to learn to hate each other.”
“Yeah, well, the first step is your penis. Listen to the thing, let it start you down the right path. You have a little fun, and if it doesn’t work out, it doesn’t work out. How else are you supposed to find love?”
I shrugged. "I don't know, man. But I'm not buying the theory that I have to stick my cock in a woman to know if I love her. Who even says everybody has to find someone to love? When did that become the end-all-be-all goal in life?"
“What’s your alternative? Making the perfect cupcake and jacking off to a picture of a Christmas tree or something?”
I threw a shoe at him, but he casually ducked out of the way. “No,” I said. “It’d be nice if I had a chance to decide for myself though, instead of having you and William try to force me and Emily together.”
“Was that her name?”
“What? Yes. Emily White, why?”
“Dude.” Steve paused with his eyes to the side and his mouth open. He snapped his fingers and pointed. “Dude!”
“What? Do you know her from somewhere or something?”
“Yes. We both do. We went to high school with her. You don’t remember? She was artsy back then, too. Your girlfriend smeared a cupcake on some painting she made and it was this big thing. You seriously forgot all that?”
I thought my stomach might fall out of my body. I hadn’t forgotten. Not at all. I just didn’t connect the dots between the sweet, funny girl from my Home Ec class to the sweet, funny girl from the retirement home. “Hold on,” I said. I went to the bookshelf and dug out my yearbook from senior year. I flipped through until I found her picture. Emily White. Senior quote: “That wasn’t like High School Musical at all.”
Steve leaned over my shoulder. “She does look different. Kind of.”
“I don’t know how I didn’t see it.” My brain was slowly playing catch up. I couldn’t decide if it was a significant discovery, or if it changed nothing.
“You probably repressed it. Your girlfriend ruined that girl’s senior project for art class. It was really traumatic. For her, at least. I thought the whole thing was kind of hilarious.”
I shook my head. “No wonder she has been so adamant about avoiding a relationship. She probably thinks I’ve just been pretending I didn’t remember her.”
“Then go apologize. Go to her, man. Say you’re a dumbass and you only just realized you knew her before. Wait till
it’s raining and then pick her up and spin her around a little bit. Then you apologize. Kiss. Fondle. Penetrate.”
“You’re right about one thing, at least.”
“Which thing?” he asked as I grabbed my things and headed for the door. “The penetrate part?”
I couldn’t wait for the elevator at Galleon without replaying the ridiculous series of events that followed last time. It had been almost two weeks now. Realizing she was the same girl from high school shouldn’t have changed anything. I still didn’t do well with relationships. I still had a trail of horrible romantic failures in my past.
And yet, I felt something different. I remembered all the conversations I’d had with her now. Back then, I’d been an idiot, and I had followed along with Steve’s theory of dating: the hotter a girl was, the better idea the relationship was. But then the ordinary girl in my Home Ec class had rocked my understanding of women. I’d actually enjoyed talking to her. Gradually, she hadn’t looked so ordinary to me, either.
When Haisley found out that I was spending more time than I had to with Emily, she got jealous. I’d just shared a few of the cupcakes Emily and I made for Home Ec that day, and she went storming off in a jealous rage, cupcake in hand. By the time I found her, she had smeared blue icing all over Emily’s painting that was on display outside the art room.
Being the idiot that I was, I did the worst thing possible. I took the fall for Haisley, because I thought that was the honorable thing to do. I was her boyfriend, after all. Haisley thought the act somehow meant I still had feelings for Emily, and Emily thought I really did it. And just like that, I ruined my chances with both of them at the same time.
I took a deep breath outside the conference room where Emily had all the artwork set up and displayed for me. It looked like a slice of Halloween heaven inside, with a giant Frankenstein monster, ghosts, a hairy tarantula the size of a German Shepherd, and a stack of the gorgeous posters she’d made. I’d already seen the posters because I had her email pictures of them to me as soon as she was done and let William handle posting them all over Galleon and I’d put them up in my bakeries.
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