Room for Love

by Andrea Meyer

  “Jacquie?”

  I hear the scratch of a match, the whir of a flame, and a candle is lit, illuminating Zach, the cute hardware-store boy. I never noticed he was a leftie before. He looks disheveled, bundled in his faded jean jacket that’s lined in lamb’s wool. He lights another candle. He hasn’t shaved in days and the stubble on his face is the amber color of maple syrup with sunlight shining through the bottle. His eyes are sleepy, a very pale blue like the sky when wispy white clouds are floating past. I’m ashamed of myself for thinking in such mushy metaphors. Steve would never stand for that crap in the magazine.

  “Hey,” Zach says.

  I slowly approach as he pushes himself up to a seated position. “Zach,” I say, breathing in sharply. “You’re still here.”

  “I fell asleep.”

  I look around at the candlelit furniture he’s dragged back in from the roof, the garbage bags, the beautifully sanded bookshelves standing incongruously in the middle of the hollow shell of the home I loved so much. I can’t think of one thing to do to start making it better.

  “What can I do?” I ask him. “Give me a project.”

  “It’s the middle of the night,” he says.

  I look at him in a way that says, “What’s your point?”

  “You could rub my hand,” he says. “It’s sore from all the sanding.”

  “Okay,” I say shyly and lower myself in front of him to sit on my heels. My knees hit the cold, dusty floor. Zach stretches out his left hand toward me. I turn it over and rub his palm firmly with my thumbs, working the flesh between the small bones of the front of his hand with my other fingers. The skin there is surprisingly soft, so different from his rough, calloused palms. I feel my face flush and glance up at him to see if he noticed. He smiles. I’m thankful for the fan sending cool air at me from the corner.

  “You’re good at that,” he says. My heart pounds on my rib cage, reminding me of its existence. He gives me his other hand, which is bloodied and scraped across two knuckles.

  “Oh my God,” I say.

  “I forgot about that.”

  I grab one of the candles and make my way into the bathroom, where I manage to find a tin first-aid kit, with Band-Aids and a bottle of alcohol inside. I grab a paper towel from the kitchen on my way back and look at Zach sitting patiently Indian-style watching me. With his hair sticking up he looks about twelve.

  “You’re an Aries, aren’t you?” I ask.

  He nods. “How did you know?” I shake my head and kneel down to clean up his hand.

  “Hey, what are you doing here?” Zach asks once I’m done putting alcohol on the wound.

  “I broke up with my boyfriend,” I say, feeling like I might cry again.

  Zach reaches out to touch my shoulder and I pull away from him, pushing myself up and moving to the other side of the room.

  “I’m sorry,” Zach says, standing up to take the Band-Aid that I hold out in his direction. We’re silent for a minute as he puts it on his cut. Then he says, “I guess he was that guy you were fighting with in the street the other day at the fire, huh? He wasn’t good enough for you anyway.”

  “What?” I snap. “Who the hell are you, Zach, to judge me or Anthony? You don’t know him. You don’t even know me. You’re just some guy who’s fucking Serena.”

  “What?” he says, rushing over, inches from me, his cheeks flushed. “Serena’s my sister.”

  “Your sister?” I choke, my face and chest getting hot. His sister? Serena and Zach brother and sister? I feel totally thrown.

  “What the hell?” I say. “Oh my God, I can’t believe you … Why didn’t anyone tell me?”

  “I assumed you knew,” he says. “Wow. God. I figured you knew.”

  I look around me at the bookshelves, the backsplash, the books he so carefully stacked. “Why did you do all this? I mean, I thought you were a couple, I thought you were doing this to impress Serena.”

  Zach shifts from leg to leg and then turns to his left so I’m looking at his profile. It’s delicate, like a child’s. He stares at the little window in my kitchen as if thinking very seriously about what I just asked.

  “Shit, Jacquie, I did it for you. Isn’t that obvious?” He turns and looks at me, then glances down at the ground in front of me. “I mean, I still remember the first time you came into the store. It was, like, seven or eight years ago. You’d just moved into your first apartment in the neighborhood and you needed a screwdriver. I got you our best-seller, eleven in one for sixteen ninety-five. You were so excited. I wasn’t working there yet. It was before my dad died and I was still in school, studying to become an architect, but I’d help out on weekends. My dad came over and put together this whole toolbox for you, and you were…” He clears his throat and glances at me for a second. “I don’t know, you were just … you did this thing where you’d, like, bounce and get all your hair in your hands and put it on top of your head, and then you’d take it back down. I couldn’t stop watching you—you were, I don’t know, pretty, alive, and I liked how you treated Buster.” He laughs nervously. “I’m surprised you didn’t notice all these years.”

  He’s standing very straight now, with his arms running awkwardly down his sides, looking at his feet again.

  “Oh my God,” I say.

  “I’ve pretty much always had a girlfriend,” he says. “I was with one girl I lived with for almost five years.”

  “Serial monogamy,” I say.

  “I guess some people would call it that. I think my ex called it that, but whatever, it never felt right.” He’s silent for a moment, but I don’t say anything.

  “When my sister sublet this apartment and it turned out to be yours,” he says, “I thought maybe it was fate. This will sound stupid, but I thought maybe on some level I had been waiting for you. And now look…”

  I force my eyes away from him and scan the destruction around us. My throat tightens. I lean against the refrigerator and slowly let my body glide down until I’m sitting on the cold floor. I don’t know what to do with this information. Zach sits next to me. He’s wearing his soft jacket that smells like leather and grass.

  “Where are you staying?” I ask him.

  “With my sister.”

  “When is she getting married?”

  “Next weekend.”

  “Who is she marrying?” I ask.

  “Rory,” we both say at the same time.

  “Of course,” I say. “I’m so happy for her.”

  “Me too,” he says. “I always liked Rory, and he really loves her.”

  “You know, I never got to see my bathroom painted pink.”

  “I was skeptical, but it looked great,” he says.

  And with that the handsome love interest—the soft-spoken, sweet guy in the wings whom the audience has been rooting for all along—leans over and kisses me, softly, as if he’s been waiting to kiss me all his life.

  “What are we doing?” I ask after a moment’s sweet kissing. “You’re the guy who burned down my apartment.”

  “I’m the guy who’s helping you rebuild it.”

  “Have you ever seen Grease 2?” I ask.

  “Tell me you don’t like Grease 2,” he says.

  “I love Grease 2,” I say defensively.

  “First One Steamy Summer and now Grease 2? And here I had you figured for an intellectual snob,” he says, shaking his head.

  “I am totally an intellectual snob!” I say. “Grease 2 is a cult classic, so bad it’s brilliant. It launched Michelle Pfeiffer’s career.” Zach smiles at me and I smile back at him. “I was just thinking this is kind of a Grease 2 moment. You know, you’re the sweet, shy guy who was always nice to me at the hardware store and then I find out you’re also the cool, hunky fixing-up-my-apartment guy I’ve secretly had a crush on for months.” I blush wantonly. “You have no idea what I’m talking about.”

  “‘You were the one who went in my dreams and I never knew it?’” he says, quoting Grease 2 lyrics, blushing back at
me.

  “Oh wow, a closet fan.”

  “I’ve watched it too many times with my sister,” he says.

  “‘I wanted to tell you time and again but I couldn’t do it,’” I sing quietly.

  “Don’t get me started,” he says. “I do a mean ‘Cool Rider.’”

  I hold an imaginary mike to my mouth and continue to sing, more loudly now. “‘All that you are is all that I need, no more pretending. Now I can be me and you can be you and we’re never-ending, whooooaah.…’” I’m embarrassed—it sounds like a declaration of love. There’s no way I can sing the next line: “‘We’ll be together, always together/Like birds of a feather, for ever and ever/We’ll be together.’”

  I don’t know if it’s too brazen or just too bad.

  Zach laughs, because he’s hearing the lines playing in his head, too, and puts his hands on either side of my face. “It’s much more a Clark Kent/Superman moment than Grease 2.”

  I’m so happy he’s not sleeping with Serena. Ew, he’s her brother.

  When he pulls me tightly against him and kisses me again, I feel high. I have an urge to scream, to sing cheesy love songs at the top of my lungs. It’s this amazing kiss that makes my head spin. I’m going with it and not thinking, allowing my hands to take their own initiative, wandering through his baby-soft hair, over his broad shoulders and back. I can’t believe I’m kissing Zach the cute hardware-store boy, who burned down my apartment, and getting soot all over my dress. I almost start laughing as I imagine our clothes starting to fly off, Courtney’s pretty green dress that’s now mine landing in an elegant heap on my lumpy, damp floor. That is what’s going to happen, right? I mean, it is time to lose the clothes. Right? That’s what usually happens in my life anyway. In the movie version. But suddenly my mind kicks in and I abruptly stop kissing Zach.

  I pull away and hold him at arm’s length, breathing quickly. His face is flushed. His eyes are gentle. He softly lets his hands drop and says, “Jacquie, I’m right here.”

  He looks right into my eyes as he says it and I know that he’s telling the truth. For some reason, I think about dropping my bag on the floor by the door when I come home at night. It’s my bag and my door and my floor and I know it will still be there in the morning.

  I used to have this thing in college. I thought if I could only sleep with a guy, it would all be okay. Then I thought if I could only sleep with him more than once, two times, three times, then for sure it would mean something to him and he’d stay. But to make him stay, I would become this desperate girl doing everything in my power to get him to sleep with me, calling in the middle of the night, pleading, running my fingers suggestively along his forearm when we ran into each other on campus, reminding him how much he should love me. But I wouldn’t be me anymore, just this well of desperation, and that would be just the thing to send him looking for the next girl.

  In the movie version, Zach would gently remove my clothes and we would make perfect love. In real life, when he kisses me again, it occurs to me that we’ve got tomorrow to kiss and the next day and the one after that. I purr, a sort of sexpot moan that lets him know I love the feeling of his lips on mine, his tongue in my mouth, his soft stubble rubbing against my cheeks and chin, his arms around my waist, his pelvis, thighs, chest pressed against mine. I take his bottom lip between my teeth and let it go again, before pushing his chest lightly away from me with one hand.

  “Zach, do you want to get something to eat?” I say. “I need something in my stomach to soak up all this tequila.”

  “Yeah,” he says, with a shy laugh. “I haven’t eaten since lunch. I’m starving.”

  He touches his lips to mine again lightly, letting the tip of his tongue linger for just a second, sending a jolt of electricity through me that lands squarely between my thighs. I am such a slut. I ignore an impulse to rip his clothes from his body and wrestle him to the floor, and instead stand up and smooth my brand-new green dress, as cheesy Grease 2 lyrics dance through my head. Zach crosses the whole room in three wide, handsome strides and kneels down to blow out the candles on the floor, smiling up at me before the room goes black. Then he stands again and finds me with his hands in the dark.

  Wrapping his arms around me, he says, “Welcome home, Jacquie.”

  Outside, I hear the sounds of the East Village: the laughter of the smokers huddled outside the bar across the street, sirens wailing in the distance, a motorcycle showing off on Avenue A. Somewhere a girl cries out with unadulterated joy. Somewhere a car alarm shrieks its irritation into the night. Somewhere a dog barks, maybe Larry, and another, maybe the neighbors’ ferocious Yorkie, joins in his serenade. Enveloped in complete darkness, Zach takes my hand and we find our way through my damaged apartment that we are going to repair. I push the door open, and we stand facing my bright hallway, blinking side by side, fingers entwined, dazzled by the light.

  Praise for Room for Love

  “Room for Love is a delightful read for any woman searching for that proverbial room of one’s own. With writing that glitters like the NYC skyline itself, it’s a smart and sexy urban romp that’ll have everyone calling Meyer the downtown Candace Bushnell.”

  —Erin Torneo, coauthor of The Bridal Wave: A Survival Guide to the Everyone-I-Know-Is-Getting-Married Years

  “Readers will be rooting for Jacquie as she bravely navigates the turbulent territories of love and real estate in NYC.”

  —Melissa Clark, author of Swimming Upstream, Slowly

  “A funny and sexy debut with a delightful heroine and clever premise. Gives ‘room for rent’ a whole new meaning.”

  —Karen Mack, author of Literacy and Longing in L.A.

  This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

  ROOM FOR LOVE. Copyright © 2007 by Andrea Meyer. All rights reserved. For information, address St. Martin’s Press, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010.

  www.stmartins.com

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Meyer, Andrea.

  Room for love / Andrea Meyer.—1st ed.

  p. cm.

  ISBN-13: 978-0-312-37078-7

  ISBN-10: 0-312-37078-4

  1. New York (N.Y.)—Fiction. 2. Chick lit. I. Title.

  PS3613.E898R66 2007

  813'.6—dc22

  2007017430

  eISBN 9781466856806

  First eBook edition: October 2013