* * *
Katie had not imagined that she would wake up to an inbox full of winks and messages and offers of intercourse, but this was exactly the case as she sat at her kitchen table with a cup of coffee and scrolled through her many virtual suitors. It was a mixed bag. From Paulie in Bay Ridge, who expressed interest in fucking her so hard, to Mike in Crown Heights, who expressed interest in fucking her so hard, to David in midtown, who expressed interest in fucking her so hard. At this rate she would have to grow another few holes just to keep up with it all. So much for the site’s paywall working as a filter against losers.
Then Katie struck upon Jeremy in Chelsea, a good-looking, brown-haired, brown-eyed, six-foot-tall finance professional who enjoyed cycling, playing basketball, and going to nice restaurants. He did not express explicit interest in fucking Katie so hard but implied that he wouldn’t be opposed to doing so. He complimented her photos and asked her out straightaway. The tone of his message was measured but confident and not a direct threat to any of her body parts, so she messaged him back something equally measured and confident with a little flirtation added in for good measure.
Just when Katie arrived at her office, she got a message back from him. Are you free Saturday night by any chance?
She wrote back: By chance I am.
Great. I’ll make a reservation for 8 pm. Sound good?
Katie didn’t really know how to do this online dating thing, but she got the immediate impression that there wasn’t much conversation involved, so all she wrote back was: Great. Then she tried to calculate how much time she had to get herself up to snuff. Maybe a new dress, a mani/pedi, a wax. Not necessarily in that order. The wax probably needed to be prioritized.
Of course Katie couldn’t get appointments at any of her regular places for these services because she chose to live in a city where you had to buy movie tickets a week in advance, so the next evening after work, she found herself at a random corner “spa” that was probably a money-laundering front. An angry-faced stranger was shredding her nether regions when her cell phone pinged.
Katie froze at the sight of Cassidy’s name. Had fun at dinner, she’d written. Lemme know if you’re around this weekend.
“Ow!”
“Sorry,” Katie’s angry-faced torturer said, but she did not seem very sincere.
Katie ignored Cassidy’s text and switched her phone to silent.
By the time she left her apartment to meet up with Jeremy, Katie was bare and smooth and feeling confident in her new cobalt-blue wrap dress that made her eyes pop like she’d Insta-filtered herself with X-Pro II.
Jeremy was waiting outside the restaurant for her when she arrived, which she thought very gentlemanly. He recognized her right away and went in for a peck on the cheek.
So far so good. Katie had been concerned Jeremy might look older, balder, shorter, and overall less attractive than he did in his photos, but for the most part his full head of brown hair appeared the same as it did in that photo of him on his mountain bike, and he seemed to be a legitimate six feet tall. She checked out his shoes. They were brown leather derbys, clean and unscuffed, appropriate with his dark navy jeans and dress shirt. Not bad, she thought. Not bad at all.
He’d chosen Salinas, an ideal date restaurant thanks to its sexy atmosphere and flattering lighting. They were seated in the back garden, which had a retractable glass roof and a stone fireplace. They ordered wine and tapas and got to talking about themselves.
Katie couldn’t find anything seriously wrong with this guy. He did brag about himself a little too much, but mostly he was doing his best to impress her and not stare too much at her plunging neckline. Overall Jeremy was a catch, and yet as dinner proceeded, Katie couldn’t help but notice that she was kind of bored while he went on about his recent trip to Rwanda.
“It isn’t for everyone,” he said. “Hiking through rain forest, scaling mountains with slopes you wouldn’t believe. But to have the opportunity to look directly into the eyes of a mountain gorilla and to see how expressive they are. It made me question what it even means to be human.”
It was all Katie could do to not fall asleep into her arroz de pato. To Jeremy’s credit, he caught on that anthropomorphism was not the most efficient route to her heart, so he quickly transitioned to his job. How hard he worked. How much responsibility he had. How many millions of dollars of other people’s money he was responsible for. Standard investment banker banter.
“So what kind of law do you practice?” he asked her finally.
“I’m at Dorchester Nevins Dunn,” Katie said. “In structured finance.”
Jeremy recalculated something in his mind and then smiled. “So does this mean you’re gonna bill me by the hour for this date?”
Katie forced a laugh because he was trying. It wasn’t his fault that this felt like a job interview—she was just out of practice.
She could tell by the flush to his face that he liked her. And once he learned that Katie wasn’t some public defender with big dreams or wide-eyed counsel to a nonprofit, he seemed to recognize that she wasn’t so fragile, that he didn’t have to be too careful with her and his best behavior could go right out the window with his sensitive guy’s Rwandan gorilla trek. He flipped on the switch to his alpha male.
Their waiter presented them with the postres menu, and Jeremy didn’t bother looking at his. “My apartment is really close to here,” he said. “Just two blocks away.”
Katie looked up from her menu. “Is it?”
Smooth, she thought. Real smooth.
“Want to skip postres?” he asked.
Was that any way to ask a lady to go to bed with you? But then again, why not? She was trying to try new things. That’s what this whole night was about.
Just like that they were in Jeremy’s living room making out like animals, animals with zero to offer on what it meant to be human, animals that were eating each other’s faces. He unbuttoned his clean-cut dress shirt, and Katie was pleasantly taken aback by the Clark Kent surprise of his cut chest and abs.
“Do you have a condom?” she asked.
He nodded, scrambled to his nightstand, and they moved to his bed.
This was what she wanted, she told herself as Jeremy slid off her dress. This was what she came here for.
He climbed on top of her, and she closed her eyes.
This man was a stranger. This stranger was about to be inside her.
“Stop. I’m sorry.” She shoved Jeremy off her.
He sat up, sweating, breathing hard. “What’s the matter?”
“I’m sorry. This isn’t me.” She sprang up from the bed and scrambled for her shoes.
“Wait. You’re leaving? Did I do something wrong?”
“Not at all.” She wiggled her dress back on. “This was all my fault.”
He moved to get up, wrapping the sheets around his waist.
“No, stay,” Katie said, extending her arm as if to shield herself. “I’ll let myself out.”
She couldn’t get away from Jeremy fast enough. Out on the street, she power-walked down Ninth Avenue like she’d just escaped a burning building that she herself had set on fire.
Her mind started spinning, and before she could stop it from happening, she became a girl in a slutty dress marching down the street while crying. She had to sit down on a cement slab in front of an abandoned construction site to catch her breath.
What the hell was happening to her? Something felt seriously and perhaps medically wrong. She needed to call someone, a friend. She took out her phone and started scrolling, but there was no one. She was having a nervous breakdown, hyperventilating, and there was no one!
The only recent activity on her phone was that text from Cassidy, which she’d never responded to. She wished she hadn’t ignored it now that going home alone might result in a 911 call and an ambulance ride to Bellevue. Did Bellevue still exi
st? It was possible that even a famed mental hospital would fail her in her hour of need.
She started to text Cassidy: I need help. But she’d only typed I need when she accidently hit send, forcing her to compose a second text of only Help, which appeared even more pathetic and alarming as a stand-alone word. Which meant she had to send a third text to try to sound less nuts. I can’t go home. Are you out?
Cassidy, bless her heart, wrote back right away. Where are you?
Katie began to write, Construction site, but thought it better to just give her cross streets.
Her phone suddenly rang, and she got so startled she nearly dropped it into a pile of rusted scaffolding pipe. “Hello?”
Cassidy’s voice was on the other end of the line. “Katie, what’s going on?”
“Oh nothing, I just . . .”
“You don’t sound so good,” she said, and that was probably because Katie had started to cry again. “Did something happen?” Cassidy asked.
“I don’t know, I was at dinner and then this guy’s apartment, and now I’m on the street, Ninth Avenue, I think, in Chelsea.”
“Listen,” Cassidy said. “You’re five minutes from my apartment. I’ll text you the address, okay? The doorman will let you up. I’ll be there in fifteen minutes, tops.”
“Will you really?” Katie choked the words out through her sobby throat.
“I’ll meet you there in fifteen,” Cassidy said. “I promise.”
“Will they seriously let me in without you there?”
“Yeah, just ask for Brandon if you have a problem.”
They hung up, and Cassidy’s text came through with her address.
It was possible that Katie’s nervous breakdown was simply a panic attack, because she felt calmer already, just knowing that she had someplace to go and someone to talk to.
In a few short blocks her breathing returned to normal and she was in front of Cassidy’s building and holy shit, was this really where Cassidy lived? It was that crazy blue-glass building on West Eighteenth that curved like a curtain blowing in the wind. Katie entered like she wasn’t a madwoman who’d just cried off all her eye makeup and approached the concierge.
“Excuse me,” she said. “Are you Brandon?”
“I’m Frank. Brandon’s not here, but how can I help you?”
“I’m a friend of Cassidy Price’s. She’ll be here in a few minutes, but she told me to ask to be let up to her apartment.”
He nodded like this was a regular thing, took a quick look at Katie’s driver’s license, and then went to get a key from somewhere.
Frank accompanied Katie to the elevator and up the many floors to Cassidy’s apartment. “Here we are,” he said, unlocking her door, swinging it open, and clicking on the lights. “Can I help you with anything else?”
Whoa. This was the most beautiful and gigantic apartment Katie had ever seen. Paul Michael would have soiled himself over the design of the place.
“No, I’m good, thanks,” she said, walking across the vast living room floor in a half-hypnotized state.
Frank left, closing the door behind him, and Katie did a 180 to take it all in, the panoramic views of Manhattan, the Hudson River, and the High Line. There was a certain masculinity to the place, in the way it was decorated. Lots of sleek black and rich browns in the living room, stainless steel and walnut wood in the kitchen. If she didn’t know better, she would have guessed this place belonged to a man who was single, and possibly Bruce Wayne.
The bathroom was even more spectacular than she was anticipating—marble countertops, a limestone floor, a glassed-in shower with one of those crazy showerheads that rained down on you like actual rain. She couldn’t help but notice Cassidy’s products around the sink—hair tonics and creams in dark bottles and circular metal tins. Moisturizers and lotions with foreign labels. Not a pink razor to be found. No lipstick tubes or blush brushes.
Katie knew it was wrong, but she had to inspect the bedroom. This was like being left unattended on the best HGTV episode of all time—how could she not check out the bedroom?
Like the rest of the place it was sparsely but impeccably decorated, immaculate to the point of being almost scary. The centerpiece was a walk-in closet that would have made Carrie Bradshaw swoon, except that it was filled with only dark suits, crisp dress shirts, and men’s shoes. Where did Cassidy keep her nonwork clothes? Katie opened the top drawer of her dresser and—eek. Men’s briefs? She slammed the drawer shut and suddenly felt sick.
She rushed back to the living room.
Maybe she should go. Maybe this was a mistake.
Just then, she heard a key in the door. She sat down on the leather sofa as Cassidy stepped inside.
EIGHT
It was only around eleven p.m., but Cassidy was lit. She couldn’t recall the name of the girl she was sucking face with up against the bathroom wall at Metropolis—Laila, was it? Or Laina, or Lainey. What did it matter? She tugged at Cassidy’s belt buckle as they stumbled into the doorless stall designated for this exact purpose. The important part was that Cassidy was feeling no pain. She remembered nothing of her day, her week, her life. If the girl’s name was collateral damage, so be it. Cassidy went at her neck, unbuttoned her blouse. Everything was vibrating.
No, not everything, Cassidy realized. It was her pocket. The vibration was coming from her phone, not her insides.
Cassidy hadn’t been thinking about Katie. She had very specifically not been thinking about Katie since she’d texted her to say she’d enjoyed their dinner and got no reply—but still she had to take out her phone and look.
There was Katie’s name staring back at her.
I need, Katie had written. “Whoa, whoa. Hang on a sec,” Cassidy said to Laila or Laina or Lainey.
“Are you seriously texting someone right now?” The girl’s bright yellow blouse was wide open, exposing a skimpy bra the color of ripe watermelon.
“I’m so sorry.” Cassidy zipped up her pants and rebuckled her belt. “I have to make a quick call.”
Cassidy bumbled out of the bathroom with her phone to her ear as it dialed Katie’s number. It was already ringing by the time she made it outside to the sidewalk.
“Hello? Katie?” Cassidy yelled into her phone, covering her free ear with the palm of her hand, but she still couldn’t hear over the street traffic. “Are you crying?”
Katie was somewhere in Chelsea, that much she understood.
“You’re right near my apartment,” Cassidy shouted. She held out her arm to hail a cab, or rather her arm flew into the air all on its own, frantic and determined. Desperate, really.
A cab pulled up just as whatever her name was burst through Metropolis’s door. “You’re leaving?” Her yellow blouse was neatly rebuttoned, but the rest of her was chaotic. “You were just going to leave me like that?”
Cassidy hurried into the cab and slammed the door shut. “Emergency!” she yelled through the open window. “I’m having an emergency.”
* * *
Cassidy did her best to sober up on the twelve-minute cab ride home by taking deep breaths and chewing on breath mints. She wasn’t sure what she was walking into, if some tragedy had occurred, but whatever it was, Katie had thought to call her—and that had to mean something. When Katie had ignored her text, a siren had gone off in Cassidy’s ears, a terrorizing sound of alarm that would not stop.
It went quiet at the sight of Katie seated on her living room sofa.
Katie was slouched over with her deep-blue dress hanging half off her shoulder. Her eye makeup was smudged, and her hair was tied up in a messy ponytail.
“What’s going on?” Cassidy crossed the room with apprehension. “Are you okay?”
Katie looked at the floor, so Cassidy brought her voice down to a gentle tone, the kind you might use with a child you’re trying not to frighten. “Did something happ
en?”
“Not like you’re thinking,” Katie said. “I’m just having a hard time.”
“Oh good. I mean, that’s understandable, that you’re having a hard time.” Cassidy stumbled over her relief that Katie wasn’t in real crisis, uncertain now of how to proceed. “Can I fix you a drink? I’ve got a bottle of Evan Williams.”
“You do not,” Katie said. “Did you know they make that right near where I grew up?”
Of course Cassidy did. She’d special-ordered the bottle and had it overnighted, not because she imagined Katie would ever be present to share it but because she’d had an unrelenting craving for Kentucky bourbon since they first met.
Cassidy half-filled two rocks glasses, then sat at a safe distance from Katie, in her leather lounge chair. She would not allow herself to drink another sip of alcohol, but she had to fix herself a glass for appearance’s sake.
Katie sipped her bourbon, cupping the glass as if it held warm tea. “This is delicious.”
“Good,” Cassidy said.
Tears started running down Katie’s face again, maybe from the simple kindness Cassidy was offering, maybe from the taste of home. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I don’t even know what’s happening to me. My emotions are all over the place.”
“It’s okay.” Cassidy leaned forward on her chair. “You don’t have to apologize.”
“I don’t even know why I called you.”
“That’s okay, too.”
The tears continued, and Cassidy could see that Katie was desperate for something. Comfort? Human contact? Anything to feel better.
Cassidy watched her cry for longer than she could bear before setting her bourbon on the table, rising from her chair, and joining Katie on the couch.
Katie inched closer to her the moment she sat down. “What were you doing when I called you?” she asked.
“Nothing much.”
“I hope I didn’t ruin your night.”
“You didn’t.”
Katie rested her head on Cassidy’s shoulder. “Are you sure?”
When Katie Met Cassidy Page 6