by Corri Lee
“That thing when it takes you a second too long to reply.” Fuck! Was I doing that? There were some tell-tale signs my nearest and dearest could hone in on to tell if I was starting to flag mentally. They rarely enlightened me as to what they were until I was actually doing them again. “Do you want me to call Daniel? He’d fly over—you know he would.”
“No, don’t do that.” I hadn’t spoken to Daniel since I’d seen him and his partner, Jonathan, off to bed the night before I vanished without warning. He’d been offended that I hadn’t talked it through with him. “I’m just distracted, that’s all. I don’t know what to wear tonight.”
“Oh.” Like many flighty women, my mother was easily distracted by fashion. “Wear a suit, love. He’ll appreciate the formality.”
I wore a little black dress because I knew exactly what my mother was trying to do. A suit would make it look like I wasn’t interested when I was. Very interested. The gayest women in the world would have been interested in Calloway Ryan.
His assistant had sent me the reservation details for a Chinese restaurant on the banks of the Hudson River with a distant view of the Statue of Liberty. It was all but empty when I arrived—nothing but the neatly made out tables and soft lilt of twanging oriental music. Very intimate and friendly. Somewhere I might enjoy.
“Miss Tudor?” It was more surprising that I didn’t jump at the voice which sneaked up on me. It was probably the serenity of the place.
I turned to find a familiar face standing behind the bar. “Sophie! I didn’t know you had two jobs.”
“I have to look like I’m making an effort, you know. My parents pay for school but I have to earn it.” I got that. I admired it. I loved the kind of Eastern values that I’d seen around me in Chinatown—the ones that didn’t give up everything for free just because genetics were involved. “You want to eat? It should be fast. So quiet tonight.”
“I’m actually waiting for someone.”
“We only have one reservation... Oh!” Her eyes lit up when they tracked down the booking list, and she laughed with a knowing nod. “Astoria. Makes sense now. Mr. Ryan’s running late—traffic. Drink?”
It was strangely peaceful that night in New York. Only a slight breeze ruffled the river banks and the noise of passing cars was almost excluded. “It’s so quiet here.” And something about it unnerved me. I had grown used to the constant hubbub that rattled my windows through the night—the cat calls of dirty stop outs and the constant rev and blare of taxis.
Sophie and I leaned over the wooden railing overlooking the waters barely talking, silenced by silence.
“It’s weird, right? It’s eerie when a city this big gets quiet. It’s like that surreal stillness right before a storm. I know something big will happen in New York tonight. Maybe it’s you. Maybe you snag the rich guy. Maybe you find fairytale romance. Maybe old faces come back into your life.”
Maybe you see sense and get on a plane back to London.
“Maybe you update me on the gossip tomorrow.” Sophie tilted her head slyly towards the oncoming patron and slunk back slowly into the restaurant, leaving me to greet my dining partner.
Calloway wore the same suit he’d been wearing at his office and was obviously flustered that he hadn’t arrived precisely at his arranged time of seven o’clock. The hand holding his phone to his ear while he snapped down it dropped as soon as he saw me, and a strange kind of relief softened the choler in his features.
Taking a step forward, I gave him an awkward half wave. “Cal.”
“Miss Tudor.” Shit, why did something as innocent as saying my name feel like a seduction when it came out of his mouth?
“I’ve changed my mind, you can call me Emmeline.”
“Ah.” A small smile hit the corners of his mouth though it wasn’t entirely convincing, “I shall consider that an honour.” He was patronising me now?
Bristling slightly, I felt myself withdraw, feeling like I’d overestimated him as the type of man who was too smart to disarm a woman with sarcasm.
You mean like you would? Isn’t sarcasm your second language?
No, Japanese is my second langu—Argh!
She always wanted me to talk back and acknowledging her was a step down into the abyss. I did my best to ignore her but sometimes she just caught me off guard.
A chilling wind whipped at the hem of my dress, making me wish I’d worn jeans. It didn’t really matter if I’d worn a sack because everyone looked like crap next to Calloway. “We should go inside.”
He nodded. “There’s a storm coming.”
I walked past him stiffly, suddenly completely unsure of what I was doing. Why was I so unhinged over such a flippant comment? He might have been trying to be cavalier—polite, and I was blowing it completely out of proportion. Why had I even agreed to dinner when I was still so emotionally raw? My mother was right, this was a bad idea, so why hadn’t I been a little wiser?
Because he reminds you of Blaze, idiot.
Did he? Was that what this was? Dark hair and stunning eyes—surely that was as far as the similarities went? Nothing meaningful but for the street we’d all stood on...
Of course! This stupid thing over Calloway was the association because of how we’d met. A few months earlier, I couldn’t have offered him more than a cheap date and a guaranteed lay. Now he was the only thing I had that bore any kind of connection to being with Blaze.
But was that really fair on him? Didn’t he deserved to be the centre of someone’s universe the same as I should have been?
Bingo. You think you weren’t the centre of Blaze’s universe. You think money meant more than you. You wanted him to say that he was leaving his wife because he loved you more but he didn’t. You just want someone to tell you that they would have chosen you.
I was. I was looking for someone to tell me that I was worth more than money. Who better to do it than a gorgeous rich bastard who had more money than he could count?
“Miss Tu—Emmeline? Are you all right?” Right, yeah, he was still staring at me. “You zoned out again.”
“I’m sorry, I have a lot of work stuff on my mind.” Not strictly a lie. I’d noticed a few miscalculations in Henry’s budget that were playing on my mind but he wouldn’t let me add to my workload. It at least provided me with a cover story for my distractedness.
“Let’s forget work.” Calloway strode towards me, movements confident and smooth as ever, and held out a hand. “Let’s forget about everything.”
The meal was delicious. I ordered ginger duck and he ordered lobster, and we picked at each others meals across the table while we traded small talk. I wasn’t surprised to find out that he’d graduated from an Ivy League school and majored in business. He was as white collared as they came but somehow it didn’t put me off like it might have done a few months before.
The more we talked, the more it felt like I’d known him forever. We weren’t alike as one might have hoped but we had a good level of tolerance for each others different tastes and preferences. He liked the dimly lit basement level bars that roped in gloomy poets to read their work from a spotlit stool on a raised wooden stage while I preferred the razzle-dazzle burlesque shows full of glitter and cheeky giggles. We vowed to educate each other.
He was too damn charming. He smiled while he talked to me, all the tension he’d arrived with gradually ebbing away by the minute, and I found myself smiling back, making small flirtatious movements I consciously tried to stop in their tracks. While taking him home would have been a nice conclusion to the evening, it wasn’t my motive. I owed him more than he could understand.
“So what happened with Blaze?”
I froze midway through a spoonful of green tea sorbet and swallowed hard. Why did everyone have to know about it?
Calloway shook his head and smiled, picking up our bottle of wine to top up my glass. “I’m sorry, I don’t mean to pry but the man cock-blocked me. I’m only interested if it affects whether I have a shot with you or not.”
My hand rose to my face, partially to flap away the brain-freeze but mostly to cover my smirk over the fact that he’d vocalised an interest. “It was complicated—” Understatement of the century... “—but no, it doesn’t.”
“So I have a shot?”
“At a very easy target. Oh! ...Uh...” My head dipped protectively to hide my flaming face and I took a sly glance over my shoulder. It had been a surprise and a disappointment that Sophie seemed to have disappeared as soon as Calloway arrived. I would have appreciated the female solidarity. “But out of interest, how do you know?”
“I’m a New Yorker. You learn to sense danger everywhere and pick your battles.” With a cheeky grin, he shook his head again. “I Googled you, Emmeline.”
“This afternoon?” God. The world knew me as Emmeline Tudor now instead of Emmeline White. I could only imagine what the newstands looked like in London. The notion made me pale.
“Yes, I Googled you again this afternoon.” Ignoring my frown, Calloway leaned over the table to wipe away a stray glob of sorbet from the corner of my mouth with his thumb. Any other time, I might have given him an endearing nip. “We parted without trading names and backtracking seemed untoward. But I recognised your friend. And now I know that he hadn’t tried to pick you up on the street like he claimed.”
Not that you hadn’t been practically begging for him to do just that in an alley.
“I am sorry about that day.” I looked down at my hands and found them worrying a napkin. “I feel like I misled you.”
“I seem to remember him doing most of the talking.” Calloway raised a hand to dismiss my defence and he had a point. Why was I trying to take the blame away from Blaze when he’d roughed me up and shoved me out into the street when I was already feeling ruffled? My collapsing in front of Calloway hadn’t been intentional. “You made my day quite memorable. Though you are quite a different woman now.”
“The hair?”
He pursed his lips. “All of you. You seem a little more comfortable in your own skin.”
“I do?” With a sly look downwards, I mused over his notion. I suppose I had been far less concerned with my weight and had been a lot more enthusiastic with my clothing decisions. In no way was I blaming myself for the disaster that befell Blaze and I. No reckless actions to fill the void, unless you included this particular dinner date...
With an oddly self-satisfied nod of agreement, I dug out another spoon of sorbet. Voices or not, this had to be what you could call progress.
Calloway steepled his fingers under his chin and watched me intently as I finished eating. He’d chosen to pass on dessert, choosing coffee instead which struck me as a little odd at nine o’clock. It was hard not to jump to conclusions over why he might want a caffeine kick...
“I think you dumped him.” I stilled again with the last spoonful in my mouth. Cal smiled at me almost bashfully to excuse himself. Bashful Calloway—Heaven help me... “I’m sorry to keep going on, but I’m fascinated. I don’t think even he is foolish enough to take a beautiful woman like you for granted.” That shy smile turned wolfish when I blushed. “So I think you dumped him and it must have been something huge because you’re still wearing his ring.”
Fuck. It hadn’t even occurred to me to take it off, but now he’d brought it up, was it weird of me to wear it on a date, if at all? Would he understand my reason why?
“He didn’t really propose as such, it was... a promise.” Who was I kidding? Of course he wouldn’t get it but I really didn’t want to take it off. It meant too much to me.
Because you want it to still mean something. When you drag your sorry backside home, you want to think that whatever he’s doing, Blaze will drop everything for you because you’re still wearing it.
God, I hated it when she verbalised what I didn’t want to think about. Tucking my left hand out of view under the table to rest on my knee, I took a quick, quiet breath and tried to trivialise the subject. “So what do you think he did?” At least I had the comfort of knowing that apparently nobody had gone to the press with the reason for our split.
Apparently unfazed, Calloway took the bill from the server who approached the table and slipped his credit card into the black leather book without even looking at it. Why the hell hadn’t I thought of that during my business lunches? “I don’t think he cheated on you. I don’t think he would have laid an ill finger on you.” He looked up at me and squinted. “I think... I think he asked too much of you.”
Well, he might not be Blaze, but he’s perceptive, I’ll give you that.
“Am I right?”
“You are. As much as I cared for him there were just commitments I couldn’t make.” Commitments to becoming selfish and callous.
You think this isn’t selfish? Being here is about your wants and needs. It’s all about doing whatever kids you into making you feel better when you’ve left everyone else behind. You broke more than one heart when you left.
“Emmeline, you look beat.” I blinked up at Calloway and nodded. Yes, I still couldn’t sleep for all the nightmares and torturous flashes of Blaze’s face. Fatigue had to be playing a part in my hallucination returning. “I have a breakfast meeting to prepare for myself. Let me call you a car.”
If I was selfish, I wouldn’t have gone home alone.
You think?
I didn’t even try to sleep that night and opted to work at home the next morning. Strictly speaking, I didn’t have an office but the director’s office in The Seymour was always at my disposal. At some point I would use it but at that precise time, I wanted nothing more than to drop off the planet for a day.
Not an option anymore, though. Is it? You made yourself indispensable by going against your morals; why couldn’t you just do that for Blaze?
But obviously, I couldn’t escape from my own mind. It was times like these that I was glad for the city ruckus trying to contend with the noise inside my head, making a desperate attempt to drown it out.
At noon, I took my usual trip over to Canal Street for lunch, leaving my phone at home. Rock music blared into my ears through my headphones on the subway, and it wasn’t until I’d arrived in Chinatown that I realised I’d gone there just out of habit. Already, I was falling into a daily routine and acting by rote.
You can’t deny who you are inside by moving across the planet.
Yes I could. Instead of dropping in to see Sophie, I walked the extra few minutes down into Little Italy, found a quiet bistro and drummed my fingers across the clean white tablecloth while I waited for my meal to arrive. I could be spontaneous. I could act without forethought and be happy. My days didn’t need to be structured and rigid like they used to be. I was not dependant on routine to feel comfortable. Not anymore.
Though I did feel at a loss without my laptop or phone. With nothing but mandolin music to occupy my attention, my mind started slipping back to London, where I’d left everyone behind. I hadn’t really accepted how lonely I was until I’d cut myself off for an hour and realised that, even if I could call someone, I had nobody to call. I knew my friends well enough to be sure that they’d be resentful of the mess I’d left behind and not especially pleased to hear from me just because I was a little bored. Ivy would just want to talk about my date and rehash all the reasons why I shouldn’t be pursuing romance. Henry and I didn’t have the kind of relationship where we could just talk and I swore that I’d never speak to my sister again.
Where did that leave me?
“Emmeline?” I looked up from my milkshake with the straw still in my mouth, just to release it with a ‘pop’. Calloway Ryan filled the doorway directly ahead of me, dressed in a sinfully well fitting runner’s vest and cropped khakis that showed off well-toned calf muscles. A sheen of sweat covered his entire body and the darkened patches of fabric around his arms and chest assured me that this was a man who worked at looking amazing.
Clambering to my feet, I stood in silence while he ordered a glass of iced water and took the other s
eat at my table, not once taking his stunning icy blue eyes off me. Honestly, I’d thought that my despondence the night before would have put him off me, but he’d obviously taken a deliberate detour inside the restaurant to talk to me. I was secretly kind of glad he had but despite the fact he was in his gym kit, I felt horribly under-dressed in torn skinny jeans, high-tops and a chequered shirt.
“Cal. You look...” He blinked at me expectantly, a smirk hitting the corners of his lips as I sat again. He looked fucking beautiful, but there was no way I’d say that out loud. “You look... I’m a woman, you see what I’m getting at here. Pick an adjective—any adjective.”
Laughing, Calloway took his water from the waiter and swept at the sweat lingering on his brow. Some of his hair was plastered to his forehead, and the rest messily pushed back, falling in dishevelled spikes at the back of his head. Why the hell was that so sexy? “I’ve been trying to call you. I was worried that you were avoiding me.” Oh. Definitely still interested, then.
“I’m sorry, I’m taking a ‘me’ day. I feel kind of groggy.”
“That’ll be the humidity. The storm is still lingering, I can smell it.” I held in a smile. For years, I’d told people I could ‘smell’ approaching thunderstorms and everyone thought I was mad. It pleased me to finally find someone who understood—someone receptive to that sulphuric tang and moody atmosphere.