“No problem.”
When Paige was gone, Lauren sat with the cats. Sunday was purring hard as she rubbed against Lauren. Her thoughts, of course, drifted back toward Caleb.
She really liked him. Maybe issuing the ultimatum had been a mistake. They could have worked something out. Or if she’d given him the time he wanted, he might have come around. Because she felt happy when they were together, and there was always a little bit of magic in the air, and she wanted to spend more time with him, and…
Oh, shit, she was in love with him.
Well, okay, maybe it wasn’t love exactly, but she’d definitely developed stronger feelings than she’d been willing to acknowledge. She liked him. She really liked him.
She sighed. This was exactly what she had not wanted to happen. She was supposed to be focusing on herself, first of all, but the fact that she’d fallen in love or something like it with a grouchy veterinarian who wasn’t interested in a relationship seemed like exactly the wrong thing to do. And yet, she’d done it anyway, and then she’d told him to leave.
Because it was very likely he never would have come around. Because of some stupid ideas he had about commitment, he never would have wanted to be with her in any way except behind closed doors. And that was a good reason to break up with him, if “break up” was even the right term for ending something that hadn’t ever really started. They didn’t want the same things out of life, out of their relationship. They liked each other a lot, but Caleb didn’t care about her, not the way she cared about him. Otherwise, he would have fought for her. Right?
Or he didn’t think he was worthy of love, maybe. That moment a few nights ago when he’d mumbled he was fucked up, maybe that meant he’d taken the wrong lesson from his divorce. His ex-wife had hurt him. Maybe part of him thought he’d deserve that. But why?
Well, it wasn’t Lauren’s job to get to the bottom of that—a mental health professional would have been more qualified—but she also didn’t want to keep having the same fight. If he didn’t want to be with her, then fine. They wouldn’t be together.
Ugh, what a mess. Lauren leaned back in the chair a little and pet the cats that surrounded her, trying to take solace in the fact that many other things in her life were going very well.
But it was a truism of city life that the three most important things were career, housing, and love, and at any given time, one of those things would not work. Lauren couldn’t remember who had told her that—Evan, probably—but it had long been true for her. During the Derek years, she’d had a good apartment and a good boyfriend but a crappy job. And now, she had a job she loved and was good at and a great apartment she paid so little for it was practically a crime, but her love life was a mess. So this was all in order.
She grunted. Well, if things with Caleb wouldn’t work out, she could at least devote herself to the cats. She gently moved Sunday away and then stood up. “Which of you cats wants a treat?” As if they all understood English, they followed her like she was the pied piper toward the storage bin where the treats were kept.
Chapter 24
That Friday, Lauren, Evan, Paige, and Lindsay convened for end-of-the-week drinks at Pop.
“So,” said Lindsay, “a friend of mine is starting a website for Brooklyn pet owners and is trying to get me to work for her full time. Since you guys are the cat people, I figured I’d get your opinions.”
“Because web start-ups are always cash cows,” said Evan, “you’re of course going to turn her down.”
“I mean…yeah. I think so. But it might also be interesting. I like writing about food, but it might be refreshing to write about something else. Plus she wants some help with research and marketing.”
“I would never tell you not to go to work for a friend,” Paige said, “but that sounds a little sketchy. Does the website have income?”
“From ads, I assume.”
“How long has she been in business?”
“A few months.” Lindsay sighed. “That’s what’s giving me pause. I should probably stick with writing restaurant reviews for now. I don’t think my friend is making enough to pay me much. She has implied that the per-article fee could go up when she starts making money, but right now she wants me to work for a low fee and ‘exposure,’ and I can’t afford to work for that. At least restaurant reviews pay really well.”
“That’s something. Anything good coming up?” asked Evan.
Lindsay shrugged. “My boss at Dine Out NY wants me to go to that new hipster food court on Nevins and try all the offerings there.”
“Hipster food court?” said Lauren.
“Yeah. You know. It’s a fancy food court. Someone bought a store that used to be a laundromat and converted it into a big open space that looks like a warehouse, and there are a half-dozen food booths around the inside perimeter. And it’s not, like, normal food court food. No soft pretzels or fast food or any of that. If I remember correctly, there’s a ramen restaurant, a sushi place, a taqueria, a Filipino place, and a couple of other things.”
“Oh,” said Evan. “Is it the Filipino chain with the ramen burger? I can’t remember what it’s called. They have one over by my apartment.”
Lauren laughed. “I feel like I’m on a different planet. Ramen burger?”
“They make the bun out of ramen noodles, then instead of ground beef, the meat in the middle is pork belly, and there’s also some kind of secret sauce. It’s a sodium bomb with I’m sure, like, seven thousand calories, but it’s so good.”
“Anyway…” said Lindsay. “The food court just opened on Nevins near the intersection with Whitman Street, so I’ve been assigned to try one thing from each restaurant and write it up.”
“Uh, if you need any help with that, I’m your man,” said Evan.
“Noted.”
“Well, this makes me feel better about everything,” said Evan.
“What’s going on with you?” Lauren asked.
“Absolutely nothing, which is kind of the problem. I met a nice fellow at the library last week, of all places. We got to talking about our mutual love of this esoteric book I read last month. I thought it was going well. Then his girlfriend came by to pick him up.”
Everyone groaned.
“I’m sorry, honey,” Lauren said, patting his arm.
“And what about you, Lauren. You’re a few martinis into the evening. You feel up to sharing anything?”
Lauren wanted to talk about what happened, but she didn’t even know how to start. To stall, she said, “What do you mean?”
“You think you’re pulling a fast one over on old Evan, but let me tell you, things have been super weird between you and Caleb all week, and I want to know why. He referenced some conversation you had when he came by the other day, and I want to know what you talked about.”
“Wow,” said Paige. “That’s bossy of you.”
“You have to admit, you must be curious.”
Lauren sighed. Caleb was right, she was a little tipsy. There was just enough vodka in her system to make her think telling the truth was a good idea. “Okay, I’ll tell you everything, but don’t be mad.”
Evan crossed his arms over his chest, like he felt vindicated.
So she gave them the Reader’s Digest version: She and Caleb had been secretly sleeping with each other for nearly six weeks now, and they’d been spending a ton of free time together, Lauren thought they were finally getting somewhere and thought he’d be willing to go public with their relationship, but he’d balked, so she’d ended it.
“I’m so sorry for not telling you guys,” she concluded, “but I was trying to follow Caleb’s wishes and he wasn’t ready for us to go public.”
Evan, Paige, and Lindsay were silent. Evan and Paige glanced at each other.
“Well, that wasn’t what I expected,” Evan said.
“Are you mad?”
�
��No, of course not,” said Paige. “It’s up to you what you feel comfortable telling your friends.”
“I mean, I’m a little mad,” said Evan. “We usually share these kinds of things.”
“Just because you’re an oversharer doesn’t mean Lauren has to be,” said Lindsay.
“Fine. I’ll forgive you, Lauren, if you buy the next round.”
Lauren laughed, despite feeling tense. “All right. But the thing is, I wonder if I made a mistake.”
“In what way?” asked Evan.
“I mean, I really like him. I think I was most of the way toward falling in love with him. And I gave him an ultimatum, which is so unlike me. But I needed him to make a decision about whether we were going to be together for real or not. I guess I got my answer.”
“Yeah,” said Paige.
“But I keep wondering if we could have worked things out if I’d just given him more time, or if I had been more understanding. I mean, he did just get divorced. Like, maybe we would have been something really great if I hadn’t pushed him away.”
Everyone appeared to think on that for a moment.
“No,” said Paige. “He doesn’t deserve you.”
Lauren sighed. “Really?”
“If he can’t see how amazing you are, then he’s a fool, and you should not be with a fool.”
“I agree,” said Lindsay. “It sounds like he was never going to commit. You can’t wait around forever for him to figure things out. You were together for all those weeks. Shit or get off the pot, man.”
Lauren laughed. “Gross, but thanks?”
Evan looked at them all, his head tilted as if he was thinking hard.
“Well?” Lauren asked.
“I don’t want to say I told you so, but… I did tell you so. All those times we saw you fighting, you were really fighting and then finding a closet to fuck in, weren’t you?”
Lauren felt heat flood her face. “Maybe.”
“I don’t need details. This just goes to prove my larger theory that the two of you were basically meant for each other.”
“This is not helpful, Evan. You want me to go back to him?”
“No. Not at all. He’s an idiot if he can’t see that you’re the right woman for him. But maybe this is an absence-makes-the-heart-grow-fonder thing. In fact, I hereby predict our dear Caleb will realize how dumb he was to let you go and come back with some big romantic gesture, and you, my dear, will swoon, and then marry him so hard, and I will expect my ten dollars paid in cash.”
“Evan, that’s insane.” Lauren didn’t see Caleb coming around.
Because keeping his distance would have been the easy thing. Relationships were hard. They took effort and commitment and time. They were wonderful, too, or Lauren wouldn’t be mourning the (non-)relationship with Caleb as much as she was, but likely Caleb was guilty of the same thing. It was easier not to get involved, not to put oneself out there, not to risk anything.
Caleb was right. Commitment was a risk. But it was a risk that had the potential to pay off in a wonderful way. Lauren was willing to take that risk, but if Caleb wasn’t, they were at an impasse.
“So what do you think I should do?” Lauren asked.
“Nothing,” the other three said in unison.
“Even you, Ev? You think I should do nothing.”
“Wait for him to come to you. Which he totally will. Because destiny.”
“You’re so full of shit,” said Lindsay. “The world doesn’t work that way.”
“All right. I want ten bucks from you when I’m right, too.”
Paige rolled her eyes. “How are you doing?” she asked Lauren, putting a comforting hand on Lauren’s arm.
“I’m all right. Sad that it’s over. More time to focus on the café, though.”
“It’s not over,” said Evan.
“We’re definitely going to need more drinks,” said Lindsay as she flagged down a waitress.
***
Caleb’s thoughts unraveled in the shower.
He did his best thinking there, probably because there weren’t many distractions and he could autopilot through the process.
So after his morning run, he stood under the spray and let his mind wander. At first, he was just planning his day. His shift today would end at five, and after that, maybe he could grab Lauren and get dinner somewhere…
Well, no, he couldn’t do that.
And he was doing the overnight the following day, so he should probably just come home and rest in preparation.
Why did he want to see Lauren so much anyway? They weren’t together anymore. He’d made the right decision to end things because he couldn’t do a commitment.
Maybe there was someone else he could go out for drinks with tonight. Maybe Rachel would want to…or whichever other vet was working today…
But he hadn’t really reached out to this community much, had he? Because the block of Whitman Street that held the vet clinic was its own ecosystem, in a way. Most of the vets seemed to know everyone on the block. The Cat Café was doing collaborative events with the yarn store and the bookstore. Lauren did her laundry at the big laundromat up the block and he’d spotted Paige going in and out of the high-end thrift store quite a bit. Caleb got lunch at the corner bodega all the time because the deli counter made a pretty solid sandwich.
He was friendly with the other vets, but they didn’t socialize much outside of work. He could probably invite Doug or Olivia for a post-work drink as an overture—Lauren liked that bar Pop, right?—and he could develop those friendships.
But the person he most wanted to spend more time with was Lauren.
He sighed and shampooed his hair.
He had some regrets. Lauren really hadn’t been asking him for more than just the opportunity to explore where their relationship went. He didn’t trust his own judgment where romance was concerned, but he did really like Lauren. She was beautiful and passionate and she cared a lot about all those cats.
What did his gut tell him?
As he got out of the shower, he realized he wanted Lauren. He could fall in love with Lauren.
And wasn’t that a kick in the teeth? All these weeks of trying to keep her at arm’s length, and at some point, she’d worked her way under his skin, to the point where he couldn’t stop thinking about her, couldn’t stop imagining what their next encounter might be like. She was on his brain all through his morning run, through the shower, and now as he got dressed. She was always on his mind.
He was an idiot.
As he walked to work that morning with Hank, he tried to think of what to do. Let her go? Take the fact that he’d been so reluctant to say yes as a sign he wasn’t ready for a relationship and he’d made the right decision? Or should he try to fight for her?
He knew better than to think he could just walk up to her and say he’d changed his mind, though. Or could he?
She was, in fact, standing outside the Cat Café when he got to Whitman Street. She didn’t see him at first because she was intently focused on her phone. But Hank started barking as soon as he saw her, and she looked up.
“Oh. Hi,” she said.
“Hi. How are you?”
“I’ve been better.” She focused back on her phone and tapped at it angrily a couple of times.
“So, uh…” he tried.
“Sorry, I’m dealing with a pastry crisis right now. One of our vendors is super late with their delivery and we’re not going to have anything to feed people soon if I can’t track them down. My contact says the delivery guy left twenty minutes ago, which is clearly a lie, because the bakery is only a ten-minute drive, tops.”
“All right. Good luck.”
Caleb shifted toward the door to the vet clinic. Lauren brought her phone to her ear as he slipped through the door.
He couldn’t te
ll if she’d been short with him because she didn’t want to see him or because of the pastry crisis, so he decided to drop by the Cat Café on his lunch break to clear the air. It was probably the wrong thing to do; he’d rarely stopped by the café when they’d actually been seeing each other.
But he couldn’t help himself.
She was standing near the counter, talking to Monique, both of them all smiles. Apparently the pastry crisis had been solved. But Lauren frowned when she saw Caleb.
“Hi,” he said. “Uh, regular coffee?”
“Sure,” said Monique, going into action and grabbing a cup.
“What are you doing here?” Lauren asked.
“Getting a cup of coffee. And saying hello. You were a little preoccupied when I walked by this morning, so I just wanted to make sure you were okay.”
“I’m fine.” Lauren’s tone was short and direct.
“Two dollars,” said Monique, placing his coffee on the counter.
The pastry display was pretty stark, with only a single plain bagel and a couple of cookies.
“I’ll take that last bagel. Toasted with cream cheese.”
“Sure. That’s another two-seventy-five.”
“No problem.” Caleb pulled a five from his wallet. The whole time he moved, Lauren stared at him like he’d grown a tail. While Monique dropped his bagel into the toaster, Caleb turned to Lauren and said, “Did your pastry delivery arrive?”
“Yeah. Later than I would have liked, but as you can see, we sold out.”
“Glad that worked out.”
“Who are you?” Lauren asked. “Do you want something?”
“No, I just came by because it’s my lunch break. I’m trying to be sociable.”
“But…why?”
So it wouldn’t be easy to slip back into her life. She was wary of him, with good reason.
“Can we be friends, at least?” he asked.
Lauren glanced at Monique, who was now smearing cream cheese on Caleb’s bagel. “I don’t know,” she said softly. “Probably not.”
Well, that was an answer. If Caleb wanted to be with Lauren, he’d have to undo some of the damage he’d done. If that was what he wanted.
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