Yanked (Frenched #1.5)

by Melanie Harlow

  A month.

  I scowled.

  Yeah, that was pretty fucking crazy.

  Flopping onto my side, I punched my pillow to fluff it up, but punching something felt so good, I kept doing it. So what if it’s crazy? I thought getting on that plane to Paris was crazy too, but it brought me to Lucas, didn’t it? Maybe I like crazy. Maybe crazy suits me. Maybe—

  I froze, my fist in the air.

  Maybe I could get on a plane this weekend after all. Maybe I could go to New York, surprise Lucas, and make him realize that we were perfect for each other and it was time to decide where we were headed. (I could get those eight inches I wanted, too.)

  Crazy? Probably.

  But it sure as hell was spontaneous. And Lucas liked spontaneity the way I liked lists.

  So right after we have crazy, spontaneous I-Can’t-Believe-You’re-Here sex on the living room floor, maybe we’ll make a list of pros and cons about living in New York, and then one for Detroit.

  Sex and lists.

  My panties were wet already.

  “What’s with you?” Coco asked as soon as our prospective client was out of earshot. We were seated next to each other at a booth in our favorite spot for breakfast before work. Normally the smell of strong coffee and fresh-baked cinnamon rolls made me drool, but I had no appetite this morning.

  I raised my eyebrows and picked up my coffee cup, which was still nearly full. “Nothing. Why do you ask?”

  She rolled her eyes. “Because I know you. And all through that meeting you kept asking Karen White to repeat herself, or you’d say things that had just been said a few minutes before. You stopped taking notes halfway through the meeting and doodled question marks instead, and you called her Sharon when you said goodbye. None of this is like you.” She put her hand on my forehead. “Are you feeling OK?”

  “God, I called her Sharon?” I cringed, setting my cup down without drinking from it. “Shit.”

  “Yes.” She dropped her hand. “But luckily, I don’t think she cared. Our ideas impressed her enough to verbally commit to hiring us. We just have to send a contract over to her office this afternoon with an estimate and some details. I’ll call over to the DAC and see if her first choice of dates is free. Maybe you can check on a band?”

  “Of course,” I promised. Underneath the sea of question marks in my notebook—I much preferred handwritten notes to typed—I jotted a reminder to call the talent agency. I wanted to please this client, I really did. Karen White was special events coordinator for a breast cancer awareness and research foundation. Their annual fundraiser was quite a coup for Devine Events, the event planning business Coco and I ran together. Most of our clients were brides, but I knew this would lead to more high-profile society events if Karen was pleased. She’d contacted us after attending a retro-inspired wedding we’d done last summer, and it had been Coco’s idea to pitch a Roaring Twenties/Great Gatsby theme for the fundraiser. She’d nailed the pitch, and Karen had loved it.

  But Coco was right—I was totally distracted, unable to concentrate on the meeting at all. I didn’t want to think about bands and catering, centerpieces and silent auction setup. I wanted to think about living with Lucas. About coffee together every morning and TV on the couch at night. About sharing closet space and bathroom drawers and a bar of soap in the shower.

  Mmm, the shower…

  “Mia!” Coco was totally exasperated. “What the hell? You’re not listening to a word I’m saying!” Her expression grew concerned, and she lowered her voice to a whisper. “Oh, God. You’re not pregnant, are you?”

  “What? No!” That snapped me out of it. “I’m not pregnant, I’m just distracted.” I reached into my purse and pulled out my wallet, removing some cash to pay the tab. “Come on, let’s go back to the office. I’ll tell you all about it.”

  We left the money on the table and bundled up our coats against the February chill. It had been a freezing cold, snowy winter, and I was longing for the day when I could wear shoes to work, not boots. We slogged through the slush to the parking lot, and I remembered Lucas’s suggestion that we fly to Miami so I could feel warm sand under my feet. Why the fuck had I said no? Shivering in the teeth-rattling cold, I opened the passenger door and slid into Coco’s bright red Volkswagen Beetle.

  “So? Spill.” Coco turned the key in the ignition and the engine came to life.

  “I will. Turn on the seat warmers. I like how your car makes my ass hot.”

  She grinned and adjusted a knob on the dash. “Done. Your buns will be toasted in a moment.”

  “Thank you. OK, so last night, I was on the phone with Lucas,” I began as she backed up, “and—“

  “More phone sex?” Her eyebrows disappeared beneath her Bettie Page bangs. “Do tell.” Coco was endlessly fascinated by my sex life, especially since she’d sworn off sex herself. She’d dated a string of assholes the past few years, and said she was tired of good sex with bad boys.

  “If you must know, yes, but that’s not what has me distracted. After we—“ I flapped a hand in the air—“you know, finished that part, he said—“

  “Toy or no toy?”

  “Jesus, Coco. You really need to get off the abstinence kick.”

  “I’m not on an abstinence kick.” She sounded almost offended. “I’m just waiting for someone worthy of all this.” She spanked her hip twice. “Now keep talking. And don’t skip the sexy parts.”

  I rolled my eyes. “Fine. No toy.” Lucas had sent me my first vibrator for my birthday last fall. (Don’t ask how I went twenty-eight years without one.) It was called the Gigi 2, but I preferred to call it the Lucas 10.

  He says I flatter him—I say I know what I feel.

  “But the important part of this story is not the sex,” I insisted as we drove through Brush Park, the historic neighborhood in Detroit where our office was located. “It’s what he said afterward.”

  She glanced at me. “What did he say?”

  “He said he wants to make me happy every day.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “I don’t know exactly, he didn’t explain it. But I wonder if it means he’s ready to make a more serious commitment.” I toyed with the strap of my computer bag. “Like maybe living together.”

  “Has he mentioned that before?” I could hear the surprise in her voice.

  “No,” I admitted. “But it’s been eight months. Don’t you think he might be ready to at least talk about it?”

  Coco shrugged as she pulled into the small parking lot beside the restored Victorian home that housed the Devine Events office. “Maybe. But it could also mean that he wants to make you happy every day with you here and him there.”

  I groaned. “You’re killing my buzz, Coco.”

  She turned off the engine. “Sorry. I just don’t want you to pin your hopes on something if it’s not gonna happen. I know how you get about these things.”

  That annoyed me a little. Would I forever be judged for my mistake with Tucker? Or criticized for wanting to find someone I could spend forever with? “I’m not…getting how I get, Coco. I’m not picking out china patterns or anything—but I love him, and I want to know if we have any kind of future together. A future that’s more than phone sex and occasional weekends.” My voice had risen in frustration, and Coco patted my leg.

  “OK, OK. Don’t get upset. I’m on your side here. And I like Lucas. If you want to talk to him about moving in together, then do it. What’s the worst that could happen?”

  “Um, he could freak the fuck out and run the other direction.”

  She shrugged. “Maybe. And that’s a risk you’ll have to take. But he could surprise you. Maybe he is ready to talk about it. It’s all in how you approach it, I think.” We gathered our things and Coco took my elbow as we made our way through the lot and down the icy sidewalk. “But I do have a question for you. Let’s say he agrees to move in with you. Let’s say it’s amazing and you fall even more madly in love. Then what? Is that going to be
enough for you? Or will you want that next commitment too?”

  I sighed. “I don’t know, honestly. I just know that I want more. And I feel like…if we move in together and it’s amazing, maybe he’d consider the other things.”

  “Just be careful you don’t approach it like you want him to change for you,” she said. “Men hate that. You have to make him think it was his idea, if you can.”

  “Right.” I nodded. I didn’t really want to change Lucas—I was crazy about him. I just wanted him to change his mind about spending forever with someone, namely me. That wasn’t the same thing, was it? “What’s the best way to bring it up, in your opinion?”

  “Hmmm.” She considered it as we climbed the cement steps to the front porch. “Tell me exactly how you left things the last time you talked about it.”

  I opened one of the glass-paned double doors and motioned for her to go in first. “We haven’t really talked about it at all since Paris. At that point we kind of just agreed to take things day by day and see where they went. But he did say anything was possible.”

  “Can you tell him you’re unhappy?” She looked at me over her shoulder as we ascended the wide, creaky staircase up to the second floor of the house, where we had a suite of rooms—an office for each of us and a meeting space between them.

  “Well, I’m not unhappy, exactly.” I stopped on the landing and considered the question. “But I could be happier. I think I could make him happier. But I also think he’ll be scared to even consider it because he’s been so anti-marriage for so long.”

  “Well, my first piece of advice is to avoid using the M word,” Coco said wryly as she opened the door to her office. “But you could say you’re unhappy about living so far apart, and the stuff about wanting more.”

  My stomach jumped, and I put a hand over it. “I think I have to, or it’ll drive me crazy. Are you OK if I take off this weekend? We have that wedding at the Yacht Club.”

  “You’re thinking this weekend?” Her eyes widened. “Wow. You mean business.”

  “Yeah, I know it’s a little sudden. But I feel like something is unresolved, like I need to know. I’ve gone eight months without making demands or asking questions about the future, and I guess at this point I’d like to ask him to think ahead a little. That’s fair, isn’t it?”

  Coco nodded. “I think it’s fair. Go for it.”

  I threw my arms around her in an attack hug, hampered by our bulky winter coats, computer bags and purses. “You’re the best. Thank you!”

  She laughed as she regained her balance. “You’re welcome. Good luck.”

  My phone was ringing as I let myself into my office, and I got busy quickly, booking a last-minute retirement party for March, a corporate event in July, and a wedding for October. I called Karen White and apologized for my inattentiveness this morning and finalized the details of her contract. I was just about to email it to her when Coco burst into my office, closed the door, and backed up against it, a look of sheer terror on her face. “Don’t leave me.”

  “What?” Taken aback, I gestured to the chair in front of my desk. “Come sit. What’s with you?”

  Chewing her lip again, she walked over and took a seat, crossing her legs, which looked even longer than usual today in a short black lace skirt and black stockings. I knew that underneath her skirt, those stockings were held up by garters because Coco thought tights and modern panty hose were the most abominable-looking things in the universe, and she refused to wear them. Her lingerie collection looked like she might have inherited it from Marilyn Monroe. Actually, so did much of her wardrobe.

  “I’m scared about this New York thing.”

  “Why?” I asked, closing my laptop. “You don’t think you can handle the wedding?”

  “No, it’s not that. But I was thinking, what if he realizes how amazing you are and decides yes, you should live together in New York. I’m scared I could never run this business without you, Mia. I was a history and English major, for fuck’s sake.”

  I rolled my eyes. “Don’t even. You know you’re crazy smart.”

  She shook her head. “You’re the brains behind this business.”

  “That’s so not true, Coco. I actually think you’re the more creative of the two of us. I’m good at details and organization, but you’ve got amazing vision and communication skills. I’m not planning on going anywhere at this point, but no matter what, I know you could run this business. You could always hire a new partner, too. Or just an accountant.”

  “But it wouldn’t be you. What if I couldn’t find someone I could work with as well? We complement each other so perfectly.”

  “That’s true, but that doesn’t mean you wouldn’t be able to find good help. And I’m not going to leave you high and dry.”

  She chewed her lip. “Promise?”

  “Promise. If that were even a consideration, I’d need to think about a lot of things, but our business is at the top of the list. I’ve put a lot of blood, sweat and tears into Devine Events. My name is on it. It was my dream to start something like this—and then you had the faith in me, in us, to invest your inheritance. I don’t take any of that lightly.”

  Coco shook her head. “It’s not the money. I’m just…scared.” She lifted her shoulders. “I’d feel so lost without you here.”

  “Erin would still be here.”

  “I know. And I love Erin. But she enjoys teaching. She’s not going to leave that to come work with me.”

  “No,” I said. “But she’ll be here for you when you need help. She loves when we rope her into working at our events.”

  That coaxed a rueful smile. “Right.”

  “Remember the time we made her dress up as Cinderella for that spoiled brat’s sixth birthday party at the country club because the talent agency screwed up the time?”

  The smiled widened. “Yeah. God, she was so mad at us.”

  “Well, serves her right for being born looking like a Disney princess.”

  Coco’s smile deepened, and she exhaled. “I’m sorry, Mia. I shouldn’t be in here burdening you with my worries. You need to make your own decision, I know that.”

  I shook my head. “There isn’t even a decision to make yet. Don’t jinx me here.”

  Coco stood up. “Ignore me, I’m just being selfish. And I have PMS. My first reaction was to panic at having to run this business by myself, but who knows? Maybe it would be good for me, just like learning to stop trying to map out every minute of your life has been good for you.”

  I arched one brow. “Trying to get rid of me?”

  She shrugged. “Yeah. Ten years of friendship is enough, I’d say.”

  Relieved, I opened my laptop again. “Drinks after work? I’ll text Erin and see if she’ll meet us.”

  “Sounds like a plan.”

  “Hey, I’m sending over the contract to Karen White right now. Why don’t you take the lead on this one? I’m here to help, but you could see how you do on your own.”

  She nodded, her smile happy if not entirely confident. “Sounds good to me.”

  As soon as she was gone, I emailed the contract, texted Erin, and hopped on kayak.com to check flights to New York.

  Fuck.

  Flying short notice was not cheap, and flying at all for me was akin to mild torture. Should I do it? I chewed on my bottom lip as I considered the possible outcomes.

  Shit That Could Happen in

  New York This Weekend

  1) He says no emphatically. Breaks up with me. I drink wine.

  2) He says maybe someday. Wants more time to think. I drink wine.

  3) He says yes whole-heartedly. We apartment hunt the next day. I drink wine.

  4) He says no. I blow him in spectacular fashion. He changes his mind. I drink wine.

  5) He says oh my God yes, I was just about to propose, however did you know, you sexy, brilliant, hilarious goddess of a woman, please be mine forever and wear this flawless Tiffany diamond ring as but a small token of my undying l
ove and commitment, let’s elope tomorrow! We have wild monkey sex. I drink wine.

  See? There’s wine no matter what. But my stomach would not settle down. The cursor hovered temptingly near the purchase button. I felt like I used to as a kid, standing on the high dive, looking at the pool below and daring myself to jump. It took me three summers of climbing up there, hemming and hawing, and descending the ladder in shame before I worked up enough courage to jump. And once I did it, it was so thrilling I was angry I’d waited so long.

  OK. On three.

  One. Two.

  Deep breath.

  Three.

  I jumped. I had a nonstop flight from Detroit Metro into LaGuardia departing in just over twenty-four hours, and even though the grin briefly morphed to grimace when I saw the total charged to my credit card, I brushed aside any doubts.

  This is the right thing. I feel it.

  My phone buzzed with a text from Erin.

  IDK about drinks tonight. I’m getting dick.

  I burst out laughing, screenshot it, and sent it to Coco. Erin’s typos and auto-correct fails were a running joke with us. I texted her back.

  Glad to hear it. It’s been a while.

  OMG! I hate this stupid new phone!

  I had to laugh at that. Erin was forever blaming her “new” phone, but she’d had it for months.

  Sorry to hear you’re sick. How about just a glass of wine for medicinal purposes?

  I guess I could. Or a cocktail.

  Great. Let’s meet at Sugar House. 6:00?

  OK. You twerked me into it.

  I was laughing so hard I could barely reply.

  You know how I love twerking.

  What? OMG how is that even a word in my phone?

  LOL See you at 6. I have news. <3

  #

  After a drink with the girls, I rushed home to start packing, still a little off balance by the whole idea of flying to New York on such short notice. It was just so unlike me! But that was part of the thrill too—Lucas would recognize that he was influencing me in all the right ways, and maybe he’d admit I’d had some influence on him too. Maybe he’d say he realized the value in talking about the future with me.