City of Yes (A Novella)

by M. J. Pullen

  “I’m fine,” she said. “Just not sure whether gin goes with this outfit. It’s more of a vodka martini look.”

  He untied the flannel and handed it to her. “Put this on.”

  When she started to object, he cut her off. “You know me. I’m warm-blooded. Besides,” he glanced down at her breasts, “as a gentleman, I can’t in good conscience let you walk around in a wet, white blouse. As much as I personally might be enjoying it.”

  Mortified, she snatched the shirt from him and turned around to pull it on.

  “Come on, Lotta,” he scolded. “You’re smarter than that. Putting it on over your shirt isn’t going to help. It’ll just press the cold moisture against you. Take the other one off first, city girl.”

  “I can’t take my shirt off out here!”

  Jared made a show of looking around at the deserted alleyway. “I think you’re okay. I’ll spot for you.”

  She glared, embarrassed to admit that she didn’t want to change in front of him, either. He raised a sandy eyebrow and grinned at her. That damn dimple again. “I think we both know I’ve seen you a whole lot more naked than that.”

  “Skinny-dipping ten years ago doesn’t count.”

  “Oh, it counts,” he leered playfully. “But if it bothers you, go behind the dumpster.”

  “‘Go behind the dumpster?’ You tech tycoons really know how to show a girl a good time.”

  “Only the best for you, babe.” He turned his back. “Besides, this is your tour of the city. You’re supposed to show me a good time.” Charlotte sighed and changed as quickly as possible, hoping the bouncers didn’t throw out any more budding cinematographers while she was doing it.

  “That’s not our deal, you know,” she said as she emerged, tying the corners of Jared’s shirt into knots at her waist. “I’ve been showing you the proposal tour of San Francisco, not my personal tour… What’s wrong?”

  He was staring, mouth slightly open, at her handiwork on his shirt. It hadn’t occurred to her until now that he might not appreciate her tying little knots in it. “The wrinkles will come out in the dryer,” she offered. “Unless you want it back now?”

  “Keep it.” He shook his head. “It looks way better on you than on me. Way better.”

  Something crackled in the damp night air between them, and Charlotte fidgeted with her necklace, wondering whether she should have gone up one more button. Jared reached for her hand and she gave it to him, cautiously. “Are you ready to call it a night?” she asked tentatively.

  “Are you kidding me?” His face brightened and the tension between them evaporated. “I’m ready for the Real Charlotte Bates Tour of San Francisco.”

  “But you haven’t picked a proposal site yet,” she objected, as he led her out to the street where a line of cabs waited. “Brianna is going to be back the day after tomorrow.”

  Jared looked at his watch. “It’s 11:00 at night. I think you can safely go off-duty. I’ll put in a good word for you at Perfect Proposals.” He opened a cab door and waved her in with a challenging grin. “Unless you’re too tired to hang with an old friend who’s still on Central time?”

  Challenge accepted.

  Charlotte climbed in the cab. “Taylor and Eddy, please.”

  “This should be interesting,” Jared said. “Isn’t that the Tenderloin?”

  “Look who’s been studying the map of San Francisco,” she teased, looking him up and down. “You don’t have your internet millions on you right now, do you?”

  “It’s not millions,” he corrected.

  “Well. Don’t worry, I’ll protect you.”

  His expression melted into a grin. “I’ve missed you, Lotta Love.”

  “Me, too.”

  For the next few blocks, the city went by in the quality of silence known only by very old friends.

  Charlotte’s favorite spot didn’t look like much from the outside—a matte black cement wall with “PIANO BAR” written in all-caps red paint. The entry door was the same solid color, no windows to give passersby a glimpse of what might be happening inside.

  Jared kicked aside the bone of a chicken wing on the sidewalk, his face carefully neutral. “Not that I don’t trust you,” he said cautiously. “But if we go in there and it’s a bunch of Mafia guys playing poker…”

  Reckless, she turned to meet his challenge just in front of the door. “What? What will you do?”

  “I’ll adjust my internal badass rating for Charlotte Bates, for one thing.” He stepped forward, almost touching her forehead with his. “And, I might just have to kiss you.”

  She held his gaze, covering the squirmy feeling in her stomach with bravado. “Good thing that’s not going to happen.”

  He inched closer to her, his mouth so close she could feel his breath against her skin. “Yeah. A really good thing. Whew. Shall we go in?”

  Jared held the door, and Charlotte made a beeline for the bar, weaving through the crowd and dragging him behind her. “Hey, Tina,” she greeted her favorite bartender. “Two double-bourbons, rocks. Four Roses if you have it.”

  “Always.” Tina extended a tattooed hand to Jared. “Who’s your hot friend?”

  “Jared, meet Tina.”

  “You must be something special.” Tina shook his hand. “Charlie never brings men here.”

  “He’s not a man,” Charlotte corrected. “I mean, not like that. He’s a friend from college.”

  “And now totally emasculated.” Jared threw a congenial arm around Charlotte. “Better make mine a triple.”

  Tina smirked and poured their drinks. There was a three-piece blues band playing at the other end of the room, and people filled the dozen or so bistro tables around the stage. They found a spot against the wall and sipped their drinks.

  “She called you Charlie,” Jared said between songs. “You hate that.”

  Charlotte shrugged. “It’s better than Lotta Love.”

  “Nothing is better than Lotta Love.”

  She rolled her eyes and faced away from him, swinging her hips to the music, which was a jazzy, bluesy mix. As the band warmed to their set, the crowd filled in and the lights lowered around the stage. After a few moments, she felt Jared’s hand light on her waist as she danced. She decided to leave it, for now. They were two old friends and the music was good and the bourbon was making her heady and warm.

  Everything was fine. She let the ragged wail of the electric guitar roll over her in warm waves of contentment. Let her mind and body drift into the music.

  The band wrapped up just after midnight, and Charlotte led Jared toward the back right of the music hall, where there were two small theaters branching off the end of a short hallway.

  “This is much better than your first nightclub attempt, I have to say,” he said.

  “Sorry about that,” she said. “I don’t usually take clients somewhere I’ve never vetted personally. It’s just that it was so highly rated and you seem to be looking for something unusual, and you said Brianna liked trendy places…” She was rambling.

  “Ease up.” Jared squeezed her hand. “I’m just giving you crap, Lotta.”

  They got to the doorways that led to the theaters. The one on the right could seat about a hundred people, but there were at least twice that many in there now, milling around and chatting, gearing up for the next show. She gestured at the packed auditorium. “On weekends, they rotate between the larger theater and the main hall, where we just were, every hour for most of the night. You can get here at seven and see five or six different music acts before you get back in a cab.”

  “Like a mini-festival under one roof,” Jared said, impressed. “This kind of thing would crush it in Austin.”

  “We can’t let Austin have all the good ideas,” Charlotte said, teasing. “They already have you.”

  “For now,” he said. “I don�
��t know what will happen, after… Bree and I…we haven’t talked about…”

  “This smaller theater isn’t used for music as much,” she interrupted, leading him into the quieter space to the left. It had about thirty seats, and the walls were draped with maroon velvet curtains. The house lights were low, the small stage lighted only by a single floor lamp. A few patrons sat scattered in the seats, eating baskets of bar food and murmuring to one another. “They do open mic poetry here on Wednesdays, and occasional private parties or really small acts.”

  “Now this is more like it,” Jared said. “Why didn’t you suggest this for a proposal? It’s perfect.”

  “No. This is my place. You can’t use it for…” Charlotte sounded mean and selfish, like a kid who didn’t want someone else in her treehouse.

  “Lotta, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean—”

  “It’s just…this is my sanctuary. I wouldn’t want this place to feel like work.”

  They were interrupted by a guy in a black PIANO BAR t-shirt, who walked past them with a tray, calling out, “Charlie! Charlie?”

  “Do you mean Charlotte?”

  The guy turned, lowering the tray to reveal a giant basket of the house specialty curly fries and two bourbons on the rocks. “Maybe? I’m new, sorry.” He looked at the ticket. “And are you ‘Man who’s not really a man’ or something?”

  Jared laughed. “That’s me.”

  Relieved, the kid handed Jared the basket of fries and one of the bourbons, giving the other to Charlotte. “These are on the house. Tina asked if you would turn off the lights in Stage Two when the show starts next door.”

  “Sure.” Charlotte looked over at the bar. Tina gave her a wave, her ringed lip curling in a half smile. “Shall we?”

  They carried the fries and drinks into the theater, where Jared bypassed the smattering of empty seats and hopped onto the little stage, sitting cross-legged on an X made with duct tape. He munched curly fries and looked around the setting with his wide, light-hazel eyes. Charlotte loved that about Jared: the innocent, exploring way he took things in—never judging, never cynical. She imagined that even in very old age he would still have the heart of a seven-year-old boy, finding the world.

  Did Brianna appreciate this about him? Was she up for anything, ready to follow Jared on every adventure? Was she everything Charlotte hadn’t been when she’d had the chance?

  “I always regretted not staying in touch with you after college,” she blurted.

  “It happens.” He lifted the world’s longest curly fry out of the basket and stared at it in delighted awe. “This is a hell of a curly fry. Want it?”

  “Go ahead, I insist. You’re a guest in my city.”

  “I was hoping you’d say that.” He tilted his head back and lowered the fry into his mouth happily. People were beginning to filter out of the small theater to walk next door. Charlotte heard music start on the other side of the wall, so she turned out the house lights and closed the door behind the last stragglers before she returned to the stage.

  “Tina doesn’t like people sneaking off in here during the show.”

  Jared cast his eyes around at the warm glow of the single lamp. “I can see why—it’s a pretty romantic setting. In case you decide to compromise your integrity and use it for a proposal one day.”

  “Never,” Charlotte said. “This club is my spot, the only place in the city I can go and not think of someone else’s special moment.”

  “It’s a weird job you have,” he said.

  “Yep. But it pays the bills, for now.”

  A speaker at the back of the house came on, and the funky music from next door began piping into their deserted theater. Charlotte leaned her head against Jared’s shoulder, and they sat in silence as he finished the curly fries.

  “I wasn’t good at keeping up with anyone,” he said eventually. “After college. Sort of lost myself to the trails for a couple of years there.”

  “And it paid off,” she said, thinking how easy it would be to change the subject now, to talk about the success of PathFinder rather than the lump in her throat. “But…you heard that Boyd and I split?”

  You heard, but didn’t call.

  “Yeah.” He stared at the stage floor. “My younger sister is still friends with his sister. I talked to her a lot from the road. I was in Yellowstone that summer, working as a dishwasher at the park restaurant, hiking on my off days…”

  “Spending time with all the cute hiker girls?” She was trying, and failing, to lighten the mood.

  He stiffened. “No reason not to.”

  “Of course.” Charlotte pushed herself off his shoulder and looked down at her bourbon, swirling the amber liquid so that it coated the sides of the glass. She had no right to know what he’d been doing with his time or who he’d been seeing. She was the one who turned him down graduation night, not the other way around.

  “I did think about calling you,” he said softly. “I knew you’d never be able to find me, so if I wanted to talk to you I’d have to reach out.”

  “Or, you know, just get married in San Francisco.”

  He laughed. “Apparently. But I spent that whole first year thinking long and hard about what you said graduation night, about how you couldn’t see yourself leaving Boyd to be with someone with no plan, no ambition. And you were right. You deserved more than what I had to offer.”

  Charlotte cringed to hear her own awful words again after all these years. Jared’s confession had come out of the blue, at a time when everything in her life seemed off-balance. She’d said so many things that night that she regretted. “Jared, I was wrong.” She put a hand on his arm. “I was a twenty-two-year-old idiot who thought I could plan every moment of my life. I’d just found out my dad had cancer, and I had no idea my reliable, safe boyfriend was busy screwing my hairdresser.”

  “I’m sorry about your dad. And the hairdresser.” He took her hand. “Even not knowing that stuff, I was an idiot. It was completely unfair, cornering you like that, putting you on the spot. I mean, what could be less romantic than getting drunk and telling your best friend you’re in love with her in her roommate’s bedroom, while her boyfriend and all your families are having a party downstairs?”

  “It was romantic, actually,” she admitted. “The things you said…that you thought I was the most beautiful woman you’d ever known, that you loved the way I challenged you to be better.”

  “All true.” He picked out a tendril of her hair that had escaped her hasty ponytail and wrapped it around his finger. “Still true, in fact.”

  He leaned closer and hesitated, searching her eyes. “You really should keep my shirt.” He tugged on the collar, his voice so low it was almost a growl.

  Charlotte held her breath, scared to move, thinking of the hallway at Club YOLO. But this time she wasn’t wrong. He leaned in, and she melted into the kiss she’d passed up seven years earlier. Jared put a hand behind her head and pulled her closer. He tasted like bourbon and curly fries and something she’d never known she was missing. He tasted like home.

  “Oops!” came a voice from the other side of the room, bringing light and crowd noise with it. “You do know this locks from the inside, right?”

  Charlotte pulled away from Jared and stood up, so suddenly that her head spun. Tina was silhouetted in the doorway, and even without the benefit of light on the bartender’s face, Charlotte knew she was smiling.

  They all three talked at once.

  “Sorry, Tina. We’ll just…”

  “It’s fine, you guys can stay.”

  “No, we need to—”

  “If you don’t mind—”

  “I thought you were gone.”

  “That’s all right. I need to get back anyway.” Jared hopped off the stage and offered Charlotte his hand.

  She turned off the lamp and followed him out, trying d
esperately to ignore Tina’s conspiratorial grin as they passed her in the doorway. When they hit the night air, Jared looked for a cab but there were none nearby. “I typically use one of the riding apps from here.” Charlotte pulled out her phone. “They’re easier to get in this part of town than a cab.”

  Jared pointed down the hill, toward the bustling Market Street a few blocks away. “How about down there?”

  She nodded, and he took her hand, pulling her down the hill at a determined pace. Charlotte almost had to jog to keep up with him. When they got to Market, they turned left toward the large intersection with Powell. Jared still held her hand, but he felt a million miles away.

  When they stopped at the busy intersection, she spoke up. “Jared, are you okay?”

  “Of course,” he said. “Just a long day and too much bourbon.”

  “Can we talk about—”

  “No need. We’re fine.” He flagged down a taxi and handed the driver a fifty dollar bill. “Look, I’ve got a couple of early calls with Austin in the morning, but why don’t you text me with where you want to meet up? I should be able to get somewhere by 11:00. Does that work?”

  “Of course. You’re not taking the taxi?”

  He shook his head. “My hotel is three blocks that way. I’d rather walk.” At her incredulous face, he squeezed her hand. “If you drop me off first, you’ll be half an hour later getting to bed, and I’m expecting to be completely wowed tomorrow. You need your rest so you can bring your A-game to this proposal thing.”

  And with that, he’d closed the cab door and she was off, watching him fade into the distance, rubbing his bare arms for warmth.

  Charlotte had never been so glad that Lily was at home. A large spread of proofs covered their coffee table, and there was a glass of wine on the tile floor next to her. Charlotte dropped her purse and threw herself into the armchair with an exhausted sigh, picking up Lily’s wine and taking a healthy slug.

  “Where have you been?” Lily asked, without looking up from the proofs. “You missed all the drama. The Witch came home tonight, and half the neighborhood is pissed at her. Not only did she double-park that monstrosity, again, but she nearly ran over Mrs. Pendergrass’s dog. Didn’t even apologize. Just smiled like it was nothing, even though there were a bunch of us standing there yelling at her.”