by Cat Carmine
I tap my lip thoughtfully, then turn to face Wes again.
“What if we had a contract?”
His brow furrows. “We have a contract.” His eyes go to the folder in gesture.
“Not that kind of contract. A personal one.”
“Are you talking about … a sex contract?” He gets a devilish grin on his face, one I ignore.
“No. I’m talking about a no sex contract.”
“That sounds distinctly less fun.”
“But a thousand times more professional, don’t you think?” I sip my coffee and stare at him over the rim of my cup. Wes does the same.
“Theoretically, what would this contract entail?” he asks finally.
“Well, it would just stipulate that we would have no physical relationship. Which includes kissing,” I add pointedly.
“Hey, you were the one who kissed me last time.”
My cheeks redden. “I know. But that was a regrettable lapse in judgment. One that wouldn’t be committed again, especially if we have a contract.”
“A regrettable lapse in judgment, huh?” Wes frowns, then sighs, grabs the napkin from beside his plate and spreads it out on the table between us. He reaches into the breast pocket of his jacket for a pen.
“CONTRACT,” he scrawls across the top of the napkin. His handwriting clearly hasn’t changed a bit since high school — it’s still the same messy scrawl that every teenage boy seems to use.
“So, what do you think?” he asks. “Number one is obviously … no sex. Since this is a no sex contract and all?”
I nod. This whole thing is absurd, yet I find myself swept away by it. Wes writes a number one and then writes no sex next to it. I get a rush of euphoria. This is going to work. It’s in writing now.
“What else?” he says, looking up at me.
“No physical contact of any kind. No kissing. No touching. No hugging.”
“What about high fives?”
I roll my eyes. “No high fives. That would be a kind of physical contact.”
“Got it.” He writes the words no physical contact underneath the first clause.
“Oh, and no dates.”
He raises his eyebrows. “Dates?”
“Well, nothing that could be construed as a date. You know — no having so-called business meetings in places like Jasmine Thai. We meet at your office or on otherwise neutral territory, like this place.”
“Fine.” He adds the words no dates to our napkin contract and stares down at it. “How about this one — no talking about the past?”
“Fine with me.” I don’t need to be reminded of anything that came before this. What happened between Wes and I back then is ancient history, and I’m happy to leave the past in the past.
“Is that it, then?” He stares down at the napkin.
“No getting attached,” I say quietly. I don’t know if I’m making this rule for him or for me. “When our work contract is over, we go our separate ways.”
He glances up at me, his expression grim. The look in his eyes makes my stomach somersault, and I wonder if I’ve gone too far. After all, at one point, Wes was my best friend and, at least I thought, the love of my life. Is it unreasonable to think we might be able to stay friends this time around? But he nods and scribbles the words down on the napkin.
“Anything else? Or do we have a deal?”
I look down at the five rules he’s written out. This whole thing seems ridiculous and yet it makes me feel better to have it in writing. To know that we’re on the same page — that anything happening between us would be a bad idea of epic proportions.
“We have a deal.”
Wes tilts the napkin towards himself and scrawls his name at the bottom, under our list of rules. Then he hands me the pen. I scratch my own name into the rough napkin. The fact that I feel I need this contract in the first place should be a major red flag, yet here I am, signing it and feeling like it’s going to magically fix everything I’m feeling.
I slide the napkin back towards Wes, but he waves it off.
“You keep it,” he says. “I trust you.”
I take it and slide it into the blue folio with our other contract, the real one, for safe-keeping. For the first time since Wes walked back into my life, I feel like I actually have a chance of getting out of this unscathed.
Ten
When I get back to the office, Kyla is sitting at the green-felted conference table, finishing up a takeout order of sushi.
“How was the meeting?” she asks right away. “Do you have a better sense of the project now?”
I don’t tell her we barely talked about the project at all. I run my finger along the spine of the blue file folder before I drop it on my desk.
“Uh, yeah, sort of. I think we’re going to be pretty busy though. They want a full proposal by end of next week. With cost breakdowns and everything.”
“Wow, okay.”
“Yeah. I really want us to come up with something that’ll blow them away.”
“Agreed. So ... got any brilliant ideas?” She grins.
I wrinkle my nose. “No. We … might be screwed.”
Kyla laughs. “You always say that, and then we always manage to come up with something awesome. I’m sure this’ll be no different. How about we both start thinking about it, and then we can do some brainstorming tomorrow?”
“That sounds great.” And it really does. I’m so glad I have Kyla as a partner in all this. I don’t know what I would do if I was facing down Wes alone.
I pull my chair back over to my desk and fire up my email. I have a message from Barb from the community center, with a recap of our meeting and copies of some of their existing promotional materials so I can see what they’ve already tried. I shoot her a quick reply to say thanks and then glance through the stuff she’s sent. It’s all pretty lackluster, and I get excited thinking about what we can do to help them out.
Although my brain keeps wanting to drift back to Wes and our lunch meeting — and the napkin that’s nestled between the covers of the blue file folder — I force myself to set all that aside and get some work done. With Wes’s deadline looming, we’re going to seriously need to get our asses in gear this week. I open a blank document and jot down some initial ideas for the campaign, as well as a general to-do list for all the things we’ll need to pull together for the plan. As I work, the to-do list gets longer and longer while my ideas list stays distressingly sparse. I know we’re only on day one, but I already feel like Kyla and I are in way over our heads.
Then again, we were in over our heads the moment we decided to open our own firm. Business licenses, incorporation papers, accounting software. There was so much neither of us knew about, and until now, we’ve managed to figure it all out. I’m sure that if we put our heads together, we’ll be able to get through this project too.
I hope.
We both end up working long into the evening. By the time I rub my eyes and look up from my computer screen, it’s almost eight o’clock. Kyla’s still buried in her own work, wearing her huge headphones as usual.
“I think I’m going to take off now,” I announce. She pulls off the headphones and blinks a few times.
“Wow, I didn’t realize how late it had gotten.”
“Me either. I’ve been trying to come up with some ideas for the campaign but ...”
“Me too. Anything good yet?”
I grimace. “Not really. You?”
She shakes her head. “Are we completely screwed?”
“Oh, probably.” I laugh as I sling my purse over my shoulder. “No, I think we just need fresh eyes. We’ll huddle tomorrow and see what we can come up with.”
We say our goodbyes, and I bound down the stairs and out into the street. As soon as my feet touch the payment, I realize I left my contract upstairs. Not my real work contract, but the other one. The one on the napkin. I don’t want to chance Kyla finding it — I’m pretty sure she wouldn’t be too keen to find out I had to make a no-s
ex contract with one of our clients. The thought sends a twinge of guilt through me. I hate lying to her about my history with Wes, but there’s no reason she ever has to find out. After all, nothing’s going to happen. I have it in writing.
I take the stairs back up to the office, two at a time.
Kyla looks up, raised eyebrows.
“I forgot some notes,” I say, waving the blue file folder. I carefully slip out the napkin and shove it into my purse. Then I’m out the door and gone again.
As soon as I pull open the apartment door, I’m hit with the smell of lasagna. That means Emma’s home. And if I know my sister, this isn’t real lasagna but her zucchini noodle concoction. Emma The Perfect doesn’t do carbs, as she would say.
“Rori, is that you?”
“No, it’s your friendly neighborhood burglar.” I drop my bag on the hallway table.
“I’m just about to take dinner out of the oven, are you hungry?”
“Famished.” That’s true. I’d barely picked at my macaroni and cheese at lunch, because I’d been too distracted by my conversation with Wes.
“Come, then. Sit. Eat with me.”
“Thanks.” I head into our tiny little kitchen and grab an extra plate and cutlery and set it down at the table with Emma’s. I’d offer to open us a bottle of wine, but Emma doesn’t really drink much either. At least not during the week. On the weekend, she’ll occasionally indulge in a rum and Diet Coke, but that’s about it. Sometimes I wonder how we’re even sisters.
Emma and I have been sharing an apartment for the last few years, and despite our differences, we actually get along well as roommates. We’re both neat — well, she’s neat and I manage to keep my messiness contained to my own bedroom — and neither of us are big partiers, so the house is always quiet and clean, which are two of the biggest factors in roommate harmony. Plus, to be honest, it’s nice having someone who really knows me here, especially with Celia gone. Even when it seems like my sister might be from another planet, she still feels like home to me.
Emma could live anywhere, of course. Her job doesn’t require her to live here in New York City, even though her editor works here; she says she just likes it here. I guess I can understand that — there’s no place in the world like New York City. Especially not Highfield, the small town in Connecticut we grew up in. Our third sister, Blake, still lives there with our parents, and I don’t know how she can stand it. Then again, Blake is the baby of the family, and she seems to feel no need to leave the nest any time soon.
“How was your day?” I ask, as Emma scoops out tiny portions of her zucchini lasagna. Have I mentioned my sister eats like a bird?
“Pretty good. I got another two chapters written.”
“That’s great! Are you going to tell me what it’s about yet?” Emma is working on a non-fiction book, something that goes along with her column, but she won’t give me any exact details. To be honest, I’m dying to know. Knowing Emma, it will be something like How To Be Perfectly Perfect: A Guide To Being Better Than Everyone Else. In fact, I’m pretty sure I suggested that title to her once.
“Of course not.” She flashes me a grin. “At least not until it’s done.”
“Fine.” I pretend to pout, but I suppose I can’t exactly be mad. After all, I’m keeping my own secrets. “Any good letters today?”
“Oh my God, yes! I meant to tell you this. I’m going to use this one in tomorrow’s column. A guy wrote in wanting to know how he could convince his girlfriend to have an open relationship, despite the fact that she’d said no three times. He wanted to know whether it would be bad to just go ahead and do it anyway. Can you believe that?”
“Ewwww. What a loser. Did you tell him not to be a jackass?”
Emma giggles. “Of course. And a whole bunch of other things too.”
“Good. God, this is why I don’t date.”
“Seriously,” Emma agrees. “Speaking of jackass guys — whatever happened with Wes? Did you tell him where to shove his job offer?”
Shit. I look down at my plate and carefully saw off a piece of zucchini. I pop it into my mouth and chew as slowly as humanly possible. Emma waits for an answer, and the vegetable seems to stick in my throat as I swallow. I don’t know how to respond to her question, but after a couple of minutes, my silence becomes its own answer.
“You took the job, didn’t you?” The note of disappointment in Emma’s voice is clear.
I shrug. “Maybe.”
“Rori.” She sounds like a parent who found out their precious child got caught stealing candy from the corner store. I’m not mad, I’m just disappointed. That’s the look she’s giving me right now.
“The job is a huge opportunity, Em. I couldn’t turn it down. Besides, don’t you kinda think Wes owes me?”
“What he owes you is an apology.”
I shrug. “That’s all in the past. I honestly couldn’t care less about stuff that happened back then.”
Which is a lie, but Emma doesn’t need to know that.
Emma purses her lips. She lays her fork down across her plate. Her nails are perfectly done, a seashell shade of pink that compliments her skin.
“I agree that it’s all in the past,” she says diplomatically. “I just wonder if he’s changed.”
“Well, he’s practically a billionaire now, so yeah, I’d say he’s changed.”
Emma rolls her eyes — a rare show of impatience for her. “I just think Wes is a user, Rori. He doesn’t care about anyone but Wes. I doubt having money has done anything but make that quality worse.”
I stuff another bite of vegetables in my mouth, if only so that I don’t have to answer her.
Is she right? What Wes did ... that was so long ago. Everyone is an asshole in high school, right? I’m sure I did things back then that I wouldn’t be proud of today — like the time in seventh grade that I stopped being friends with Denise Turner because she didn’t have the right high-top sneakers and all my other friends decided she couldn’t hang out with us anymore. I’m not exactly proud of that moment, but I like to think I’ve grown into someone kinder than that. Who’s to say that Wes hasn’t done the same thing?
I know one thing for sure: if there was any chance that I would admit to Emma that I’d accidentally kissed Wes, not once but twice, that chance has gone right out the window.
“Can we talk about something else?” I say, pushing a piece of zucchini around my plate.
“Of course. Sorry. I don’t mean to harp. And I get that this is about your career. So you should do whatever you think is best.”
It’s surprisingly kind for Emma, but the rest of her sentence hangs unspoken between us — don’t come crying to me when it all goes to shit.
Later, after I’ve done up the dishes, I grab my laptop and take it into my bedroom, intending to do a little more brainstorming about the campaign before my meeting with Kyla tomorrow. But my mind keeps going back to Wes. Is Emma right? Is he just a user? I’m sure someone in his position, and with his money and power, is used to getting exactly what he wants. Am I playing right into his hands? I still can’t figure out why he sought me out after all these years, especially when he could work with any marketing agency in the city. Is this all just part of some master plan I’m not in on?
I want to say that Emma doesn’t know what she’s talking about, but giving out advice is actually what she does for a living. So maybe I should pay more attention to what she says about Wes. After all, she knows him too. She remembers everything that happened.
I fish the napkin out of my purse and look over the words Wes had etched onto it this afternoon. I let my fingers trace the lines of his signature, that hard scrawl. I know that I should stay far, far away from Wes, but every time I’m around him, all that logic seems to be nowhere to be found. And the weirdest thing is, I enjoy being in his company — after all this time, he still makes me laugh, still makes me feel heard and strangely ... understood.
I open the drawer in my nightstand and stuff the
napkin in there for safe-keeping, then crack open my laptop. I may not know what to do about Wes The Man, but I know that if I’m going to impress Wes The Client, I’m going to need to have a kick-ass presentation by the end of next week. And that means I need to get cracking.
Eleven
I leaned forward, peering into the mirror as I carefully applied a stroke of Primrose Pink to my lips. I took a tissue out of the box next to me and blotted, the way I’d seen models do in magazines. My hair was shellacked into a perfect chignon, with a couple of tiny silver beads wound through it, nestled into the twist. Mom and I had researched the hairstyle months ago, and she’d practiced it on me a few times since then, so that it would be perfect for tonight. And it was. It was perfect.
I was almost ready. I reached for my necklace, nestled in the small teal velvet box it had come in. A graduation gift from Grandma. I was touched that everyone wanted to make tonight so special for me. You only get one prom, they all said. What they didn’t know was that it was already going to be special, because I had Wes.
I cracked open the little box and gasped. It was empty. The delicate pearl and rhinestone necklace, along with the matching cluster earrings, was gone.
“Mom!” I shrieked. Panic rose in my throat.
She appeared at my bedroom door a moment later, camera in hand.
“What is it?”
“I can’t find my necklace! The one Grandma gave me. It was right here.” My lip quivered. Even though I already knew tonight would be perfect, I had been looking forward to showing off my outfit to Wes, to seeing the way his eyes would widen when I twirled in front of him in the kitchen. I needed the necklace for everything to be complete.
“I’m sure it’s around here somewhere,” she said. She set the camera down on my bed and we both started hunting. Behind the vanity, under the bed, in my jewelry box with the rest of my other little things. It wasn’t anywhere.