Maybe Never

by Nia Forrester

  “So how’s Tracy?” Chris asked.

  Damn. In addition to kicking his ass on the basketball court despite being a full four inches shorter, was he a mind-reader too?

  “Good,” Brendan said. That was all he was about to offer up.

  “Still making a ruckus, fighting women off you and shit?”

  Brendan laughed. “Hey, there’s never any fighting involved. My woman’s way too classy for all that.”

  “One of these days you gon’ have to tell me what you did to her. Some Kama Sutra shit, or what, man?” Chris looked at him. “Because she was just. . .”

  “Choose your words carefully,” Brendan warned, only half-joking.

  He knew Tracy had a reputation among their extended circle of friends. She was ‘challenging’ was what people said when they were being polite.

  Chris laughed. “Nah, I’m just sayin’ . . . When I first met her, I wrote her off in ten minutes. No way in hell a woman like that was going to give someone like me the time of day. No matter the money. And someone like you either, come to think of it. So you know I have to be curious . . .”

  “All I can say is that she’s way more than you think.”

  “I don’t doubt that,” Chris said. “I don’t doubt that at all.”

  The diner was crammed. It was a little place Riley had turned Brendan on to. A hole-in-the-wall named Luke’s that looked like it would have been more appropriately located in a small town in Iowa. But New Yorkers, cynical though they were, loved anything that smacked of small-town America, so it was always packed, even though the food quite honestly left much to be desired. But for an old-fashioned breakfast of eggs, home fries and country ham, Luke’s was on the money.

  When they walked in, Chris and Brendan were lucky enough to snag a booth, just as a couple with a little two-year old girl were clearing out. As they left, the little girl grabbed for a napkin on the table and succeeded in upsetting a half-full cup of coffee that spilled across the table. Brendan watched as her mother very placidly smiled and without missing a beat, turned to clean it up. The little girl smiled at Brendan, as they both waited for her mother to finish the task, and he smiled back.

  “I’m sorry,” the father said to Brendan and Chris. “At this age, they just feel like they have to touch everything.”

  “It’s alright, folks, I’ve got it.”

  A waitress interceded, carrying a dishcloth and a plastic tray to bus the table. Chris shifted from one foot to the other, clearly impatient, while Brendan watched the family head out the door.

  If he and Tracy had a little girl, he wondered, what would she look like? Like her mother, with any luck. Damn . . . her mother. Tracy as a mother. The mother of his kid. To the rest of the world, he was sure Tracy seemed like the least motherly of all women. And even she might describe herself as such. But Brendan suspected she’d be great at it. Phenomenal, even. But were they ready for that?

  The booth was cleaned and cleared to Chris’ satisfaction and they sat down, placing their orders. Chris immediately pulled out his phone and started checking messages. Brendan was actually surprised he hadn’t done so before. Chris was the most hands-on of CEOs, leaving almost no decision of significance to anyone else. He went through staff so quickly Brendan had stopped trying to remember people’s names. It wasn’t because Chris was a difficult boss, exactly, it was just that he didn’t want to let go of anything.

  His pattern was to look for the best and the brightest. Graduates from some of the best business and law schools in the country, and eager, ambitious and smart young people who were hungry to learn from him. But once he had them working for him, Chris seemed unable to simply let them do their jobs. He respected their intellect, but not their instincts; and there was no denying that Chris Scaife’s instincts were better than almost anyone’s. But it was only a matter of time before he had to let go of something. No one could push themselves this hard forever.

  By the time their food got there, Chris was still on his phone, responding to email, making quick calls. He worked between bites, between sips, as though even the need to eat was an unwelcome distraction. Brendan shook his head and smiled. And Tracy thought he worked too hard. A guy like Chris would drive even the most patient of women crazy.

  “Brendan Cole?”

  Brendan looked up at the sound of his name and at the sight of a familiar face, smiled.

  “Oh damn! Janice?”

  “Yes!”

  Brendan stood and hugged the slender woman standing in front of him then held her at arm’s length to look her over. Janice Spell. One of a handful of women who could claim to have actually been ‘in a relationship’ with him. She pulled away and glanced down at Chris, engrossed in a phone call, nodding a greeting at him and turning once again to Brendan.

  “You still hang with the same crowd I see,” she smiled.

  Brendan nodded. “With a few changes.”

  When he and Janice were together he’d been working for Chris as a talent scout. It seemed like eons ago, now. A long time for sure, but Janice was still the knockout she’d been then. Five-foot ten, the color of dark Belgian chocolate and with hair shaved almost to the skull to accentuate her swanlike neck and slender frame. She was just an aspiring model when they’d dated, but now Brendan saw her every so often on the cover of British Vogue, and in other high-fashion magazines.

  “Are you in New York now?” Brendan asked.

  “Yup. Been back for about two years,” Janice nodded. Her eyes were beautiful. He’d forgotten that about her—that she had these almond–shaped eyes, the color unexpectedly light for her complexion, impossible not to be mesmerized by.

  “Two years! Gave up on Paris, huh?”

  Chris, annoyed at the conversation taking place in such close proximity to his phone call slid out of the booth and after patting Janice on the shoulder in greeting stepped outside.

  “Sit down,” Brendan told her. “Tell me what’s been going on with you.”

  Janice smiled and hugged Brendan again, kissing him on the cheek before taking a seat. “So weird running into you like this!”

  Yeah. Weird, Brendan thought.

  Janice was like the Ghost of Christmas Past or something. Just as he was contemplating . . . something with Tracy. Just as a new future was emerging for him.

  “So fill me in on . . .” Janice looked up at the ceiling as though calculating, “. . . the last thirteen years.”

  “You’re the one who left me and ran off to Europe,” Brendan said. “You fill me in.”

  “I didn’t leave you, Brendan,” Janice said, her face serious. “I left New York. I went to pursue my career.”

  “I know,” he nodded. “I just remember what it felt like. It wasn’t pretty.”

  “We were, what? Twenty?” Janice said, her voice soft. “We had stuff to do. Things to prove to ourselves. Both of us.”

  The waitress, noticing that someone new had joined the table came over and took Janice’s order for green tea and wheat toast with fruit preserves. Brendan grinned at her when they were alone again.

  “That didn’t sound like a meal to me. So I take it you’re still modeling.”

  “Hanging in there for another couple of years. It’s tough competing with these new fifteen-year olds on the scene,” Janice shook her head.

  “So why do it?” Brendan asked. “You’re beautiful. Marry a millionaire. Settle down, do some other stuff . . .”

  “Been there, done that,” Janice said.

  “Word?” Brendan leaned back. “You’re married?”

  Janice shook her head. “Was married. That’s kind of why I’m back. Married a French guy. Didn’t work out.”

  She looked away, and there was pain behind her eyes. Brendan instinctively reached out and grasped her hand. Janice had been one of the good ones. One of the ones you might even see yourself settling down with. But they’d been way too young back then, and like she said, had too much to prove.

  “Sorry to hear that. He was an ass to
let you go.”

  Janice shook her head sadly. “That’s just the thing. He wasn’t an ass. Not at all.”

  Brendan said nothing.

  “He was something like you, in fact,” Janice said, her voice quiet. “You were the blueprint.”

  “Aw, c’mon . . .” Brendan pulled his hand away from hers and shook his head.

  “No,” Janice said, taking his hand briefly again and squeezing it. “That’s why it’s so crazy that I would run into you like this. I have this little place downtown. A small apartment, for my new, much smaller life. And it’s an adjustment.

  “And I’m not seeing anyone right now, so on Saturday mornings, I go for a walk and I come here and have breakfast. And then I go home. And maybe I go out later. But when I do that, I’m still alone.”

  “You make it sound so sad,” Brendan said. “A woman like you will always have her pick of men.”

  Janice shrugged. “The good ones have already been . . . picked,” she said. “Like you, for instance. I’m betting you have someone, don’t you? I can’t imagine some woman wasn’t smart enough to snap you up.”

  “Well, I’m with someone,” Brendan confirmed.

  “But not married?” Janice sounded surprised.

  “Not married, no.”

  “That surprises me,” she said.

  “Why?”

  “You were always the marrying kind, I thought.”

  “After you left, I had a decade-long party, drowning my sorrows,” Brendan said grinning at her.

  “Yeah, right. I doubt I had that much of an impact on you, Brendan.”

  “Well, it wasn’t just you leaving,” Brendan admitted. “I was young, and I was in a business where I met lots of women. So it was about that for awhile . . . and of course, Shawn was blowing up these last seven years . . .”

  “How is he? My god he got huge, didn’t he? And then there was that mess he got himself into. But now he’s married, right? I remember when he was all over the place.”

  Brendan laughed. “You wouldn’t recognize him. Yeah, he’s married. To a great woman. They’ve got two kids . . .”

  “Wow . . .” Janice leaned back against the seat. “It’s so strange. Do you ever look at other people’s lives, like people who are your peers and feel like they’re moving and you’re standing still?”

  Her question caught him off guard, and Brendan was just about to attempt a response when Chris returned, phone still in hand.

  “I have to be out,” he said to Brendan. Then he looked at Janice and smiled. “Whassup, girl?”

  “Nothing much, Mr. Scaife. Good to see you,” Janice smiled.

  “Later for that ‘Mr. Scaife’ bullshit,” Chris shook his head.

  “You’re quite the kingpin these days, I‘m not sure how to address you . . . I only ever see you in magazines.”

  “Likewise,” Chris said. “But unfortunately today is not going to be the day we catch up ‘cause I’ve got some kingpin shit to take care of.”

  “So another time then,” Janice said, turning her cheek to receive Chris’ brief peck.

  “Okay. And I’ll catch up with you later, B,” he said nodding at Brendan.

  When they were alone, Janice smiled at Brendan again and he was transported, just for a moment back to a time when he was almost twenty-one, perpetually horny, infatuated with this woman who looked and moved like an African queen and treated him like her king. But he’d been too ambitious to put her first, and when she had to leave, he’d simply let her go. He was a different man now though.

  “So tell me about your . . . lady friend,” Janice said.

  Brendan smiled.

  His ‘lady friend’ was probably leaving yoga right now, dropping off their dry cleaning, food-shopping for them. Tracy had a Saturday routine that he could set his clock by. If they had something to go to in the evening, she would get back to the apartment early and spend much of the day lazing about, get rested for a night on the town. Or she would be with Riley, playing with their godchildren. Occasionally, she went out shopping with her friend Russell, but without fail, every Saturday, she was home before five.

  “Her name’s Tracy, and we’ve been together a couple years now.”

  “A model?”

  Brendan laughed. “No. A hedge fund manager.”

  Janice looked surprised. “Hmm. So why no wedding?”

  Brendan shrugged. “It’s complicated.”

  Tracy was complicated. Their relationship was complicated. His feelings about her were complicated.

  “You don’t love her enough,” Janice said taking a sip of her tea.

  Brendan’s eyebrows shot up, surprised.

  “If you did, you’d marry her,” Janice said with certainty. “You’re the guy who, in spite of everything, wants to be married. You always have been. So if you’re not closing the deal, there’s a damn good reason why.”

  “Nah, that’s not . . .”

  Janice shrugged seeming to sense his discomfort with the subject. “Anyway, relationships are difficult.”

  “What happened in yours?” Brendan asked, wanting to deflect any further questions about Tracy.

  “He was at his heart a pretty traditional guy. Like you as a matter of fact. He thought he wanted to be married to a jetsetting model, but in the end what he really wanted was for me to live in his country house and churn out babies. And I wasn’t ready for that, so he dumped me,” Janice said matter-of-factly.

  “Wow. And now . . ?”

  “Now I see what a damned fool I was,” she said evenly.

  The silence that fell between them was heavy.

  Janice had always been driven to succeed, just as he had been. When she’d dropped on him that she got a deal to go model in Paris for a year, Brendan hadn’t wanted her to go but that was out of the question, so she suggested he come along.

  It’s only a year, he remembered her saying. And then we’ll come back to New York. You give me one year, and you get the next.

  But he’d been breaking into Chris Scaife’s inner circle then. Chris, who at the time was the young gun in the music business, the hit-maker that everyone wanted to get close to. To leave then would have put all of Brendan’s dreams of a career in the recording industry at risk. Choosing that over Janice hadn’t even been difficult. Missing her had been, but only for a while.

  Within a year, he was living like Hugh Hefner, and Janice had drifted to the back of his mind. But not out of his mind, not completely. To see her now, in the flesh, he wondered whether what he remembered about her was real or a completely idealized version of reality.

  “I’m done with this,” Janice said now, pushing her toast aside and taking a last gulp of her tea. “But I’d love to keep talking. Want to walk me home?”

  ________

  When he left Janice’s apartment, it was almost one-thirty. Brendan had planned to stop by Shawn and Riley’s to see his god kids but if he did that, he wouldn’t make it back home by the time he’d told Tracy he would. As it was, he was going to have to artfully avoid the subject of where he’d been all afternoon. To tell her he’d been in the apartment of an ex-girlfriend would result in a flip-out of colossal dimensions, and he couldn’t say he’d blame her this time. As a rule, Brendan didn’t lie to Tracy, and more importantly than that, didn’t do anything that would require him to lie. But this time, the truth was not an option.

  He hailed a cab to take him back uptown, shifting uncomfortably on the vinyl seat. He needed a shower. As soon as he opened the door to the apartment, he headed straight back to the bathroom, and stripped, jumping in under the warm water, lathering up quickly and even shampooing his hair. Janice’s apartment had smelled like sage, which she burned in a stone dish at her bedside table. The strong scent had permeated his clothing by the time he left. Even his gym bag probably smelled like it.

  Getting out of the shower and grabbing a towel, he noticed that Tracy—or their cleaning service—had done some work. All of the bottles of toiletries were neatly organ
ized, the sink and bathroom mirrors cleaned, the floor sparkling. Brendan didn’t think the cleaning service was due for another week, so Tracy had probably done it herself.

  “Trace!”

  He called out, thinking she must be upstairs in the loft, in the kitchen or something. Brendan walked out to go in search of her, and found to his surprise that he was alone. It was just past two now, and it occurred to him for the first time that he hadn’t heard from her all day. Last night had been rough, but he’d written her a note when he took off, it wasn’t as though he’d just left or anything.

  Brendan grabbed his phone and called her, suddenly disturbed by the silence. Her phone rang twice before she picked up.

  “Hey,” he said. “Where are you? I got in and you weren’t here.”

  “Brooklyn,” she said.

  “Brooklyn,” Brendan repeated after a while. “Why?”

  “No reason. I thought I’d come check on the house, do some cleaning and stuff.”

  “You didn’t do enough cleaning here?” he said. “You thought you’d go do some in another borough?”

  “We hardly ever stay here anymore,” Tracy said. “So I just wanted to make sure everything was . . .”

  “Sweetheart, about last night . . .”

  “I’ll be back in the morning, Brendan. This has nothing to do with last night. I know I sprung something on you that you weren’t expecting, so . . .”

  “Wait. You’re staying in Brooklyn tonight?” he asked.

  On the face of it, that wasn’t a big deal, but for them it kind of was. They never slept apart unless it was unavoidable. For Brendan, sleeping together every night was a preference, but for Tracy it was a necessity. She hated it that they even had separate residences.

  “Yeah. May as well.”

  “Huh.”

  Tracy said nothing.

  “But it’s not even late afternoon. Why didn’t you wait so I could . . ?”

  “I went to yoga with Riley, did the grocery-shopping and then I don’t know, I just wanted to come home.”