Mister O

by Lauren Blakely

  Maybe both.

  The elevator arrives with a soft ding. The doors spread open. She takes a step. I grab her arm to stop her. “Say it.”

  She takes her hand off her mouth. Raises her chin. Speaks clearly and simply. “I can’t tell you not to go to L.A.”

  When I felt my heart sink in the cab the other day? That’s nothing compared to now. This stupid organ in my chest craters, plummets to the floor like a meteor crashing to Earth. I want to stop her, to make her stay, to explain herself, but I’m frozen like a statue as the doors close. The elevator chugs downward, and Harper breaks my heart.

  I kick the wall, and it hurts like a son of a bitch. “Fucking hell,” I mutter.

  I return to my apartment, march to the window, and stare at the street until she emerges from the lobby and onto Central Park West.

  She wipes her hand across her cheek once. Then again. She picks up the pace, and soon she’s a red blur, and my chest aches for her.

  Love sucks.

  I have no clue what to say, what she needs to hear, or what the hell I’m going to do. I don’t even know who to turn to for advice.

  But that matter is solved for me a little later when the doorman rings. Hope rises in me that she’s returned. Only when I ask who’s here, it’s the other Holiday.

  36

  Spencer yanks out a stool, parks himself on it, and plops a white plastic bag from Duane Reade on the kitchen counter. He says nothing as he opens the handles and methodically removes each item.

  A box of orange hair dye and a razor.

  “Shit,” I sigh heavily as a new and equally nasty emotion crashes into me. Shame. I’ve lied to him, and he knows it.

  He tilts his face, strokes his chin, and stares at me. “Tell me why I shouldn’t shave your head and dye your eyebrows orange in the middle of the night.”

  I drag a hand through my hair and blow out a long stream of air. Then I just shrug. “Can’t think of one.”

  He scowls. “Seriously? That’s all you’ve got?”

  I hold out my hands in surrender. “You are well within your rights,” I say, my voice empty. Because really, who cares now?

  He scratches his head. “You’ve been messing around with my sister, and that’s all you’re going to say?”

  “What do you want me to do?” I spit out. “Deny it? Ask you how you know?”

  “Umm,” he begins, and he’s speechless. He really did expect me to deny it.

  “Look,” I say, because I’m not in the mood right now. “I’m sure you figured it out. I’m sure you saw me dancing with her at your wedding. Right? Am I right?”

  He nods, his green eyes registering some kind of surprise that I’m not tap-dancing around this confrontation. “Charlotte mentioned it, and I told her there was no way in hell. So we bet on it, and I came here to prove her wrong. But holy shit. Is there something going on for real?”

  I nod, then shake my head. “There was. There’s not. I don’t know. Either way, take your revenge.”

  His eyes bug out. “C’mon. For real?” he asks, and he’s the one in denial now.

  “Look, I’m sorry, but I’m not sorry,” I say, my voice rising as I lean against my fridge, frustration, anger, and sadness coursing through me.

  He holds his hands out wide in a what gives gesture. “How the fuck did that happen?”

  I give him a look. “I’m not getting into the details.” The way it started is no one’s business. I promised Harper I wouldn’t tell a soul, and I’m not going to break that promise, even if she saw fit to slice my heart in two with her feel-free-to-go-to-L.A. send-off.

  “You mess around with my sister, and that’s your answer?” His tone darkens, and he’s clearly pissed now.

  “It’s private, okay? It’s private, and it’s personal.” I move away from the fridge and press my hands against the counter, staring him in the eyes. I thought I’d have to ask his approval to fall in love with his sister, but now I see that what happened with Harper isn’t about his permission. It isn’t even about him. I’ve gotten that part all wrong. She was only off-limits if I didn’t care about her. I care about her so fucking much I don’t know what to do with this surplus of feelings for my best friend’s sister. It’s time for him to know that. “It happened, and it happened again, and now here I am.” I tap my sternum. “I’m in love with your sister. So there you go. Get out the hair dye, shave it off. Whatever, man. It’s not going to change the fact that I told her I love her, and she told me I’m free to go to L.A.”

  “Whoa.” Spencer shakes his head like there’s water in his ears, then he makes a time-out sign. “Back it up. I got in love and L.A. Start at the beginning.”

  Whatever anger was brewing in him seems to have quieted down.

  I don’t start at the beginning. I don’t share the nitty-gritty. But I give him the basic ingredients of my lucky-bastard life and first-world problems. “Look, here’s the truth. I’ve had feelings for her for a while now. I tried to deny them. I tried to ignore them. But the more time I spent with her, the tougher it became to fight it. I didn’t ask you at first because what was happening was about her and me. I’m not saying that makes it okay. I’m saying that’s how it went down, and I’m not sorry for how I feel. It all became clear when you were on your honeymoon. How much I care about her. And how much I’m in love with her. And the real rub in all this is now that I’ve told her, I can’t even be with her.”

  He frowns. “Why?”

  “They’re moving my show to L.A. Gino already gave my timeslot to someone else. If I want to keep doing the show, it’s California or it’s over.” I heave a sigh. “I don’t expect you to feel sorry for me. I don’t expect anyone to.” Dragging a hand through my hair, I drop my voice. “I just want the girl, and I can’t have her.”

  Spencer sighs, too. “Man,” he says, sympathy in his tone. “It’s not even noon, and we need to break out the Scotch because there is nothing worse than falling in love.” He reaches for the hair dye and razor and drops them back in the bag.

  “I get a reprieve?” I ask, with a quirk of my lips.

  He nods.

  “You’re not pissed?”

  He levels me with his gaze. “Dude, I fell in love with my best friend and business partner. I get it. Love just fucking happens and clobbers you out of the blue. And you—you fell for my sister. I can’t fault you for that. I can’t be mad at you for having good taste. Besides, you’re suffering enough being in love without me being an ass.”

  I laugh once. “Love is a bitch.”

  “Don’t I know how rough it can be. Which is why it’s a damn good thing I can return these at Duane Reade.” His expression turns more serious. “But listen, I need to say something. You know why I was a dick before about not wanting you to be with Harper?”

  “’Cause you think I’m not good enough for her?”

  “Fuck no,” he scoffs. “You’re probably the only guy who actually deserves my sister, and my sister is awesome.”

  I manage a small smile. “I know. She really is.”

  “I told you all that because if you break her heart,” he says sharply, pointing a finger at me, “then I’d lose you as a friend. And I need you, Nick. But I’d still have to kill you for hurting her.”

  “That’s kind of the nicest thing you’ve ever said to me. In a weird way.”

  “I know.”

  “But Spencer? I don’t want to hurt Harper.” I look him in the eyes so he knows I’m as serious as he was. “And I don’t want to break her heart. I just want to love her. And you can totally mock me for saying that. But it’s true.”

  He pushes back on the stool, stands up, and claps me on the back. “All right. I didn’t want it to have to get to this, but clearly we need to call for reinforcements.”

  “Who’s that?”

  He shoots me a look, as if the answer is obvious. “Charlotte. You think I can figure out how to get her back? I’m lucky I convinced Charlotte to marry me. You need the big guns for thi
s one.”

  Fido stares at me like he knows all my secrets while Charlotte listens to the tale of my unrequited love from her perch on the couch.

  “Let me get this straight,” Charlotte says on a yawn. She’s jet-lagged from their trip but willing to tackle my pathetic excuse of a love life. Spencer is next to her. “She encouraged you to pursue the most amazing career opportunity you’ve ever had?”

  “Yes.”

  “And she is well aware that your show is the thing you love most.” Charlotte stares at me.

  “It is?”

  “Duh. Everyone knows that.”

  “They do?”

  Her eyebrow rises. “Nick, it’s not a bad thing. It’s a true thing. You love your work, you love cartooning, and you love The Adventures of Mister Orgasm. I’m sure Harper knows how much you love the show.”

  “I guess.” I flash back to our post-mortem after Harper’s pseudo-date with Jason, when she asked what I was most afraid of. My answer? That it will all fall to pieces. The job, the show, the success. Then, after we took Serena to the hospital, and she asked me about kids down the road. My reply underscored once more that the show is my true love. I’ve been pretty focused on work, and my job, and the show. That’s what my life has been since I graduated college, and I love it.

  Which means . . . ding, ding, ding . . . Harper Holiday has every reason to believe I’d do anything for work. I’d go anywhere for my show. She has no reason to think anything else.

  Charlotte confirms this with her next assessment. “She knows that your job—understandably—has been the center of your universe for all of your twenties.”

  I nod again, and Fido takes the opportunity to stretch across Charlotte’s lap and flop to his back, offering her his belly for petting. He is such a manwhore.

  “But,” I say, shaking my finger as I trot out more evidence, “I told her I loved her and she said ‘I can’t tell you not to go to L.A.’ She didn’t say she loved me.”

  Charlotte waves off my concern. “That’s not the issue. She’s trying to show you she supports you. She doesn’t want you to make the decision based on her.”

  “How would I be doing that?”

  “By blurting out that you love her in the same breath as you tell her that you’re moving to L.A,” Charlotte says calmly as she pets Fido.

  “And that means I’m making her make the decision?”

  “Yes, and she cares about you, so she wants you to be free to make the right decision for you,” she says, pointing at me.

  I narrow my eyes. “How do you know that she cares about me?”

  “When you told her about this new opportunity, she urged you to take it. Yet somehow you think that means she doesn’t care about you? Am I understanding correctly?”

  Spencer smiles widely and drapes an arm around her. “My wife is brilliant, isn’t she?” Then to her, “So can you tell us what this all means?”

  Charlotte rolls her eyes. “You two are such ding-dongs. And I love you both. In different ways, of course.”

  “Better be different ways,” Spencer says with a huff.

  Charlotte turns to me. “How did you feel when you were with her? Did it seem as if she felt the same way?”

  Spencer covers his ears. “La la la. I don’t want to hear.”

  As he continues to hum, I tell Charlotte more than I’d ever admit to him. “Yes, it did. Completely. We were in sync. You know? The way she looked at me. The things she said . . .” My voice trails off. I don’t tell her how I felt in bed with Harper last night, but I know she had to feel the same way.

  Tell me you feel it, too.

  Just the memory of last night lights me up.

  I replay the moments in the cab before she left Manhattan, and how we finally admitted how much we wanted to see each other.

  I rewind to what Harper said after running into Jillian. I’d thought she was trying to box me up in the friendship zone. But what if she was trying to do the same thing I was doing—make sure we were something, at least? That we didn’t lose each other? Because something is better than nothing. I replay all the moments we shared—her asking me to take her to the train station because she wanted to see me, her showing up after midnight in a cape, her bringing me ice cream, and giving me detergent and pencils, and taking me to the shower showroom, and coming to Gino’s party, and throwing the bowling match, and giving me my librarian fantasy, and even wearing lingerie for me. My God, the fantastic, heavenly, unholy lingerie she wears that drives me out of my mind. She turns me on, and she makes me happy, and she inspires me and—

  Charlotte interrupts my reverie. “I think the question isn’t whether she should tell you not to go to L.A. The question is whether you want to go. If you do want to go to L.A., perhaps you should ask her to go with you.”

  She’s brilliant. Totally brilliant. I’ve done this all wrong, and I need to fix the mess I’ve made. I stand. “You’re right. I need to go.”

  I kiss her on the cheek, clap Spencer on the shoulder, and scratch Fido under the chin. He arches a haughty eyebrow, but I know he approves because we love the same girl. As I leave, Charlotte turns to Spencer and says, “I won. Gummi Bears are on you tonight.”

  When I leave, I cab it uptown to my house, grab some files, then head to Tyler’s office where I tell him to call Gino’s bluff.

  37

  If this were one of J. Cameron’s romance novels, the hero would hire a skywriter to pen the heroine’s name across the blue canvas above us. Or he’d stop the airplane at the gate and profess his love. Maybe he’d even tell the woman he adores that he only had eyes for her on a Jumbotron at a packed baseball game.

  But this is my life, and Harper’s life.

  One thing I know to be true about the woman I’m crazy for is that while she might like public kisses, she’s not one for public declarations of love.

  That’s why I don’t do any of those things. I don’t buy flowers. Or chocolate. Or balloons. Or a teddy bear. I don’t grab a boom box and play Peter Gabriel outside her window. Instead, with an eight by twelve envelope in hand, I head to her building and press the button for her apartment.

  It rings, and it rings, and it rings.

  I take a deep breath.

  Maybe she’s in the shower. I look at my watch. It’s two in the afternoon.

  I buzz again.

  And it rings, and it rings, and it rings.

  I grab my phone from my back pocket. Maybe I should have called first. I definitely should have called first. This was fucking stupid. She could be anywhere. She could be doing a magic show.

  Okay, maybe not on a Monday afternoon.

  Wait. I snap my fingers. She said she was taking a class. Then doing laundry. I slide open the screen to call her, and when I see a message from her, my heart goes into overdrive. Holding my breath, I click open the text.

  I learn she’s doing none of the above.

  Princess: Where are you? The doorman is ringing, and ringing, and ringing.

  That note is followed by another.

  Princess: Oh, you could be anywhere. I guess I could call. My phone is bi-directional after all.

  My heart soars at her words. She’s at my house. Holy shit, she’s at my house. I dial her number, but before I can hit send, my phone beeps. “I’m at your building,” I say as soon as I answer her call.

  “I’m at yours,” she says, and I can hear something like lightness in her voice, like hope. I want to clutch the possibility of what it might mean tight in my hands.

  “I have an idea,” I say, thinking quickly. “Meet me in the middle?”

  “Eighty-Fourth Street then?” She lives on Ninety-Fifth, and I’m on Seventy-Third.

  “I love it when you do math. Yes, meet me at Central Park and Eighty-Fourth.”

  “Are you Ubering it or walking?”

  “Walking.”

  Ten minutes later, I stand by the park entrance, under the bronze and wine-red leaves of a cherry tree, as afternoon traffic whizzes by. I
pace, waiting for her, searching for her, until I see her, walking fast, practically running to me.

  My heart beats like a wild bird, and I don’t know how it can stay inside my chest. I have no idea what she’s going to say, or why she was at my house, or what’s going on, but she’s here now. She came to find me, and the last time she came to find me was the start of our first real night together.

  The autumn breeze blows her hair, red strands floating past her cheeks as she marches right up to me, looks me square in the eyes, and says, “I’m in love with you, Nick. If you ask me to go with you, I will.”

  And my heart, I swear, it jumps out of my chest into her hands, where she can hold it forever because it belongs to her. I fall deeper into love with her in that moment.

  She cups my cheeks and says more before I can even speak. “I didn’t say anything when you told me this morning because I wanted it to be your decision,” she says, her blue eyes fixed on mine. “That’s why I left right away, so you could be free to make the choice that works for you. I didn’t want you to worry about me, or think you had to turn down something you love because of me. But the whole time I was a wreck because I feel the same way you do. And I know how much this means to you, and you mean so much to me, and I want you to know I’d go with you. Because I love you, too.”

  I can’t not kiss her. I slant my mouth to hers, brush my lips against hers, and kiss the woman I love, who loves me, too.

  New York and autumn. Harper and me. Love and friendship.

  I’m so damn happy it can’t be contained. There’s no way I can hold all this joy inside me. We kiss, and we kiss, and we kiss, and I can’t stop. I thread my hands in her hair, the soft, silky strands spilling over my fingers as I kiss her outside Central Park where I’ve met her in the middle.

  Only, there’s no need to compromise. There’s no need for her to give up anything for me. When I break the kiss, I’m lightheaded and grinning like the love-struck fool I am.