One and Only

by Jenny Holiday

  Jay seemed to accept her explanation. He downed the remainder of his coffee and stood. “I need to hit the shower and get out of here. I guess I’ll see you both later.”

  No! Jane wanted to shout! Do a man-hug! Or shake hands, even! “It must be so great to have Cameron back from Iraq, huh, Jay?”

  Cameron whipped his gaze to her. He was not pleased with her little outburst. But, damn, somebody had to make these two Neanderthals do the right thing. It wasn’t her fault that subtlety had never been her strong suit.

  Jay cleared his throat. “Uh, yeah, it is.” He walked over to Cameron and laid a hand on his shoulder. “I’m sorry things didn’t work out in the army, but I’m glad you could make the wedding.” He sounded like he was reciting from a script, but at least it was something. Jane held her breath in the silence that followed. It was probably only a few seconds, but it seemed to stretch on forever.

  “Thanks, man. It’s good to see you,” Cameron finally said, and she exhaled.

  “So what are you up to today?” she asked Cameron once Jay had headed for the shower.

  “Why? You still on duty?”

  She had no idea, actually.

  Like Cameron, she had been a delinquent texter last night. She had a bunch of them from Elise, but going back in time before the one telling her they were working on the mystery teapots again this morning, they were all of the “WHERE ARE YOU?” and “WHAT ARE YOU DOING?” and “DID CAMERON BURN ANYTHING DOWN?” and “OMG, DID CAMERON KNOCK ANYONE UP?” variety.

  “I’m not babysitting you,” she said firmly as she scrolled.

  “Yes. You’ve mentioned that a few times.” He topped off her coffee, leaned over, and propped his elbows up on the breakfast bar so they were eye to eye.

  “I was just wondering what your plans are for today.” She tried to project her voice because she was afraid it was going to come out as weak and wobbly as she felt. The hangover, the virile, tattooed personal chef: it was all a little overwhelming. But she’d overcompensated, and basically yelled the question at him.

  He looked like he was trying not to laugh. “My plans are to get laid.”

  Her eye roll was as involuntary. “Ow.”

  “What?”

  “I rolled my eyes so hard my eyeballs actually hurt.”

  “Well, you asked. You also cock-blocked me last night, if you recall.”

  Jane managed to keep her eyeballs reined in, but only just.

  And of course that was the moment Jay emerged from the hallway, dressed in his usual weekday uniform of a navy suit.

  “Keeping it classy, I see, brother,” Jay said.

  “I always do,” Cameron shot back.

  “I gotta get to work.” Without another word, or even a glance back, Jay collected his briefcase and phone from a table in the entryway and departed, leaving an awkward silence in his wake.

  Okay, WWTBD? What would the bride do? The answer, of course, was that the bride would continue to cock-block the hell out of Cameron. As much as Jane wanted to go home and sleep off her hangover, she needed to do the responsible thing and redirect this dude. Of course, she personally couldn’t care less if he slept with half of Toronto, and there were no barns in a city this size that he could burn down, but she was suffused with a general sense of foreboding nevertheless. Butterfly effect and all that.

  So she pasted on a smile and said, “Let’s go to the CN Tower!” It was the first thing that popped into her head when she thought about what people did when they visited Toronto. But it was also the lamest thing she could have said. The CN Tower was where busloads of tourists from Middle America were disgorged by the hundreds.

  “It’s actually on my list.”

  “It is?” Mr. Black Sheep wanted to go to the biggest tourist trap in the city? And here she’d already been scouring her brain for edgier suggestions.

  “Yeah, I have this thing where when I’m visiting somewhere, I like to go to the highest point if I can. Take in the view.”

  She cocked her head. He really was kind of a mystery. “What’s the highest point in Thunder Bay?”

  “Tower Mountain,” he said without hesitation.

  “All right,” she said, slapping her hands on the marble breakfast bar and sliding off her stool. “I need to get changed.” And take about a thousand Advils. And talk Elise off the ledge. She glanced at her watch. She’d been going to suggest they meet there at eleven, which was two hours from now. But was that too long a gap? Could Cameron do any damage in the next two hours? He yawned, interlaced his fingers, and pressed his arms up and over his head, stretching like a cat. A very dangerous, tattooed, man-eating cat.

  Woman-eating cat.

  “I’ll meet you there at ten,” she said.

  Chapter Five

  When Cam ambled into the lobby of the CN Tower at 10:03, Jane was already there perusing brochures. She had changed into another pair of curve-hugging skinny jeans, and she was wearing a form-fitting black T-shirt and a pair of leopard print flats. The woman certainly had a lot of flats. And T-shirts. Last night, at the bar—and in his bed—she’d been wearing a sort of fancy T-shirt, made out of silk or something, and of course she’d had a blazer over it for the not-in-bed portion of their evening, but it had been a T-shirt nonetheless. He was starting to realize that the jeans-T-shirt-flats combo was her thing. As uniforms went, it wasn’t bad. It worked for her.

  “This is a total racket,” she said, looking up as he approached. “They basically want fifty bucks a head if you want to go to both observation decks.”

  He took the brochure and peered at it. “Or we could do this EdgeWalk thing, and that package gets you into everything else, too.” It was stupidly expensive, but, hell, he had his “tuition” savings burning a hole in his pocket. And life had been a little short on thrills since he’d gotten back from Iraq.

  “I knew you were going to want to do that.” She put her hands on her hips. “Because I’m starting to understand: You. Are. Insane.”

  “Not your thing?” he asked, though he already knew the answer.

  “Let me count the ways. Numbers one through two hundred and ninety-five are the dollars it would cost me. And then there’s the part where you’re paying them to dangle you off the freaking CN Tower, Cameron!” She grabbed the brochure back from him and read it aloud, her voice getting higher. “A hands-free walk on a five-foot-wide ledge encircling the top of the Tower’s main pod, eleven hundred and sixty eight feet, or a hundred and sixteen stories, above the ground.” Then she shook the brochure under his face.

  He took it back from her and read on. “Yeah, but also there’s the part where ‘trained EdgeWalk guides will encourage participants to push their personal limits, allowing them to lean back over Toronto with nothing but air and breathtaking views of Lake Ontario beneath them.’” He was taunting her now, but she was kind of irresistible when she was incredulous.

  “What part of ‘insane’ did you not understand? Do you need synonyms? ‘Crazy,’ ‘deranged,’ ‘delusional.’ Anything ringing a bell here?”

  “You don’t have to do it with me.” He shrugged. “But think how many brownie points this will get you with Elise. You do this, and it’s like you’re the valedictorian of babysitting.”

  He’d hooked her. He could tell by the way she tilted her head and squinted her eyes at him. She was searching for a rebuttal, but she didn’t have one. “I’m not babysitting you.”

  He raised his eyebrows. She didn’t seem to remember that she’d admitted as much at the bar last night.

  “So the whole valedictorian of babysitting thing doesn’t apply,” she added.

  “You were probably the actual valedictorian, anyway,” he teased.

  “Salutatorian. Wendy was the valedictorian in our high school.”

  “Wendy?”

  “One of Elise’s other bridesmaids.”

  “You and Wendy and Elise went to high school together?” he asked. He was having trouble imagining Jane as a girl. She seemed like the
kind of person who had been born thirty years old.

  “Nope, just Wendy and me. I’ve known Wendy since she moved to our neighborhood when we were ten. We picked up Elise—and Gia, the fourth bridesmaid—in university. Gia is four years younger than us, though.”

  “And how long ago was university?”

  “Are you asking how old I am?”

  “I might be.” He wasn’t sure why he cared, except that he couldn’t peg her. She was young-looking, with her smooth skin and her cute, if utilitarian, wardrobe. But in other ways, she seemed so world weary, in a way that went beyond her prissiness.

  “So just ask me.”

  “Jane, how old are you?”

  “Thirty-one.” Four years older than he was. But then his own age felt as un-pin-down-able as hers in some ways. Everyone saw him as the immature boy he’d been for so long. But some of the shit he’d seen made him feel like he was a hundred years old.

  She cleared her throat, and he realized he’d gotten lost in his thoughts, so he reached for a joke to cover himself. “Thirty-one is definitely old enough to have your personal limits pushed with nothing but air and the breathtaking view of Lake Ontario beneath you.”

  “Goddamn you, Cameron MacKinnon.”

  He grinned. “I dare you. But I bet you won’t do it.” Suddenly, he really wanted to see Jane hanging off the edge of this impossibly high tower. He wondered if she’d be a screamer.

  Whoa. A shiver ran up his spine as that thought brought to mind a totally different image of her screaming.

  “And if I take this crazy bet, what do I get?”

  “The satisfaction that comes with having your personal limits pushed.”

  She swatted him.

  “The breathtaking views, too, of course.”

  She swatted him again, harder this time, and he grabbed her hand and held on to it in order to halt her attack.

  “How about this?” she asked, not taking her hand back and getting right in his face. “I do this demented EdgeWalk thing with you, and you forgo today’s booty call. Or tonight’s. Or whenever you were planning it.”

  He whistled. This woman knew how to bargain. He was, frankly, taken aback. But also kind of impressed. He hoped Elise knew what a first-rate nanny service she was getting.

  “Because, really, if you’ve slept with one random, you’ve slept with them all,” she went on. “But how often do you get to dangle from a one-hundred-and-sixteen-story building with a bestselling young-adult author? I’ll post us on my Instagram.”

  Shit. He was going to agree to her nefarious terms. What was the matter with him?

  “Come on,” she wheedled. “Tit for tat.”

  Well, at least he could go down swinging. So he took her arm, steered them toward the ticket windows, and said, “I think you mean tat for no-tit.”

  * * *

  Jane was really scared. Like, really, really scared.

  Even the elevator was freaking her out. By the time their guide explained that the ascent would take only fifty-eight seconds, her stomach had already been left behind on ground level. She jerked a little and had to restrain herself from grabbing Cameron’s arm.

  He must have noticed, because he shot her a concerned look. She summoned a smile she feared looked as fake as it was.

  “Let’s do this first,” he murmured in her ear when the guide announced the stop for the glass floor.

  “Yes!” she said a little too vehemently. Because a glass floor was nothing compared to, like, being tethered to the outside of a building more than a thousand feet in the air, right?

  Wrong.

  “Ack!” She did grab Cameron’s arm this time. They were standing at the edge of a glass-paneled floor that showed them the view straight down the hundred and sixteen stories to the street below.

  “It’s kind of wild, isn’t it?” Cameron said mildly, leaning over like he was on an actual ledge. “It’s like your brain knows the glass is thick, and it’s perfectly safe, but…”

  The more he leaned forward, the harder she pulled back on his arm. He was exactly right. The rational part of her understood there was nothing to fear. There were kids gleefully jumping up and down on neighboring panels, for heaven’s sake.

  “But sometimes you’ve gotta open your eyes and jump,” he said, breaking out of her grasp and jumping backward so that he landed on one of the glass panels.

  She could have kept her hand on his arm, followed him out onto the glass, but she didn’t. As their fingers slipped past each other, a twinge of regret pinged around in her chest, but it was swept away as someone on the next panel shrieked in laughter.

  Cameron was grinning, too, looking down at his feet.

  She turned and walked away, her heart beating as if she had walked out on the glass. She busied herself reading an interpretive panel on the wall that informed her that the glass floor could hold forty-one polar bears, or thirty-five moose, or three and a half orcas. So there was basically no way, short of the apocalypse striking, that anyone was falling through that glass. God, what a wimp she was. Children were doing this. Her face heated.

  For no reason at all, she suddenly remembered a time she tried to have some friends over after school in fourth grade. This was before Wendy had started at Jane’s school, back when Jane was…not an outcast really, but struggling to find a place to fit in. Of course, she had fixated, the way kids do, on the pretty, popular girls, thinking that befriending them would make her life so much easier.

  So much happier.

  Part of her knew, even then, that it was a mistake to invite them over. Having people over was usually too much of a risk, given that she never knew what state her father was going to be in. But she’d talked herself into it. She had told Daddy, coached him, begged him even. Explained the stakes. Promises were made.

  But of course she knew the minute she opened the door and he greeted them with a high-pitched “Hi, girls!” that she had been naive to think he could lay off the drinking for even one afternoon. She’d learned her lesson that day: taking risks was usually not worth it.

  “Hey.”

  She inhaled sharply, startled out of her memories. But the shame was still there. She just didn’t know if it was the same old packed-down crud or a fresh new layer.

  “So I’m thinking maybe we should just hit the observation deck and call it a day?” Cameron said gently, resting a hand on her shoulder.

  “What about the EdgeWalk?” she asked.

  “I can do it another time. And I’m sure they’ll give you your money back. People must change their minds all the time. We can just call off the bet.”

  What went unspoken was that he recognized her for the chickenshit she was. And that he was being so nice about it was worse somehow than if he’d whipped out his usual jerky banter.

  She glanced at her watch. Ten minutes until their assigned start time. She thought of those girls who had never come back to her house but had later been over-the-top with expressions of sympathy when her father died. “Nope, let’s do it.”

  * * *

  Cam felt like a dick. Which wasn’t all that unusual, really, but this time he hadn’t actually done anything wrong. There was no way this could end well. And it felt like his fault. Which was ridiculous. Yeah, he hadn’t initially grasped exactly how much of a scaredy-cat she was, but as soon as he’d realized that the glass floor alone was making her start to come unhinged, he’d tried to pull the plug on the whole thing.

  But no. Jane was fronting with false bravado. She was all blustery determination, pasted-on-smiles, and overly loud small talk with their fellow adventurers as everyone lined up to be fitted into their harnesses.

  She was also awfully cute in her orange jumpsuit. The same jumpsuit that made the rest of them look like awkward rejects from a Ghostbusters casting call somehow hugged her curves just right.

  They were all being strapped into harnesses that had cables in the front and the back that fastened to a track in the ceiling that ran the length of the room and the
n continued on outside. The guides who would make the walk with them were fastened onto a parallel, outer track.

  “The platform outside is five feet wide,” the main guide said. “That’s about as wide as your average sidewalk. Have you ever fallen off a sidewalk?”

  That got a mixture of genuine and nervous laughter. Cam eyed Jane. He shouldn’t know her well enough to be able to tell, but underneath her breeziness, she was terrified. He understood. He himself was feeling that same zingy anticipation that always preceded a dangerous task on tour. It was human nature. Even though here, unlike in the Middle East, you knew you were perfectly safe, some reptilian part of your mind whose job was self-preservation was screaming, “danger!” It was like the glass floor, but more.

  Which was why he was worried. He leaned over to whisper in her ear. “You okay?”

  She nodded, too vigorously. He rested his hand on the small of her back.

  “Okay, here we go!” shouted the guide as he threw open the doors and the wind, which was something fierce coming off the lake, whipped in. Several among their group started squealing. In fact, pretty much everyone had some kind of audible reaction as they stepped outside.

  They were toward the back of the line, and Jane was shaking. He could feel it through her jumpsuit. He consoled himself that even if the worst happened and she went hysterical, or passed out or something, the setup was such that they could tow her back inside using the track and cable system.

  Unlike at the glass floor, and unlike nearly everyone else in the group, she was totally silent as she stepped onto the grate that was the floor of the outside platform. He’d thought going behind her made the most sense, so he could steady her if need be, but he saw now that the better choice would have been to go first, so he could watch her face. He was tempted to ask her to turn around so he could see her eyes, but if she was actually okay, in some kind of Zen zone, he didn’t want to puncture it.