Austen Box Set

by Hart, Staci

  I heard Tyler’s alarm sound, breaking the silence in the quiet apartment, and I did my best not to look when he shuffled out of his bedroom in nothing but a pair of sleep pants, dark hair ruffled. I waited until his back was turned to sneak a quick glance, at least — his skin was smooth and immaculate, and the taper of his long waist was of a mathematical proportion that made my ovaries clench.

  Any hetero woman would have looked, I told myself for the thousandth time since he’d moved in. It made me feel a little bit better about blatantly creeping on him.

  I turned my attention back to my book, sorta — I couldn’t fully focus as I listened for cues. I knew his habits so well, I could almost time the flush of the toilet, the length of his shower, the moment when he’d open that door and walk out, soaking wet, towel wrapped around his waist in front of a cloud of steam, water dripping down his abs—

  Look, I know it’s vulgar, me ogling Tyler like hippies ogle kale in Whole Foods. But Tyler was some good looking kale, if that’s a thing. If it’s not, I’m making it a thing. The guy was built like a dream. Like a teenage dream you’d plaster all over your walls, spend your nights fantasizing about your wedding spread in Seventeen Magazine. The way he looked was unreal. He was so beautiful, you’d be tempted to touch him just to make sure he was made of flesh and blood and not actually a man-bot of chiseled beauty, hand-crafted by an erotic inventor of eroticness.

  I attributed my lusty thoughts for Tyler to the fact that I hadn’t dated or slept with anyone in a while. My stupid, hard-up body was a traitor — the lack of physical contact had just reached unmanageable heights, forcing me into fantasizing about the unattainable guy who paid half the rent.

  Life is so unfair that I’d be attracted to a guy I’d never date. We were too different, and I’d done that once before, which had resulted in nothing but humiliation and regret.

  Tyler and I were friends — I was nothing but his fun and amusing little buddy, definitely not the kind of girl who he could ever publicly date. My mouth could not be trusted, and neither could my ability to walk in high heels or look pretty.

  I had been what I call ‘genetically doomed’ — my father was a small, slender man who spent more time with books than he did with people. He had a collection of cardigans that would give Mister Rogers a boner, and nearly every wall in my childhood home in the cosmopolitan city of Walnut, Iowa, was lined with bookshelves. He met my mother at the University of Iowa. Classic story: he was an English major, she studied Library Sciences. She admired his cardigan across the library, and he approached her, complementing the chain on her gigantic glasses. Her cardigan too — he’d appreciated it from across the room. She smiled and said she’d gotten it at Sears, in the men’s department, on sale.

  That was all it took. Love at first sight.

  Neither of them had ever left Iowa for more than forty-eight hours, and after their graduation and nuptials, they moved back to Mom’s home town of Walnut to be near my grandparents, each of them taking up jobs in the public schools — Dad teaching high school English and Mom as the librarian in the elementary school.

  Here’s the thing about having weird parents — they cultivate your weird, thus making weird your normal.

  Looking back, I guess I should have been embarrassed when my mom did things like send me to school in clothes that were a decade out of style or with tofu and couscous for lunch. Once she even cut my hair with an actual bowl — she made me hold the orange plastic bowl while she used the kitchen scissors to hack away at it.

  But instead of being ashamed, I went to school and told them that my mom had cut my hair because when it was long, I was too strong. Because of my superpowers, and all. I had a peanut gallery enthralled under a tree on the playground as I wove the tale of how I’d accidentally broken the table when I pushed away from it after dinner, or when I pulled the faucet off the shower by accident, but she drew the line when I pulled the car door off its hinges trying to open it. We’d cut it for everyone’s safety, I told them, and they bought it with wide eyes.

  I’d been able to read people even then, which made it that much easier to survive the perils of public school in a small town. I knew the bullies and how to work them into giving me their lunch money, and with a smile. I knew how to get the mean girls to compliment my odd fashion choices in high school. I knew who to trust and who to avoid. And that adaptation taught me how to survive the rest of life.

  I wasn’t named Most Likely to Succeed for nothing.

  Of course, then I left for college. See, I’ve had this problem with authority my whole life. Maybe it’s in part because my parents never were authoritative. I followed the rules, for the most part, and when I didn’t, I had a damn good argument as to why. So when it came to college, as I headed off to the University of Iowa, I knew myself well enough to recognize that I didn’t know what I wanted to do with my life. I loved to learn, just not anything I didn’t want to learn. Five years in, it was suggested I should choose a major so I could get a degree. I figured why the hell not, especially after finding that I only had a handful of classes needed to do just that.

  So I tallied up my classes to figure out what the shortest track to a degree would be and landed on a History major with a minor in Japanese.

  Weird, I know. Like I said, it’s genetic.

  I’d studied in Tokyo for a semester, and once I graduated, the last place I wanted to go after graduation was back to Walnut. I was ready for another adventure, so I decided to move to New York on a whim. My parents were almost what I’d call horrified that I wanted to stay out of Iowa, which made sense, given that the biggest city they’d ever been to was Omaha. But adventure was basically my middle name. I’d lived a thousand lives through the books I’d read, which meant I was certain I could conquer just about anything.

  The first thing I did was find a job, thinking that being a counter girl at a comic shop was temporary. My boss — who looked a little something like the comic guy from The Simpsons, ponytail and all — took one look at me and hired me on the spot. I’d like to say it wasn’t based on my looks, but it would be a lie. I was basically a unicorn — a girl who knew her comics better than most of the guys who came in. And within a few months, he promoted me to a manager. That, I’m happy to say, was strictly based on my abilities.

  I’d worked there for two years, content to be in an environment where I was comfortable, had the perks of reading material at my fingertips, and could wear Converse to work. But the day that Cooper Moore came in to buy comics for the first time was, unknowingly, a day that would change everything.

  Cooper was one of the New York elite, a socialite and renowned playboy who found himself on the cover of gossip magazines as much as the Kardashians. The day I first met him, he looked like he was shooting for incognito in a baseball hat, shades on, and the first one in the store that day, which was a time when the nerds were usually still curled up asleep in their moms’ basements, dreaming of Sailor Moon. I knew who he was almost right away, and when he asked about some pretty specific underground comics, I knew two things: 1) we would end up being friends and 2) he was the coolest geek I’d ever met.

  So, I became his dealer of sorts. Helped sneak him into ComicCon in a freaking full-blown custom-made Batman suit. And when he became the investor for his friend Rose to open the book-slash-comic bar, he asked me to help her run it, and the salary he offered almost made me faint.

  Almost.

  The second thing I did when I came to New York was find an apartment, which ended up being on the Upper West, subletting a room from a guy named Giovanni, who I never met. My roommate then was Francesca, who had been Giovanni’s girlfriend until she came home and found him nailing a friend of hers. There was apparently a lot of swearing in Italian as she threw all of his clothes off the fire escape — a story that my upstairs neighbor Mrs. Frank loved to retell.

  A few months after I moved in — long enough for me to badger her into teaching how to make pasta and speak a little Italian — she
met some Wall Street dude who moved her into his penthouse on the East Side, and the subletting carousel began. I’d been living in the apartment for two years, and in that time, I’d had no less than six roommates, including Francesca and Tyler, and he’d lived with me for almost a year. Each one ended up letting the apartment to someone else, changing the scenery every couple of months. My last roommate had sent Tyler to take her place, the guy her friend had just dumped who had nowhere else to go.

  I’d never lived with a straight guy before, certainly not one who was built like a freaking stallion. But the second he told me his name, I knew exactly who he was. Everybody knew about Tyler Knight, the Nebraska tight end to watch, the sure thing for an NFL contract. In fact, he played when I was a freshman in college, and I still remember watching the game when he was injured on TV, seeing him lying unconscious on the field as they administered CPR. But the injury to his spine took away any hope he had of a career in the NFL, and we all mourned for him.

  I was a little star struck with him at first. The fact that I lived with a legend was crazy enough. The fact that we were actually friends was the nuttiest thing of all.

  But friends we were, falling into our relationship easily. I’d never even entertained the idea of him and me as anything more than what we were. He belonged on his shelf and I belonged on mine — the separation between us may as well have been the Great Divide. But friends was a different playing field, one that brought us level as long as the terms were in place. We balanced each other well, even down to the little things — I made the coffee, he cooked the eggs. I knew when to razz him and I knew when he needed a win. So did he. And having something familiar made it a little easier to be so far away from everything I knew.

  He stepped out of his room, head to ankle in business casual — he was still barefoot — and it was all cut to perfection, without a pleat or misfitted seam to be seen. His togetherness sent another little flutter through me, while at the same time highlighting the differences between us. I’d never be considered what someone would call together. He smiled as he walked into the kitchen, heading straight for the coffee pot.

  “Sleep well?” I asked, abandoning my book.

  “As well as I could with Kafka barking all night,” he said as he poured himself a cup.

  I snorted as I stood and grabbed my coffee cup, heading into the kitchen to sit at the table. “That dog barks at his own shadow, I swear. If Mrs. Frank wasn’t the coolest old lady in the world, I’d riot.”

  “For only weighing six pounds, that dog has some real pipes.” He leaned on the counter and took a sip.

  “You’ve got to get a white noise machine or something. I learned that years ago — it’s top of the must-have list for living in this apartment.”

  He shrugged. “I know. I just forget to actually get one.”

  “There’s an app for that, you know.”

  He tossed me his phone. “Great. Set it up.”

  I caught it and made a face at the busted screen while he watched, amused. “When are you going to get this thing fixed? I mean, you’re all put together, but your phone looks like shit. I can’t even read the icons.” I squinted my eyes at it for emphasis. “How the hell do you play chess on this?”

  But he smiled. “It works just fine. It’s what’s inside that counts.”

  I snorted and rolled my eyes.

  He winked and took another sip of his coffee, setting the cup on the counter before opening the fridge. He pulled out the supplies he needed to make eggs — first the long paper carton, then diced tomatoes, chives, and mushrooms he’d pre-cut, then rummaged through the cabinets for his favorite skillet and silver mixing bowl.

  “Are you coming home before singles night to change?” he asked as he picked up a brown egg and cracked it on the side of the bowl.

  I picked up my Dalek mug, wrapping my fingers around it. “No, I’m taking my costume and everything with me.”

  “Oh, I forgot to tell you — I’m bringing a friend tonight.”

  My brow raised. “Oh? Do tell.”

  “His name is Martin. Met him in a business class in college — he’s an accountant. We haven’t hung out in a while, so I invited him to come with, figured you could maybe set him up. He’s one of the best guys I know, real and honest, you know?”

  I smiled. “Sounds like our type of guy. I’ll see if I can find a suitable match for him.” I took a sip. “How’s your day looking?”

  He cuffed the sleeves of his sky-blue button down and whisked, holding the bowl in his free hand at an angle. “I have a few meetings to attend with Jack and a phone call with one of my prospects.”

  “Which one?”

  “Darryl Johnson.”

  “Oh, he’s the one who plays for Nebraska? Under your dad?”

  He nodded. “I just hope I’ve done enough, you know? This business isn’t always what you’d call honest, so to be a part of an agency that plays by the book and stands on integrity is humbling and terrifying. When everyone else bribes players and you don’t, it’s a risk.”

  “Even though it’s illegal?”

  “There are ways around the rules. Everybody looks the other way because that’s just how things are done. But Jack’s built something different, and because of his principles, we’ve got some of the top players in the NFL. Darryl trusts my dad, and he trusts Jack. I think he trusts me too.”

  I smiled, looking into his honest face, knowing what Darryl would see in it. “I have a good feeling it’s all going to work out.”

  Tyler smiled back at me. “Thanks, Cam.” He glanced down at the skillet and poured the egg concoction in with a hiss. “Well, tonight should be eventful, huh?

  “Should be. Thanks for coming to hang again.”

  “Hey, no worries. I hate to admit it, but it’s fun to watch you work your magic,” he said as he pushed the eggs around the skillet. “Who are you working on now?”

  “Well,” I said, leaning on the table, “tonight, it’s sealing the deal on Bayleigh and Greg.”

  “Tell me how everyone knows each other again.”

  “So, Rose used to work with Bayleigh at Habits. Well, you know she’s a sweet girl, kind of quiet, a little shy until she gets to know you. She’s had some trouble in the guy department finding someone she can trust, so number one priority was to find her an honest dude. Greg is a super honest dude, a total catch. Rose actually used to date him — he was working at a coffee shop, and she asked him to be the bar manager.”

  “He’s the skater, right?” he asked as he stirred the eggs around.

  “Yeah. Anyway, Greg’s the best, and the guy just can’t seem to catch a break. Every girl he’s tried to date ends up being a disaster in one way or another.”

  “And he and Bayleigh are a surefire Cam Emerson match?”

  “The outcome appears to be favorable. The two of them … I don’t know. I just want them to be happy, and I think they could make each other happy. Both of them need a win, and in the exact same ways, so, yeah. I think it’ll be a satisfying match. We’ll see tonight.” I found myself smiling at the thought.

  Tyler plated the eggs and chuckled again. “That excited, huh?”

  “Just a little. But first, I have to count comic books all day. Good news is that I’m in charge of the playlist today.”

  “Upsides.” He set a plate in front of me with a napkin and fork. “Your breakfast, m’lady.”

  I bowed my head. “Thank you, good sir.” The salty steam from the eggs hit my nose, and I actually salivated, wetting my lips before digging in. An appreciative hum vibrated through me, and when I looked over at Tyler, I caught him watching me, amused. “These are damn good, buddy. You can’t keep telling me there’s no special ingredient because that’s got to be a bald-faced lie.”

  He shrugged and laid his napkin in his lap. “Oh, there’s a secret ingredient all right.”

  I swallowed a bite and gaped at him. “Are you kidding? I’ve been asking for a year now. What is it?”

  He
batted his eyes and made a face at me. “Love.”

  I rolled my eyes, though I felt myself blush. “That’s adorable.”

  He laughed. “It’s the whisking that does it. It’s all in the wrist.”

  “That’s what she said.”

  His eyes twinkled as he took a bite. “That’s how you get it all frothy.”

  “Yeah, you’ve got to beat it real good or it’s limp. Nobody likes it when it’s limp.”

  A laugh burst out of him. “You win.” He speared a chunk of eggs and slipped it into his mouth.

  “Of course I did,” I said, making a show of taking a bite of my own. “I’m a good winner. Some would say I’m the best winner.”

  We finished up our breakfast and finished getting ready, Tyler pulling on his oxfords, while I opted for skinnies, my Visit Mordor tee, and a cardigan. We left the apartment together as we always did, parting ways in the subway station, heading in opposite directions. The trains were packed for rush hour, but I caught a seat as someone got up and felt like I’d won the lottery. Those were the best days, when I could sit down on the way to work without having to maintain my balance. Because that took way more brain power than you’d think.

  I spent the train ride on my phone, playing chess with Tyler. I’d been practicing, and I swear I was so close to beating him I could taste it. But with my headphones in, soaking in the last moment of solitude that I’d have for the day, I smiled to myself, feeling like it was going to be a real good day.

  I put my phone in my pocket when I reached my stop and headed off the train, watching the people around me. An old man trudged through the wide passage as people flowed around him, not even seeing him. I touched his arm as I passed and gave him a smile, and when he smiled back, his whole face lit up.