I took his hand tentatively. Were first-date jitters even a thing for someone like Sebastian? Because hearing that, now I had them too. “What do you think the feature is tonight?” I asked as we crossed the lawn with the dogs.
“Surely some kind of fairy tail.”
“You mean like The Little Furmaid.”
He snickered. “Brokebark Mountain.”
My heels sank in the grass, so I stooped to remove them. “Love in the Time of Collars,” I said. “Featuring Sandra Bulldog and Drool Barrymore.”
He stopped to wait for me. “Don’t forget Tommy Flea Jones.”
“Titanic,” I said.
“Titanic? I don’t get it . . . oh, wait.” He narrowed his eyes in thought. “Kate Winslet the dogs out?”
I resumed walking in my socks. “There’s no play on words. I’m just wondering if you like that movie.”
Realization crossed his face. “Damn it. I know what you heard, and it’s not true. Justin claims I cried, but the truth is that I have an inordinate number of eyelashes. Sometimes they cause trouble in the eye-watering area.”
“Sure.” I grinned, squinting ahead. “Looks like You’ve Got Mail.”
“For the record, I requested Lady and the Tramp,” he said, “but that only got me the side-eye.”
“You did not.”
“I one-hundred percent did.” At the edge of the crowd, he stopped and set down the picnic basket. “Made some last-minute calls and said it was for a piece I was working on. So You’ve Got Mail feels like a huge ‘fuck you,’ to be honest.”
My laugh came out sounding awed. He had this dating thing down to an art. I could almost convince myself this felt real to him too. “Seriously, where’d all this come from?”
He unfurled a blanket onto the grass. “Never ask a magician for a peek behind the curtain.”
“I’ve never had anyone go to these lengths for a date.” I squatted to pull the edges taut, and my words hung in the air. Maybe I should’ve kept that to myself. “I mean, the thing is,” I continued, testing the waters, “we could probably end the date now and have plenty of material.”
“Not unless you’re sick of me.”
I smiled inwardly. “If I wasn’t sick of you four hours in, I wouldn’t be after six.”
“I’ve never been on a date this long. You?”
I stuck each of my boots on diagonal corners of the blanket. “Only if you count weekend getaways.”
“With your ex,” he guessed, opening the basket. “Never done that. Now, I can say my first getaway date was a trip to Greenpoint.”
“Sorry, but mock dates don’t count.”
“Ah, I see,” was all he said.
Thankfully, the dogs were already lying in the grass, half asleep. Bruno needed rest. Today had been more activity than usual for him, and his heart condition was never far from my mind.
Sebastian passed me the second blanket. “It’s getting chilly.”
I sat cross-legged and covered my lap with it while he unpacked a bottle of red wine. “This is from that stash the Spanish vineyard sent over.”
“For the natural wine piece?” I took the bottle from him and read the label. “Looks fancy.”
He sat next to me. “The most impressive part is that I remembered a corkscrew.”
I looked up. “Since I’ve been with you all day, I can only assume you packed this before coming over this morning, which was risky.”
He pulled out several takeout containers. “How so?”
I tried to peek at the contents, but the lids had steamed over. “Considering our history,” I said, “it would’ve been a safe assumption that I might not have agreed to help you today. What if I’d slammed the door in your face?”
“I wasn’t taking no for an answer.” He took the plastic top off some mixed greens, and my stomach grumbled at the promise of food. “I’m persistent,” he said. “Irresistible quality number four. Or was that five? I’m losing count.”
Sebastian had known I’d say yes. In truth, I hadn’t put up much of a fight. He and I had butted heads since practically the moment we’d met, and yet I’d given up a Sunday to go out with him. Was that romantic, I wondered, or foolish?
The din of the crowd lowered slightly as the movie started. He uncorked the wine and poured us each a stemless glass of red. “Salud,” he said, raising his drink.
I clinked my glass to his and took a sip. His attention was even headier than the wine, and I was glad I’d agreed to come. I didn’t regret a moment of the day, but it would’ve meant even more to know if he was feeling the same.
“Georgina?”
I licked the underside of my top lip. “Hmm?”
“I asked what you think of the wine.”
“Oh. It’s fine.”
“How does it compare to last night’s?”
I wrinkled my nose, wondering if I’d missed something else he’d said. “What?”
He set down his wineglass, looking into it as he worked his jaw back and forth. “Are you still talking to Frank?”
As if the question wasn’t random enough, his use of Frank over François got my attention. “We haven’t been out again if that’s what you mean.”
“What about . . . staying in?” He peered at me. “I saw the empty wineglasses and Pinot bottle at your apartment this morning. And I haven’t stopped wondering about it all day.”
The way he said it, brows heavy, it was almost as if the thought of Frank spending the night bothered him. “Do you really think I’d invite a date, even a pretend one, upstairs when I’d spent the previous night with someone else?”
“Georgina.” He gave me look. “You can’t honestly tell me you still believe we’re on a fake date.”
My heart skipped. Happiness bubbled up so quickly, I had to stop myself from breaking into a grin. I’d been trying to bury my instinct that this was real, but deep down, I’d known it was. I’d just been clinging to the lie out of fear of the truth. As Neal’s dark cloud crept back over me, my excitement subsided. Some days, our breakup didn’t feel that long ago. I felt ready to move on, but was I really? I worried it wouldn’t take much for those insecurities to surface—or for me to fall into old habits. I had reasons to be skeptical of Sebastian’s intentions, but I wasn’t. I trusted him. Or was it only that I wanted him enough to ignore red flags as I had in the past?
“Oh, no,” he said when I didn’t respond. “You do still think this is for the magazine.”
“I—”
“There’s no article.” He worked his fingers under the lid of the largest container, then popped it off. “I didn’t want to risk you turning me down. But clever as you are, I would’ve thought you’d have figured it out by now.”
I watched as he scooped spaghetti and meatballs onto a plastic plate. “I guess I’m still learning how to read you,” I said.
“I’m complex. Another one of my qualities. Though I imagine that one falls under frustrating as well.” He served me pasta and salad. “So, now that you know the truth, you know why I’m asking if Frank spent the night. And why I hope to hell that answer is not a fucking chance.”
“Luciano and I had a sleepover,” I said, secretly awed that he sounded jealous. “I haven’t talked to Frank in days.”
“Good.”
“Good?” I asked.
“Yes, good. Why haven’t you spoken?”
“I don’t know. Life, I guess.” I took a bite. “This is still warm. How’d you put all this together?”
“Even Santa Claus has helpers.”
Justin. It had to be. He really was a good friend. “Does your elf know this isn’t make-believe?”
“Of course. Lady and the Tramp was his suggestion—I think he’s hoping for a spaghetti kiss.”
I blushed, my stomach suddenly full of butterflies that hadn’t been there before. At least not since I’d run into him outside my apartment. Now this was the right moment for a first-date kiss—the setting sun, wine, good conversation. Frank could tak
e a few notes from Sebastian.
“We weren’t really a match,” I said.
Sebastian seemed to know instantly that I was talking about Frank. He nodded. “Why not?”
I twirled spaghetti onto my plastic fork. “A few reasons, but there were a couple things he said that actually reminded me a little of my ex.”
Sebastian hummed. “And I take it that’s a bad thing.”
“My ex was . . . patronizing. More interested in what others thought than what I did. I second-guessed myself a lot around Neal, and it turned me into sort of a . . . pushover.” I exhaled a long breath. There, I’d said it. “I would end up deferring to him on everything.”
“I have a hard time seeing that,” Sebastian said, studying me as he took a bite of pasta.
“That’s because, you’ve mostly only seen me as . . .”
He tilted his head as he chewed and swallowed. “George,” he finished.
Maybe I should’ve been more surprised that he’d figured it out, but the difference between George and Georgina had to be obvious. “You asked earlier why Neal and I broke up. Another woman was only half the truth. He saw me as weak, and I realized when it came to him, I was.”
“Weak how?”
“I give up my seat on the subway. I let others have the last slice of cake at a party. He’d say mean things about me while we were dating, and I’d believe him.” I traded my fork for my wineglass. “He slandered me to our mutual friends assuming I wouldn’t put up a fight. Most of them don’t even speak to me anymore.”
He swatted at a fly hovering over a meatball. “Why didn’t you put up a fight?”
I shrugged. “I have Lu, Bruno, my family, and my work. Neal, he needs people around him who make him feel important. Honestly, if our friends believed what he told them, they weren’t friends anyway.”
“Georgina, you aren’t a pushover.” Sebastian smiled gently at me. “You’re kind.”
“That’s not all,” I said, fiddling with my bracelets. “I supported him so he could go back to school. And as soon as he’d graduated, he left me.” Would Sebastian see me differently after this? As someone without a backbone? I glanced at my hands. “I didn’t realize how bad I was until he came back a couple months later and talked me into forgiving him. At least for a few hours.”
He reached out and stilled my hands. “I’m still not convinced you’re anything other than a good person.”
“People don’t respect good,” I said. “They respect bitches.”
A slow smile spread across his face. “Don’t you hear how ridiculous that sounds?”
“Saying it out loud . . . maybe I do. But it’s what Luciano always says. He opened my eyes to the fact that I lost myself in that relationship.” I paused. “I don’t want to make that mistake again.”
“Then you have to date someone who doesn’t want to lose you, either.”
I didn’t want to lose Sebastian. Not when I’d finally found him. “Are you suggesting . . .?”
His eyes gleamed in the reflection of the movie. “I regret how I spoke to you the morning I met you. I was patronizing. I should’ve just told you the truth. That you’re beautiful.”
I glanced into my drink. I’d been called cute and pretty plenty in my life but rarely beautiful. Hearing it was like trying on a hat I loved but one I couldn’t get to fit quite right.
He lifted my chin with his knuckle. “You know that, don’t you?”
I bit my lip. “Beautiful is such a big word.”
“And yet it describes you so well.”
I believed Sebastian when he said it. I wished I hadn’t come to question that over my time with Neal. “That morning, when I flew off the handle? It wasn’t directed at you. I’d already been berating myself for not sticking up for Luciano, so when you called me out for exactly that, I responded out of hurt and guilt.”
He frowned. “I overreacted, Georgina. Would you believe me if I told you I had a good reason?”
I already knew why. I nodded. “You were on the phone with Justin, and you looked angry. I can only imagine it had to do with me, even though neither of us knew it in that moment.”
He wiped his mouth with a napkin and balled it up. “It wasn’t about work. Well, not entirely. It had more to do with my mom.”
“Your . . . mom?”
“She immigrated from Mexico when she was eighteen, poor, and pregnant. Made it all the way to the east coast on her own.”
“Wow.” I moved my plate away, adjusted the blanket over my lap, and hugged my knees to my chest. “She sounds resilient.”
“She had to be. When she arrived in Boston, she worked as a cleaner.”
I tried not to show my surprise. For a while now, he’d been hinting at a past that didn’t line up with what I’d read about him. Judging by Vance’s offer, Sebastian did very well for himself, and I’d uncovered that his sister owned a successful clothing store in Chestnut Hill. “Until when?”
“That was all Mom ever did, under-the-table jobs. Cleaning for fast food restaurants when I was really young, then a higher-end department store. She eventually worked her way up to five-star hotels and rich people’s homes.”
“That’s why you ‘summered’ on Nantucket.”
“Yeah. We lived in the maids’ quarters.”
“That’s so bourgeois,” I murmured.
“Wasn’t as bad as it sounds, to be honest. At least people weren’t rude to her the way they’d been at her other jobs, sometimes right in front of me.” He paused for a bite. “At the café, when that woman disrespected Luciano, it triggered something in me. Rudeness usually does, apparently.”
His comment came rushing back to me.
“You’ll call a stranger an asshole, but you can’t even stand up for your supposed friend?”
Everything clicked. “I didn’t defend him.”
“Yeah, so I took it out on you. Especially since that day in particular was . . . tough.”
“Because I was starting the job?”
“No.” He reached out and cleared some hair from my cheek. After a few moments, he said, “You’re just the kind of woman my mom wanted me to meet. I wish I could bring you home.”
“Where’s home?”
“Gone,” he said.
One word sent chills down my spine. My response came out as a strangled whisper. “Gone?”
“The day I met you was the first anniversary of her death.” He took his hand back.
The misshapen puzzle that was Sebastian’s personality finally clicked into place. Mom was the piece I’d been missing. She was why he’d stood up for Lu in the coffee shop and had called me out for not doing the same. “I’m . . . I’m so sorry, Sebastian. What happened?”
“She . . . when we were saying goodbye . . .” He paused, swallowing. “I made her a promise to be better. She wanted me to settle down and meet a nice girl, so I’ve been trying to make some changes.”
She was behind his sudden change in lifestyle too. I’d doubted the integrity of the exposé in the first place, but now the lack of research over things like the car accident and Sebastian’s background angered me. “The exposé must’ve been a huge setback,” I said.
“I’d never felt like such a disappointment.”
His reaction to my presence, and to being maligned in the press, made more sense now. “You’ve been under pressure since the day I met you.”
“And my mom was the one I went to for anything,” he said. “Always.”
“You’re not a disappointment,” I said. “How could you be? You’re kind, smart, generous, successful. If I of all people know that, your family definitely does.”
“Was that a compliment?”
“It was four. You called me beautiful.”
His expression fell. “You should know, my mom would’ve had my hide for how I’ve treated you. She didn’t raise me that way.”
“I understand so much better now.”
“Do you?” he asked. “I need you to know I’m not Neal.”<
br />
The vehemence with which Sebastian said it told me he comprehended the damage Neal had done. And that was enough to prove they were nothing alike. I nodded. “I know that.”
“A few minutes ago,” he said, “you said you forgave him, but not for long. What happened?”
I hugged my legs more tightly, clasping my elbows. “It . . . when he asked me to take him back, I assumed he’d realized what he’d had in me. And he did, but not what I’d thought.” I rested my chin on my knees. “He said he never should’ve left someone like me for a stronger woman. To him, I wasn’t loyal or devoted—just easy to control. He was the first person to ever make me feel so meek.”
“And I was the second.” Understanding dawned on Sebastian’s face. “I came along and said you’d get run over in this city.”
“Before Neal, I would’ve brushed it off. But you hit a nerve.”
“Georgina, you aren’t meek. For one, you didn’t take him back. Secondly, you wouldn’t let him bully you into not adopting a pet that needed you.”
“That was for Bruno, not myself.”
He shook his head. “You’re drawing non-existent lines. What matters is that you were strong. For him and for yourself. You’re both George and Georgina. You got up in front of a room that first day at Modern Man and gave the shit out of your presentation—no one else.”
It was such a simple concept that I was embarrassed to admit I’d never really thought of it that way. I was still the one standing at the front of the room, not some version of myself that I could return to a box later . . . even if it sometimes felt that way.
And of course there was the fact that I’d forgotten to be either version all day. I’d just been myself.
“Now, since I can’t kick my own ass,” Sebastian said, “tell me where to find that cocksucka Neal so I can make him sorry he ever opened his pie hole.”
Smiling, I pushed Sebastian’s shoulder. “I have to admit, it’s a little sexy when your accent surfaces.”
He caught my wrist, sliding his hand down until he held mine. “I’m serious. I don’t like how he treated you. Not at all.”
“You don’t have to worry about him.”
“And Frank?”
My insides pulled, sending a twinge of excitement down between my legs. Sebastian wanted me all to himself. I hadn’t pegged him for the possessive type, but I recognized my own jealousy in him, which had quietly formed seeing him with Isabella, June, or in photographs with other women. “There’s nobody else,” I said. “You?”
Right Where I Want You Page 21