Right Where I Want You

by Jessica Hawkins

  It turned out life was full of thin lines. They formed tenuous tightropes between loving and hating, mating and dating . . . life and death. One misstep, one nudge, could knock you from one side to the other before you realized it. Before you were ready.

  * * *

  I woke up curled onto a cushioned seat with my face smashed against a muscular, denim-clad thigh. My eyes focused on a vending machine as stale coffee perfumed the room. Holy shit. I’d fallen asleep at the vet? I shot upright and cursed when I banged the top of my head.

  “Oww, G!” I recognized Luciano’s voice. “What the hell?”

  I covered the welt forming and blinked sleep from my vision. “Lu? What are you doing here?”

  “You texted me to come.” He rubbed his jaw with one hand. “I found you sleeping all contorted on the chair with your pencil skirt halfway up your thighs.”

  “Oh my god.” I yanked it down and threw my face in my hands. “Bruno.”

  “He’ll be all right,” Luciano said in an uncharacteristically gentle voice. “He has to be.”

  I rubbed my eyes. “What time is it?”

  “Almost eleven. You weren’t out long.”

  “I can’t believe I fell asleep. I had such a long day. What if something had happened?”

  “They would’ve woken you. Don’t beat yourself up. Bruno will need you when he’s released, so you should rest now.”

  I pinched the corners of my eyes until a wave of tears subsided. I hadn’t let myself cry yet. Not with an audience. Not without news. Not when I needed to be strong for Bruno. “I can’t believe this. I thought it was a seizure, but Doctor Rimmel said it’s more likely that he fainted. Something about his heart restricting blood flow to his brain.” I nearly choked on the words. “He’s never fainted before.”

  “You’re prepared for this, Georgina.”

  I’d frozen up. All Bruno’s life I’d known he could go into crisis, and yet I’d almost messed up. What if the seconds I’d sat there staring had been the difference between saving or losing the brightest light in my life?

  “You should’ve seen his eyes,” I said, shuddering. “He looked so scared.”

  “I doubt that. I’ll bet with you there, he felt nothing but safe.” Luciano put an arm around my shoulders and kissed the side of my head. “Remember that time I showed up on Halloween in a Freddy Krueger mask and Bruno nearly mauled me?”

  I hiccupped, halfway between a sob and a laugh. “I wouldn’t have blamed him. You were hideous.”

  “Or how about when he cost me the Wii Tennis championship?”

  I nodded against him. Luciano and I had gotten so worked up during the final moments of the last game of our set that Bruno had jumped on Luciano and knocked the controller out of his hands. It was the only time I’d won. “It’s just like you to blame a poor, innocent dog.”

  “Right.” He snorted. “Try poor, innocent beast.”

  I looked at a clock on the wall across from us. “It’s getting late. I wish they’d just tell us what’s going on.”

  “Why was it such a long day?” Lu asked.

  He was trying his best to distract me, so I let him, considering the alternative was worrying myself to death. “Where do I start?” I said, sighing. “I slept with Sebastian.”

  He gasped. “Julia Roberts in a bubble bath!” he cried. “Warn a girl before you blurt out something like that.”

  It felt good to laugh. “I knew you’d get it out of me in the next few minutes anyway.”

  He seized my shoulders to push me back into my own seat. “When was this?”

  “Last night.”

  “Spill everything.”

  “Not much to say. It ended about as quickly as it started.”

  He grimaced. “Already?”

  I caught Luciano up on everything that’d happened since he’d slept over, from Sebastian ambushing me outside my apartment for a faux date to doga in the park to our thwarted spaghetti kiss. And how one of the best days ever had turned into an even better night.

  “That sounds like the date of a flipping lifetime,” Luciano said. “How the hell did things go bad?”

  I tugged my skirt down as far as it would go. It was too cold not to have tights on, but I hadn’t had a moment to change since work. “When we woke up, I felt guilty for keeping the job offer from him. So I told him.”

  He sat back. “Oh. Shit.”

  “Yeah. You won’t believe his response.”

  Luciano shook his head. “I’m imagining all kinds of curse words. Was he at least clothed when he flew off the handle?”

  “He was. I wasn’t.” I picked at my chipping nail polish. “Not that he really flew off the handle at all. I was actually the one who got mad.”

  “Did you?” Luciano looked impressed. “Why?”

  I dropped my hands in my lap. “I told him I got the offer, but I never said I wasn’t taking it. He just assumed I wouldn’t accept out of loyalty to him. I was ‘too good of a person’ to steal his job, which is more or less the patronizing way he put it.”

  “Ah.” Luciano nodded slowly. “And even though you weren’t going to take it, it felt like he expected you not to.”

  I nodded. “It all went downhill from there. He said I wasn’t qualified for the job. I accused him of sleeping with me so I’d be easier to manipulate.”

  “Jesus, G. Do you really believe he’d do that?”

  I twisted the pendant of my necklace. I didn’t think so, but after he’d asked if I was trying to ship him back to Boston, it’d felt like a fair comeback. “Maybe,” I said, because I wasn’t done being angry. “But it doesn’t matter. We’re over.”

  “Hmm.” Luciano sighed. “Were you worried it’d become a Neal situation all over again?”

  “Obviously,” I said, scratching my temple. Except, even though I’d insinuated Sebastian was like Neal, he’d never really intentionally made me feel like I didn’t matter. Neal had employed manipulation to control me. For a moment, in the breakroom with Sebastian, I’d retreated into a memory of a similar argument with Neal over where to spend Thanksgiving—only in that one, I’d backed down. With Sebastian, I fought. Had I regained my strength, or was it simply that I wasn’t afraid to be myself with him, no matter how hard we argued?

  “Actually, Sebastian’s not like that,” I admitted. “I don’t really believe he planned the date with bad intentions. Even though he tricked me into going on it in the first place.”

  “I see. So if I have it right, you ended things, not him? What’d he say to that?”

  “He apologized . . . with a Butterfinger.”

  “Girl, that can’t mean what I think it does.” Luciano pursed his lips. “You’re not that experimental.”

  I shoved him. “I’m talking about the candy bar.”

  “In under forty-eight hours, he took you and Bruno on a date, gave you the best sex of your life, and brought you chocolate. And you’re upset—why?”

  I bit my bottom lip. “I never said it was the best sex of my life.”

  “I’ve only met the man once, but his BDE is off the charts.”

  “Geez, are they passing out pamphlets about it or what?”

  Luciano laughed. “So was it the best sex or not?”

  I thought of how Sebastian had brought me to the brink of orgasm, then flipped me over to get the job done. He’d looked me in the eye and hadn’t shied away, even when intimacy had overwhelmed the moment. “It was the most, I don’t know . . . connected,” I said. “It was special, and I have a feeling we only scratched the surface.”

  “If you want my advice, which you do, don’t write him off so easily. We can’t ignore that he apologized, which Neal never would’ve done.”

  I picked at invisible lint on my skirt. “I thought you’d be proud of me for sticking up for myself.”

  “I am, I just don’t want you to go the opposite direction and let your past with Neal scare you into being alone. Then it’s kind of like you’re still not calling the shots, you
know? He is.”

  I looked up, eyes wide. “That’s like what Sebastian said before he walked out of the breakroom. That by running away, I was letting my fear make my decisions for me.”

  “He has a point.”

  I chewed my bottom lip. The fact that I’d been so tempted to forgive Sebastian in the breakroom had only scared me more. He could’ve walked when I’d pushed him away, but he’d stood where he was and given it right back to me.

  He made sure I knew he wanted me in his life.

  And if I was honest, I wanted him in mine.

  It was the simple truth, but now, things were even more complicated than they’d been that morning. “That’s not all,” I told Luciano. “Dionne offered me a new position.”

  He perked up. “A promotion?”

  “Yes. All the way to Boston.”

  “What?” he screeched. “Why?”

  I covered my ears with a light laugh. “These past couple months got me thinking about how I’m ready to take on new challenges, but where I am now, there’s not much room for me to grow. I told Dionne all that earlier tonight, and she wants me to go to Boston to open a new branch.”

  “Like, permanently?” He sounded worried.

  I nodded. “But, Lu, lately I’ve been feeling like a change would be good. Maybe different scenery, maybe learning some new things.”

  “Don’t you know enough already?” If not for Botox, wrinkles would’ve formed between his eyebrows. “You can’t leave now. We finally became official New Yorkers.”

  I wrinkled my nose. “When?”

  “It happens automatically once you’ve been here long enough to not only map out but pee in every acceptable public bathroom between fourteenth and thirtieth.”

  “We’ve done that?” I asked.

  “Probably.” He pouted. “Do you actually want this? Or could it be that something else is missing?”

  “I think I might want it,” I said and purposely didn’t ask about the “something else” he was referring to. “Besides everything I already mentioned,” I reasoned, “I’ll make more money and get more space for what I pay now. Plus, I’ll basically be my own boss.”

  Luciano narrowed his eyes. “I’m not convinced. Something stinks here, and it’s not that grandma perfume I warned you not to buy.”

  “Hey,” I said, sniffing my wrist. Damn him and his keen sense of smell. The commercial for the fragrance starred Aliana Balik, the model on Sebastian’s desktop and the one woman he’d never been able to score for the cover of Modern Man. It wasn’t that I wanted to be her, but it wouldn’t hurt to at least smell like her.

  “This is all a little too convenient, Georgina. You were on the verge of starting something new and fabulous with a luscious Latin man—”

  “I don’t see how that’s relevant—”

  “And suddenly you have to leave?” He took a deep breath, his expression sobering. “Are you sure you’re not looking for ways to sabotage this relationship before it starts?”

  It wasn’t as if I’d picked the one place Sebastian would never return. Or had even asked to be promoted. “Yes, it would be easier to leave town than risk getting hurt again, but that’s not what I’m doing. Maybe I was wrong this morning, but does having feelings for Sebastian automatically mean I shouldn’t take this opportunity?”

  “I just want to make sure you’re making this choice for yourself and not because Neal scared you. I tell you to be a bitch because I already watched one guy undermine you over and over, slowly draining your confidence.” He took one of my hands. “I want you to make decisions based on your needs, not others’. Take what you want. Do you want Sebastian?”

  If Sebastian had truly meant what he’d said earlier about making this work, and if he could forgive me for the way I’d treated him in the breakroom, then . . .

  I nodded slowly. “I do.”

  “Do you want the job in Boston?”

  I inhaled deeply, thinking back to my conversation with Dionne. Some of it was a blur, my memory short-circuiting from everything that’d come after. But I hadn’t forgotten the confidence she’d had in me. “I would have a team, Lu, one I get to assemble, train, and mentor. We’d be entering a new space where there’s not really much competition yet, so I’d be on the forefront of that. And I’m not bored with my job as it is, but I’d be taking this next step on my own, moving out from under Dionne’s wing after all these years.”

  Luciano watched me. “Yeah. I guess you do want the job.”

  I squeezed his hand to say what I couldn’t. Leaving wouldn’t just mean saying goodbye to New York, but to Luciano and all the memories we’d made here.

  His eyes doubled in size.

  “Oh, don’t get emotional,” I said. “I won’t be able to—”

  “I’m not crying.” He glanced behind me. “I, um . . . I’m sorry . . .”

  “For what?” I asked as he grimaced. “What’s wrong?”

  “I probably should’ve mentioned that Sebastian called while you were sleeping.”

  “Oh. It’s fine.” Sebastian’s text during Bruno’s crisis had been a request to come over and talk. Once I’d checked Bruno in at the vet, I hadn’t had the emotional capacity for anything else, so I’d ignored the message. “I’m avoiding his calls.”

  “You were until I picked up.”

  I slow blinked. “You talked to him?”

  He lowered his voice, looking furtively over my shoulder as he rushed out, “Yes, and I was waiting to see how your story played out before I decided whether to stick around for this, but honestly, he got here much faster than I anticipated.”

  “He’s here?” My heart stopped. I whirled around in my seat to see Sebastian striding down the hall with a bouquet of white roses at his side. Still in his suit, his hair was disheveled, his tie crooked. “Why?” I whisper-hissed. “Up until an hour ago, you still thought he was my enemy.”

  “He didn’t sound hostile on the phone when I answered it,” he said defensively. As Sebastian neared, Lu quickly added, “He sounded sad. Said he needed to talk to you. For a moment, I was worried he’d start unloading on me, so instead, I told him about Bruno.”

  And here he was. “I came as soon as I heard,” Sebastian said, pulling up a chair. With authority in his voice, the sharp angles of his suit, and the crease in his brow, I almost felt as if I was in trouble. He sat across from us, leaned his elbows on his knees, and let the flowers sag between his knees. “What happened?”

  25

  SEBASTIAN

  Georgina and Luciano sat across from me in the vet’s waiting room gaping as if I’d just flown in on a pig. “How’s Bruno?” I asked when they didn’t respond to my earlier question.

  Georgina flinched. “What are you doing here?”

  I’d been leaving the office when I’d decided to try Georgina one last time. Twenty-four hours earlier, I’d been buried in her in more ways than one, and now I couldn’t even get her to take my calls. “Luciano told me what happened. Or at least, the gist of it.”

  Luciano put a hand to his chest and feigned innocence to Georgina. “I only gave him the name of the hospital and the cross streets,” he told her, “but I didn’t tell him to come, I swear.”

  I couldn’t muster an ounce of offense that she didn’t want me there. Knowing what Bruno meant to her, she had to be in a world of pain. Dark circles under her eyes and goosebumps on her knees and arms told me all I needed to know. Why wasn’t she wearing a coat?

  “You’re dripping . . .” Georgina said.

  I glanced down between my feet. I’d bought the bouquet in a hurry from a bodega on the way over, and the wet stems had made a puddle. I didn’t even know if she liked roses, but it seemed like the right thing to do. “These are for you,” I said, passing them to her. “So, is there any news?”

  “Not yet,” she said, resting the bouquet in her lap. “One minute I was petting Bruno, and the next—” Her voice caught. “He . . .”

  “It’s okay, just relax,” I sai
d, standing up. My intent wasn’t to make her cry but to comfort however I could. I pulled a bag of gummy bears from my suit jacket, my other last-minute grab from the corner store. “You must be hungry,” I said. “You haven’t changed since the office?”

  She took the candy with wide eyes. “I didn’t get a chance.”

  I removed my jacket and handed it to her. “Put that on,” I said, then went to reception for paper towels and a blanket.

  Once I had what I needed, I made my way back to them. Georgina, in my oversized blazer, frantically chewed gummy bears and looked as if she was having a whispered argument with Luciano. They went silent the moment I was in hearing distance.

  I unfolded a royal blue blanket and shook it out. “This should work for now,” I said, handing it to her. “I can go to your place and get you a change of clothes if you like.”

  “It’s okay,” she said almost cautiously as she covered her lap.

  “How about a mocha latte?”

  “I’ll handle that,” Luciano said, getting up. “There’s a twenty-four-hour deli a couple blocks from here. Sebastian?”

  “Black coffee is fine. My treat,” I added, getting my wallet from my back pocket. I didn’t think I’d ever live down the fact that Georgina’s best friend had seen me snap at her in the café. I sighed, thinking he’d probably volunteer to contribute to my next exposé, and gave him a twenty. “If you don’t mind.”

  “Not at all,” Luciano said before walking off.

  I dragged my chair forward to sit facing Georgina. “Are you okay?” I asked.

  She swallowed audibly, then relayed the details of her evening as remotely as she seemed able. Through a series of staccato hiccups, she attempted to hold back tears when she got to the part about how terrified Bruno had looked. “I almost couldn’t help him,” she said.

  I put my hand over her blanketed knee. “It sounds like you did everything right.”

  “He had too much activity yesterday. I should’ve known better. And when it was time to act, my mind went completely blank. I almost fucked it all up, Sebastian.”