“Good.” He exhaled in relief and pulled me to him. “I felt so bad about having to cancel on you the other night. But I think when you hear—”
“Whitaker!” Kevin’s booming voice abruptly cut off whatever Will was about to say, and I didn’t know whether to be frustrated or relieved. “Oh, hey, Cadie,” he said much less aggressively once he saw that Will was not alone. “I’m afraid I’m going to have to steal him from you.”
Will’s hand dropped from my shoulder as he rushed to meet Kevin at the end of the hallway. They began speaking in hushed tones—something about a phone call and, if my ears didn’t deceive me, something about a pigeon. At one point they both glanced at me, at the exact same time, and they both smiled cheesily—making me acutely aware that I had been mentioned in the conversation. Completely lacking subtlety, they turned back to face each other and spoke even more quietly.
“Yeah. Okay, I’m there in one minute,” Will concluded before hurrying back over to me and kissing my cheek. “I have to run, but I’ll be able to explain everything tonight.”
“Tonight?” I asked, trying to remember if we had plans.
“Dinner? I’ll pick you up at 7:00, and I promise you nothing will get in the way tonight.” He smiled a very charming smile before leaning in and kissing me tenderly on the lips.
“Yeah.” I nodded and did my best to smile a little bit. “Sure.”
I knew I should be counting my blessings. I couldn’t ask for much better, really. An end to this uncomfortable exchange, and a promise that I could finally begin moving Will Whitaker to my life’s archive folder, in just a few hours? Great.
But he really needed to stop kissing me. It had been a very long time since he’d kissed me like he was kissing me right then—as if there were the promise, or at least the potential, of something more. When he kissed me like that, I was ready to put the past year behind us and start over.
“Did you say something about a pigeon?” I asked as I breathlessly put some separation between us.
He began walking backward away from me, toward The Field, and as he did he tilted his head in confusion. “I don’t think so . . .”
“To Kevin. He said, ‘He’s on the phone,’ and you said, ‘The pigeon?’”
There was one more brief moment of confusion on his face, and then recognition registered and he burst out laughing. “You didn’t hear anything else I said, did you? Maybe about the pope’s nose, or chromosomes, perhaps?”
“No . . .”
“Good. I wouldn’t want the surprise to be ruined.” He winked and then rushed back toward me. Before I could register what was happening, or brace myself in any way whatsoever, one of his arms was wrapped around the back of my neck and the other was around my waist, and I was being dipped for a sexy, straight-out-of-the-movies kiss.
“Surprise?” I asked—whimpered, maybe?—once he let me up for air.
He ran his fingers down my jawline and said, “I think tonight will be a really special night for us, Cadie. Thanks for being patient with me. I promise to try and make it worth the wait.”
Darby peeked her head around the corner and interrupted the romance of the moment—romance I didn’t understand at all, mind you—by saying, “Hey, Will . . . Kevin is calling out your name from The Field, in increasing levels of irritation, it seems.”
He shook his head while simultaneously straightening his tie. “Thanks, Darb. I’ll see you tonight.” He pointed at me and winked again as he backed away. When he reached Darby’s location at the end of the hall, he stopped long enough to exchange some ridiculous secret handshake they had made up and then turned and began running toward The Field.
“What in the world was that about?” Darby asked with a laugh, making her way toward me.
I shook my head and muttered, “I have no idea.”
“Are you okay? You’re all flushed—”
“He kissed me. Like, kissed me.”
“Was that after you broke up with him, or . . . ?”
I groaned and spun on my heel to walk away from The Field, toward my office. Or anyone’s office, really. I just had to get away from an open space where Will could potentially interrupt all of my well thought out intentions and once again call an entire year into question.
“It isn’t funny,” I asserted as we walked into my office and I closed the door. “I don’t know what that was all about, but I can’t let it affect anything. I just can’t.”
“Okay, Cadie, seriously. What in the world happened? He just kissed you? I mean, it’s not like it’s the first time he’s kissed you. What’s the big deal?”
That was a very good question.
“There was just . . . I don’t know. An energy. He was kind of playful and sexy and mysterious. I don’t know how else to describe it.”
She chuckled as she slipped off her heels and plopped down in my desk chair. “Mysterious? Look, Will is a lot of things, but mysterious? I think you’re just processing a whole lot of different emotions, which makes sense. Total sense. So don’t let it get to you, just—”
“He said tonight is going to be special. He said . . .” My voice trailed off.
I knew there was a very good chance she was right, and I knew the best thing I could do was brush it all off and resume practicing my “We’ve just grown apart” speech, so that by 7:00 I could deliver it in the cold and detached—but not unsympathetic—way it needed to be done. But I knew Will Whitaker better than I knew anyone. I knew him better than anyone else knew him. And I knew that something different was happening.
I needed to talk it out with Darby, but I didn’t even want to acknowledge the questions racing through my head. I was overwhelmed by a suspicion that absolutely nothing good would come from that acknowledgment.
But of course Darby wouldn’t accept that.
“What? He said what, Cadie?”
“He said he promises to try and make it worth the wait.”
She sat up straight in the chair. “Make what worth the wait?”
“He didn’t say.” I thought back through the conversation to make sure I wasn’t missing a clue. “He thanked me for being patient—”
“Patient how?”
Darby’s pestering shook me out of my stupor somewhat, and I laughed as I sat in the chair across the desk from her.
“I don’t know. That was pretty much it. Patient with him. Just that and some nonsensical gibberish about pigeons and popes. And chromosomes, I think.” She opened her mouth to, no doubt, ask the very necessary questions, but before she could proceed I added, “And he said he has a surprise for me. Tonight.”
Darby jumped up from the chair and circumnavigated the desk. As she hoisted herself up to sit on it, right in front of me, she asked, “What are you going to do?”
“What do you mean?”
“What are you going to say?”
“About what?”
My best friend sighed. “Cadie . . .”
“Don’t say it, Darby. Seriously, don’t say it. I don’t think I could bear it if you said it. I know what you’re thinking, and of course I’m thinking it too. But I can’t afford to be wrong again. I can’t afford to set myself up for disappointment again. I can’t. I just . . . can’t.”
“Okay,” she said softly as she grabbed my hand in hers. “So, um . . .” She cleared her throat. “Can you explain the pigeon and the pope and the . . . chromosomes, was it? Sounds like the setup for a really bad joke.”
I laughed and wiped away the tears that had begun pooling in my eyes. “I misheard him. When he was talking to Kevin. I’m not sure what he really said, but I could have sworn he said something about a pigeon being on the phone. When I asked him about it, he asked me if I overheard anything else. Like, something about a pope’s nose or chromosomes. He was just teasing me.”
And I didn’t want to admit how much I had enjoyed being teased by him. What had once been a staple of our relationship had been mostly missing for a very long time.
“Then what?” Darb
y asked, all of the color gone from her face.
“What is it, Darb?”
“What did he say after that? What did you say? And then, yeah . . . what did he say?”
I shrugged. “I don’t know. I just said that I hadn’t heard that, and he said that was good, because he wouldn’t have wanted the surprise to be ruined.”
She leapt off of the desk as if she’d been electrocuted, and her hands flew to cover her mouth—which I could only assume was as wide open as her eyes.
“What?” I laughed, though it was a laugh I was forcing in order to hide my nervousness. I didn’t even know why I was nervous, but I knew that nervousness was the proper emotion.
“He’s going to propose,” she muttered through her fingers.
I groaned and stood from the chair and began pacing. “I told you not to say it!”
“I know. I know! But ‘pope’s nose’? ‘Chromosomes’? Clearly he was teasing you about whatever he said that you thought sounded like ‘pigeon’—so he was dropping a hint. And maybe also making sure you actually didn’t hear something? I don’t know. But don’t you see? Pope’s nose. Chromosomes. Propose!”
“Oh, come on. That’s stretching things at the very least. Don’t you think?”
“Well, yeah . . . I would, if he hadn’t also talked about surprises and patience and special nights.”
Oh my goodness. She was right. She had to be right.
“So,” she continued, “now that we’re not just talking about obscure gut feelings and such, I’ll ask again. What are you going to do?”
What was I going to do?
“I have no idea!” I exclaimed, a little more loudly than I meant to. I looked toward the door and verified that it was still closed. The speed of my steps back and forth across the room increased as I followed Darby’s example and kicked off my own high heels. “It’s, I mean . . . it doesn’t change a thing. It doesn’t change a thing, right?”
She threw her hands up in the air. “Beats me! On one hand, yes, you’re right. It doesn’t change a thing. It doesn’t change the fact that it’s been four years, and that all of the romance and consideration and, you know, having a clue for the past year has been pretty much—”
“Nonexistent,” I interjected.
“Yeah. It doesn’t change that. But suddenly today he’s playful and sexy?”
“And mysterious.”
“And mysterious,” she repeated. “I mean, maybe he woke up. Maybe he was worried he was going to lose you—”
“Which was totally going to happen tonight.”
“And he decided to pull it together. Maybe you’re wrong. Maybe he is the most intuitive of guys.”
I was with her until then. I really was. I was growing increasingly certain that he’d finally decided he wanted to spend his life with me, and increasingly uncertain that I didn’t still feel the same way. But then reality reappeared.
“He hasn’t seen me, Darby. He hasn’t spoken to me. What in the world could have made him wake up? What could have possibly changed from the time he stood me up—”
“He didn’t stand you up.”
“To now?” I completed the sentence, choosing to ignore her constant beating of the “you weren’t stood up” drum.
She shrugged. “I don’t know. But for all we know, he was planning to do it the other day, and whatever made him cancel your date truly was out of his control. I don’t know, Cadie. But I know he loves you. And I know that if he’s finally gotten it all figured out, I want you to be with him. Because I’ve seen the two of you at your best, and at your best, you make each other happy. I know that. And you know it too.” She paused as she made her way across the room to me, and then she planted her feet right in front of me and forced me to look straight at her as she said, “And I know that you still love him. I also know—and fully understand—that you can’t keep going with him the way things are. But I’m also pretty doggone sure that if he could get his stuff together, you’d rather be with him than anywhere else, with anyone else in the world.”
I couldn’t deny that.
I stopped in front of my desk chair and plopped down as she had a few minutes prior. “I don’t know what I’m going to do,” I muttered as I buried my face in my hands.
She sighed. “Look, you know I’m no love expert—”
I raised my head slightly to peer at her over my fingers, eyebrow raised. “You’ve been on three dates this week . . .”
“Exactly. Three first dates with three different guys. I didn’t say I wasn’t a first date expert. I am that. But love?” She scrunched up her nose and shook her head. “But I really think you need to just live in the moment on this one. Trust your gut.”
My eyes were drawn to the charts and spreadsheets that were placed all around me, wherever I looked. My life was charts and spreadsheets, quotas and budgets. There wasn’t a single aspect of my job that required anything less than meticulous planning and consideration of all the variables. Trusting my gut never really came into play.
“I think I trusted my gut a year ago—”
“I know,” she agreed with a nod.
“And all I’ve had to show for it is that whole awkward sex talk—”
She boastfully laughed at my use of her phrase.
“And a year of missing the good old days. I can’t go through that again.”
“And you won’t.” She crossed the room to stand behind my chair, wrapped her arms around my shoulders, and rested her cheek on the top of my head. “Because this time, if it’s time to end it, you’ll know. You’ll be ready.”
4
A Year Earlier (AKA “That Whole Awkward Sex Talk”)
Thanks for walking me home,” Cadie said with a smile as she unlocked the door of her West Village brownstone. “It was a really great birthday and anniversary.”
“It was, wasn’t it?” Will pushed the door open for her and then followed her inside. “Of course, when the birthday girl is as venerated as you are . . .”
Cadie laughed freely as she carefully hung her keys on the hook on the wall, above the tiny kitchen counter. Meanwhile, Will was locking the door and the additional dead bolts and chains that were a fixture in the home of any cautious New Yorker—even those who lived in the West Village. He had yet to give Cadie her birthday gift, but one of her anniversary gifts had been a Word of the Day app that Will had downloaded for himself—in reference to an inside joke they shared about his limited vocabulary. In fact, his vocabulary was perfectly sufficient, and they both knew it, but if he could make Cadie laugh by using new words—such as venerated—each day, he’d gladly play into the joke.
“I don’t think I’ve heard that word as many times in my whole life as I’ve heard it today,” she said, her laughter continuing.
“Well, it’s only the first day. Give it some time.” He took off his jacket and hung it on a hook by the door—as carefully as she had hung up her keys. “Will talk more good words soon,” he added in his best caveman voice.
He crossed the limited square footage of Cadie’s co-op and helped her off with her jacket, and then hung it up as well. In his apartment, throwing outerwear—and, let’s face it, the occasional dirty sock—over the back of the couch was good enough, but for Cadie, he always strove to honor her meticulous habits.
“Want some coffee?” she asked.
He was suddenly just behind her, his much longer arm beating hers to the coffee maker. “Here. Let me.”
Cadie pivoted where she stood and faced him, their bodies and faces only inches apart. “I need to have birthdays more often,” she said with a smile, before quickly shaking her head. “No, I take that back. Forget I said that.”
He set the carafe back down on the base, the desire for caffeine momentarily forgotten by them both. “Or maybe I just need to treat every day like it’s your birthday.”
He wrapped his arms around her waist and she rose slightly on her tiptoes as she threw her arms around his neck.
“I could live with th
at. You have made me feel very venerated today.” She winked and planted a quick kiss on his lips.
“Maybe I should have gotten you that app. You need to learn some new words. That one’s kind of overused.”
She giggled and leaned her forehead onto his chest, and he pulled her closer. She turned her head so that her cheek rested on him instead, and he felt as if he had no control over the sigh of contentment that escaped from his mouth. She was so fond of her high heels, always a bit self-conscious of her slight 5’4” stature, but he personally loved it when she wore flats, as she did tonight. Maybe because it represented how comfortable she was with him. Maybe because she seemed to fit against him even more perfectly that way.
“I love you, you know,” he whispered into her ear. A gratified smile overtook his face as he felt her shudder slightly in his arms, presumably a reaction to his breath against her skin.
“I do know that, yes,” she replied, her voice nonchalant and seemingly unaware that when he was holding her as closely as he was, she couldn’t fool him. He knew how affected she was by him.
“And . . . ?” His cheek rested against the top of her head, and her chuckle let him know that she had felt his smile increase against her hair.
“And . . . I’m glad.”
He pulled away from her in mock horror. “You’re glad I love you?”
“Yes,” she replied simply, as her smile widened despite her best efforts.
“That’s all you have to say?”
Cadie shook her head. “No, of course not. I also want to say that I think you’re very nice as well.”
He laughed for a moment before capturing her lips with his. He’d really intended to prepare a witty comeback, to continue the repartee. But, as it turned out, his lips hadn’t been privy to the plan.
He grew increasingly lost in her as his looped arms inched lower on her back, drawing her closer to him and helping her take some of the pressure off of her tiptoes. It was a familiar dance they shared. Familiar, yet every bit as exciting as the first time they’d kissed, so long ago.
Wooing Cadie McCaffrey Page 4
