by Julia Kent
“No, never.”
Laughter bursts out of him as his palm goes to my back, the other takes my hand, and I do the same. It’s jolting, really, to go from Ian to this guy. But as he moves me across the floor, I’m stunned by Dancy’s elegance.
“You’re a very good dancer,” I tell him.
“I know.”
“You’re also modest.”
“That I’m not, my dear Hasty.”
For some reason, when he says Hasty, it doesn’t bother me at all. I let him get away with it. I have a feeling that Dancy gets away with an awful lot.
“Come here often?” I ask him.
“That’s my line, young lady. How old are you?” he asks, one eyebrow up.
There’s something about him, a bit hollow, a bit familiar. “I’m thirty-four,” I inform him.
“Much too old for me,” he says. “You’re practically one of the blue hairs here.”
“Hey!”
Ian and his partner happen to be moving past us just as Dancy says that. Ian makes a sound that’s pretty close to a snicker.
“You have no room to talk. How old are you, ninety-five?”
He removes his hand from my waist and clutches his heart. “I’m half that!”
“You’re half full of it.”
His hand goes back to my waist and he dips me. I’m impressed he has the strength, as my loose hair practically touches the ground. I look up at him, neck stretched, as he says, “No, my dear. I am one hundred percent full of it.”
Clap, clap!
Philippe shouts, “Change partners!”
The rush of blood as I go upright makes me flushed. Dancy takes a little bow, cackling, as he finds another victim. Soon I’m paired up with a woman named Susan. As you’d expect in any dance class, there are more women than men. She’s a good half foot shorter than me, with birdlike bones and bright white hair curled in tight ringlets around her skull. I lead her, clumsily, through the steps.
“Not used to being the man, are you?” she says. “What’s your name?”
“Hastings.”
She comes to a dead halt. “Hastings Monahan?”
Oh, boy. “Yes.”
“You’re that girl from the news?”
I don’t know what to say to that. I move her to the left, then to the right, my hand on her hip, feeling like I'm turning a doorknob. She’s bony, tiny, and this is probably–other than church and the grocery store–her one outing every week.
Face tipped up to me, she waits for a response.
Finally, I confess.
“Yes, that’s me.”
“Your parents run the insurance agency in Anderhill.”
“Um hmm.”
She brightens. “I remember you. From farm camp. When you were in middle school.”
I pause, unable to continue absorbing the information and instruction from Philippe, move my body in space in concert with hers, and have this conversation.
“How do you remember me?”
“I’m one of the farmers, dear. I taught the alternative dairy portion, remember? I worked with the goats and the sheep.”
“You're that Susan?” Twenty years melt away, and I’m transported back to the summer of eighth grade, the three weeks I spent at a small farm thirty minutes north of Anderhill, at Mom and Dad’s insistence. I’d hated every minute of the first few hours, and then I fell in love with the milking, the cheese making. Susan didn't run the farm camp, but she brought her sheep's milk there and was one of the counselors. “Susan Johnson? You’re Susan?” I reach for her and give her a gentle hug. “Oh, my goodness. I haven’t seen you in—”
“More than twenty years. I know, dear.”
Suddenly I want to cry. The bundle of emotions inside is too difficult to describe. It’s threads of the past, the present, the me I could have been, the me that I am, the me that I thought I was.
And the me that Burke stole.
She grins up at me. “You were always such a sweet girl, so serious. Do you still make goat's milk cheese?”
Ian happens to dance past us as she asks the question, his face switching to a puzzled look, but then he turns, carrying his partner off to the other side of the room as if sweeping the question away.
“I do,” I tell her. “Well, I did. Now it's sheep's milk only. In fact, Eric Hesserman brought me four gallons of sheep’s milk last week.”
She brightens. “Is that what he was doing with it?”
“He got it from you?”
“No, dear, not me. I’m too old now. I don’t milk that often. My son runs the dairy.”
“But you live so far away. You came and brought your animals to teach us. You’re way up in New Hampshire. What’re you doing here taking dance lessons?”
“My husband’s in a nursing home nearby, a special facility. I come and visit him every other day. My friends—” she gestures to two old women with hair as white as hers, “—insisted that I come to dance. Serendipitous, isn’t it?” she says, reaching up to touch my face with a hand so callused, it doesn’t reconcile with her fragility.
“Yes, serendipitous,” I echo, just as the music stops.
She reaches into her pocket and pulls out a surprisingly modern smartphone. She turns it on and asks, “What’s your phone number, Hastings?”
I recite it to her. She enters it into the phone. But before she puts it back in her pocket, she wiggles it in the air. “Handy little thing, isn’t it? My grandson taught me all about it. Made me take a class with him.”
“Yes, yes it is.”
I don’t know what to say.
Susan gives me a quick hug and then says, “I’m sorry, dear. I have to go.” And with that, she turns away, walking with an economy of movement.
I’m stunned, and because I’m so surprised, I don’t realize Ian is at my side until he speaks.
“Hastings, what’re you doing after this?”
I look at him, unable to form words, emotion filling up all the corners of my mind that organize speech.
“Hastings? You okay?” He touches my elbow. It zings.
“I’m fine.”
“Dinner after this?” He laughs. “You’re the local, so you know the best places.”
“I’m not local anymore, Ian. I haven’t been home and gone out to eat in ages.”
“Really? What do you do when you come home?”
“Hide from the media.”
“No–I mean, before.”
Shorthand between us makes me want to say yes to his dinner invitation. Ian is the only connection to my old life, my only tether to the Bay Area. It's appealing.
He's appealing.
“I networked. Went to business meetings. Had dinner with my parents and my little sister.”
“That's it? Work and family?”
“Sure.”
“What about fun?”
He’s so appealing, standing before me, offering me the world. Why is he being so kind? Why did he come to my defense and pay all those legal bills? Why did he offer me a job? Why is he here, asking me out for dinner? What’s with the pursuit? What’s going on?
I want to ask him, and as seconds tick by, the offer hanging in the air between us, I’m tempted, and yet something holds me back.
“No,” I say reflexively but with a smile. “I appreciate the offer. I really do. But I don’t think it’s a good time.”
“Why not?”
“Ian, I just got stood up. By someone who works for you, whose entire job was to convince me to come here and then sign up for dance classes, and now you’re here and you expect me to go out with you? It’s just a little too twisty.”
“It doesn’t have to be,” he says, taking one step forward.
I look around and realize we have an audience. “The answer’s no. I need you to respect that.”
“That’s right,” Dancy says. “No means no.”
Ian ignores him, his face growing serious. His phone buzzes. He ignores that, too, giving me his full attention.
&
nbsp; I touch his hand and give him a grateful look. “I do appreciate it. I do. But we’re colleagues. You’re my boss now. I can’t date you.”
“Back in my day, you sure could,” Dancy says.
“Fine. Call it a business dinner,” Ian counters, upping the ante. His phone buzzes again.
“Aren’t you going to answer that?” I ask.
“No.”
“Why not?”
“Because it’s less important than you are.”
“We’re in that territory now, are we?”
“What do I have to say to convince you to go out with me?” he asks, holding his arms over his chest, reveling in the fact that we have an audience.
“This isn’t a negotiation. We’re not talking about a merger or an investment question, Ian. We’re talking about dating. Romance.”
“Love!” shouts one of the women in the room.
“Aren’t you that woman from the TV?” says one of the older ladies. “The one in that financial scandal. Aren’t you married to that guy who took off and left you in trouble with the law?”
My face flushes.
“She’s Sharon and Roy’s daughter.”
“Oh, that’s right.”
The whispers behind me make me close my eyes.
Pity whispers.
“Poor girl. She really got screwed over by her husband.”
Eyebrows shoot up at the word husband.
“If she has a husband, why is this man asking her out?”
“Hastings,” Ian says, pulling me aside. “You don’t have to—”
I cut him off. “I absolutely have to, Ian. The answer’s no.”
And with that, I walk away, knowing that I’ll go into the office tomorrow and see him. And I don’t even have it in me to turn around and ask him why in the world he’s at a dance studio in small-town Massachusetts.
Asking me out for dinner.
11
It’s Saturday morning, and now that I’m working a normal job, I’ve come to appreciate my weekends. For someone who used to happily work ninety or a hundred hours a week, it’s official:
I’m a slacker.
But I’m a slacker with an incredibly comfortable childhood bed, now that Mom and Dad bought me a new mattress.
The phone buzzes, then it buzzes again, and finally the damn thing starts to sound like a bee. I groan and roll over, grabbing it.
This is Raul from Beanerino, the text says. We’d like to place an order for your cheese.
My cheese? How does he know I’m making cheese?
We know you’re making cheese because Perky told us is the next text I get.
Mystery solved.
We like to buy local, keep customers happy with community-minded products. Our wine bar would be a great setting for your sheep’s cheese. Are you in?
The next text quotes a price per pound that they’re willing to pay.
I reply back with a figure four dollars more per pound. Raul impresses me by coming back, holding steady, and after seventeen or so back and forths, we settle on a decent price. He’s only buying ten pounds, so what’s my profit going to be? Fifty bucks, if that?
It’s more the feel that hooks me, the negotiating.
I have value.
I was about to let the words once again float through my mind, but something stops me. Burke never valued me. Maybe I never valued myself in the way that I should have.
This feels good. It feels light and happy and pleasant enough, to sell ten pounds of cheese that hasn’t finished aging yet.
It’s not ready, I tell him.
I know, he writes back. But when it is, we get those ten pounds.
Of course. We can do three-month aged. Some people prefer it. It’s a bit softer, I write back.
Let’s start a pipeline, he replies. Three-month, six-month, eight-month.
You know your manchego, I write back.
All I get is a smiley face.
Thanks, I answer, realizing that the nicety needs to be there. This is a client, after all.
No, not a client.
A customer.
I’m selling a commodity here. Not a service. Not a financial product. Not my own ability to connect multiple people into a pattern that leads to my benefit.
I’m working with my hands to produce something that people consume and enjoy. This is different.
It feels good, really good, in a way that negotiating a deal for someone else never did.
My phone pings with another text.
Hello, you still there? Raul asks.
I shake my head, startled to realize that I’ve gone off into the deep, winding forest of my own thoughts.
Yes, still here. Pipeline it is, I type back. Sounds good.
Now I have to source more sheep’s milk. Note to self: Contact Eric immediately to get more.
I look at my phone and pull up Susan's information. Even better. Go direct to the source.
Perfect, Raul writes back. Come in and sign the contract any time.
How about today? I write back.
I get a thumbs-up in response.
Falling back against the pillows, I stare dumbly at my own phone. Endorphins race through my bloodstream, making my skin warm, my mouth twisting up into a smile that feels dopey on my face. My shoulders relax. My muscles feel loose.
This is what it's like to feel good, centered and grounded. Like something’s going well in my life.
Because it is.
A fifty-dollar profit? I would have spent that on a tip for a good haircut, six months ago.
Now it represents a crowning achievement.
I catch my reflection in the mirror. Half my hair has fallen out of its messy bun, and I’m pretty sure I’ve had this t-shirt since tenth grade. I look at my toes and try to remember when I last had a pedicure.
It’s long past time.
Between my new paycheck and this side business making good cheeses, I’m settling into something close to a life. My life.
Defined by me, not Burke.
Not investors.
Not bosses.
Not the social milieu of the Bay Area.
Me. Just me.
Instead of letting myself start second guessing, getting caught in a jumble of thoughts that eventually paralyze me, I go straight for the bathroom. I strip down, jump under the hot spray, and think of Ian.
Being naked and hot must be preconditions for thinking about him.
No, that’s not true. I think about him even when I’m clothed and cold. I think about him in my dreams. I think about him at the office. I think about him when I watch a movie, when I read an interesting article. I think about him when I’m dragging the trash out to the curb because Dad has asked that I participate more in household chores.
I think about him when I lie in bed at night and cry.
Not because he makes me cry, but because my old life comes flooding in then, and thoughts of Ian are the only thing that gives me hope about the future. Not a future with him; that’s a fantasy. I’ve written it off. I might as well be back in seventh grade, dreaming about Justin Timberlake.
Not a future with Ian, but a future, period. He’s helped me so much.
As I soak my long hair, I wonder about him. Where is he right now? He hasn’t been in the office lately. Irene has been uncharacteristically quiet about Ian's location. Being secretive doesn’t surprise me. What’s his day-to-day life like? How can a man who’s helped me so much, put himself so much in my life, be so private, so closed off?
Maybe I’m being silly.
After all, I rejected his offer of dinner.
Maybe I drove him away.
I rinse the rest of the shampoo out of my hair and pour conditioner in, running my fingers through the tangled strands. I grab the soap, and my hand runs down my belly, stopping just short of places I haven’t thought about in a long time.
Except when I think about him.
“This is crazy,” I whisper aloud, some of the water from the shower spray g
etting into my mouth. I swallow, exquisitely aware of every movement of my body, the click of my throat as the water goes down, the rivulets as they wind their way along the curves of my back. My skin is on fire, and my heart starts to slam against my ribs, the throbbing between my legs intensifying. That side of myself is supposed to be dead.
Or is it?
The stupid dating app didn’t do me any good. I deleted it after the dance fiasco. My entire world is nothing but my job–and now, making cheese.
Too bad there isn’t room for Ian McCrory in it.
By the time I’m done showering, drying my hair, and dressing in running clothes, I decide that I might as well run over to Beanerino, sign the paperwork, and get it out of the way. What else am I going to do? Read some of the four hundred letters from creditors that fill my inbox?
Avoidance is a finely honed strategy.
My calves complain bitterly for the first quarter mile of my run. I haven’t been going out on these long stretches lately, too busy with work to let myself exercise during the week. After a half mile, though, the rhythm takes over, my ponytail swinging, my long-sleeved shirt warming up under the arms.
It feels good to sweat.
It feels good to move.
It feels good to run toward something and not away from it.
The miles between home and Beanerino melt away as I become nothing but a flow. It’s not just the flow of blood and muscle, of sinew and motion. It’s bigger than that: It’s the flow of escaping the overwhelming tornado inside my head that has stripped everything about who I am down to a foundation littered with debris. Each pounding footstep makes me feel lighter.
By the time I see the small building, I’m absolutely slammed. My skin is bright red, all the blood flowing to the surface, tapping on my pores, so close to being free.
I reach for the door handle, yank it open with arms ready to do some work, and stride into the coffee shop like I own it. Raul looks up from the register and gives me a wave, his big grin evincing a shared friendliness that makes me think coming home with my tail between my legs wasn’t the worst thing ever.
“Hastings.” Raul’s deep voice carries tones that I’ve never heard before. Because I’m not dead yet, my body takes about three seconds to run its inventory of responses to such a hot guy smiling at me.
