by Adele Buck
James leaned his elbow on the bar and turned to face the older man more fully. “Lay it on me.”
Alexander put his glass down on the bar and stared into it like it was a crystal ball. “Buckle up. Your life’s about to get out of control.”
Freddie’s phone chimed as she was leaving the theater. A text from Cath read, Paul giving lecture at the New School tonight. Free for dinner? Grinning, Freddie tapped out a response.
Definitely. Long day. Starving. Where does the preggo lady want to eat?
The preggo lady wants tuna sashimi but she can’t have any. So…
Thumbs tapping, Freddie replied. Some nice soft cheese and a cocktail?
Three dots pulsed and her screen was populated in quick succession with a poop emoji, a middle finger, and a yellow wailing face.
Freddie smiled and typed. Sorry. That was mean. How about that bistro near your place? I’ll keep the cheese menu away from you.
Perfect. Meet you there in half an hour.
Pocketing her phone and shrugging her backpack more securely on her shoulder, Freddie headed for the nearest subway station that would take her to Cath. Moving through the turnstile and onto the platform, she saw a tall guy and a smaller woman a few feet away, standing close, facing each other. He was looking down at her with a smile of unabashed admiration. She was smirking up at him in an adorable way, basking in the affection.
A pang shot through Freddie as the man drew the woman to him, enfolding her in his coat. Would she and James get there again? Would they have that ease and open affection, or would they keep ping-ponging between raging sexual tension and irritation?
They had agreed to wait to see each other until Saturday. It was her last free weekend before she plunged into the hell of tech week and then the grueling production schedule. James’ shooting schedule was also apparently going to be ramping up. They were both heading into a very busy time.
The train arrived and Freddie boarded, dropping her backpack between her feet while she held to a pole in the crowded car. A big dude, not paying attention, stepped sideways into her and glanced down, seemingly surprised and put out that anything could exist below his eye level. Freddie glared at him and firmed up her grip on the subway pole.
Fucking clueless dudes, man.
Sighing, Freddie monitored the passing stations until her stop. Pushing her way through the throng, she made her way onto the platform, breathing more easily once she was out of the crowded car. Setting out towards the bistro, she felt bookended by couples. The two on the platform, Cath and Paul. Even though Paul wasn’t going to be there, his DNA was currently combining with Cath’s to make a completely new person.
Yup. She was surrounded by couples.
She just didn’t quite know if she was in one.
James choked on his whiskey, coughing and finally managing to swallow. “Out of control? What do you mean?”
Alexander shrugged. “I could be wrong. But I’m probably not. The buzz that’s starting around you reminds me of me thirty years ago. I’ve seen it happen more than once since. It’s accelerated with the internet and the social media crap we have now, but it’s essentially the same. A feeding frenzy.”
James’s belly turned to ice. “What’s going to happen?” An absurd image of being ripped apart by sharks as he thrashed in the water assailed him.
“Well, forget about walking down the street without getting papped, for one thing. Vultures with lenses instead of beaks, that’s photographers.” Alexander savored his whiskey. “And the media is going to get very interested in your love life, if you currently have one.”
Freddie. “I do.”
“Well she or he is about to have the lid ripped off too.”
The freezing feeling intensified, a lump of cold lead in the pit of James’ stomach. “How do I protect her from this?”
“She in the biz?”
“Sort of. She’s a theatrical stage manager.”
The older man mulled, swirling his drink. “Well, the media and the bloggers and all the tweeters—or whatever they are—are only going to be interested in her by virtue of her relationship to you. If she was an actress, she might be able to leverage some publicity for herself.”
James shook his head. “No. She’s definitely not interested in being in the public eye. She’s told me that in no uncertain terms.”
“She’s not going to be happy about this, huh?”
James felt his shoulders slump. “She’s already not happy about this. What am I going to do?”
Alexander’s brows drew together. “So it’s serious, then.”
“Yeah.” James hadn’t realized until that moment just exactly how serious it was. The idea of Freddie backing away, panicking from the exposure and running—it was unbearable.
“So you need a plan, my friend.”
“What kind of a plan?” The panicky feeling swirled through his brain, making rational thought impossible.
Alexander’s hand landed on James’ shoulder and squeezed. “Prepare her. Talk to her. Make sure she knows that this exposure doesn’t mean that you belong to the world now. That your circumstances might be changing but you’re not. Does she know how seriously you feel about her?”
James thought the question over, reviewing their conversations of the last couple of weeks. “I don’t know,” he admitted. “I mean, we were already in a slightly weird place…” That’s what happens when you fuck first and ask questions later, genius.
“Well, learn from my mistakes. I was considering asking the woman I was with at the time to marry me when the feeding frenzy hit. I waited too long and got too distracted by all the new attention. It went straight to my head and Kim ended up going straight out the door.”
James considered this statement. “Well, you’ve got a granddaughter. I’m guessing that doesn’t happen without a successful relationship somewhere along the line.”
“True, and eventually I met Ella and we’ve had a great run. Still wish I hadn’t fucked it up with Kim, though, not that way. Even if it hadn’t worked in the long term, I would have liked it to have played out naturally instead of me getting distracted by fan bullshit. That’s why I say you have to let her know how you feel—let her know she comes first, regardless. If she does.”
James rubbed his chin, stared at the baseball game without seeing it. “That could be a problem. We dated a couple of years ago and she bolted when I wanted to take things to the next level. I don’t want to pressure her right now. She might do it again.”
Alex tossed back the last of his drink. “The situation is going to pressure her. You’re going to have to find a way to balance that, or it’s going to become an all-out pressure cooker.”
“Great. No pressure on me either.” James took a deep, steadying breath. And then another for good measure to keep the panicked feeling from overtaking him entirely. “Anything else?”
“Yeah.” Alexander turned, sighing, to face the bar and signaled for another. “Don’t hit photographers. That way lies lawsuits. Potentially expensive ones.”
Cath settled herself into the bistro chair with a small groan.
“How are you feeling?” Freddie asked.
Rubbing her rounded belly, Cath said, “Tired and spacey. But at least I don’t have morning sickness anymore. I can’t believe I have five more months of this. Except it’s only going to get worse as I slowly grow to the size of a planet.”
Folding her lips together, Freddie suppressed a smile. “Hey. My mom did it five times.”
“No.” Cath lifted a hand as if to halt Freddie, her expression pained. “Not again. This is enough. One child per New York couple. I think it’s a law or something.”
Freddie picked up her menu. “The dual strollers I have to dodge daily say otherwise. Yet the real estate expenses alone would be on the…well, the much side.”
Cath rolled her eyes. “Oh, you have no idea. Paul is already talking about moving to a bigger apartment and I’m like, ‘Hey. I’m going to be as big as an
elephant in a few months here. Can we have the kid first and then think about the moving thing later?’”
“Oh wow. Yeah. I can’t imagine trying to move and being pregnant at the same time.” Freddie considered for a moment. “Of course, moving with an infant can’t be easy either. How’s Paul settling in to impending fatherhood?”
Cath’s big green eyes sparkled with suppressed laughter. “Well, we learned we’re having a girl, so he’s… going slightly caveman on and off. I have to keep reminding him that he’s a feminist and a pacifist and to calm the hell down.”
“Paul? Caveman?” Freddie couldn’t think of anything less likely than the kinetic, distracted, artistic Paul acting like a caveman.
“I think there’s a protective instinct in men that gets triggered by the damnedest stuff. He was kind of the same way around me when we first got together. It didn’t help. Anything.”
“Man-woman stuff. Even if the woman isn’t even born yet.”
“Exactly.” Cath’s eyes went thoughtful. “Speaking of which, how’s James? Looks like his show is getting some serious buzz.”
Freddie rolled her eyes. “It’s…complicated.”
“How so?”
“Well, there’s starting to be some buzz about him, too. He’s getting all sorts of attention. And we’re in a kind of a funny place. Good, I think–maybe–but funny.”
“And you don’t want to share him with all these strangers?”
Freddie barked a short, mirthless laugh. “No. But I’m not a hundred percent certain how he feels about me, so I don’t know what’s going on.”
Cath’s eyebrows crimped together. “Adults have this thing called talking. You might want to give that a try.”
Letting her head loll back, Freddie groaned. “I know. But I don’t even know how to bring it up.”
“You say, ‘James. I’m a little freaked out by this—okay, a lot freaked. I need to know how you feel about me.’”
“If only it were that easy.”
“Why isn’t it?”
“Because…”
“Pride? Fear? Suck it up and put your big girl pants on.”
“Yes, Mom.”
One of Cath’s hands settled on her belly and the other pointed at Freddie. “Hey. This one is the only one who can call me that and she can’t talk yet.”
The gravity of everything suddenly settled over Freddie. “Yeah.”
Chapter 10
“You can put that over there,” James said, pointing to the corner of the living area where he wanted his small dining table. The two movers carried it over and set it down, pausing at the door to let two more men come in, balancing stacks of boxes taller than they were against their backs. They lifted these box towers with canvas straps threaded under the lowest box and shrugged over their shoulders. The arrangement looked impossible, but the movers were amazingly adept.
“Bedroom. Anywhere,” he said to the guys with the boxes. James didn’t even try to figure out what they contained. It was likely that half of the boxes needed to go into the kitchen, but he would sort that out later. He couldn’t believe he really had this much stuff. Any plan of trying to handle the influx of his possessions in an organized manner had gone straight out the window in a matter of minutes. The movers had arrived late and they weren’t interested in organized, they were interested in fast. And damn, but they were fast. The boxes were piling up at a furious rate.
Fine. He’d organize later.
A guy carrying the side rails of his bed frame appeared in the door. “Where do you want your bed set up?”
James hustled into the bedroom and indicated the wall he wanted the headboard to be up against.
“Where do you want the sofa?” Another voice echoed through the half-filled apartment.
“Good grief. This is nuts,” James muttered to himself as he practically sprinted out to show the men where the furniture should go. His phone chimed. Pulling it out of his pocket, he smacked his forehead with his palm when he saw the time. A text from Freddie, coinciding with a call from the doorman. She was downstairs. James told the doorman to let her in, helplessly looking at the hive of activity his new apartment had become.
A few moments later, Freddie arrived. “Wow,” she said, peering in the doorway. “This is quite a production.”
Seeing another mover with a rolled-up carpet on his shoulder appear behind her, James reached for her hand and pulled her into the kitchen, a relative oasis of quiet and calm. He looked over her head and hooked his thumb at the living room and the man nodded and walked in.
“Sorry. The movers got here late and it’s been such a crazy whirlwind, I completely lost track of time,” James said.
“That’s okay,” Freddie said, but her expression was alarmed. “Maybe we should forget about dinner tonight, since you have all that going on.” She waved a hand at the passing parade of movers.
“Aw. Come on. Stay with me,” James said. “This should take another hour or so, but then we can…” He realized that he was going to have to at least start to unpack or he was going to be sleeping on a bare mattress. Asking Freddie to either help him rummage through boxes or hang around and watch him wasn’t exactly the romantic night he’d had in mind. “Well, maybe that’s not the best idea. I’m going to have to find some stuff to make this place ready for human habitation by tonight.”
Freddie glanced at him sharply. “Expecting someone?”
James blinked, nonplussed. “Yeah. Me. I don’t know where my sheets are, for instance. Hard to make the bed without them. And I checked out of the hotel. So I have to camp out in this chaos until I get it figured out.”
“Oh.” Freddie looked abashed.
“What did you think I was going to do?”
She shrugged, looking at the floor. “I don’t know.”
“Hey.” Running his finger under her chin, he tilted her face up toward him. Her expression was worried, a little crease forming between her eyebrows. “What’s this about?”
Before she could answer, another shout for him to make yet another decision rang through the apartment. Freddie shifted, obviously uncomfortable, and said, “Look. You’re clearly super busy here. I’ll just go home and we can call a rain check on this, okay?”
James was about to protest when another voice called from the living room. “Where do you want the bookcases?”
“One minute!” he yelled, his eyes squeezed shut in exasperation. Rubbing his thumb over the back of Freddie’s hand, he opened his eyes again to catch her gaze and hold it. “Okay, yeah, maybe trying to fit in a date on moving day was a bad idea. Tomorrow?”
“Won’t you still have all this to contend with?” Freddie waved her free hand at the parade of movers walking past the kitchen.
“They’ll be gone.”
“Yeah, but you still have to unpack.”
James shrugged. “I can get to minimally livable by tonight and work on it in stages. Don’t worry about that.”
“Okay.” Freddie seemed to collapse into herself in a way that worried him. This was old Freddie, shrinking Freddie. He wanted his confident Freddie back. She gave him a little wave. “Go deal with the movers.”
“I’ll text you when they’re done.”
“Fine.”
He gave her a swift kiss on the cheek as he left the kitchen, another shout from the living room claiming his attention. When he was finally able to look up from making decisions, Freddie was long gone.
Freddie waited at the crosswalk, bouncing on her toes as she waited for the walk signal. Her entire body was electrified, ready to run. She couldn’t figure out why she felt so panicked. Getting the go ahead to cross, she practically sprinted across the intersection, walking as fast as her legs would take her back to her own apartment.
Geez. What’s the matter with me? Forcing her stride to slow, Freddie glanced into a wide window looking in on a busy restaurant. It seemed to have been taken over by a party of some kind, with people milling around a central someone who was appare
ntly the guest of honor. Even the people having conversations at the fringes of the room seemed aware of the tall man holding court in the middle of the big room. Her stomach gave a sick roll and the sight of the raucous, shifting crowd focused on a solitary person made her want to flee again. She forced herself to stay and breathe, identifying the source of the emotion that spurred her back to her apartment like a rabbit seeking its burrow.
Ah. That’s it. She groaned to herself. Thanks, Universe. This was like a big Monty Python hand coming out of the sky, pointing at the riotous party with its human centerpiece.
Here’s your metaphor for the thing you fear most, Freddie. Enjoy.
The chaotic scene in James’ apartment had also been like a real-life version of the social media whirlwind that had freaked her out so much, with everyone in the immediate vicinity wanting—no, needing—James’ immediate attention. Demanding he pay attention, make decisions. The realization eased the racing of her heart a little, and she resumed walking at a more normal pace, her hand pressed over her chest.
Another block and Freddie felt almost ashamed of herself, fleeing the scene of James’ apartment like that. The poor guy was just dealing with movers, not crazed fans. The hustling throng of workers didn’t really want anything to do with James, they just wanted to haul his stuff in, collect their tip, and get out.
But unease blossomed in her stomach again when she thought of those fans and their inevitable demands on him. She could see herself shoved aside by a mob, forever on the outside as James tried to respond to an increasing tide of people.
Two years ago, she had let him go with only a little twinge of pain, liking his easy friendship and loving the sex, but not ready to change her life or her career for him and being a little freaked out by his readiness for something bigger and more permanent. They’d been at different stages, their lives not fitting together and their goals conflicting.
