Date Me Like You Mean It

by Grey, R. S.

  “Yeah, I quit,” I say again, stepping out of the cab line.

  “What do you mean you quit?” He’s pissed. “Is this some kind of joke? Are you high?”

  I must be. There’s no other explanation for what I’m doing right now.

  “This is the Times,” he continues. “You don’t fucking quit.”

  I laugh again.

  “I think I just did.”

  When he speaks again, his tone is markedly less aggressive. It’s like he’s trying to talk me off a ledge. “You’re on the fast track to success, Aiden. Don’t be rash. Come into the office tomorrow morning and we’ll talk about this.”

  “I’m going back to Texas right now.”

  “You’re what?”

  “I gotta go.”

  “What the hell are you talking about?”

  He doesn’t understand, and it makes sense. Paul lives for his job. He’s at the office all the time. I’m not one hundred percent sure he doesn’t sleep there. Up until this moment, I envied him. Hell, I wanted to be him. Now, I realize I was wrong.

  “Paul, when’s the last time you put your job on the back burner?” I ask, trying to get him to understand.

  “Never. How do you think I made editor?”

  “And are you happy?”

  “What kind of question is that?”

  “Are you happy? Do you have people you care about?”

  “Sure, yeah. I have a cat.”

  I smile and shake my head, rolling my suitcase back into the airport.

  “Aiden, if you leave New York City, if you get on a plane back to Texas, you’re done. Your career is over. No reference. Nothing. Do you understand?”

  He doesn’t get it. He thinks I care about a letter of recommendation? His endorsement of my work ethic? Who fucking cares?

  I’ll change careers. I’ll work at a fast food restaurant. I’ll deliver mail. I’ll wash cars. What the fuck is the point of life if I’m not spending it with Maddie? If I’m not waking up next to her every damn day?

  “I gotta go.”

  “Aiden—”

  I hang up on him before he can continue. Then I run right back into the airport and head toward departures.

  It’s late, but there’s still someone manning the Southwest desk. I ask when their next flight leaves for Austin.

  “Twenty minutes,” the attendant says, squinting at her computer screen. “And that’s our final flight there for the day. I could get you on the 6:40 flight in the morning?”

  “I want to be on the one in twenty minutes.”

  She laughs. “I’m afraid that’s not possible. You’ll have to—”

  I lean forward and shake my head. “That’s the flight I want. Put me on it. Please.”

  She inhales a sharp breath, annoyed that I’m not taking her advice, but there’s not much more she can do. If I want to waste my money buying a ticket for a flight I probably won’t catch, that’s on me.

  “All right. It’ll just take me a moment to process your payment and print out your boarding pass.”

  It takes her two minutes and ten seconds, but who’s counting?

  Once she’s handed over all my paperwork, I take off toward the TSA checkpoint. Someone shouts at me to stop running, so I slow down to a quick walk as I retrieve my ID out of my wallet. There’s no one in the security line, and because of all the traveling I do, I get to go in the pre-approved line and keep my shoes on.

  “Step through,” the officer tells me, waving me through the metal detector. I wait for what feels like an eternity as he reads the monitor, then he nods and says I’m good to go. From there, I start running again, taking off toward terminal C.

  They’re announcing the final call for my flight over the airport speaker. Boarding is finished.

  “Aiden Smith, please make your way to gate 35.”

  I kick it into gear, running as fast as I can down the hall. It’s not easy fighting the flow of traffic. I nearly collide with a few people. One guy curses at me, but I can’t stop. My gate’s just up ahead.

  The flight attendant gives me one final call over the speaker.

  “I’m coming!” I shout, hoping she’ll hear me.

  Her head turns in my direction, and I wave my hands in the air so she can spot me barreling down the walkway.

  She shakes her head as she sets down her intercom device, slightly amused, mostly annoyed.

  “You nearly delayed the flight,” she tells me once I come to a sliding halt at the gate and hold out my boarding pass for her to scan. “Next time, please arrive a little earlier.”

  “Absolutely, I will,” I tell her with a big smile as I try to catch my breath.

  She hands me back my boarding pass and I dart down the tunnel toward the plane. Inside, the rows are all full since I’m the last one to board. I walk down the aisle, aware that I’m getting a few glares from passengers. I want to tell them why I was late. They’d understand, surely, but I just keep my head down and walk as quickly as I can toward the last row, taking the empty aisle seat.

  I’m still breathing heavy. I look down to see my hands shaking with adrenaline.

  “First time on a plane?” a soft voice asks.

  I glance over to the old woman sitting in the window seat. Even though she’s sitting down, I can tell she’s petite. She’s wrapped up in a warm scarf and sweater. Her short white hair is curled and her face is lovely and wrinkled, especially near her eyes as she smiles over at me. Her hands are resting on a closed hardcover, and I notice that each of her fingers is covered with a different ring.

  “Oh…” I chuckle. “No. Not even close. I fly all the time for work. Or, well…I used to.”

  She tips her head to the side. “Used to?”

  I glance down at my hands, shaking my head. “Yeah. I was a journalist up until a few minutes ago.”

  “You quit tonight?”

  I nod, and she seems intrigued.

  “Did you not like the work?”

  I mull over her question. “It wasn’t so bad. The travel got to me a little.”

  “Ah. There’s always a downside to any job.”

  I agree, drumming my thumbs on my thighs.

  “But that’s not why I quit.”

  Her thin eyebrows rise, prompting me to continue.

  “I’m sort of taking a leap of faith,” I confess.

  She grins. “Is it for love?”

  I laugh and tip my head back against the seat, glancing up at the ceiling. “Yes, though it sounds cliché to admit that.”

  “Clichés are clichés for a reason. Tell me about her.”

  “Maddie?”

  “Is she the one you quit for?”

  I nod. “Yeah. She’s…”

  I’m stumped for a moment as I consider how best to encapsulate her for a perfect stranger. How to describe Maddie? It feels impossible.

  I laugh. “She’s amazing. Funny. Outgoing…” I tilt my head back and forth like I’m weighing both sides of an argument. “Ridiculous, at times.”

  “Aren’t we all,” the woman says with a wink. “I’ll bet she’s beautiful too.” I smile, and she responds with a laugh. “Of course she is. And how long have you been together?”

  “It’s kind of complicated.”

  “Is that why you quit your job? To un-complicate it?”

  I smile. “Exactly.”

  “Well I hope you succeed.”

  You and me both.

  We talk for a long while after that, both of us eager to share stories. Even so, the flight seems to take forever. I flip through the in-flight magazine, tear into a bag of peanuts, fiddle with my phone, and still, we’re an hour from Austin.

  My seatmate is busy reading now, so I don’t bother her, instead counting the seconds that tick by, desperate to get back to Texas.

  We don’t touch down on the tarmac until after midnight, and then our bags take forever to appear on the luggage turnstile. I grab my suitcase and make a run for the airport doors, grabbing the first cab I see waiting
outside.

  I give the driver the condo’s address then start to sweat in the back seat.

  It’s occurred to me more than once in the last few hours that what I’m doing is a little insane.

  I could have called Maddie and alerted her to the fact that I was coming back to Texas, but it seems like something best said in person. Fortunately, there’s no traffic out on the roads this late. We leave the Austin airport and make it downtown in no time.

  “Right here?” the cab driver asks, pointing to the curb.

  “Yeah, that’s great.”

  I still know the access code for the building, but I don’t have a key to get into the unit.

  I ride the elevator up to our floor and roll my suitcase down the hall as my heart hammers in my chest.

  Maddie, hi. Maddie, I’m back. Maddie, I’m not going to New York.

  I hate myself for not preparing an actual speech. I had time on the flight, but now I’m outside the condo with nothing poignant prepared.

  I take a deep breath and lift my hand to knock on the door.

  No one answers, and then I check my phone to see it’s 1:00 in the morning. Tomorrow’s a workday. She and Lucy are probably sleeping.

  Shit.

  I knock again, a little harder this time.

  Still, no one answers.

  Reaching into my pocket, I retrieve my phone and give her a call. I know it’s hopeless. Maddie sleeps with her phone on silent so it won’t disturb her. I’m fucked.

  The call continues ringing, and hopeless laughter escapes me. I press the phone to my ear and let my forehead drop against the door with a heavy thud.

  Maddie’s voicemail picks up, and I listen to her tell me to leave a message.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Maddie

  “Maddie, it’s me. Aiden. I’m, uh…standing outside of your door, actually. In Austin. If you could wake up and come let me in, that’d be great. But I guess you’re sleeping, which is fine. You probably need it after our weekend. On the off chance you listen to this before I see you, I’ll…uh, be outside, leaning against your door waiting for you to wake up. You’re probably wondering why I’m here, and well…I just couldn’t bear the thought of leaving you again. I don’t like the long-distance thing either, and who cares about—”

  Aiden’s voicemail cuts off and I stare down at my phone, thoroughly confused.

  I only woke up a minute ago and my brain is still groggy with sleep. Surely I didn’t hear that right.

  I go back to my voicemail list and click his again so I can replay it.

  “Maddie, it’s me. Aiden. I’m, uh…standing outside of your door, actually. In Austin…”

  I did hear it right! The rest of the voicemail fades into the background as I leap off my bed and run for the door of the condo. I yank it open as quickly as I can and scream as Aiden’s upper body falls to the floor at my feet.

  “Shit,” he curses, rubbing his head as he slowly comes to.

  He must have been asleep against the door and now he’s lying there, blinking his eyes open and staring up at me.

  “You’re not in New York!”

  He smiles. “No.”

  “You’re here! At my door!”

  “Yeah. I have been for the last, oh…five and a half hours.”

  My hands fly to my mouth in shock and he slowly pushes himself back to a sitting position before standing. He looks like shit. His clothes are all rumpled. His hair is standing up on one side from his sleeping position against the door. He winks one eye, trying to adjust to the light pouring in from the window behind me, and I’m crying. Then I’m hitting his chest. Then I’m crying some more.

  “What are you doing here?!”

  “Oh, just…proving my love,” he says with a self-deprecating grin. “You know, the ol’ grand gesture where you fly back into town in the middle of the night and then sleep in the hallway because your girlfriend doesn’t answer the door. Maybe you’ve heard of it?”

  “You’re crazy!”

  “I know.”

  “How are you already back in Texas?! You must have flown back right away.”

  He narrows his eyes as if thinking it over. “I think I was in New York for less than thirty minutes, tops.”

  Wow.

  Okay. So he came back…for how long?

  “Your voicemail made no sense. Are you just here for a few more days or what?” I’m shaking my head, trying to understand the change of circumstances. He still only has his one suitcase.

  He rubs the back of his head, almost like he’s nervous. “No, it’s a funny story actually…I quit my job.”

  My mouth drops open. “You WHAT?!”

  “Yeah. I quit. Last night. Very unprofessional of me, but well, what are you going to do?”

  “Aiden!”

  He laughs and then sucks in a deep breath. His eyes lock with mine, and I see tears start to gather beneath his dark lashes. He never cries. Never! What is going on?!

  Then, slowly, he starts to lower himself down onto one knee. He winces as if in pain. I’m sure after sleeping propped up against my door for several hours, his muscles are stiff. “I think I slept in a weird position. My body is killing me.”

  “Is that why you’re kneeling down?! Here, come inside and you can go back to sleep on my bed.”

  I reach out to scoop him up in my arms, but he doesn’t accept the help.

  “Not yet. I have something I need to do.”

  I frown. “What?”

  He sweeps his arms out as if to say, Isn’t it obvious?

  I step back in shock.

  “No.”

  No.

  Way.

  “Maddie Lane,” he says, smiling up at me with those swoon-worthy dimples, “don’t you think it’s about time you and I got married?”

  “AIDEN SMITH.”

  “Oh good, you know who I am.”

  “Don’t joke right now! Are you being serious?”

  “Deadly.”

  “You’re asking me to marry you.”

  “Yeah, did you not catch on? I can repeat the whole thing. It wasn’t long. Maddie Lane, don’t you think it’s—”

  I throw myself onto him before he can finish, and we tumble back out into the hallway. He groans under my weight as I pin him down, kissing him anywhere I can manage: his hair, his forehead, his cheeks, his mouth.

  “Is that a yes?”

  “What kind of proposal was that?!” I tease, sitting back to get a good look at him. “Where was the romance?!”

  “I wasn’t finished,” he insists, peering up at me from the ground. He’s wearing a cocky half-smile. A lock of dark hair hangs low over his forehead. “You’re the woman of my dreams, the absolute best lover I’ve ever had—”

  I shove him on the shoulder, and he winces playfully.

  “That’s your proposal?! Talking about my skills in the bedroom!? We’re going to have to tell people about this!”

  “Okay, so I shouldn’t go into detail about that little thing we did Saturday night—”

  I try to stand up then, to inform him that I’ve had enough of his quips, but he reaches out to grab my hands and hold me down on top of him.

  “Maddie.”

  His tone has shifted. He’s not kidding anymore. His green eyes implore me to take him seriously, to say yes and put him out of his misery. His hands squeeze mine.

  “I love you,” he says, so sincere and earnest that I have to blink through the sudden onslaught of emotion. “Marry me,” he continues, after swallowing past a lump in his throat. “Be my wife. Make me the happiest man for as long as we both shall live.”

  I start to nod slowly, but then momentum builds and my head is bobbing up and down wildly as tears spill down my cheeks.

  “Yes?” he asks, starting to sit up. “Yes?!”

  I’m grinning from ear to ear, practically splitting my cheeks in two.

  He lets go of my hands so he can wrap his arms around my waist and hoist us both up and off the ground. W
e crash back into the condo. I’m vaguely aware of Lucy in the background of the kitchen, saying something, but my every cell is focused on Aiden. I kiss him senseless, trying to show him rather than tell him how much I want to marry him. Desperately. Embarrassingly. If I could say yes a thousand times, I would.

  “Don’t mind me! I’ll just keep eating my cereal!” Lucy shouts as we head toward my room. “No, that’s fine. Just leave the front door swinging wide open! I’ll take care of it, sure. Oh, and I guess I’ll be getting Aiden’s suitcase he left out here as well? What am I, the bellhop?”

  “Thanks Luce!” I say, just before Aiden carries me past the threshold of my bedroom and kicks the door closed behind us.

  I’m pawing at his clothes, trying to magically make them disappear, when I realize it’s a workday. A Monday, no less.

  “Aiden, I have to be at the office soon!”

  “You’ll be on time. I promise,” he says, sounding impatient.

  I have no idea how he can promise that as he’s currently slipping his hand up into my pajama shirt.

  What ensues after that is the fastest, most injury-inducing bout of morning sex I’ve ever had. We don’t make it onto the bed. We barely make it past the door. It’s fast and reckless and I’m sweating and breathing hard by the end of it. I have a bruise on my ass and a sore shoulder from lord knows what.

  I glance up at Aiden: his cheeks are flushed, and his eyes carry that I-just-had-the-best-sex-of-my-life glow to them.

  “That was…”

  Aiden grins and finishes my thought for me. “Glorious. Now get in the shower. After, I’ll walk you to work.”

  I turn on the water and then step inside. With my head tilted back under the stream, I let this newfound reality sink beneath the layers of shock. Aiden came back to Texas for me. He quit his job and proposed. It doesn’t feel possible.

  Then I peer around the shower curtain to see him walk into the bathroom and head straight for me. He wants into the shower too, and he doesn’t ask before he steps in and shifts us so we both get wet.

  I’m staring at him, slack-jawed, when he finally realizes it and looks over.

  “What’s wrong?”

  I shake my head.

  Then I reach out and poke him in the chest with my finger. He’s real.