His Town

by Ellie Danes

  My mom freaking hated NYC. She’d hated how cold it was, and I remembered how if she left at all on a cold day, she bundled up with tights under her pants and at least two pairs of socks. I didn’t think she’d ever worn fifteen scarves, but it wouldn’t have surprised me, either. As for me, my sister, and my brother, she had always made us wear at least two of everything before we went outside in the winter.

  It was funny how randomly she’d pop into my head, but it wasn’t surprising. I missed her. I hated how distant we had grown since she’d moved to Phoenix. I hated how I didn’t even know her anymore, and I hated more than anything that Claire barely knew her at all.

  I couldn’t help but sometimes wonder if she might have wanted to see me more if she knew that I wasn’t always with Dad. If she’d known that I had no desire to follow in his footsteps, would she have tried harder to get visitation when I was a kid? Or was she just naturally not that attached? It was sad, wondering about these things, and I’d been wondering about them for years.

  Even when I’d been away at school, she hadn’t made much of an effort to get in touch.

  I growled in frustration. I knew, logically, that it didn’t matter where I was. If she cared enough, she would have made it work. I was her daughter. There was nothing that could stop a mother from seeing her children if she really wanted to. That was why it was so freaking dispiriting that she hadn’t contacted any of us in so long.

  Dad had always blamed Claire for our mom’s absence. And honestly, I wouldn’t have believed it at all if I hadn’t known how hard Claire’s behavior had been on her. I wasn’t sure if that was the whole story like Dad wanted us to think. It probably wasn’t — true, Dad was a hard man to deal with. I knew that firsthand. Claire was probably just the tip of a large and terribly cold iceberg.

  That didn’t make it right, though. Claire was her daughter, too. And as much as I wanted to forgive her for leaving us, I wasn’t sure that I was ready to. Claire had needed Mom. Hell, we both did.

  My lips quivered in the air that continued to beat me as I walked.

  The Starbucks wasn’t far, but it may as well have been a million miles away that morning. With every step, I felt like I was trapped in an ice age.

  And then, when I finally reached the door and looked inside, my shoulders fell in defeat. The line was, once again, long. I flung open the front door and ran inside, accepting the warmth as soon as I crossed the threshold. “It’s cold out there,” I gasped dramatically, almost completely breathless. I wasn’t sure who I was talking to — probably no one — but whoever it was, if anyone, they weren’t listening.

  Typical New York. No one cared.

  I shrugged it off and went to stand in line. I sighed. At least the line was shorter than it had been the first day I met Ian. At least it wasn’t almost out the door, and at least I was standing inside.

  I craned my neck to look ahead of me. I wondered if Ian was in line, but I didn’t see him. Maybe he was running late.

  I glanced over my shoulder every time I got closer to the register. I wondered if he would be coming in behind me. But every time I looked, all I saw were strangers.

  I felt disappointment weigh on my shoulders. He really must have been running late.

  I sighed and ordered my mocha latte with almost a tinge of sadness. Although I loved the drink, it didn’t seem quite the same without Ian there to share it with me.

  “Kate!” the barista yelled.

  I picked up my drink and groaned in annoyance as I made my way through the packed crowd and finally sat down at my favorite seat by the window. I tried to look on the bright side; I was lucky to have found a seat at all, let alone my favorite. But it still didn’t make me feel completely better…and neither did the delicious taste of my drink.

  Instead, all I could do was glance out the window — like a sad puppy waiting for his owner to return — and bite my lip.

  I couldn’t help but wonder why he wasn’t here. Was everything okay? Hadn’t we said we’d see each other? Maybe we hadn’t—maybe I’d just imagined it. Like my sex-in-the-bathroom dream, I was prone to vivid imaginings, so it was entirely possible we hadn’t planned to meet here.

  I felt a little nuts that I cared so much. If he knew he wasn’t coming, why would he have texted me? This wasn’t a date. It was a see-you-if-I-see-you sort of thing. The hour passed slowly while I sipped my coffee and hoped for an Ian sighting that never came.

  After spending a long hour in Starbucks, I headed home. When I closed my Dad’s apartment door behind me, I found myself looking down at my cell phone. My finger hovered over his contact name. To text or not to text…that really was the question.

  The quiet living room beckoned; it would be the perfect place to mope or sulk or whatever it was I felt like doing. I threw myself face-first onto the large, overstuffed couch. I was exhausted, and it wasn’t even eight in the morning. And I was still cold. I rolled over to my side and pulled at the throw blanket folded on the arm of the sofa, and stretched it over myself. Maybe a nap would do me some good. I sighed as I snuggled into the comfy sofa.

  As soon as I closed my eyes, my phone buzzed.

  My eyes shot open, quickly, but not as quick as my hands, which had instinctively begun searching for my phone. As soon as I found it, I pulled it to my face.

  Thank freaking goodness. There was a text from Ian.

  Missed my coffee this morning. Had an impromptu early morning meeting. But I’d really like to see you for lunch later if you’re interested?

  I giggled like a school girl.

  It wasn’t that I had necessarily thought he was blowing me off — I had enough confidence to know that he liked me a little more than that, but still, there was something about getting concrete reassurance that boosted my mood.

  Ha, I hadn’t been this giddy in a long time — especially over a man — especially when a phone was involved. It was like I was in junior high all over again and I was waiting on my crush, Billy Jackson, to call me after school. God, junior high. That really was forever ago, which was a blessing as far as I was concerned. That phone call with Billy had been full of awkward pauses and high-pitched giggling.

  His giggling, not mine.

  Grinning at the memory, I glanced around the apartment. I took in all the pictures and all the little family touches. I found myself up off the couch, aimlessly walking around, looking at it all. Then, all of a sudden, as the images sort of melded together, the memories of my past seemed to come flooding in again.

  I hated remembering my mom, and the time we’d shared in the large apartment together — because it didn’t seem real. Because while she was here, she’d seemed so loving, so protective, so motherly. But now, it all seemed like it had been one big fat lie because she was all the way across the country and hardly spoke to any of us.

  I hated remembering how it felt when she left.

  But more than anything, I really hated how much I had loved growing up in this apartment. I’d loved my bedroom, especially. It was still decked out in my teenaged fantasy posters, and full of purple and pink.

  I smiled and walked into my bedroom. It was really, really juvenile, but I hadn’t gotten around to changing it. I’d left when I was eighteen and had only been back for holidays and breaks since. I hadn’t wanted to take the time to redecorate, and hell no I wasn’t going to take my dad’s offer of hiring a decorator to do the job for me. Besides, I wasn’t sure I was quite ready to part with it.

  My room represented me from a more carefree time. Sure, I’d still been under my dad’s pressure to become a businesswoman, but overall I’d been happy and able to ignore him. Now I looked around my room, at the few pictures scattered around, and crayon measurements of my height on the doorway. They were all that I had in the way of sentimental things. So why would I part with it right away? Why wouldn’t I try and hold onto it forever?

  It wasn’t like I was going to live with my dad for much longer. If I were, I probably would have put changing my room high
er up on the priority list. But this wasn’t my permanent home; it was my childhood home. Shouldn’t my childhood be present? I smiled and leaned against the door frame, and my gaze fell to the room across the hall from mine.

  Claire’s.

  It was crazy, really, because as soon as I looked at her door, I felt almost a strange sense of foreboding. The icky sense that something wasn’t right was grabbing ahold of me, ice cold fingers causing a shiver to trail up my spine. Claire’s room always did that to me. I was always worried about her.

  Always.

  I took a deep breath and walked through the half-open door of her room and looked around. It was so different from my bedroom. She had all neutral colors — mostly gray — and even some black. Looking at her room always seemed to depress me a little.

  It was all sort of ominous.

  And also sort of…disgusting. My nose scrunched. Strewn about the room were candy bar wrappers, dirty clothes, dirty dishes, and a whole slew of trash. I could only imagine what was here that I couldn’t see, and what she had hidden beneath the layers of trash and dirty clothes.

  Who knew my sister was so disgusting?

  “Ew!” I scowled as my bare foot ran over what looked like a peanut butter stain. I held my foot up, dramatically, like I would have if I had just stepped in dog shit or something. I hopped around on one leg and made my way out the door.

  But on my way out, I passed a picture of Claire and me. It had been her very first day of kindergarten. She had been so nervous — but so excited. It was before she had been diagnosed with anything. She was just a normal, shy, little girl. And she’d looked up to me even then. Probably even especially then, as she hugged my legs in the photo, her smile wide.

  I grinned, noticing a couple of her teeth had been missing. I paused to draw a deep breath as I stared at it a little more seriously.

  The gravity of what I was doing with my new job in San Diego was starting to take hold. I was leaving everything that I had ever known behind. I had been away at school for so long, that I almost forgot how much I missed my family. Tears started to well up, and I felt the edges of my eyes start to burn…

  But then, as if on cue, my phone vibrated in my pocket, breaking me away from any sort of moment that I was about to have.

  Claire’s school.

  Shit.

  That earlier sense of dread fisted and balled tightly in my belly.

  I closed my eyes and wondered what was going on this time. Was it something that was going to piss me off and suddenly make my day worse? Was I going to have to cancel my lunch plans with Ian? I almost didn’t want to answer. I really didn’t want to resent my sister at the moment; I had been thinking so fondly of her all morning.

  “Damn it,” I whispered before clearing my throat to answer.

  “Hello?” I spoke quietly into the phone. The room around me was silent; I felt like I had to be quiet, too, for some reason. It was like I was scared of disrupting whatever peace I had just been enjoying.

  Everything in the room went blurry as I focused on listening to the person on the other end of the phone. I balled my fists and squeezed hard until my knuckles turned white and my fingers ignited in red.

  At first there was silence on the other end. Something was wrong.

  Really wrong.

  A slight breath hit the phone’s speaker, and I knew that the person on the other end had opened their mouth to speak.

  Chapter 16

  Ian

  My eyes were heavy as I sat at my desk, staring at my laptop. The screensaver had been on a loop for probably a good five minutes or so, but I couldn’t even begin to force myself to hit a key and make it go away.

  I was lost in my own thoughts, and I couldn’t shake them.

  Today had already been a fucking nightmare. Way worse than the usual nightmare. I buried my face in my hands. I was overwhelmed, but saying that I was overwhelmed was the understatement of the fucking century. It was still morning, and I was already beyond exhausted.

  The early morning meeting with MTS’s legal team had been a total shit show. It was always a shit show, but today, it had been even more awful than usual. The lawsuit wasn’t going well. Apparently, the attorneys on BioResearch’s team — including my cold-hearted, crazy ex-girlfriend—claimed to have some sort of evidence that the blood imaging technology had actually been theirs all along. Our case was faltering.

  As much as I hated to doubt him — especially considering he wasn’t around to defend himself — I was starting to wonder if Dad had told me the entire truth. In all honesty, I was starting to wonder if my father did, in fact, do the deed himself and then create a lawsuit out of it just to pick and prod at his much-disliked business rival and competitor. Was it possible that he could, and that he would lead the entire company and me into a pile of horse shit this large — all for nothing other than to be an asshole?

  It really didn’t matter either way. If there was evidence, there was evidence, and I was fucked.

  “How the fuck am I going to get out of this,” I groaned, as I pressed my palms into my cheeks.

  Sleep would be so fantastic right now. Forget everything else going on. Finally, get some rest. But I had to keep going; I had to keep on working.

  Plus, I’d just made a lunch date with the beautiful Kate.

  I wondered if it was too late to back out of the lawsuit like the Murphys had asked me to do over and over again. I wasn’t sure if I would, though, even if I could. I wasn’t sure my pride would let me. Besides, I wasn’t completely sure this meltdown of mine wasn’t what the attorneys wanted. The whole thing could just be a fucking scare tactic to get me to drop the case.

  I wondered why they were sympathetic and wanting me to drop this suit. Surely they didn’t care about saving my ass.

  My mind was jumbled, and I kept trying to focus, but my thoughts kept drifting back to Kate. She was the only thing lately that seemed to make me feel normal. I could relax around Kate, and feel like myself. To Kate, I wasn’t just a cog in a great big machine—to Kate, I was Ian again. Not a CEO, not some tight ass business man in a lawsuit. Ian. The past year it had been like I’d forgotten myself and who I was. Kate was bringing me back.

  Seeing her gorgeous face had been the highlight of everything as of late, and I was beyond excited at the prospect of seeing her since I’d missed out on seeing her at Starbucks this morning. But damn, I was tired. I didn’t want to be a crappy lunch companion, but I couldn’t resist the chance at spending more time with her.

  I grabbed my pen and started writing out checklists for the day. I always preferred to do it on paper instead of on my phone. It was so much more satisfying to check the shit off on paper rather than on a digital screen. Plus, it was nice to do something on paper for a change. Everything in my life was digital. Even my meeting planner was digital. I was surprised that my freaking secretary, Janice, wasn’t digital.

  I needed to prepare for the major meetings of the day. I needed to know what the topics were. I needed to know what points I needed to hit, and what questions I needed to ask. I needed to be the boss.

  I didn’t think I could do this. I was seriously contemplating just getting my rat of a Vice President to stand in for me. But that wouldn’t fly. I damn well would need a better excuse than a whiney ass cry of “I’m so tired, I need to go to bed.”

  But in all honesty, I didn’t have a better excuse.

  A knock on my door pulled me out of my self-pity fest. Janice stood hesitantly in the doorway, looking like she’d rather be anywhere else. I couldn’t really blame her for that.

  I tossed my pen to the side and stood, buttoning my suit jacket as I did. A small glimmer of light drew my attention to the laptop screen, and I noticed my reflection there. I stood up straight and slicked my hair down with my hands.

  “Yes?”

  Janice usually didn’t come in unless someone was there to see me — or someone was on the phone. But since I didn’t see a call on hold when I glanced down at my desk�
��s phone, I figured someone was there to see me.

  So I was up, and I was ready. “Sorry to barge in, Ian.” She glanced to the side, no longer looking at me.

  “Yes?” I took a couple of steps closer. But she still wasn’t looking at me — she was still looking to the side, right at the ground. She was avoiding eye contact. “Janice,” I said carefully. “Is something wrong?”

  Whenever it was something only mildly annoying, she smiled like a blazing idiot, almost like she was trying to trick me into thinking it was a good thing. A fake smile to end all fake smiles. But this time, she was looking away, cowering almost. Almost like she was afraid, or ashamed maybe.

  She looked exactly like a dog that had just torn into the trash, and I was her owner that had just come home from a long day of work to find it scattered all over the fucking floor.

  “Amelia Markewicz is here for you,” she squeaked. She knew exactly what Amelia being there would do to me. She knew it’d cause an ulcer the size of Wyoming. She knew I’d be annoyed. She knew I’d even be a little pissed.

  But rather than show my anger to Janice, who had no part in the psycho’s presence, I cleared my throat and took a deep breath. “No,” I said simply. “Just no. Tell her to please leave.”

  Janice nodded before she backed out of the office. She hated confrontation, but there was no way in hell I could handle dealing with Amelia after the morning I’d just had. I unbuttoned my suit jacket and sat back down. I took a deep breath and tapped the keyboard of my computer. I really needed to chill out and focus.

  Because fuck, as soon as I found out that Amelia was in my building expecting to see me, I realized just how lucky I’d had it a few minutes ago. I’d much rather prep for meetings than so much as look at that woman’s face for even a second.

  I grabbed my computer roughly by its sides and pulled it closer to me, and began working on my notes. Just a little while longer, and it would be lunch time. I could see Kate. I’d be able to touch her hand, maybe even kiss her in greeting. We could talk, learn more about each other.