Now a Major Motion Picture

by Stacey Wiedower

  What had Mark—the co-worker who’d set up tonight’s date—said about Erin? That she was a teacher…hmm, science, was it? Definitely high school, which meant she had spunk, he decided. A person had to be pretty feisty to put up with today’s brand of teenager.

  I could like this girl. Was he trying to convince himself? Yeah, probably. Hmm, that was new.

  He pushed the thought out of his head.

  “So you’re a teacher, huh? Where do you teach?”

  She arched an eyebrow. “You sure you’re listening this time? God, you’re even worse than my students. At Northside High School. I teach ninth- and eleventh-grade math.”

  “Well, I can tell you’re good at it.” He smiled disarmingly. “And I’m paying attention now, I swear.”

  As she talked about her school, the kids, the crazy situations she dealt with on a daily basis, he felt himself start to relax. Erin was easy to talk to—and she seemed to find the same quality in him, now that he’d decided to enter the conversation. They kept up a constant stream of chatter until the food came, and he didn’t miss the fact that she dove right into her chicken panini, a major plus in his book. He hated it when women picked over their plates to try to look delicate or to impress others with their willpower. He didn’t understand that mindset, and he had a hunch she didn’t either. There didn’t seem to be a pretentious bone in Erin’s body.

  Once they’d finished their entrees and passed on dessert, he snagged the check the server deposited onto the edge of the table and insisted on paying for the meal, despite Erin’s unsurprising protest. Apparently, chivalry really was dead, he thought. On every date he’d been on in recent months, his date had attempted to pay. He didn’t mind picking up the tab, in part because it was customary and he was a traditional guy, but mostly because, apart from these semi-frequent setups, he didn’t have anybody to spend his money on besides himself.

  It had been six-and-a-half years since he’d moved to Texas, a job lead garnered through a friend of his father’s landing him in the Lone Star State. At the time, he hadn’t cared where he ended up, as long as it was away.

  His degree in architecture—secured one semester later than originally planned—was enough to gain him an entry-level job at an established Dallas firm, where he poured blood, sweat, and tears into every task, every project he was given, earning his way up. Two years earlier, he’d landed a spot at a tiny, but cutting-edge firm that specialized in small-scale hospitality design. He spent his days immersed in plans for restaurants, nightclubs, boutique hotels.

  He was a bona-fide workaholic, and he loved his work. It was, in fact, the only love in his life. For a while he’d played the Dallas singles scene, but apart from a couple of one-night stands that stretched on for a few extra nights, he’d never found anybody he liked better than his job.

  Now, though, his friends had apparently had enough of his brooding solitude. The corners of his mouth twisted into a grimace as he thought about the way one person after another said they knew “the perfect girl” for him. Occasionally he accepted their charity dates with good humor, but his real motivation in consenting was to get them off his back.

  I’ll have to thank Mark for this one, though. Erin wasn’t half bad. He cast a sidelong glance in her direction as they made their way to the front of the restaurant, then held the door for her as she passed through it ahead of him.

  He’d met her at the restaurant, an Italian place she’d suggested at the southern tip of Deep Ellum, so they said their good-byes in the tree-lined parking lot. It was still early—patches of sunlight streamed through the branches and formed dappled patterns on the black pavement. Warm smells of oregano and garlic emanated from the building and clung to the air around them as they walked side by side.

  “I had…fun,” Erin said, giving him a lopsided grin.

  “Yeah. Me, too.” He was surprised to realize he meant it. “We should do it again. I’ll call you.”

  She stopped beside her car, a svelte, black Audi A5, and clicked the door unlocked. “I might call you first.” She winked at him, tossed back her dark mane of hair, and slipped inside.

  He raised his eyebrows. He hadn’t noticed her car when she’d pulled up. Hell, he hadn’t noticed her until halfway through their meal. Now, he found that his eyes trailed the car as Erin drove away.

  * * *

  On the drive back to his condo—which backed up to a tranquil park in Turtle Creek, the closest neighborhood to his firm’s Uptown office suite—Noah mulled over the surprising turn the night had taken. The stirring in his stomach when he pictured his date with Erin was…unexpected. He’d thought, at this point, that his insides were numbed to feeling when it came to the opposite sex.

  He honestly believed he was meant to be alone.

  And he didn’t mind. He liked his life. A lack of girlfriends meant a lack of the inevitable complications relationships tended to bring. As he stood by and watched his friends deal with one dramatic episode after another with their mostly high-maintenance girlfriends—Dallas women were nothing if not high-maintenance—he felt something more akin to pity than envy. So instead of throwing his energy into women, he threw himself into a passionate love affair with his work. Buildings, blueprints, form, function—there was the love of his life.

  Every once in a while the solitude would start to get to him, and a date would stretch into two…or at least would stretch until the next morning. It was enough for him. In the rare instances when he gave the topic more than a fleeting thought, he knew something better was out there—at one point it had been within his reach. But that fantasy had died nearly eight years ago—he had murdered it—and a part of him had died with it.

  He was past the dark moods that had plagued him for the first couple of years after things with…her…had ended. He wasn’t normally prone to depression. He thought of himself as an easygoing, level-headed guy, but the years that followed his night with Ashley Howell had felt anything but normal. He didn’t even understand himself how he’d messed up his life so thoroughly in one blurry moment of thoughtlessness.

  He shook off the thought, gripping the steering wheel harder as he remembered why he preferred to spend Friday and Saturday nights at the office or out with the guys instead of navigating the singles scene. It was easier not to think about his dating history when he pretended the whole institution didn’t exist.

  He sighed and let his thoughts drift in another, more pleasant direction—the hotel project he’d met with developers about that morning. Once it got off the ground, the project would occupy his time and energy for months. It was a much safer topic to mull over than women, past or present.

  On autopilot, he rounded a corner and almost plowed into his next-door neighbor Seth’s Prius, which was parked illegally against the curb. The front door of Seth’s condo was open, and Noah could see a couple of people inside, probably the owners of the other cars cluttering the narrow street. Seth walked up to his glass storm door at that moment, beer in hand, and lifted his can in a mock salute. Noah waved back, glad Seth hadn’t witnessed the near-collision. He reached up and clicked his garage door opener, feeling guilty at his relief that he didn’t actually have to talk to anybody.

  He slid his car into the garage, his mind already back on the Modernist building that wasn’t yet built. He didn’t give Erin or the evening he’d just returned home from another thought.

  * * *

  The next morning, the piercing trill of the alarm clock on his bedside table woke Noah with a start from his heavy, dream-filled slumber. He reached toward it, fumbling around on the sparse tabletop with his fingers. He pounded the side of his hand into the oversized snooze button and reached back to massage his now-throbbing temples.

  He groaned. Last night when he’d set the alarm, he’d been buzzing with the excitement of his new project, anxious to get into the office to start sketching out his ideas. Now, though, the previous night’s zeal was overshadowed by the immense appeal of a leisurely Saturday morning. He
flopped over and buried his face in his pillow, shielding his eyes from the fragmented slivers of sunlight sneaking in around the edges of the woven shades mounted inside the frames of his bedroom windows. The room was minimal and modern, with pale bamboo floors, a platform bed and furniture the same deep brown as the rug.

  Eyes closed, he tried to force himself back to sleep, but his mind started to wander ahead into his day, and he knew the damage had been done—he was up. He groaned again, louder this time, and reached over to turn off the clock before it could start screeching again.

  He rubbed his eyes, sat up, and found the rug with his bare feet. After a quick, hot shower he threw on his standard weekend morning attire: track pants, running shoes, and one of his ten or so highly prized Cubs T-shirts. He’d managed to get on board with the Stars, the Mavericks, and even the Cowboys since his Texas transplant, but no team would ever replace his beloved Chicago Cubs.

  He wandered into the kitchen to start a pot of coffee before jogging down his short entry hall to snag The Dallas Morning News from its usual spot on the welcome mat. Like his bedroom, the rest of Noah’s condo was white-walled and clean, with sparse, low-slung furniture. In the dining area, open to the main room, six clear acrylic chairs with metal legs surrounded a wood dining table. He folded his six-foot, two-inch frame into one of the chairs and skimmed through the paper before reading the sports section from cover to cover, a morning ritual he held sacred. Lingering over his coffee cup, he reached down with one hand and nuzzled Amos, his five-year-old chocolate lab, behind his ears.

  “Ready to walk, boy?”

  Noah drained his last drops of coffee and eyed Amos expectantly. The languid animal perked up, anxious for the next part of his and Noah’s daily routine. Noah folded up the paper and dropped it into the recycling bin in the utility closet before returning to the kitchen to place his orange coffee cup in the sink. On the way out of the room, he snagged Amos’ leash from its hook on the back of the pantry door.

  He grabbed his keys, snapped the leash into place, and took off, Amos leading the way down the entry hall and out into the crisp air of a luminous fall morning. The Texas sun was already bright as they crossed the busy street and moved into the outer reaches of the park—popular with the young, professional, and largely single crowd that occupied the thousands of condo and apartment units around it. Cars whizzed by, horns honked, and two guys who were already out tossing a Frisbee yelled back and forth to each other. Noah heard none of it. As Amos tugged on the leash and he followed, his mind traced over the events of the previous night.

  It had been so long since he’d enjoyed a date—enjoyed a woman’s company other than his mother’s, his two sisters’, his friends’ significant others—that the feeling was unfamiliar, almost unsettling.

  What was most disturbing, he realized, was that along with this fear of the unknown had come another, more distressing sensation: betrayal.

  Why the hell should he feel disloyal to Amelia after all this time? He shook his head, annoyed with himself. She’s probably married with two-point-three kids and a dog by now. The idea twisted his stomach, and he let his thoughts drift in a safer, though still foreign, direction.

  Erin.

  He half-smiled at his memories of last night, thinking of his flippant promise to call and her teasing response. Would he call her? Would she call him? He inhaled sharply at the breadth of this uncharted territory, and then blew the breath out in a short gust. He was thirty years old, for God’s sake. How could he be nervous about approaching a woman for a second date?

  He was immersed in these thoughts, still letting Amos lead the way through the park’s familiar, meandering walkways. So he didn’t notice at first when someone running by him on the wide path turned slightly and then spun fully to face him, jogging in place.

  “Helloooo? Noah Bradley? Geez, are you always this spaced out? I’d thought it was just me,” Erin said, tugging out the earbuds attached to her iPod and flashing him a curious, lopsided grin.

  “Erin!” The word came out high-pitched, and he hoped it wasn’t obvious he’d just been thinking about her.

  Unable to help himself, his eyes flashed down to give her a quick once-over. She looked different than she had last night—better, he decided, more natural. Her dark hair was swept back into an untidy ponytail, several wavy strands flying loose around her face. Her wide-set eyes had no trace of makeup, and her form and attire suggested she was more than a casual jogger.

  She studied him too, openly, her eyes drinking in his tall frame, his tanned arms, his slim, but muscular build. She glanced down at Amos, now sitting at Noah’s side, and knelt to rub his head.

  “Hey, there.” She laughed as Amos strained his head around to give her wrist a lick.

  “No, Amos.” Noah laughed, too, thankful to have her attention off him for a moment. He hadn’t figured out yet where to take this conversation—he certainly hadn’t planned on it happening so soon.

  “He likes you,” he said, watching her. She was crouched next to Amos, stroking behind his ears and cooing to him in that soft way women had.

  “Smart dog.” She looked up and flashed a teasing smile. “How about his owner?”

  She rose slowly, eyebrows arched, and gave him a speculative glance. His eyes widened. Wow, Erin was…forward. This wasn’t something he was used to and not a quality he was sure he could handle. The last time he’d dealt with an aggressive woman, he’d landed smack dab on a collision course with disaster.

  He wasn’t sure what emotions his face betrayed in the three seconds it took to think these thoughts, but she obviously saw something because her own eyes widened in response.

  “Kidding—relax,” she said, one corner of her mouth twisting into a wry smile. “I know, I know. We just met. I’m not that girl.”

  He stared at her in surprise—it was as if she’d read his thoughts. What was with this woman? She was totally messing with his head.

  “I’m a little blunt, maybe.” She shrugged. “I had fun last night. I wondered if you did, too.” That signature smile of hers appeared on her lips again, and she waited.

  “I did, actually.” His voice was hesitant. “When I said we should do it again, I meant it.”

  “I’m glad. And I’m glad I ran into you. Literally.” She smirked. “Call me.”

  She studied him for a couple of seconds, her head tilted to one side.

  “I can tell somebody did a number on you. We’ve got to work on that. Us women, we’re not all bad.” She winked. Then she popped one earbud back in and prepared to replace the other one, pausing just long enough to say, “I’m holding you to that call.”

  Shooting him a meaningful glance, she spun on her heel and picked back up with her morning run. Dazed, he just stared after her, wondering what the hell he was getting himself into.

  * * *

  After completing his and Amos’s circle beneath the park’s canopy of shade trees, Noah headed for home. All morning, he wavered back and forth on whether or not to make the call, an internal war raging between the part of him that wanted to hang on to the past and the part that wanted to move forward.

  Erin Crawford was intriguing. That was one point in favor of calling. Plus, it was obvious she wasn’t going to let this thing that was brewing between them drop. That was point number two: the fact that if he didn’t call, she would. But the idea of opening himself up to vulnerability, that was a strong point in favor of not calling. It might outweigh the others. And that was the part he couldn’t figure out.

  It wasn’t that he was worried about getting hurt again, or hurting someone else…again. If he was honest with himself, the problem was that the more he thought about dating Erin—or anyone—the more he thought about Amelia.

  It had been so long since he’d allowed his mind to travel down that path. After their breakup, he’d thought of nothing else for weeks that dragged into months that dragged into two staggeringly miserable years. He had no idea what to do with the fact that his entire l
ife, his entire future, had come crashing down around him. Amelia had been the key to the life he’d wanted. He hadn’t wanted the rest of it without her.

  That was why he’d left school. The last time he’d seen Amelia, he’d been so numb with grief and regret he could barely drag himself to class, let alone concentrate on the exhaustive senior studio project required for him to graduate. He’d been trudging across campus, still trying to will himself to get through the semester, when he’d spotted her not twenty yards from him across a courtyard, on her way to class. He’d been calling for weeks, but she wouldn’t answer. He’d shown up at her apartment fifteen times at least, but she was either never there or she never answered the door.

  Seeing her that day had been his last straw. She was a wreck: dark, purplish circles ringing her eyes, her long, straight chestnut hair shoved into an unkempt ponytail, her shoulders slumped under an invisible weight. He saw that she saw him, and her shoulders sagged even lower as she swerved from her path to avoid him. He knew he deserved it. He deserved one hundred percent of the blame for putting her in that wretched state, for breaking her heart.

  After that encounter, he didn’t leave his house for three days. When he did finally drag himself outside, it was to walk to the administration building on campus to withdraw from all his classes. He couldn’t face her again.

  He also couldn’t face Ashley—the one person more repulsive to him in those days than himself. She’d called him nonstop since he returned to campus, even though he’d made it more than clear that he didn’t want to see her again.

  On the third day of his self-imposed isolation, she showed up at his door.

  He didn’t budge from the couch when he heard the knock. He just kept staring at the TV, tuned to whatever was on ESPN, the volume so low it was barely audible. After a five-minute attempt to ignore the knocking didn’t make it go away, he dragged himself off the couch and to the door—a brief, improbable glimmer of hope that it was Amelia the one thing that finally made him move.