Now a Major Motion Picture

by Stacey Wiedower

  His face contorted when he saw Ashley on the other side of the threshold.

  “Noah, I—” she said before he shut the door.

  More knocking.

  He hesitated behind the door and then reopened it with a violent heave.

  “What? What the hell do you want, Ashley?” She recoiled slightly, as if she was afraid he might physically push her from the doorstep. “I have nothing else to say to you. Please just leave me alone.” His voice broke on the last word.

  “I just wanted to explain,” she said. “Apologize—”

  Apologize? He stared at her as if she had six heads, her words making no sense. They’d both been there that night. No matter what had happened—and the details were still fuzzy—no apology could change it, and no explanation could fix the hell it had made out of his life.

  “I don’t want an apology from you, Ashley. I just want you to go.” He met her eyes. “And this time, don’t come back.”

  He shut the door softer this time, but with a definitive snap.

  He never saw her again.

  The next day, he made the excruciatingly long drive home to drop the double whammy on his family that not only had he left school, but the wedding was off. He never gave his parents the details, but he knew they’d surmised what had happened. They lived in a small town. There were no secrets.

  He knew he’d let them down, too.

  They didn’t say a word about his decision to drop out of school, probably because he didn’t look as if he could take it. Misery was etched across his haggard face, grief palpable in his blood-shot eyes. Even then, in the midst of his pain, he realized what a blessing it was to have supportive parents.

  His mom tolerated his misery until it ran its course, not protesting when he stayed shut up inside his room for the better part of two weeks. His youngest sister, Nicki, still in high school, rolled her eyes a lot, but didn’t hassle him, so he knew things looked as bad as they felt.

  Just before his would-be graduation date rolled around, his dad sat him down and delivered the speech that ultimately got him back on his feet.

  “Son,” he said, “I know how things seem. I might know it a little better than you think.”

  His father’s story shocked Noah with its frankness. His parents had been high school sweethearts, the classic love story. Growing up with their example, he’d never doubted he and Amelia would make it through college, through life, grow old together. He’d witnessed, in Geoff Bradley, a more mature version of himself.

  But in his most vulnerable moment, his dad told him something he’d never known and never would have suspected. His parents’ marriage almost hadn’t happened. In their case, it was Melanie, his mom, who’d self-destructed. After she’d agreed to marry Geoff and as the date of their wedding neared, she’d gotten cold feet. She’d called the wedding off, left town. She’d even started dating someone else.

  “I waited, Noah,” Geoff said, his eyes wistful. “I knew, I always knew, that we were right. It didn’t matter what she did or what I did. When things settled down and she was ready to come back, I was here, waiting for her.

  “If things are right, Amelia will wait for you, too. Have faith in that. But whether that happens or not, you can’t destroy your life. If she comes back, son, you’ve got to give her someone to come back to.”

  It was hard to argue with that, even knowing as he did that Amelia wasn’t coming back. He didn’t exactly find a renewed zeal for life at that moment, but he did start figuring out how to put one foot in front of the other again.

  Noah sighed, his mind flashing back to Erin, back to the present.

  I’ve waited long enough, he thought.

  He’d make the call.

  * * *

  He still waited until Sunday night to dial the number he’d saved in his phone. He wasn’t really up on the rules of relationships, but he knew he didn’t want to appear too eager. As he clicked “send,” his fingers shook. Seriously? Grow a pair, Noah. Where the hell had he been all these years?

  He steeled himself as the phone began to ring.

  “Hello?”

  “Hi, Erin. It’s Noah Bradley.”

  “Well, hey, Noah,” she said, a hint of surprise in her voice. “You actually called. I was pretty sure I was going to have to make good on my threat.”

  “Yeah, well, I was kind of scared to cross you.” He laughed, his tension ebbing.

  She laughed, too. “I don’t bite. I guess I need to work on my first impressions.”

  “I don’t know. You gave me a pretty good first impression.” His flirtatious tone surprised even him.

  “Hmm. I think we’re on the same page then.”

  Well, this conversation was on a path to something, he thought. He took the next step.

  “Are you busy later this week?”

  “I’ve got a night or two open. What’d you have in mind?”

  “How about dinner? My pick this time. And I’ll pick you up?”

  “Consider it a date.”

  After working out the details, he snapped his phone shut and stared at it for a couple of seconds. He’d just made a second date. For him, that was a first.

  CHAPTER SIX

  Get a Life

  By the next morning, Noah had pushed all thoughts of Erin to the back of his mind. The comforting, habitual buzz of the impending workweek returned his attention to more pressing matters: his hotel project.

  As he navigated the familiar route to his office, Noah’s mind traveled over space plans and specifications. His firm occupied the fourth floor of a seven-story, glass-plated commercial building in the heart of Uptown’s business center. The postmodern structure looked out of place amidst the squat brick and yellowed stone commercial buildings that surrounded it, and Noah liked that about it. He steered his white, compact hybrid SUV around the building and into the parking garage, blinking a few times to help his eyes adjust to the switch from dazzling sunlight to underground blackness. He opened the door to the familiar, dank odor of the garage and hurried from his car to the building, sidestepping a trail of water that oozed from a mysterious hole in the concrete block walls. The ID mechanism beside the door flashed green and beeped as he waved the card on his keychain in front of the electronic pad. He hurried through the door, bypassed the elevators, and ran the five flights up to his office.

  Mindy, the administrative assistant, raised her head and smiled at him as he breezed through the frosted glass doors at the firm’s entry.

  As usual, he didn’t notice the way her eyes traveled over him as he passed by the reception desk and rounded the corner to his office—an open space he shared with two other architects and an AutoCAD technician.

  Also as usual, he was the first one there. Most of his co-workers rolled in around nine, but Noah was almost always in at eight, itching to get to work, especially when he was getting started with a new project. He always hand-drew first, slaving over his renderings until he’d fleshed out his ideas.

  He barely looked up from his workspace until after noon, when he felt someone’s presence behind him. He swung his chair around to find Mark Bialik, a junior designer who worked one set of offices over, staring over his shoulder.

  “Nice,” Mark said, eyeing his sketches.

  “Thanks.”

  “Want to grab some lunch?”

  He noted Mark’s odd expression—a mix of curiosity and amusement—and groaned inwardly. Oh, yeah. Mark was the one who’d set him up with Erin. He wants details. And Noah didn’t feel like divulging any.

  But he didn’t see any way around it. He had to eat.

  “Sure…be ready in a minute. I’ll meet you out front.” He turned to flip off his task light and did a quick check of his email before leaving his desk.

  They walked to a nearby deli. To his relief, Mark didn’t talk much about Erin, but Noah did glean that he already knew about the impending second date. He also learned Erin was Mark’s girlfriend’s best friend.

  So she’s been talk
ing about me to her friends. He pondered what that meant. It couldn’t be a big deal—women told each other everything, right? But he felt a twinge of pleasure that he’d made at least some sort of impression on her. He was so out of practice, he didn’t know he’d had it in him.

  The server appeared then with their sandwiches, and that was the extent to which he thought about it. He bit into his Southwest pita and answered with his mouth full when Mark asked him if he was going anywhere to watch the Cowboys that night. They moved on to a debate about which beer style was better, porter or lager, and soon it was back to work.

  * * *

  In fact, he didn’t have much time to think about Erin at all that week—his looming presentation with the hotel client kept him in the office well past nine every night. He went home every afternoon to get Amos and bring him to the office after his co-workers had left, something he often did in busy periods so Amos wouldn’t feel abandoned. On the way back to his condo each night, he grabbed takeout, and by the time he and Amos got home, he was so exhausted he crashed out in front of the TV, sometimes not making it into bed until the sun was coming up. Usually he tried to hit the gym a couple times a week, but he didn’t make it there once.

  So when Erin’s name popped up on his electronic calendar Friday morning, he was taken off guard by the quiver that ran through his stomach. He headed out the door at six that night—he wanted time to clean up before driving the short distance from his place to hers to pick her up for their date at seven.

  After changing into casual khakis and a blue V-neck sweater that unintentionally accentuated the deep blue color of his eyes, he left to pick her up, arriving at her place a few minutes early. He opened the car door and got out, but before he had time to reach her door she swung it open and breezed outside.

  “Hi,” she said, flashing him a grin.

  “Hi,” he answered, surprised she hadn’t played the waiting game he’d expected. She didn’t seem to be into mind games, which he liked.

  He opened her car door and she raised an eyebrow, impressed. Seriously, does no one do that anymore? He really was from the dating Dark Ages.

  After maneuvering his car out of the complicated network of streets inside Erin’s apartment complex, he headed north toward Addison, to his favorite Tex-Mex place. He’d thought about taking her somewhere more upscale, but decided to keep the pretense to a minimum. This place was him.

  It seemed to be her, too. Erin was surprisingly easy to please.

  As she walked ahead of him through the restaurant door, Noah’s eyes swept along her trim, five-foot, five-inch frame. She wore a casual skirt and a green sweater that hugged her curves without flaunting them. Her walk reflected an appealing combination of confidence and class.

  This time, his head was fully in the game.

  He found out a lot more about her tonight. She was twenty-eight. After finishing her master’s degree at The University of Oklahoma, she’d applied for the Teach For America program and made it through what sounded like a terribly rigorous interview process. She’d landed an unlikely placement in her hometown to teach math at an inner-city high school and liked the job so much she chose to stay on after her two-year placement ended. She also liked her roommate, a sorority sister from her undergraduate days who worked at a Downtown accounting firm, but she was ready to find a place of her own.

  He learned she’d been engaged once, but had called the wedding off after finding out her fiancé had been cheating on her. That had happened six years ago, when she was still in college. The story hit way too close to home—and swung the conversation uncomfortably in his direction.

  “What about you? Any interesting romantic backstories?” she asked. “I know there’s something behind this air of mystery.”

  “Air of mystery?” He laughed. “I guess that’s one way to put it.” Noah picked up his beer and took a drink to stall for time. “I don’t think you really want to know,” he said, looking at her with one corner of his mouth turned up. “It’ll just scare you off.”

  “Ah, I knew there was something,” she said, her eyes narrowing. “Guys like you are usually snapped up early.” She paused. “And just for the record, I don’t scare easily.”

  His mind wheeled—he’d never faced this situation before. Of the sparse number of girls he’d dated in the past six years, none had piqued his interest enough to warrant discussion of romantic history. He really did worry that if he said too much, she’d run screaming in the opposite direction.

  “I’ll tell you this much,” he said finally. “I was engaged once, too. A long time ago. She broke it off, and I haven’t seen her since. I also haven’t dated much since then.”

  He exhaled in a gush, the last two sentences strung together in a rush of words.

  She nodded, seeming to sense not to push him any further. To his relief, she moved on.

  “So tell me more about what you do,” she said. “You design hotels?”

  “That’s part of it. Hotels, bars, clubs. Anything that’s hospitality related. Hotels are my favorite, though, especially boutique projects.”

  His face lit up as he talked about his work. They kept up an easy stream of conversation until they’d finished dinner, paid, and left the restaurant.

  As they walked to his car, he asked if she wanted to go somewhere for a drink.

  “Sure,” she said, relief and surprise mixed in her tone. It was obvious she wasn’t ready for the evening to end. Noah, bemused somewhat by the thought, felt the same way.

  He headed back toward Uptown, to a bar he sometimes went to after work. Erin had never been there, but he thought it was a place she’d like. They picked a pub-height table in the back of the bar and climbed onto barstools upholstered in red leather. He watched as her eyes roamed the room, which was lit with a warm glow by strands of Christmas lights that wound around dropped ceiling beams. The walls were paneled floor to ceiling in honey-colored wood.

  “I like this place,” she confirmed, and Noah smiled.

  They talked their way through a couple of beers—she was a beer girl, another strong point in her favor and somewhat unexpected. Most girls he’d been around in this city drank fruity mixed drinks or wine seeped in pretense. He wasn’t a big drinker himself. In the past he’d drunk as much as the next guy, but these days, two beers was about his limit. It had taken him a while to work up to even that—he hadn’t been drunk since that night over Christmas break in his senior year when he’d gone out with his friend Sean after work and ended up with Ashley…

  He shook his head violently at the thought.

  “Hello? Noah? You’re doing it again,” Erin said, waving a hand in front of his face.

  “Oh, sorry.”

  He’d never noticed how he zoned out any time something reminded him of Amelia. He shoved the memory out of his head and focused on Erin’s thoughtful expression, her lower lip pushed forward as she concentrated on his face. He had a sudden, fleeting desire to see what that lip would feel like against his. His eyebrows rose at the newness of the thought.

  She started to speak, but studying his eyes, pressed her lips together and stopped herself. “Ready to go?” she asked after a long moment.

  “Sure.”

  He drained the last swig from his pint and rose to leave. As they stepped out into the cool night air, he swung one arm across Erin’s shoulders and led her across the parking lot toward his car. She glanced up at him, that same thoughtful expression on her face.

  After making the short drive back to her apartment, he parked as close as he could to her door and got out with her.

  “Want to take a walk?” she asked in a low voice. “I’d invite you in, but my roommate’s home. She usually hogs the couch on weekends.”

  He cocked his head to one side. “Is it her couch?”

  “It is, actually.” She stuck her tongue out at him. “See why I want my own place?”

  He smiled. “A walk sounds great.”

  He followed her past her door to a landscap
ed common area that backed up to her quad of apartment units. They wandered for a while on a maze of pebbled sidewalks that wound through the complex and linked a series of similar courtyards. She laced her fingers through his, the only sounds the murmur of concrete fountains and the chirping of the ever-present Texas crickets. When they returned to the spot behind Erin’s building, Noah stopped and pulled her down beside him on a stone bench that was nestled into some tropical-looking foliage.

  The heady garden scent filled his lungs, and he and Erin sat in silence for several minutes. In their stillness, he could hear street noise in the distance, the sound of car doors shutting, the low drone of a TV in a nearby apartment. Erin shuddered against the chill of the autumn night air, and he slid an arm over her shoulders.

  She looked up at him.

  The urge he’d felt in the bar hit him again, and he leaned forward instinctively, brushing her lips with his. He pulled in a deep breath, his eyes closed. It had been so long since he’d felt a rush of emotion at a woman’s touch. This wasn’t the first encounter with a woman he’d had since Amelia had left, of course, but it was the first that held any meaning.

  After a short pause, Erin reached up and slid a hand behind his neck. Their lips met again, parting this time in a fuller, deeper kiss. Several minutes passed before he pulled back, his thoughts tangled into a million tiny knots. He enveloped her shoulders with his arm and gazed at the smooth stone fountain, which glowed silver in the sparse light.

  They still didn’t speak. He sat beside her and relished the sudden warmth that had spread like a blanket around them. When she turned her head to look at him, he said, “I’ll walk you to your door.”

  Before he left, he bent down and kissed her again.

  “I’ll call you.”

  Erin nodded, for once offering no teasing response. She turned and disappeared inside.