by C. J. Lake
“Listen, I live right there,” Jamie said, motioning to the six-story residential building directly across the street.
“Since when? I’ve never seen you.”
“Since about a week ago,” Jamie told her. “Before I signed the lease, though, the landlord promised me this parking spot. It’s supposed to come with my apartment—like a package deal.”
“Who’s the landlord?” she questioned, squinting a bit again, as if hoping to catch him in a lie.
“Edward Brakoff.”
Just like that, the girl’s fighting posture slumped a little. Her frown appeared resigned. “Oh,” she said. Damn, there was so much disappointment packed into that “oh.” For an illogical second, Jamie almost felt guilty.
“Brackoff never said anything to me,” she mentioned, then grumbled, “He knows I always park there.”
That confused Jamie. “But I’ve never seen you, either. In fact, that space has been empty the entire time I’ve lived here.”
“I’ve been away,” she said vaguely. “I just got back from my trip today.”
He expelled a breath and tried to start over with her. “Look, I’m sorry about the confusion. But, you see, I just bought a car, and…like I said, I was counting on parking coming with the apartment.” As a conciliatory gesture, he added, “You know what, let’s call Brackoff right now. So you’ll know I’m telling the truth. If that will make you feel better.”
“Okay,” she agreed after a pause.
Damn, so she actually didn’t believe him? he thought, mildly offended. Whatever. “I’m Jamie, by the way,” he said as he took out his phone.
“Sky,” she muttered in return, gathering her long, silky dark hair in her hand as the wind kicked up and blew past them. When she didn’t stick out her hand for a shake, he decided not to bother, either.
Casually, Jamie glanced at her as he waited for Brackoff to answer. Being up close confirmed his first impression as she’d been crossing the street. Sky was a cute girl, probably in her early twenties. She had olive skin and dark, soulful-looking eyes. Or they were when she was blinking neutrally in his direction, rather than eying him with disdain.
“No answer,” Jamie said after several rings, then slipped his phone back into his pocket.
Questioningly, Sky tipped up her chin. “Well, so what now? I guess you want me to move my car?” she asked, sounding annoyed.
“No, don’t worry about it for now,” Jamie assured her. “You don’t have to move your car this second. I already found temporary parking a few streets away, and I’m going out later anyway.”
“Fine. Well…thanks,” Sky managed, her tone more clipped than thankful. She brushed past him to open her backdoor. As she pulled out a hefty duffel bag, she added, “My car will be gone by tonight.”
Out of friendly concern, Jamie almost asked where she would park instead, but stopped himself because it was none of his business. And why drag this out any longer? She was obviously pissed. Why should he help her find something? Why should he even care if she drove around for an hour looking for a spot?
Still, trying to be gentlemanly, he shut the backdoor of her car for her and said, “Do you need help with that?”
“Nope,” she said, turning to cross the street, lugging the duffel bag herself. “See ya,” she muttered without looking back.
Jamie’s mouth went slack in bewilderment as he watched Sky stride her prissy attitude—and admittedly nice ass—across the street to their building.
Chapter Three
When Sky came into her apartment, she tossed her duffel bag on the floor with enough force to catch her roommate’s attention. “Okay, you seemed in a better mood on the first trip in with your bags,” Elle remarked, glancing at the twin suitcases Sky had set down ten minutes ago. She kneed the oven door closed and set her brownie pan down on the breakfast bar.
Sky heaved a sigh before flopping onto the couch. “That was before some guy stole my parking spot.”
“What!” Elle said, clearly stunned. “What happened?” she asked, pulling off her oven mitts.
“This guy, Jamie, came up and had a big confrontation with me about how it’s his spot now.”
Elle scrunched her face for a second. “Who?”
“Apparently he just moved into the building,” Sky explained. “Brackoff promised him the spot—told him it comes with the apartment when they made the deal.”
“Oh, that sucks,” Elle offered sympathetically. She walked around the breakfast bar, into the living room. “Listen, if he’s going to be confrontational, two can play that game,” she said as she shook her blond hair free from its hair-band. It fell in big, cheerful curls all around her shoulders. “Describe what he looks like. I’ll give him a dirty look whenever I see him on the elevator.”
“No, don’t do that,” Sky said.
“Why not?”
“Because…” Elle stood in front of the couch, looking expectant, and Sky admitted, “Because…he actually seemed like a nice guy.”
“Oh. But you said there was a big confrontation—ohh.”
Sky’s eyes flapped up. “What?”
Smiling a little too sweetly, Elle crossed her arms and said, “I think I see what happened. It was more like: he simply told you the situation and you bit his head off. Is that closer to the truth, girl?”
Sky rolled her eyes and tried not to grin. “Please. You think you know everything about me?”
“Getting there,” Elle said—an understatement, considering they’d been best friends since freshman year of college, after being randomly assigned as roommates. Elle had majored in poetry, and written reams and reams of it, before turning her attention to the non-fiction project she was working on now. She got this apartment last summer, after graduation. Sky had only moved in with her four months ago, when her life—and pretty much her entire emotional outlook—became hopelessly stalled.
“I wasn’t that bad,” Sky insisted now. Though, inwardly, she cringed as she recalled how rudely she’d reacted to her new neighbor. It wasn’t his fault, after all. But of all the bad timing…
“Just tell me this: did you curse at him?” Ignoring Sky’s wry look, Elle continued, “Were middle fingers involved at all?”
“Of course not!” Sky said. “Jeez, I’m not that much of a time-bomb.”
Elle smiled more brightly and said, “Fine, so tell me what happened.”
As Sky recapped her brief exchange with Jamie, she shrugged out of her jacket and pushed off her boots. “I’m just so upset! I got used to parking in that spot and…” Her voice trailed off a bit as frustration mixed with worry, and then a bit of sadness. “It’s just so close,” she finished quietly, slumping back against the pillows.
Elle paused before giving a gentle look of concern. “Is your leg bothering you?”
Always. “It’s fine,” Sky lied. She supposed her endgame wasn’t to fool Elle, but to test the idea of positivity. Maybe if she refused to give in to her discomfort, it would somehow diminish and she wouldn’t have to accept that things had changed. Or at least how irrevocable the change was. That her competitive ski career was over when it had barely just begun.
After all, wasn’t that the whole point of the Sports-Spa Retreat in Phoenix, where Sky had just spent the last seven days? The Spa was all about a healthy mind-body connection and a therapeutic itinerary that alternated between working your muscles and pampering them. It had been great for the most part—relaxing and energizing—in fact, everything about the place had felt restorative. And yet…Sky knew the trip was a last-ditch effort on her part. The last stop on a long road—a road she’d been on since that car accident last year, and one that led away from the dreams she’d had since she was a teenager.
The Sports-Spa package had been a gift from Sky’s Aunt Jen, who still believed that Sky could erase the effects of the accident and would one day ski like she used to—that she could be that good again. And Aunt Jen was probably the only one left to believe, because even Sky didn’t
at this point. The hardest concept to get her mind around, she supposed, was that she could be completely healed—technically speaking—and yet still damaged.
“Did you tell that guy, Jamie, why that parking spot is so important to you?” Elle asked now, seeing the truth instantly (she had an annoying habit of doing that).
“Of course not,” Sky replied with a shake of her head. “I don’t even know the guy. I’m not going to give him some sob story of why I should get the space.” In truth, Sky knew she’d been lucky to get the dream space, right across from the side entrance to their building, for the past four months. She should have approached Brackoff and asked about officially renting it from him or something, but she hadn’t thought of it, because he was barely around and when he was, he never seemed to care that she was parking there.
As for Jamie …
Call her prideful, call her vain, but her instinct was not to go around announcing to strangers that she had two pins in her ankle and two in her knee, and that they still caused her pain. Especially when the stranger in question was a cute guy around her age.
Again, Elle seemed to read her mind. “So what did he look like anyway?” she asked.
“Please don’t give him a dirty look in the elevator,” Sky warned.
“I won’t!” Elle said with a laugh, rising from the couch and heading back in the direction of the kitchen. “I promise I’ll be nice if I see him.”
With an acquiescent shrug, Sky described him. “About 5’10”, light brown hair, glasses.”
“Is he cute?” Elle pressed.
“Sort of, I guess.” Then Sky narrowed her eyes at Elle. “What do you care if he’s cute? You have Brett.”
“I know,” Elle said breezily, “I was just curious. By the way, everyone missed you at work last week. They wouldn’t stop yapping about it.”
Instantly she knew what Elle meant and smiled. They both worked at K9 Love Park, a dog daycare and boarding center in Beacon Hill. Elle had gotten Sky the job back in November when she’d first moved in with her.
“I missed them, too,” Sky said, referring to the dogs.
“Hey, want a brownie?” Elle offered, biting into one herself. “Brett won’t mind.”
“No way,” Sky replied too firmly, and immediately realized how ungracious that sounded. “I mean, thanks, but I’m good.” Comfort food was the last thing she needed right now. She hadn’t had a brownie or a cookie in God-knew-how-long. She’d been living like an athlete—smart-carb, low-sugar, “clean eating”—for years, and if she ended that now…it would just seem too symbolic, and painfully so.
Just then her phone rang. Sky reached over to pull it out of her jacket pocket. “That’s weird,” she said, reading the screen. “It’s Alison.” Curiously she looked at Elle. “Why would your sister be calling me?”
“Oh!” Elle mumbled, her mouth full of brownie. “About that…don’t answer! Not until I brief you.”
“Brief me?” Sky said, a little confused—but mostly suspicious. “What’s going on?”
“Calm down, it’s nothing,” Elle insisted with a wave of her hand. “It’s just…okay. I’ll start by saying that I did this out of love.”
“That’s one of the worst openings ever. Just so you know for the future.”
“Got it,” Elle said with a meek-looking smile.
“Now, love of whom?”
“Alison, mostly. And myself. A little for you thrown in there, too.”
“Talk,” Sky demanded.
Elle sucked in a mighty breath, and as she exhaled, an explanation began to fall from her lips. “All right, you know how Alison quit her job and emptied out her savings account so she could start a business?”
“Right,” Sky said, nodding. “Professional matchmaker. I remember.”
“Well, here’s the thing. It’s not going very well.”
Hmm, that was hardly surprising. Elle’s sister was trying to bring back old-school matchmaking—the careful, thorough, personal style of matchmaking—as an alternative to the countless, superficial relationship and dating apps that flooded people’s devices. It was a wonderfully romantic idea, but some anachronisms were just not destined to make a comeback. In Sky’s opinion, Alison’s whole business plan was totally unrealistic in the digital world. Of course she hadn’t said that—never had a reason to—until now…
“…and that’s why I got you a subscription to the service as a birthday present,” Elle was saying, and Sky started to sit forward on the couch.
“You what? Why would you do that?” Sky said. “That birthday present stinks. Also, my birthday is not for three months. And finally: I don’t want to be a client,” she argued.
“Please!” Elle begged. “Alison needs clients. She has nothing!”
“Then who is she going to match me up with? Myself?” Sky challenged.
“Fine, maybe I’m exaggerating a little,” Elle admitted. “She has some clients, but she’s not making any money at this point. It’s starting to kill her morale. It’s bad enough that our parents tell her everyday it was a mistake to start this business. She’s really becoming depressed.”
With a sigh, Sky relented, feeling a stab of sympathy for Alison—especially since Sky knew how critical Elle’s parents could be. “Oh, finnne. So what do I have to do? Fill out a questionnaire and make an embarrassing video or something?”
“No, not at all!” Elle chirped. “It’s all based on Alison’s judgment and expertise. No selfies, no algorithms. Just personal connections.”
“Okay,” Sky agreed, coming to her feet. She didn’t need the sales pitch, because she was going to go along with this for Elle regardless. “I’ll let Alison set me up if she wants. How bad could it be? As long as she’s vetting the guy, I’ll have to assume he’s not completely shady.”
“That’s the spirit! Let the love in!”
Sky laughed, shaking her head. “Whatever.”
“Thanks,” Elle said, her voice becoming sincere, as she crossed the living room again, holding out another brownie as if it were an olive branch or a white flag or beacon in the darkness.
Either way, Sky smirked at her and said, “Get that away from me.”
With a giggle, Elle retracted her arm and said, “Fine. But thank you. For real.”
“Sure.”
“Also, give the matchmaking a real chance, okay? You might actually meet a guy you like. If you let yourself.” Elle had given some variation of this pep talk before, so Sky was sort of immune to it. “Not every guy will be like Derek. In fact, almost no guy will be like Derek,” Elle claimed.
“Derek’s ancient history,” was Sky’s only reply as she picked up her duffel bag and started heading toward her bedroom.
Derek Webber, the evil wolf-in-sheep’s-clothing that Sky had lost her virginity to her junior year, was still a sore subject, so Elle didn’t push it any further. Instead she called to Sky’s back: “Hey, by the way, girl—believe it or not—I missed you!”
Chapter Four
That evening Jamie was pulling his tee shirt on when he heard a knock at his door. Since he was meeting his friends at Tragan’s place soon, he doubted it was one of them. But who else would be stopping by?
He was surprised to find his sister, Briana, standing on the other side of the door, looking wide-eyed and a bit keyed-up about something.
“Oh, thank goodness you’re home!” she said, sounding winded.
“Hey,” Jamie said, stepping aside as she rushed over the threshold. “What are you doing here?”
“Did you get my message?”
“No.”
“I called you about ten minutes ago, but you didn’t answer.”
“Oh, sorry. I was in the shower. What’s up?” he said, and then abruptly noticed something that he should have noticed as soon as saw her, but he supposed it was one of those delayed reactions. Warily, he looked down at her hands, gripping onto a ceramic pot. “And why do you have a plant with you?” he asked cautiously.
She pushed
it forward, nudging his stomach with the ceramic pot. His eyes dropped down, just looking at it, but he made no moves to take it. She blew some of her bangs out of her eyes and hurriedly explained, “Okay, here’s the deal. I got called in at the last minute to replace my boss on a business trip to Dusseldorf. My flight’s in two hours; I’m on my way to Logan right now. I had the cab make a quick stop here first, though.”
“Why?” he said.
“I need you take care of my plant for me while I’m gone,” Briana said.
“What?” Jamie nearly moaned as he rolled his eyes, “Come on…”
“Take it! Please,” Briana coaxed. Begrudgingly, he took the pot from her, but he wasn’t ready to accept the task yet. “I’m sorry to dump this on you, Jamie, but I didn’t even think of it until I was literally walking out of the house tonight,” she explained.
Haplessly, he sighed and looked around the room, trying to come up with a decent excuse. “I’m no good with plants,” he said, which was the truth anyway. “Can’t Lisa do it?” he asked, referring to their sister.
Briana blew off the idea immediately. “Oh, Lisa’s too immature.”
“Exactly,” Jamie agreed with a nod. “And I’m two years younger than her,” he argued. “Imagine how immature I am.”
“C’mon, I know you’re going to help me,” Briana said. Jamie was the youngest of three, and honestly, it was hard to say no to his sisters when they got relentless like this. “It’s not just a matter of feeding it. It also needs sunlight. But I live on the ground floor; there’s no way I’m leaving all my blinds open for a week while the place is empty!”
“Fine,” he agreed as he lifted the pot up and looked the thing over. “So…what? Do I have to water it or something?”
Briana’s tone was deadpan as she said: “Yes, Jamie. You have to water it.” As he nodded, she added, “Oh—except for on Thursday. Give her about a third-cup of milk on Thursday. Two percent seems to work best.”
“Ha, right,” he laughed.
“No, Jamie I’m serious,” Briana said, blinking emphatically. “The nutrients keep the leaves strong.”
