“Who gives a crap about that?” I yell.
I guess I yell pretty loud because I hear a clearing of the throat in the silence that follows and when I turn around, I see a woman standing in the doorway to my office. I’ve never seen her before and from the look on her face, she’s about to scurry away and make sure I never see her again. She’s wearing a black suit and carrying a black briefcase and I know instantly she is the temp Bailey hired. Hey, I am nothing if not a brilliant observer.
“Sorry,” she says. “I, ah, I should have waited…”
“No.” I flash what I hope like hell is a smile. “Please. Come in.” I hold out my hand. “I’m Matt O’Malley. And you’re…” Her name escapes me. “The temp. With the B.A. and the M.A.”
She nods. And shakes my hand. She even smiles. “Eleanor Griffith. Did I, um, did I show up too early? I can come by later, if you prefer.”
I glance at my watch. It’s five minutes before nine.
“No, this is fine. I’m just—I’m a little pressured this morning, that’s all. Your predecessor’s departure was kind of sudden.”
“I know. She told me about that job offer, how her new employer insisted she show up in Minneapolis tomorrow at the latest or—”
“Minneapolis?”
“Right.” Eleanor Griffith looks around her. “I assume that desk just outside your door is mine.”
“Right. Yes.” I stare at her. “Are you sure she said Minneapolis?”
“Positive, sir.” She pauses. “I’d like to get straight to work, Mr. O’Malley, if that’s all right with—”
“That’s impossible. She can’t move out of the city.”
My temp raises her eyebrows. “Well,” she says cautiously, “I don’t really know if she can or if she can’t. I mean—”
“Leaving New York is not acceptable.”
Eleanor Griffith takes a step back. “Is she—is she on probation? Because I once worked for a gentleman who, it turned out, was on—”
“I forbid it! I forbid her to move! And, Jesus H. Christ, to Minneapolis? Have you ever been there? Hot summers. Endless winters. Glassed-in walkways between buildings so you don’t melt in the summer or turn into Frosty the Snowman in the winter as you go from one place to another.”
The temp takes a couple more steps back. “I believe they’re called skyways, sir.”
“Who cares what they’re called? She won’t have the good sense to use them. She’ll take the streets and she’ll freeze to death. Or she’ll turn into a puddle of sweat because she’ll wear those hideous suits rather than let anyone see how beautiful she really is.”
Eleanor Griffith spins on her heel and hurries away. “Cancel all my appointments,” I yell after her, but she’s turned the corner and she’s gone.
The rest of my staff, however, is all here, standing at the end of the hall when I reach it, and they’re staring at me.
“Matt?” one of them says.
It’s Jack, my accountant. “Cancel my appointments,” I bark.
Jack looks bewildered. “I don’t even know where your calendar is.”
I laugh, but from the hasty scrape of feet as everybody gets out of my way, it isn’t a pretty sound.
“So what?” I say. “Neither do I.”
Two minutes later, I’m in my car, burning rubber.
* * *
One of the good things about driving is that it always has a calming effect on me.
Okay, it takes a while for that to happen this morning, but by the time I reach the city, I am in much better shape. I’ve figured things out and now I can act accordingly.
For starters, forget that nonsense about Bailey moving to Minneapolis. She’s a New Yorker to the bone. No way is she going to leave Manhattan.
Second, she’s not embarrassed.
All right. Maybe she is. A little. But mostly she simply needs assurance that what happened over the weekend won’t affect her career. And why would it? Fucking was a one-off. Well, maybe a three or four-off. Maybe, if I stop and count, a six-off. Actually, I have no idea how many times we made love—and, dammit, what does it matter if I say we fucked or we made love? The point is, I didn’t keep track. I was too lost in Bailey, in holding her, being with her. In that big bed. In the soaking tub. Over the back of the chair in front of that little writing desk. In that enormous shower and yes, on that teak bench although that time I sat her on the bench, went down on my knees, spread her thighs wide…
Honk!
I push the wheel to the right and avoid the truck coming at me. It’s the truck driver’s fault. What’s he doing, edging into my lane?
Okay.
I am not calm. Not yet. And I need to be calm if I’m going to make Bailey see what a huge mistake she’s making, giving up her job as my PA. She has a career here. And I need her. She’s a fantastic PA, the best a man could have. I’ll miss her talent for organization, her ability to make a difficult day seem easy…
Dammit.
I’ll miss her laugh. Her sense of humor. The way she stands up to me. And I never got around to teaching her anything substantive about football.
I am definitely not calm.
Deep breathing will do it. Mindfulness. Inhale. One. Two. Three. Four. Five. Hold. And exhale. One. Two Three…
I am fine by the time I get to Bailey’s apartment building. I have a moment of panic when I spot the big truck parked in front of it. Is it a moving truck? No. It’s just a delivery truck. Of course it isn’t a moving truck. Bailey is not going anywhere, certainly not to Minneapolis.
There’s no place to park. There probably isn’t one for another twenty blocks. This is New York, remember? Not Minneapolis. Or Philadelphia. Or Boston. And yes, I know there aren’t parking spaces in those cities either, but that isn’t my point. My point is that my PA was meant for this town and she would never leave it.
That’s what I tell myself as I pull into a bus stop and get out of my car. It’s what I tell myself as I go to Bailey’s building and ring a bell at random so that somebody will ring back and let me in.
It’s what I tell myself as I go inside and take the steps two at a time.
It’s even what I tell myself as I punch her doorbell.
I must be out of shape, otherwise why would my heart be beating so fast?
I’m about to ring the bell again when I hear the snick of the peephole being opened. For the first time in maybe the last hour, I can actually breathe. Not the one, two, three, four, five stuff. Just breathe, in and out, because now I know she’s really still here.
I hear the peephole snick closed and I brace myself for what she’s going to say when she opens the door. I’ve thought about it in the car, coming here, and I know what it’ll be. She’ll tell me that we crossed a line by sleeping together over the weekend and I’ll tell her that she’s correct. We shouldn’t have done it. We should have left our relationship strictly professional and what happened was all my fault and we are adults and the past is the past. I’ll admit that not only don’t I want to lose her as my PA, I don’t want to lose her as my friend because she has become my friend in the last week. She always was my friend and I was too blind to see it.
I’m prepared to tell her all those things, but I can’t because she doesn’t open the door.
I ring the bell again.
Nothing.
I hit the bell with the heel of my hand.
Still nothing.
Stay calm, I tell myself…and I ball up my fist and pound on the door until it shudders.
“Bailey,” I shout, “open this door!”
Two other doors creak open, but not hers. I glare at the other doors and since true New Yorkers are standing behind them, both doors quickly close. I turn my attention to the door that matters and bang on it again.
“Dammit, Bailey, I know you’re in there!”
Locks click and jingle. The door opens. “Stop that,” my PA hisses.
I shove the door open and march inside her apartment. Her cat stands in the
middle of the room, back arched.
“Yeah,” I tell the cat, “the exact same to you.”
I look around the room and my calm gives way to fury. Why wouldn’t it, when I see boxes stacked near the sofa?
“You are not,” I say, as I elbow the door shut, “absolutely not moving to Minneapolis.”
Bailey folds her arms over her chest. “I will move wherever I please, Mr. O’Malley.”
“Do you even know about those skyways in Minneapolis?”
She wrinkles her forehead. “What are you talking about?”
“See? You don’t know about them. How can you move to Minneapolis when you don’t know they have skyways?”
“Mr. O’Malley…”
“It’s Matthew.”
“It should have stayed Mr. O’Malley. Now, if you don’t mind—”
“How dare you quit your job?”
Her chin comes up. “How dare I?”
“What about your responsibilities to me?”
“I hired an excellent replacement.”
“An excellent replacement!” I can feel the corner of my mouth curl. “The woman ran at the first little problem.”
Bailey sighs. “Look, my only regret is that I didn’t give you more notice. There just wasn’t time.”
“Is that really your only regret?”
Somehow, my rage has drained away. What I feel instead is a kind of emptiness. I look at Bailey and I see that same emotion in her eyes.
Something knots deep inside me.
She is not dressed for work or for company. Her hair is hanging loose; she’s wearing another slightly shrunken T-shirt. And yoga pants. This pair is old; there’s a tiny hole in one leg. I can see a glimpse of her skin.
I can remember the feel of that skin. Its silky softness.
The knot inside me tightens.
“I’m sorry,” I say softly.
She nods. Her eyes glitter. She swings away and rubs at them. “Yes. I am too.”
“I only wanted to help,” I say. “Instead, I totally screwed things up.”
“It wasn’t you. It was me. I should never have—”
I capture her shoulders with my hands and gently turn her towards me. “It was wrong. I was wrong. Not for making love to you.” I reach out and catch a dark curl between my fingers. “For thinking we could keep it all a game.”
She nods again. Her eyes are damp. I want to kiss away that dampness, but I know it would be a mistake. I have to tell her some things first. Important things. Things I’ve only just learned, but not here. Not with Priscilla glaring at us from her perch on the stack of boxes, not with the sounds of the city intruding.
“Bailey?”
She looks at me.
“We have to talk.”
She shakes her head. I capture her chin in my hand.
“Okay,” I say, “I have to talk. Will you come for a ride with me?”
“Matthew. I don’t think that’s a good idea.”
She’s back to calling me Matthew. I tell myself that’s meaningful.
“Please,” I say. “Come with me. And if you don’t like what I have to tell you, I’ll bring you back here and you can—you can go to Minneapolis.”
At first, I think she’s going to turn me down flat. Then she gives a sad little laugh. “Do you really think I’d leave New York?”
“The boxes?”
“Old clothes. For the Manhattan Shelters Clothing Drive.” She manages a quick smile. “Somebody’s going to be happy getting all those old suits.”
I smile too. The knot inside me is still there, but at least it hasn’t gotten any tighter.
“Come with me,” I say.
I wait. And wait. Then my Bailey sighs, grabs a sweatshirt from the sofa, scratches Priscilla behind the ear, and we head out the door.
18
She doesn’t ask where we’re going.
That’s good, especially since I only just figured it out myself.
Wrong. I didn’t figure it out. It just came to me, the one place, the one right place where I need to take her. It’s almost an hour away and by the time I turn off the highway and I begin to navigate the series of country roads that lead to our destination, my palms are sweaty and my heart is pounding the same way it did a while ago when I stood outside Bailey’s door.
I was the kid who thought nothing of facing down three hundred pound linemen. The kid who took off for places that were only names on a map with a backpack and a bankcard. I turned into the guy who used to bet six figures on a stock without blinking, who walked away from all that so I could go into debt with little more than hope and a dream.
Yeah, but this is different.
I turn up a narrow dirt road that winds into a heavy stand of trees.
Bailey looks at me. “Where are we?” she asks, but as the trees open up just enough to reveal a gentle hill that overlooks a lake and an untouched valley, she catches her breath. “This is that property,” she says. “The one you wouldn’t put the wrong house on.”
I pull the car under a tree, get out, go around to Bailey’s side. She’s sitting perfectly still and since I know she’s not the kind of woman to wait for a man to open a door for her, it scares me that she’s not moving.
I reach for the door, but she beats me to it, unlatches the door and steps from the car.
“I’m right, aren’t I?” she says softly. “About this land?”
“Yes.”
She starts up the slope beside me. There’s a light breeze. It ruffles her hair.
It’s as if the place has been waiting for her.
We reach the top. She catches her breath.
“Oh,” she whispers, “It’s beautiful.”
I nod. It is beautiful. The land. The trees. The view. The sense of being alone on the planet.
Alone, but not lonely. Not anymore.
How come I never realized that? That I was lonely? That I would never know joyfulness until I found the missing half of my soul?
I take a deep breath and clasp Bailey’s shoulders as she stands with her back to me.
“Bailey,” I say. “there’s no easy way to tell you this…”
She turns towards me. She’s crying, and I reach out and brush the tears from her cheeks with my thumbs.
“It’s all right,” she says. “There’s nothing to apologize for. What happened this weekend was—it was everything I’d ever dreamed. It’s what I meant when I said I was the one who’d lied because—because I’d always wanted you, Matthew. I was a fool to let myself give in to worrying about what others would think. I have no regrets. Not one. I want you to know that, but I can’t keep working with you. It’s too much, too much, too much—”
There’s only one way to silence her and I take it.
I cup her face. I capture her lips. I kiss her with everything I am, everything I hope to be.
I kiss her with all the love in my heart.
“I love you,” I say against her mouth. “I’ve loved you for years. I’ve loved you forever.” She stares at me. “Bailey? Did you hear what I said? I love—”
She says my name. And, hell, she’s crying even harder than she was a couple of seconds ago.
“Honey,” I say, “please, don’t cry. I never meant to make you cry.”
“Matthew.” She rises on her toes and clasps my face. “Matthew, say it again.”
“Say what again? That I love you?”
“Yes,” she says, and now she’s laughing and crying at the same time. “Tell me that you love me, because I love you with all my heart.”
I take a deep breath. “Bailey. Sweetheart. Will you marry me?”
Another woman might drag out the moment. Give her man a little punishment. But this isn’t another woman, this is my woman. My PA.
My Bailey.
“Yes,” she says, “yes, yes, yes!”
* * *
So, yeah, what I told you at the beginning was true.
This is a romance, my beautiful wife’s and mine.
We have the ceremony right here, on our hilltop. We’ve already begun putting up our house, a sprawling contemporary that will blend into the land and the woods and, we hope, not disturb the creatures who also call this land home.
Bailey asks Casey to be her matron of honor. Coop is my best man. My little niece toddles down the aisle first, tossing flower petals in all directions.
We have a small wedding, because that’s how we both want it. Only people who matter share the day with us. There’s no ostentation, no glitter, no big buffet. Instead, my guys have put up a party tent and Casey’s come up with a caterer who’s done amazing things with free range chicken, grass-fed beef, tofu and tempeh. I have the feeling I can see all-out vegetarianism in my future, but that’s all right.
As long as Bailey and I have each other, we’ll be fine.
After the ceremony, after the party, when we are finally alone, we linger on our hillside, standing wrapped in each other’s arms as we try to count the stars.
“Impossible to do,” I say.
Bailey turns to me and smiles. And I am again reminded that it is possible to count the stars, the ones in my wife’s eyes.
“I have a confession to make,” she says softly.
I link my hands at the base of her spine. “Yeah?”
“Didn’t you ever wonder how come I just happened to be on the Pill that weekend we went to my cousin’s wedding?”
Actually, I had wondered, but I knew some women took the Pill to regulate their periods, or maybe to just be prepared.
I smile and drop a kiss on my wife’s hair. “Okay. How come?”
Her lips curve in an answering smile. “I went to my doctor’s office in the morning. Before we left. And I asked him for a prescription.”
“Oh.” And then it hits me. “You mean—”
“I mean,” she says, “I was determined to have my way with you that weekend, Mr. O’Malley, whether you were ready or not.”
I laugh softly. “Mrs. O’Malley, you are a wicked woman.”
My wife rises on her toes and brings her mouth to mine. “And you like me that way,” she whispers.
The F-Word: A Sexy Romantic Comedy Page 20
