Caught Up In Us

by Lauren Blakely

  “I’ll even break out my Get Fuzzy tee-shirt when we start planning a march to the capital.”

  “Generally speaking, I’m good with all cartoon cats, especially when cute girls wear them.”

  Then he walked off. That was all he said, and I was left alone in the hall, my mind buzzing, my skin tingling. I didn’t fall asleep right away. I replayed our conversation. We’d hit it off, right? I wasn’t imagining it. There was something in that kind of instant repartee, wasn’t there? Especially when I thought of that last moment — cute girls, cute girls, cute girls.

  The next morning, I probably spent more time in front of the mirror adjusting my hair and touching up my lip gloss than I usually did. Then I walked into town and stopped at the local cafe for my regular.

  After I left, I was surprised to find Bryan waiting outside Mystic Landing. He had a cup of coffee in his hand, and the ends of his dark hair were still wet. I was near enough to breathe in that clean, freshly showered scent. “I’m a morning person too. Hope you don’t mind if I share the morning shift with you. Nate’ll sleep past noon anyway.”

  “Not at all,” I said as I hunted for the keys in my purse.

  He tipped his forehead to my drink. “Must have just missed you at the cafe. Coffee, too?”

  I shook my head. “Caramel macchiato. Only frou-frou drinks for this girl.” Then, I leaned in closer to him and dropped my voice to a faux whisper. “I even got an extra shot of caramel.”

  He pretended as if I’d just the most scandalous thing in the world. “So decadent.”

  “And you?” I asked, because I had a theory that you could tell a lot about a guy by his coffee drink. Any guy who ordered soy, chai, or more foam was going to be high-maintenance. If a fellow asked for the water to be extra hot, he was destined to be cold and emotionless because the water at any coffee shop is already scalding; if you needed it hotter, you had no feelings. When boys wanted herbal tea, I’d run the other way because that meant they’d be far too interested in yoga, new-age crystals and feng-shui’ing my life. I had no problem with those things, but their collective by-product was often not enough showering, and I was a big fan of the just-showered look and smell.

  Then there was the man who ordered just coffee. Simple, straightforward, knows what he wants.

  Bryan tapped the top of the plastic lid on his cup. “Coffee. Just coffee, nothing more. I like my coffee the way —”

  I held up a hand. “I don’t want to hear one of those customary guy jokes. I like my coffee the way I like my women — hot, strong, with cream.”

  He narrowed his eyes at me. “I wasn’t going to say that.”

  “Oh. Sorry. How do you like your coffee then?” I turned away and slid the key into the lock.

  He lowered his voice, and spoke in a dark and smoky kind of whisper. “The way they drink it in Paris. Black.”

  It was a good thing my back was to him. Because something about the way he said Paris sent shivers up my spine. It was as if his voice was caressing my back. “Have you been?” I asked, because it had been my dream to go to Paris. To wander in and out of boutiques and shops and see all the necklaces and bracelets and jewelry. To be inspired by the designs.

  To fall in love, by the river, under the lamplight.

  “Only once. But the company I’m starting to work for has offices there, so I’m hoping go back,” he said. As I opened the door, I thought: take me with you, take me with you, take me with you.

  We worked the morning shift together that first day, and we clicked with the customers. He’d chat up a pair of vacationing sisters about a coffee table picture book, then hand off to me, and then I’d do the same with a couple considering a serving plate. We had a sort of instant rhythm and sense of how to make a store like this work.

  “We’re like a tag team,” he said after I rang up another sale, and I smiled in agreement.

  Nate arrived in the early afternoon to take over. As I grabbed my purse from behind the counter, Bryan placed a hand on my arm. “Matinee and popcorn?”

  My stomach flipped. I nodded a yes, mumbled a goodbye to my brother, and left the store with his best friend. We walked the few blocks to the six-screen cinema, picked a Will Ferrell comedy, and opted to share a medium popcorn. We went the next day to see a thriller, then the next for a sci-fi picture, and after that we saw a silly film with talking animals in it, laughing the whole time. When the movie ended, I told him it reminded me of a film I’d seen a few years back with my mom, then proceeded to rattle off how it compared to every other talking animal flick, as if I were a too-serious film critic opining needlessly. “But the pig in Babe did set the standard for linguistically-capable animals on screen.”

  “You’ve pretty much seen every movie, haven’t you?” he asked.

  “I wouldn’t say every movie.”

  “But most?”

  I shrugged. “I see a lot of movies.”

  “Why? I mean, besides the obvious. That movies are fun.”

  “Isn’t that a good enough reason? Just for entertainment?”

  “Totally. So that’s the reason?”

  “Sure,” I said, but I was smiling the kind of smile that said there was more to it.

  “All right, Kat Harper. What’s the story?” He motioned with his hand for me to spill the beans. “Tell me where your love of movies comes from.”

  “I think it’s because of what movies have always meant to my family. All these big events in my life were marked by movies. When Nate was in eighth grade and won the election for class president, we all went to see the re-release of Raiders of the Lost Ark, because it was this great action adventure, and I gripped the armrest when Harrison Ford raced against the boulder. The time I was picked to design the cover of the junior high yearbook we went to see Ocean’s Eleven. That’s just how we celebrated things. I even remember when my grandmother died. We went to the memorial service. I was twelve and I read a poem at the service, and then we decided that we should see Elf. Which probably sounds like a weird thing to do after a funeral.”

  Bryan listened intently. “No, it doesn’t. Not at all.”

  “It was really the perfect movie to see, because I think we all just needed to not be sad every second, you know?”

  “It actually makes perfect sense,” he said. I looked at him and the honesty in his face and his eyes. He understood. He got it. He got me. I kept going.

  “But I guess it all started with my mom. She’s a huge romantic comedy fan, so she started showing me all the great ones. Sleepless in Seattle. Love, Actually. Notting Hill. You’ve Got Mail.”

  “And do you still love romantic comedies?”

  “I make jewelry. I drink caramel machiattos. I wear Hello Kitty to bed. Of course I love romantic comedies,” I said with a smile as we neared my house. But I didn’t just love them. I wanted to live within them. I wanted a love like in the movies.

  Bryan cleared his throat. “I think there’s a romantic-comedy we haven’t seen at the theater. Do you want to go again tomorrow?”

  “Yes,” I said, and I’m sure it came out all breathy sounding.

  We saw the movie the next day, and it was the kind where you long for the hero and heroine to kiss, and when they do, near the final frame, you feel this tingling in your body, and you want to be kissed too. I stole a glance at Bryan only to find he was stealing a glance at me.

  “Hi,” he whispered in that voice he’d used when he talked about Paris.

  “Hi.”

  He reached a hand towards me, slowly, his eyes on me the whole time, as if he were asking if it was okay. I nodded a yes. He ran his fingers through my dark brown hair, then his mouth met mine, and we kissed until the credits rolled, slow and sweet kisses. His lips were the softest I’d ever felt, and his kisses were of the epic kind, the kind that made you believe that movie kisses weren’t just for actors or for stories, that they could be for you, and they could go on and on, like a slow and sexy love song that melted you from the inside out.

&nbs
p; When he pulled away, he leaned his forehead against mine. “Kat, I’ve wanted to do that since I first met you in the driveway the other day.”

  “You have?”

  “Yes. You were so pretty, and then you were everything else.”

  My heart skipped ten thousand beats. He was a movie kiss, he was the name above the title. He was the one you wanted the heroine to wind up with so badly that your heart ached for her when they weren’t together, then soared when they finally were.

  “I think you’re pretty cool too,” I said.

  “But we probably shouldn’t tell Nate. You know, since I’m his buddy and you’re his little sister. Not to mention the age thing.”

  “Yeah, you’re right.”

  So it was our summer secret.

  Chapter Five

  I’d deliberately resisted Internet stalking Bryan for the last few years. Sure, I knew his company was a generous supporter of the NYU business school and had endowed a new wing of the library last year. I also knew he’d started Made Here four years ago and had grown it quite nicely. But that was because I read business news, and you couldn’t miss his success story. Timing was everything and he’d capitalized at just the right moment with his product line. But more so, he knew the mood of the country shifted and that people wanted American-made goods, so he retrofitted former lugnut factories for cufflink manufacturing and then led the rapid growth along with his business partner. I hadn’t dug any deeper in the last few years. Nor had I tracked him on Facebook or hunted out anything else in recent months. The less I knew about him, the better off I was.

  Besides, I’d had a boyfriend through most of college, Michael Preston. We were together for three years. Three tumultuous years. Michael was an actor at NYU and I first met him after a performance of A Streetcar Named Desire. He played Brando’s character and he was breathtaking on stage, all raw emotion and power and want. But that intensity he brought to the stage he brought to the relationship too in the form of rabid jealousy and insecurity. One evening our junior year, he showed up at my dorm, banged on the door, and collapsed on the floor in a heap. “I didn’t get the part,” he moaned. He’d been at a callback for the role of the youngest son in Long Day’s Journey Into Night.

  “I’m so sorry, Michael,” I said and pet his hair.

  He propped himself up on an elbow. “You don’t love me enough.”

  “I do love you,” I told him.

  “Then marry me. Marry me now. Let’s have a secret marriage. Prove you love me by marrying me.”

  I was twenty. Even if I wanted to get married, I wasn’t going to do it secretly. But he looked at me so seriously, and with also something like anger in his eyes. I laughed nervously.

  “You don’t love me enough,” he repeated.

  Love me enough. What did that even mean? Maybe he was right. Maybe I didn’t love him enough. All I knew was when he showed up drunk at three in the morning the next night, it didn’t feel like love. It felt like stalking. He kept appearing in the middle of the night. Sometimes, I let him in just to shut him up so I could fall back asleep. He’d lie in bed with me and wake me up at three, four, five in the morning by poking his finger in my ear. “Stay up all night with me. To prove you love me.”

  I couldn’t prove I loved him enough, nor did I want to, and given the unexpected and unwanted late-night visits, I was even more grateful when I was accepted into a study abroad program for my senior year. I had to get away from him, but I also wanted to be in France.

  I took off for the city of lights and lived there for my senior year of school, immersing myself in the language, the food, and most of all the artisanal jewelry. My days were filled with cobblestoned streets and stone corridors of universities older than the United States, and my nights were rich with lamplights and a winding river and the occasional kiss with a young Frenchman. Once I returned to New York and started business school, there was even less room to think of Bryan.

  Now, it was finally time to follow his Internet trail. But only because I needed to be armed with information so I could make my case in front of my professor. So I did the thing I hadn’t done for years. I sought out information about Bryan online. The very first result shocked me.

  Made Here Business Partner Ousted by Board Following Affair

  The link was to an article in a New York newspaper from a few months ago. I checked out the photo of Bryan’s ex-business partner, a standard sort of average-looking guy. As I read the article, several lines stood out. “At the board’s insistence, Kramer Wilco has stepped down as co-chief executive of Made Here, the high-flying manufacturing startup that’s been earning tidy profits in the last several quarters. Wilco admitted to being involved with an intern at the Made Here factory outside of Philadelphia. When it was discovered the intern was seventeen and a senior in high school, the board made it clear he needed to go. Wilco started Made Here with his business partner Bryan Leighton four years ago. Leighton did not return calls for comment, but a spokesperson said he will run the company solo now.”

  I slumped back in my chair. I’d had no idea his firm had been touched by this sort of scandal. Was Bryan the one who discovered the affair? How had he handled it? Was he cool and clinical? Or pissed off and fuming like I would be? I Googled Wilco next and clicked on an interview he’d done with a business news channel a year ago after Made Here inked a new deal with a large retailer.

  “What’s the biggest challenge your company faces in the quarter ahead?” the reporter asked at the end of the piece.

  “Honestly, now’s not the time to talk about challenges. Now’s the time to just focus on our new partnership,” Wilco said, but there was a curtness to his answer and a snappish sort of tone in his voice. He wasn’t the most affable guy, that was for sure. Bryan would have done a much better job with the interview, coming across as warm and smart.

  Then I shook my head as if I could rid myself of the thoughts. Why was I wasting any mental energy on how Bryan would have managed a cable news interview? Much less on how he felt when his business partner got caught canoodling? Bryan’s feelings didn’t matter to me anymore. I read a few more articles on Made Here’s business strategy, then researched the skatewear gal so I was prepped for tomorrow. I shifted gears and tended to some online orders, responded to some emails, and checked out a few of my favorite European design blogs. Then I worked on my other classwork, keeping a laser focus the whole time. It was nearly midnight when my roommate Jill, with her dark blond hair and deep blue eyes, threw open the door and announced she was home from an epic dress rehearsal in which the cast of Les Mis had kicked unholy musical ass. I laughed and listened to her report.

  When she was done, I clasped my hands together. “You will never believe what happened today.”

  “Tell me.”

  I proceeded to share every single detail of my afternoon. “Isn’t that the most ridiculous thing you’ve ever heard? I’m marching into my professor’s office and requesting a new mentor tomorrow.”

  Jill smirked.

  “What?”

  She rolled her eyes.

  “Okay, what now?”

  Then came a shrug and a knowing look. “I’m just saying, it doesn’t sound like you hated the kiss as much as you’re making it sound like you hated the kiss.”

  “I hated every second of it,” I said through tight lips.

  “Yeah, keep telling yourself that, my kitty cat.”

  *****

  The next morning Jill woke me up bright and early by throwing a sports bra on my face. “Rise and burn, sunshine. Rise and burn.”

  I rolled over in bed and shielded my eyes. “Go away.”

  That made Jill jump onto my bed and bounce up and down.

  “How is it you can rehearse til midnight and have the energy to go for a run at seven in the morning?”

  “I’m a vampire. I don’t need sleep. I survive off the nectar of my Broadway ambitions. And let’s not forget I was actually up til past midnight listening to you tell me all a
bout Mr. Hottie McCufflinks.”

  I swatted Jill with a pillow, then sat up in bed.

  Jill clapped. “I won. Let’s go run.”

  She was already in her leggings, sports bra and a tight tee-shirt, with her long blond hair looped in a hair tie.

  “Fine,” I said, then brushed my teeth, yanked my hair into a ponytail and pulled on workout clothes. We ran when we hit the sidewalk of Twenty-Second Street heading for the West Side Bike Path. The sun was rising, and it promised a warm September day, free of rain.

  “So what’s your plan? How are you going to resist him during your mentorship?” Jill started, arms tucked properly by her body, feet hitting the ground in perfect runner’s stride. Back in high school, when Jill wasn’t nabbing starring roles in musical theater productions, she was a runner for her cross-country team. Oh, have I mentioned she’s also finished five marathons? I must have been crazy to run with her because when it comes to sports I specialized in walking, just walking, and only walking. That’s why I only ran with her once a week and even then I spent most of the thirty minutes consumed by one singular, solitary, painful thought: Please let this be over as soon as humanly possible.

  “I’m asking for a transfer. But even if I can’t get one, I don’t like Bryan, so it’ll be fine.”

  “Ha.”

  “Besides, he doesn’t like me either,” I said in between breaths.

  “I find that hard to believe.”

  “Jill, he didn’t like me five years ago. Why would he like me now?”

  She gave me a sideways glance. “He did like you then. He just freaked out. Got scared or something. That’s what I’ve always believed and you know it. As for why he likes you now – duh. You’re you and you’re hot.” Jill slowed down her running. Delighted, I followed her lead into a more comfortable jog. “Besides. He. Kissed. You.”

  I scoffed. “He kissed my forehead.”

  “For. Ten. Seconds.”

  “Anyway, it was nothing. I hit my head, and he was just being nice. Nothing more will happen. Because there is nothing going on.”