Caught Up In Us

by Lauren Blakely

  He snapped his fingers in a win-some, lose-some gesture. “Damn. I really thought you were still a macchiato girl. I even got an extra shot of caramel in it too,” he added.

  I took another drink. I’d never liked coffee, but somehow the harsh taste was the reminder I needed not to give in, even to the fact that he’d remembered the extra shot.

  Soon, the car slowed to a stop and the driver came around to open the door. I gave Bryan a quizzical look. We’d only been driving for five minutes. “I thought we were going to Philly?”

  “We are. By train,” he said, then held out a hand.

  I waved him off. I didn’t need help stepping out of the car. We walked into the train station, down the escalator, to the tracks, and into the first class car. It was quiet and air-conditioned, with leather-backed dove gray seats.

  “Would you like the window seat, Kat?”

  I nodded, then sat down, wishing I didn’t find politeness, consideration and manners such a turn-on. He sat next to me, his leg brushing against mine. I should have shifted my body, moved a few inches away, but instead we simply stayed like that, legs touching, as the train pulled out of Manhattan and picked up speed. He answered emails on his phone, and I read some chapters in a business book that had been assigned in one of my classes.

  As we sped through the suburbs on the way to his factory, I thought about the skater gal, and what I would ask her if she were my mentor. I’d want to hear the story in her own words of how she started her business. So I went with that, closing the book and speaking in my best curious student voice. Because that’s how I was going to act with him.

  “Would you tell me the story of Made Here? I’ve read the version on your Web site, but I’d love to hear it from you.”

  He put his phone away, and held my gaze, and in that second I felt an electricity, a tightly coiled line between the two of us. He had a way of making me feel as if he were touching me, even if we were inches apart. Maybe it was because he wasn’t afraid to look me in the eyes, or to hold onto the look. Nor was he afraid to be close. Whatever the reason, the effect was heady, and it was dangerous. Perhaps I should pretend he really was the skater gal. I pictured him wearing cat’s eye glasses and a black wig with pink streaks. There. I’d never been a fan of men in drag, so the image helped me focus.

  “I suppose it all began when I was reassigned a few weeks after I started my first job out of graduate school. I was supposed to work in New York, but I was sent to Paris instead for a year…” he said and kept talking, but it was as if someone knocked me out of time. I thought he’d stayed in New York after he ended it with me.

  “You were there for a year?”

  He nodded. “Yes. I was sent there right after…” his voice trailed off. Right after he broke up with me.

  “It’s okay. You can say it. I’m a big girl. Right after you broke up with me.”

  He sighed deeply. “Yes. Then.”

  I held out my hands. “See? That wasn’t so hard to say. We just get it out there in the open and move on.”

  “Okay. So there it is. Out in the open.”

  “And now we go back to the whole we just met routine. Good?”

  He nodded.

  “Where did you live?” I asked, shifting the talk back to Paris.

  “In the Latin Quarter. Across the river from Notre Dame.”

  “Me too.” I pictured the flat I’d lived in with a hip and trendy young French couple. The narrow staircase that wound up four flights. The cramped kitchen and even smaller bathroom. But it was Paris, and from the window in the second bedroom I had a view of the river and Notre Dame and farther beyond I could see Sacre-Coeur. A torch singer who lived across the street from me used to fling her windows open in the evenings, and she’d sing while cooking, songs about love gone awry. She had one of those voices like whiskey and honey, the best kind of voice for those songs. I half expected her to slink around her flat in a sexy, sequined red dress like a cabaret singer. “So you went to Paris for work. But this was before Made Here?”

  “The company I worked for right out of business school had an office there. I thought I’d just visit it from time to time. But instead, they relocated me. So I spent a year in Paris, learning the ropes, and the firm did a lot of business with small suppliers who made handcrafted special goods. High-quality watches, and leather bags, and wallets and such. And I was able to observe some of the processes, the handiwork, the craftsmanship. It got me thinking I could do the same back in the States, but I had to capitalize on something that was on the cusp of being popular but that wouldn’t just be a trend. That’s when the cufflink idea came to me, so when I returned from Paris I connected with Wilco,” he said, referring to his former business partner. “He was the money guy. I was the idea guy. So he raised the capital and I started building the business. And voila. Four years later, here we are.”

  I noted that he didn’t say anything bad about Wilco, when it would be so easy to disparage the man given the trouble he’d caused for Made Here. “Voila, indeed. So I take it you’re fluent?”

  “Oui.”

  “Moi aussi.”

  He raised an eyebrow. “So then I can flirt with you in French and it’ll be like a secret language just between us,” he said to me in French.

  Flirt. Secret. Us. What was he doing using words like that? Playing with my emotions? “Yeah, not so secret, Bryan. A few million people speak French.”

  Then I turned to look out the window. We were passing through a beautiful town in Pennsylvania, rushing by farmhouses and stately white homes with impeccably trimmed green lawns and shrubs.

  He peered out the window too, his body moving closer to mine, doing that thing he did where he migrated into my space. I could feel his chest against my arm as we watched the towns zoom by. Soon, he reached his arm across my back, his hand touching my shoulder. Technically, it was the sort of thing friends might do. But it didn’t feel like we were friends. It didn’t even feel like flirting. It felt like foreplay.

  And I didn’t want to pretend anymore.

  I didn’t want to be mean anymore.

  I didn’t want to toss barbs at him anymore.

  I wanted him to touch me, so I didn’t dare move. I didn’t risk a look or a glance. The moment was full of too much heat that I didn’t trust myself. I thought I was over him. I thought he’d earned the spot I’d tucked him in back in the far corner of my mind. I was wrong. I had been forcing him there for five years. Because now, with him by my side, inches away, looking out the window of a racing train, I knew all I’d done was white knuckle it through. I’d faked my way through every other relationship, when all I was doing was resisting him. He was the only one I’d ever wanted like this, and my body was on fire for him.

  He leaned in to whisper to me, and I closed my eyes. I felt as if I might collapse into him. “The towns are so pretty, Kat. Don’t you think?”

  “Yes,” I managed to say without melting into his arms.

  “And sometimes, I think, they’re even prettier five years later. Just like you. You’re even prettier now, and you were beautiful then.”

  I wanted to turn my face towards his and let him devour me in kisses, let his hands find their way underneath my shirt, and onto my skin. I could see kisses on my neck, lips on my belly, legs wrapped around him. It was almost too much to bear. I tried to shake the images – these pictures of him on me, in me, under me – but they’d staked out a home.

  Somewhere, there was a modicum of restraint in me, because I didn’t answer him.

  Soon, the train pulled into our stop. We both rose, and I noticed his cheeks were flushed. He looked at me, his eyes darker than usual, full of unsaid things.

  Chapter Eight

  I’d had a few boyfriends before I met Bryan, but none of them serious. I was the artsy girl growing up, so I was always drawn to those types too, and went out with a dark-haired hipster guy who inked comic books when I was a junior in high school, then to senior prom with a totally beautiful g
olden boy who looked like the quarterback but wrote like a poet, including a sonnet for me tucked inside the corsage.

  I liked them both, but they didn’t compare to Bryan. They didn’t come close in any department, not in my heart, and definitely not in the kissing division. Any girl who says she doesn’t keep a list of best kisses ever is lying. She may not have a pen-and-paper list, but she knows in her head who rocked her world and made her more than weak in the knees. Bryan was my butterflies-in-the-belly, my soft-and-hungry-and-neverending kisses. He was all the kisses I’d ever want. Because he was kind, and he was witty, and he always wanted to know more about me, and maybe that’s why he kissed like a dream – he was my dream guy.

  One summer night Bryan and I went to the water and stretched out on a blanket on the sand. As I ran my hands over his chest and his stomach, he made this noise, like a low growl and a sigh all in one, and I wanted to pull his perfect body to mine and move against him.

  “We can’t do more than kiss,” he said as my fingers explored the underside of his tee-shirt while the midnight waves rolled along the beach, then back out to the ocean.

  “Why?”

  “Because. Because I’m your brother’s friend. Because I’m older than you.”

  “You’re only five years older,” I pointed out.

  “I know. But you’re seventeen.”

  “So? I’m old enough to know what I want.”

  “I know, and I want it too. But it’s wrong.”

  “Would it be wrong then when I’m eighteen?”

  I looped my hands around his back and wriggled my hips closer. From the feel of him against me, I doubted it would be wrong. I was sure it would only be right.

  “Kat.”

  “Would it be wrong when I’m eighteen?” I repeated, bringing my lips to his, and running my fingers across his smooth, strong back. He shuddered under my touch, and I felt powerful. I felt wanted. I felt like the girl who was becoming irresistible to the boy.

  “No.”

  “So then…” I let my voice trail off. He was leaving for New York in a week to start his job. I was starting school a month later. Nervous hope clanged inside me. “I’m going to be in New York soon too. I’m going to NYU.”

  “I know, and you’re going to love it. But my job is going to take me out of town a lot,” he said, and my heart sank. I wanted to be more than his summer love. Summer romances, by definition, are bittersweet. They have an expiration date. “Don’t be sad, Kat. I’m totally falling for you, and I don’t want to take advantage of you. I like you that much.”

  That made me smile and feel better about the possibility of an us, even though it seemed like grasping at the edge of a cloud.

  A few days later, we were at the movies again, and I kept thinking about what he’d said about falling for me. I was falling for him too, and then some. Age difference or not, brother’s best friend or not, I wanted him to know. I wanted to put it out there, obstacles be damned. After the credits rolled, and the lights came up, and we were the only ones still in the theater except for an usher cleaning the front rows, I looked in his green eyes, took a breath, and said, “I’m falling for you too.”

  He smiled, the kind that only spelled happiness, and pressed his forehead to mine. “Kat, will you come visit me in New York next month?”

  I was a pinwheel of colors. I was the winner at the carnival. The boy I wanted wanted me. “Of course.”

  And so we made plans. I’d take the train in on weekends to visit him, and we’d do all those things young couples do in New York. Walk through the Village holding hands, kiss by the fountain at Lincoln Center, bring a picnic to Central Park and find the most secluded spot. Then, when I turned eighteen at the end of the summer, we’d do more. We’d do everything. He would be my first, and there was no question I’d waited for the right guy.

  We went to a restaurant in Little Italy the first weekend, and he touched my legs under the red-checked tablecloth the whole time, sending me into the most heated state. When we left, I pulled him against me and we made out in front of a closed hardware store next door, not caring who was walking past us.

  Another time, we spent the afternoon in the Impressionist galleries at the Metropolitan Museum, where I showed him my favorite Monet, one of haystacks in the snow. He said he liked the way the artist crafted shadows in the sun. Then, Bryan pointed at the folds on a dress in a Renoir and mused that they seemed like diamonds. I looked at him, at the way his green eyes studied the painting, and it all seemed too good to be true – here I was with someone who was gorgeous, and funny, and who actually liked looking at art – but yet, it was true.

  The next weekend he said he’d found the perfect store for me, and he brought me to a cobblestoned block in the Village and held open the door to a tiny little Japanese manga shop. I gave him a quizzical look. I wasn’t into manga.

  “Just go in. You’ll see.”

  After I passed the shelves of comics, I saw the most fantastic display. A wall full of Hello Kitty jewelry – bracelets and rings and hair clips and necklaces and keychains and every adornment imaginable with the cat.

  Bryan was smiling, as if he’d brought me to buried treasure. “I thought you might get a kick out of it.” A nervous grin came next. “But then again, you make such amazing stuff this might all seem silly to you.”

  I placed my hand on his arm. “I love it. No matter what I make, I will always love Hello Kitty. It’s a life-long kind of thing we have going on.”

  “Good. Pick anything you like.”

  I studied the displays, checking out a rhinestone necklace, a white and pink pendant, a silver and black chain. Then rings in all shapes and sizes. I showed him a cute, sparkly ring. “I do love this ring.”

  I moved over to the necklaces. Bryan shifted closer and slipped his hand onto the small of my back, touching me underneath my tee-shirt. I closed my eyes because it felt so good I wanted to purr. The slightest touch from him was intoxicating.

  “One more week until your birthday,” he whispered.

  I leaned into him, savoring the feel of his body against me. That we were in a public place barely crossed my mind. All I could think of was him.

  The girl behind the counter cleared her throat. I opened my eyes and managed to choose a sparkly number, with pink stones for the cat’s ears. It was kitschy and that’s what made it so adorable.

  “Wait for me outside,” Bryan said.

  I did as instructed and a minute later, he left the store, dropped a tiny white bag into his wallet, and then fastened the chain around my neck. “It’s just a little necklace, but I wanted you to have something from me. Something you liked,” he said, and he sounded so sweet and nervous too.

  “I love it, Bryan. I totally love it.”

  “You do?”

  “Yes.”

  Then, his hands were in my hair, and he kissed my neck, my earlobe, my eyelids. I sighed and swayed closer. I was floating, I was flying, I was in Manhattan with the man I’d fallen in mad, crazy love with.

  “Why aren’t we just in your apartment right now?” I whispered.

  “Because if we are, I will not be able to resist you.”

  “You’re not doing a good job resisting me right now.”

  “I know. Can you even imagine what it’ll be like if it’s just you and me?”

  “Yes,” I said softly. “I can imagine. I think about it all the time. I’m so crazy about you. I want to be with you in every way.”

  “Me too. Let’s go walk around NYU. You’re going to be there in just a few weeks.” He held my hand and squeezed my fingers when he said that, his touch a visceral reminder that we’d be together then. We wandered around the campus for the next hour, and with each building, dorm and classroom that we managed to find open in August, I grew more excited about college.

  “I can’t believe I’m going to be here soon. It’s going to be amazing.” We walked along the outside of one of the dorms. “Did you love it here?”

  “Yes. I
loved it. College is everything they say it is.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “That it’s the time when you find yourself. When you figure out what you want. And when you have a ton of fun.”

  “I can’t wait to start. I know I’m going to love it.”

  “You are,” Bryan said, but there was something sad in his tone.

  I looked at him. “Hey. You okay?”

  “Totally.”

  “Because you sounded…”

  “I’m fine.”

  But he grew quieter as we checked out the campus bookstore, and a cafe where I said I would probably do all my homework, and the library, which was speckled with students for the summer session. His mind was elsewhere, and he didn’t tell me where he’d gone.

  At the station on Sunday night, I thanked him again for the necklace.

  “You should always wear it,” he said before I caught the last train to Mystic. His voice was wistful, and when he kissed me goodbye, the moment had become melancholy. I didn’t feel like a girl who was returning in a week for her eighteenth birthday. I felt like a girl being sent off with only a Hello Kitty necklace to remember him by.

  When I called a few days later to confirm our weekend plans, his voice was different. Strained and distant.

  “I don’t think you should come in,” he said.

  Something didn’t compute. We’d been planning this weekend for more than a month. “Why? Did something come up at work?” My shoulders started to tighten with worry.

  “No. It’s just…I don’t think we should.”

  “Should what?”

  There were so many ways to answer the question, but the scariest one was the one he said next.

  “I don’t think we should be together.”

  I looked at my phone briefly as if it were a radio, mistakenly tuned to a channel I could no longer understand. I brought the phone to my ear and said the only thing I could think of. The thing I was clinging to. “But I’m totally in love with you, Bryan. One hundred percent and then some. And I want to be with you.”