Caught Up In Us

by Lauren Blakely

  “Yeah, and he’s the one straight actor in musical theater, right?”

  She laughed. “Pretty much. Well, him and Reeve.”

  Patrick Carlson was a few years older than Jill, and had risen quickly as a Broadway star, nabbing a Tony already, as well as a long list of gorgeous girlfriends. He had chiseled cheekbones and the voice of an angel. You could fall in love just hearing him sing. Well, if you weren’t already mad about someone, that is.

  “When’s the callback?”

  “Next week. It’s a good thing you’ll be gone because I’ll pretty much just be practicing my songs the whole time I’m not coaching my newest half-marathon club.”

  “You’re going to blow them away and make gobs of money as a star. Break a leg.”

  My phone rang. Jill raised an eyebrow as she picked up the Hello Kitty-encased device from my nightstand and brandished it at me. “I thought you two were on ice.”

  I sat up straight and looked at the screen. Bryan’s name blared across it.

  A part of me wanted to hear his voice. Another part urged me to resist. Neither part had a chance to debate it because Jill swiped her finger over the phone.

  “Kat in the Box’s line. How may I help you?”

  I rolled my eyes as she waited.

  “No, I don’t believe she is available. She’ll be free again to speak with you in about five weeks.” Jill spoke in a professional voice as if she were my receptionist.

  A pause. Jill smirked and nodded several times. “My, my, my. Isn’t that just convenient that the padlock deal came through.”

  My shoulders tightened with excitement. Padlocks. That could only mean one thing.

  “Oh, really? Well, you definitely shouldn’t go anywhere near the Hotel Marquis that’s just three blocks from the Eiffel Tower on rue Dupleix when you go to Paris tomorrow.” Jill clasped her hand over her mouth in an overly dramatic gesture. “Oh my. I did not mean to just happen to drop the name of Kat’s hotel. Especially since you two have your chastity belts on. Pretend I didn’t mention it. Wipe it from your brain. I’ll make sure she knows to stay away from the W Hotel too. Ta-ta for now.”

  She hung up the phone and I stared at her, mouth agape.

  She shrugged. “What was I to do? He was giving you a heads up that the city of Paris called him in for some last-minute meeting about the padlocks, whatever that means. He didn’t want you to be surprised if you see him at the airport tomorrow. He said he had to move up his flight a day because of the storm.” Jill winked. “Convenient, that mother nature, isn’t she?”

  Très convenient. Or inconvenient. Depending on how you looked at it.

  Chapter Twenty

  The lights of the city shone like fireflies as New York City fell away below me. The plane soared higher, and I worked on a crossword puzzle since all my reading material was of the electronic kind. Though I often wondered — if the power from a simple eReader could disable a plane’s navigation on takeoff, what did that say about the sturdiness of the plane?

  I returned to the clue in front of me, filling in edict as the answer for a five-letter word for doctrine. How apropos, given my self-imposed edict to stay away from Bryan for the next five weeks. I didn’t even see him when I boarded, but I suspected he was in first class, and I was stuck in lowly coach.

  As I finished the puzzle, one of my least favorite odors permeated the air. The scent of smelly man foot. The guy next to me had removed his shoes. I wrinkled my nose and tried to breathe in through my mouth.

  “Ah, that’s better,” he said to the woman with him as he wiggled his freed feet in their white tube socks. The woman smiled without showing any teeth, and then began clipping her nails.

  Great. Now, I had not one, but two of my least favorite human activities on public transit taking place in a two-foot radius. At least I had the aisle seat. I turned, shifting my body away from them and hoping the lady might gently remind her man of proper social mores.

  But after several minutes of sweaty-sock-scented air and the clip-clip-clip of nail maintenance, I started to wonder if perhaps my seatmates might break out Q-tips next and check for earwax. I frowned at the image as the plane reached its cruising altitude, and one of the flight attendants strolled down the aisle, a purposeful look in her eyes. When she reached me, she bent down. She wore her hair in a perfectly coiffed twist.

  “Bon soir. You are Ms. Harper?”

  “Bon soir. I am.”

  “If you’d like, I can move you to a row closer up.”

  “You can?”

  “Yes, the seats are much more comfortable, and there is a spare one.”

  She didn’t have to ask twice. I grabbed my computer bag, unbuckled, and followed the sharp-suited woman. She escorted me out of coach, held open the blue curtain to economy plus and guided me through the cushier section. I spotted a few empty seats, but she didn’t stop. She marched forward to the next blue curtain, the one that led to first class. I slowed my pace when I realized where she was taking me. The empty seat was next to Bryan. He turned around, smiled with his eyes, and gestured grandly to the massive leather seat next to his, so large it could turn into a bed. He no longer had a bandage on his right hand.

  “Would you care to join me? The seat is empty and I have plenty of miles, so it’s not a problem.”

  “The guy next to me had his shoes off and his wife was cutting her nails. So, yes, yes, yes.”

  “Those activities are forbidden under my regime.”

  “I know!”

  I took the seat, buckled in, and leaned against the buttery leather chair, feeling like a princess flying through the sky to Paris.

  *****

  “Would you like to see the wine list?”

  A dark-skinned woman with light brown eyes proffered what looked like an invitation to a fancy party. I tried not to let my jaw drop. They weren’t just passing out diet sodas and seltzer here in first class. There were several varieties of wine on the list, not to mention cocktails. I looked at Bryan. “Are you getting something?”

  “I’m not really a wine person. I’ll take a Glenlivet on the rocks,” he said to the flight attendant. Then to me. “You?”

  I shook my head.

  “Would you like a cocktail, then?”

  “Just an orange juice, please.” I felt like a kid, but the truth was I didn’t trust myself not to pounce on Bryan if I had a drink or two in me. She nodded and walked away.

  “Not in the mood? Or do you not really drink?”

  “Not often.”

  “What’s that all about? Any reason?”

  “I wish I could say I had this horrible childhood and my mother was a raging alcoholic or my father was a drunk who beat me. Well, I don’t really wish I could say that. But you know what I mean. There’s no deep-seated childhood reason. No dysfunction I’m trying to avoid. The truth is I just don’t like the taste of alcohol.”

  “Not even champagne or cosmopolitans or chocolate martinis? I would think you’d be all over the chocolate martinis with your sweet tooth.”

  “Ugh. No. None of them. Those fruity drinks and sweet drinks – all they’re doing is trying to add enough sweet stuff to mask the taste of the liquor. And I can’t stand the taste of beer. I mean, I drank it in college. But now it just reminds me that I never really liked the taste even then. It’s like swill.”

  “And hard liquors are out, I assume?”

  “They taste like gasoline to me. Well, I’ve never had gasoline, of course. My mother would correct me now and say, ‘You mean they taste like gasoline smells.’”

  The flight attendant reappeared with our drinks. She placed Bryan’s sturdy glass of scotch on his tray table, alongside my orange juice, and two glasses of water. After she left, Bryan held up his glass to toast.

  “Hand all better?”

  “Turns out I just fractured a bone. It’s pretty much back to normal now.”

  “Good.”

  We clinked glasses. “To a successful business trip to Paris.” />
  “I will definitely drink to that.” I took a sip of my orange juice. “So, how did it all come together? The padlock thing?”

  “It’s not a done deal. But I’ve been waiting on the city, and I heard this week that there’s someone new in charge, and she’s open and wants to meet right away. There are a lot of tourists coming to the city for the holidays and then for Valentine’s Day, so they need to make room for new locks.”

  “So here’s a question for you. If you hadn’t started this company, if you were doing something else entirely, what would it be?”

  “You mean, like playing shortstop for the New York Yankees?”

  “Yes. Like that.”

  “Well, shortstop for sure. Otherwise, I’d have to say rock star.”

  “Rock star would be awesome.”

  “And after that I’d write for a wine magazine.”

  I chuckled. “A wine magazine? I thought you didn’t like wine.”

  “I don’t like wine. When you write for a wine magazine, you can say anything you want and no one will challenge you.”

  “Explain.”

  “You just make it up. You ever read that stuff?”

  “Well, no. Obviously.”

  “Oh, I do. Just for fun.” He launched into an imitation of a wine writer, pretending to hold a glass and swirl it with one hand, while taking notes with the other. “Mmm, I taste a little sandpaper. Yes, sandpaper and fresh soil.”

  He sniffed an imaginary glass. “Faint aromas of shoe leather mixed with lightly toasted tar. It’s full bodied, velvety and long. With just a touch of gravel. Gravel. I mean, who the hell knows what gravel tastes like? But they write that. They say wine tastes like gravel.”

  “I don’t think I’d want to taste gravel.”

  “What are those writers doing? Getting down on their hands and knees and licking the road? The tar? The gravel? Just so they know exactly what the wine tastes like?”

  I gestured to my orange juice. “You know, my orange juice tastes like it came from the sunshine-kissed regions of Florida, with just a hint of a tropical flavor, and an extra dash of pulp.”

  Bryan raised his hands up, palms out. “See, you can do it, Kat. You can totally do it. You know what I’d like to really write about in a wine magazine?”

  “What would you like to write about?” I took another drink of my juice.

  “I’d say, ‘I like going to Bob’s Java Hut down by the ball park and getting an egg salad sandwich before a Yankees game. That and a $2 Bud. And I don’t even like Bud. But it’s good before a baseball game.”

  I started laughing again, but I’d just taken a drink of my non-drink.

  “The complexity of the egg salad sandwich, the mayonnaise from the grocery store, the smoky balance between the mayonnaise and the eggs.”

  I laughed more and wasn’t quite able to swallow my drink at the same time.

  “Sometimes I can even taste the shell from the egg. I can almost smell the chicken from where they failed to clean the egg.”

  I felt a cough building in the back of my throat. I covered my mouth with my hand, trying hard not to spit out the liquid. I put my other hand on my chest, looking down at the tray table. I kept coughing.

  “Oh, shit. I’m sorry, Kat.” Bryan handed me a glass of water. I shook my head, still coughing. My throat had constricted. I couldn’t swallow the juice. That left two ways out for the liquid – mouth or nose. I felt the orange juice swim into my nose. I reached for a napkin to cover my face, coughing more as the juice made its way out my nostrils and into the napkin. Hiding as best I could, I dropped my face onto the table.

  “Are you okay, Kat?” He placed a hand on my arm.

  I spoke in a muffled voice through the napkin. “You can’t take me anywhere. You should send me back to coach.”

  “I couldn’t live with myself if I banished you to the land of smelly feet. I’m keeping you up here.” Bryan gently pet my hair. Even the soothing touch of his hand after my display of dorkitude felt good. “Besides, it was all my fault.”

  I sat up straight. “You’re right. It is all your fault. You made me laugh. You totally did it on purpose. You sit there and launch into one of your riffs and you make me snort juice.”

  “They say laughter is the way to a woman’s heart.”

  I lowered my voice. “You already have my heart. You know that.”

  “I’m just trying to keep it then.”

  “You’ve always made me laugh. You’ve always made me happy.”

  Bryan looked out the window for a moment, at the dark of the night rushing past the plane. He turned back to me. The look in his green eyes was intense and unreadable.

  “What is it?”

  “There’s something I’ve always wanted to tell you.”

  “This can’t be good.”

  “It’s not bad, I swear.” He placed his hands on his thighs. He parted his lips but didn’t speak right away. I watched him as he fumbled for words. I watched his throat as he swallowed. He closed his eyes briefly, then opened them to hold my gaze, a tight sharp line between us. I felt as if I were hanging on to something that could crash in an instant. “Do you remember when you told me you loved me the first time?”

  That memory never hovered far from the surface. It was always there, waiting to be harnessed. How would anyone forget her first love not loving her back?

  “Yes.”

  “And I didn’t say it back. I said I have to go?”

  “Do we need to reenact it?” My face tightened, and I stared hard at the seat in front of me.

  “No. Because it was a lie.”

  I turned back to him, as if he’d just spoken Russian. “What?”

  “It was a lie,” he repeated.

  “Why?”

  “I was crazy in love with you then. Just like I am now. I’ve always loved you. I never stopped.”

  My head was spinning. My heart was sputtering. I felt as if the plane had disappeared and I was flailing in the cold, dark atmosphere, not knowing which way I was tumbling.

  “Why did you say that then?”

  “Because after we walked around NYU together all I could think was that I would be holding you back. That’s why I was so quiet that day. I just kept thinking it would be wrong. That it would be unfair to you if you went to college and were already saddled with an older boyfriend. I wanted you to go to college, and meet other guys, and figure out what you wanted in life. I didn’t want to be the guy who dragged you down. I didn’t want you to go to college and feel burdened. I wanted you to experience life on your own terms. And I knew I was going to be leaving the country, and it seemed so unfair to you to ask you to wait for me. To be a long-distance girlfriend when I was off working.”

  I scoffed. “So instead, you broke my heart.”

  “I know.” He reached for my hand, and traced a line across my palm. His touch was so soft, but still I felt raw and exposed. “Forgive me for lying. Forgive me for breaking your heart.”

  I looked deeply into his eyes, pools of green I could lose myself in. How I’d loved getting lost in him, and being found by him again. He leaned closer, pressed his forehead against mine, and took my hands in his. He whispered to me, his voice soft and full of brokenness, full of tenderness.

  In some ways, this was what I’d always longed to hear. That he’d loved me then as I’d loved him. That it had never been one-sided. Though in other ways, this admission was a wound re-opened in a new, fresh way. Because he’d thought he knew what was best for me. But he was wrong. Feeling so damn unwanted by my first love hadn’t been good for me at all.

  I pulled away from him. “I wish you had told me that back then. I wish you had let us make that decision together. Instead, you made me think you didn’t love me, and it hurt so fucking much.”

  “I’m sorry, Kat. I’m truly, truly sorry.”

  He looked so anguished. But that didn’t make my heart hurt any less, and it was aching right now.

  “Hey, do you want to watch a
movie?” he asked, worry lining his voice. He tipped his forehead to the screen on the back of the seats. “I think I saw Love, Actually on the list for this flight.”

  One of my all-time favorites.

  But I couldn’t. I couldn’t just go back in time with him as if that would take the pain away.

  “I think I’m going to read,” I said, then turned away and buried myself in a book for the rest of the flight.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  The last time I went to the markets of Paris, I strolled. I lingered. I lolligagged.

  This time I was efficiency personified as I tackled Port de Vanves. I was a businesswoman powering through table after table, row after row. I scanned quickly, writing off the items I obviously would never use on a necklace — candlesticks, picture frames, goblets.

  I ignored the old clothes for sale, the chipped sets of china, and the antique mirrors. I stopped at a table with miniature figurines, tiny little cows and pigs and dogs and cats no bigger than thimbles. Some were brushed silver, some white porcelain. They were cute, and while I wasn’t so sure a cow was anyone’s favorite, there was something about the dogs and cats that spoke to me.

  I asked the vendor how much. A round woman in a heavy tarp of a dress barked out a number.

  “Too high,” I answered in French.

  We bargained like that until she reached her rock bottom, and I scooped up nearly one hundred cats and dogs, tucking them in my wheeled shopping bag. I felt like a regular French woman, weaving her way in and out of the stalls, wheeling and dealing, snagging the best prices.

  I continued on, passing strange-looking garden tools and old kitchen utensils, when I spied several tables full of brooches and pins. They were tiny things and would look so very French on a necklace, the perfect mix of new and vintage. I bought a few dozen, and then moved along to another aisle.

  I walked past a table full of gray-haired men playing cards as they sucked on cigarettes. They were seated behind a counter displaying a messy array of hammers. I laughed silently, picturing a big, rusty hammer hanging from a slender silver chain. Yeah, that’d be a big hit, for sure. I looked ahead to the next set of stalls and spied a huge box full of antique skeleton keys. The box was at the foot of the card table, and it held hundreds upon hundreds of keys that must have worked in miniature locks because they were tiny, no bigger than thumbnails. They weren’t rusted. They had just the right look of weathered to them.