by Janette Rallison, Heather B. Moore, Luisa Perkins, Sarah M. Eden, Annette Lyon, Lisa Mangum
Tim glanced back over at his fellow performers, who were watching from a distance. “We can be a little nosy,” he admitted. “But Miguel looked so broken up about it all.”
Jane could appreciate that. “We split up three months ago, and I think we’ve both been miserable ever since.”
“I’m no expert in love— I haven’t ever managed a long-term relationship— but both of you being miserable without the other seems like a sign to me.” Tim’s look was one hundred percent empathetic. “Miguel’s a great guy, from what we learned of him in the thirty minutes we talked last night. And you seem pretty wonderful as well.”
“Well, I am.”
At first Tim didn’t seem to catch her joking tone. But then his smile blossomed, and his laugh followed shortly after.
“Thank you, again,” she said, “for the song last night. The not-so-subtle message hit its mark.”
“You’re going to take a chance on him?” Tim pressed.
Jane nodded. “Happily. And hope for the best.”
He turned a bit on the bench to fully face his friends and gave them two thumbs up. The group exchanged high fives. Jane couldn’t help but laugh. These strangers were nearly as happy about her and Miguel reconciling as she was.
“Oh, hey, Tim.” Miguel stepped up to the table and set a yogurt and an orange in front of Jane.
She scooted over to make room for him on the small bench. “Tim was checking to see if their serenade last night had the desired effect.”
Miguel set his arm around her shoulder. “I’d say it was a success.”
The others joined them, sitting in nearby booths. The next few minutes flew by as they chatted about the theater, Denver, love, second chances. Through it all, Miguel kept his arm around her. Jane couldn’t say for certain that everything would work out between them, but having him with her again felt so very right.
The official boarding calls began. Changing flights had allowed for the changing of seats as well. Jane and Miguel now sat beside each other. Once they were settled in, he took her hand.
“Thank you,” he said.
“For holding your hand?”
He shook his head. “For giving me another chance. I know things aren’t perfect between us, and I know that commitment is a hard thing for you. So, thank you for trusting me enough to try again.” He raised her hand to his lips and pressed a kiss there. “I love you, you know.”
“I know. That’s why I’m willing to try. Well, that and the fact that I haven’t had a decent tamale in three months.”
He laughed long and deep. From across the aisle, Tim gave them both an enthusiastic thumbs up.
Jane set her head on Miguel’s shoulder. The path ahead of them wouldn’t be all sunshine and roses, but being with him again, knowing he hadn’t given up on her, gave her a hope she’d seldom known in her life.
And hope made all the difference in the world.
Sarah M. Eden is the author of multiple historical romances, including Longing for Home, winner of Foreword magazine’s IndieFab Gold Award and the AML’s 2013 Novel of the Year, as well as Whitney Award finalists Seeking Persephone and Courting Miss Lancaster.
Combining her obsession with history and affinity for tender love stories, Sarah loves crafting witty characters and heartfelt romances. She has twice served as the Master of Ceremonies for the LDStorymakers Writers Conference and acted as the Writer in Residence at the Northwest Writers Retreat. Sarah is represented by Pam van Hylckama Vlieg at Foreword Literary Agency.
Find her online at http://www.sarahmeden.com/
Follow Sarah on Twitter: @SarahMEden
Dani stood on the sidewalk, looking up the grand staircase outside the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Although she’d seen the building several times during her six months in Manhattan, she’d never really stopped to look at it, and she’d never been inside.
People rushed past her as they went their different ways up and down Fifth Avenue. She could easily identify the residents over the tourists. Real New Yorkers moved with a quick, no-nonsense stride. Businesswomen in dress pants and jackets often walked in sneakers. Dani had learned that they kept high heels in their purses or at the office to switch into after they got to work. She could hear the whoosh and honks of traffic behind her.
Several strollers passed, making Dani step out of the way. Some were pushed by mothers, others by nannies. Dani glanced at a pair of women pushing strollers with toddlers about the same age. They chatted and laughed— and looked completely at home.
I want that— to feel at home here. But she didn’t, not after six months, not after experiencing a New York winter turned to spring, and not now that this was the official first day of summer, either. By some miracle, the humidity was low, but the air was hot, alleviated slightly by a cool breeze blowing down the corridors of the streets as if through a canyon. Standing so close to Central Park, she could feel the coolness there like an oasis beckoning her to come in and escape the heat.
She still related better to the other people walking the streets, the ones who were obviously tourists. They had that starry-eyed gaze as they consulted maps— whether on paper or on their cell phones— and argued about whether to see the Statue of Liberty or go to the top of the Empire State Building. They were the ones whose chins often tilted back as their eyes searched for the tops of the skyscrapers.
Dani had done that too when she’d first arrived. So maybe she wasn’t exactly a tourist anymore, not in the typical sense. She could get around without a map. She knew which trains to take to get from point A to point B.
But so much was still foreign, even the sounds. She hadn’t quite gotten used to having the constant energy and buzz of a city that never slept. The busiest street back home in Pekin, Illinois, paled in comparison to the sea of yellow taxis and buses passing her now.
She’d come here to pursue her dreams of performing on Broadway, yet here she was a step away from leaving it all.
Her mind and heart warred against each other, and had for weeks. Her mind— which tended to echo her mother’s sentiments— insisted that she’d given it her best shot and needed to go back home. She should settle down into “real” life. But her heart cried out that six months wasn’t enough, that she needed more time to give this dream thing a shot. That she was good and just needed to get in front of the right directors and producers at the right time, with the right project, to get her big break. Her mother wanted her to return home, find a man, have a litter of babies, and spend the rest of her life doing nothing more remarkable than canning peaches.
But the bitter reality of having run out of money was the weight that had finally tipped the scales in the direction of the logical mind winning out over her heart. The jobs she’d found as a waitress, dishwasher, and cashier at a souvenir shop had paid her bills— barely— but they also required her to work intense hours, leaving her almost no time for auditions or callbacks. She was here, so close to her dream, but unable to grab the brass ring.
She’d been through these thoughts and arguments over and over again. Time to stop thinking about it all and just enjoy today for what it was, to fully embrace all of the sights she would see for the first— and likely last— time.
Again she raised her eyes to the top of the wide staircase, which had students, tourists, and others walking up and down, some sitting in various spots. Her eyes stopped at the grand white building that was the Metropolitan Museum of Art— what she still called “the Met,” even though she’d recently learned that New Yorkers typically thought of “the Met” as the Metropolitan Opera, and the museum as the MMA. Further evidence that she hadn’t managed to fit in. She wasn’t really a New Yorker.
Last month, some of the biggest celebrities in the world had gathered here for the annual fashion show. Dani wished she’d slowed her life down enough to notice it at the time, to have come up here from her apartment to watch the stars walk the red carpet in their magnificent gowns instead of merely seeing it all reported on during the mornin
g news shows like the rest of the country.
As vast as the museum was, it seemed to be almost nestled within the greenery that was Central Park, safe and secure. From where she stood, she could feel the cooler temperature wafting off the park, a respite in the middle of an ocean of concrete and asphalt. Dani had half a mind to go to Central Park now and wander the miles and miles of paths until she got lost, just so she could say she’d seen everything there was to see inside it— every statue, bridge, path, and street performer. The zoo. The restaurants. The open-air theater. She could see herself spending hours at the Conservatory Garden alone.
Maybe tomorrow. Today, she’d give her time to the Met. The MMA, she corrected herself. She’d heard that a person could spend a week or more in there and still not see everything, but she’d do her best to see as much as she could today. She had too many other things on her first-and-last list to be able to give more than one day to it.
“Gorgeous, isn’t it?” a deep voice said beside her. “Going to the museum today?”
Dani startled and turned to her right to see a man somewhere in his upper twenties grinning at her.
“Do I— know you?” she stammered. Maybe she’d met this guy somewhere and didn’t remember. They could have crossed paths at an audition or something. He couldn’t be from one of the awful cattle calls she’d been in; she’d remember every face she’d ever seen during those.
One thing she’d learned during her time here was that the people were far friendlier than the New Yorker stereotype suggested. But that didn’t mean they struck up conversations with total strangers on busy sidewalks.
“No, I don’t believe we’ve met,” he said, holding out a hand. “Mark Potter. No relation to Harry.”
Dani’s eyebrows went up, and she almost laughed. He was funny, and he didn’t seem like the Ted Bundy type. Before she could speak, he went on.
“And yes, I actually have been asked that— more than once.” He looked at his hand, still held out to shake hers.
She eyed it. Maybe she looked like a gullible tourist, and this guy was going to try to rip her off with some trick. He seemed a little too nice, a little too sure of himself. But she found herself reaching out to shake his hand anyway. There couldn’t be any harm in that, surely.
“Nice to meet you… Mark.”
Now it was his turn to raise his eyebrows, as if he’d caught how she’d deliberately not said her name. As they shook hands, his was warm and his grip firm but not hard.
I could get used to holding that hand, she thought, then immediately snapped herself out of the fantasy and slipped her hand away.
Mark pointed up the stairs at the Met. “You going inside?”
Should she tell the truth and risk having a potential creeper following her around, or should she hedge and lose him? Maybe she could grab a taxi and have it drive around for a while until he was gone.
Except his warm eyes kept drawing her gaze, and he seemed to be sincerely interested in her response. And, if she was being entirely honest with herself, she wouldn’t mind having company for this first-and-last stop.
She found herself nodding. “Yeah,” she said. “I’ve never been inside, which is crazy.”
“Me, neither. Crazy, especially considering that I’ve lived here for five years. I guess it’s easy to put off seeing the sights when you’re right among them.”
“It really is,” she said, still hedging, not saying how long she’d been here.
He was right, though; she’d grown up not far from Chicago, and while she’d visited the city a few times, she’d never seen the Frank Lloyd Wright home or Wrigley Field. She’d seen the Trump Tower in Manhattan, but not the one a few hours from home. She’d done the same thing in college; she’d attended Arizona State but had never managed to visit the O.K. Corral to the south or the Grand Canyon to the north. So odd how that worked.
She glanced over at Mark, deciding what to say. She wasn’t a tourist, but she wasn’t a local, either. Not really. But today of all days, she didn’t want to be seen as an outsider.
“So what are you doing here?” she finally asked. “Visiting the Met for the first time too?”
“I am now, if you don’t mind the company.” He grinned, something that made her stomach flip deliciously. He cocked his head as if awaiting her answer, and a cowlicked piece of hair fell onto his forehead.
She sensed something else behind his smile— another emotion she couldn’t pin down. It intrigued her. Maybe a couple of hours with this guy would tell her what that was all about. Besides, the Met had to be one of the safest places in the City, with all the security that had to be in there. She could ditch him later if she needed to. And she could definitely find worse things to do with her day than spend it with a hot guy.
“Sure,” she finally said. “But I’m hoping to see the American Wing first, if that’s all right with you.”
“Sounds good to me.” He turned toward the stairs, and she started up them at his side as he went on. “I looked at the directory once and had no idea how I’d pick where to start. Figured I’d get here one day.”
“And it only took you five years,” she said, half teasing.
“Sort of,” he said, jogging up the steps beside her. “I was raised in the Hudson Highlands, an hour’s drive or so, depending on traffic. I came into the city a few times growing up— family outings, school trips, that kind of thing. But the one year our class had a field trip to the museum, I had my tonsils out. My parents were always attending symphonies and fancy restaurants, but very few touristy areas. Dad hates those. So he always said we’d visit the MMA on a Sunday, when the crowds weren’t so big.” He shrugged. “That Sunday never did arrive. I could list off some of the best places to eat in the city, but not a single painting from inside there. Let’s rectify that.”
When they’d reached the top of the stairs, Mark held one of the glass doors open, and Dani went inside. Two steps in, she could already feel the history, as if it had soaked into the stone floor below her feet. In spite of herself, her head tilted back, just like a tourist, so she could take in the tall walls that rose to meet arches. The lobby alone looked like a cathedral, only with gargantuan flower arrangements that were works of art themselves. It all gave her half a mind to shush the people milling about. She could have stayed there all day, enjoying the vast foyer.
When they reached the ticket counter, Mark paid for two and handed Dani hers before she could object. She took it from him, their fingers grazing. A zip of electricity went up her arm.
“Thanks.” She should have said so much more— how she was running low on funds, which was why she was leaving, so she appreciated the gesture even more. But the single word was all she could manage.
“No problem,” Mark said as he unfolded the pamphlet he’d been given and found the museum map, which he examined. “I hear the restaurant somewhere over… here is excellent.” He tapped a spot that looked to be past a long gallery of sculptures. “But I have a better idea for lunch— the best hot dog stand ever. It’s not too far from here.”
“Sounds good to me,” Dani said. You can’t live in the city long without expecting to walk blocks and blocks every day. A short trip to a food stand sounded good.
And after seeing how much Mark had paid for the two of them to get in, she was more than happy to have a cheap lunch— assuming that she still wanted to hang out with this guy in a few hours. One thing she’d learned during her time here was that street vendors’ unhealthy food was far cheaper than groceries and far easier to get home than schlepping bags of food for blocks and blocks to cook in the tiny apartment kitchen.
“This guy’s food is good,” Mark promised. He rolled his eyes like a puppy in ecstasy. “Heaven on a bun, I promise.”
“Let’s do it,” Dani said. “After we go through the… the American Wing, at least. We can come back to go through more of the museum after that.”
“Perfect,” Mark said. “Lead on.”
They meandered through hal
lways and climbed stairs that looked old; Dani wished she could put her hand against the walls and feel the history inside them. She would have loved to know what these walls had seen and heard over the years. They reached the American Wing, where, to her surprise, the walls weren’t white, but an almost pinky salmon.
“Huh. Not what I was expecting,” she said, looking about. But soon her attention was diverted from the color of the walls to the paintings hanging on them.
She’d seen many in textbooks and elsewhere over the years, but these were the originals. Many were downright huge compared to the inches-wide images she’d become accustomed to— some were taller than she was and two or more yards across. Others would have taken up a whole wall of her bedroom back home.
They wandered through the maze of the gallery, somehow staying side by side the entire time, their arms almost brushing each time they moved from one painting to another. Dani was used to friends and family laughing at her insistence on stopping at every display at a museum to really appreciate it and even read the signs. Her older sister insisted that going to a museum with Dani was seventy-five percent an exercise in waiting for her. But even though Mark didn’t stop to read as much as she did, he seemed happy to move at her pace. They gazed at each painting, and only after spending enough time to truly appreciate the work did they make a move to continue to the next. Dani found the relaxed pace oddly refreshing— no pressure to hurry up and move. She’d thought she was the only person in the world who took so long in museums.
Eventually they reached an area that must have belonged to a different wing, because she immediately recognized European works, especially several paintings in one room. Only one painter she knew of used those contrasting browns and whites and worked that way with light and shadow, along with those big ruffed collars on his subjects.
“Rembrandt,” she said in awe.
“Wow,” Mark said, following her.
