We Go Together
Carla de Guzman
Midnight Books
Copyright © 2016 by Carla de Guzman
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
Cover art and design by Carla de Guzman
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Midnight Books
Quezon City, Philippines
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Printed in the Philippines
Created with Vellum
Praise for Cities by Carla de Guzman
It shows a trust in the readers more than anything – that something that’s a little more complex than your typical romance novel can be accepted by Filipino readers.
RonReads
The main appeal of Cities to me is that it unravels the crucial parts perfectly […] The treatment of romance in Cities is never callous. And I appreciate that tenderness.
Amusing Alexandria
I do love nothing in the world so well as you. Is not that strange?
-Much Ado About Nothing (v.265)
Chapter 1
Beatrice
Right. Morning outfit selfie. Here we go.
I really looked awful in the morning, all messy hair and puffy eyes. That last beer from last night really was a mistake. I adjusted the angle of my phone slightly, before I gave the camera my brightest, still-slightly-sleepy smile.
I hadn’t really thought about what I was going to wear today (horror of horrors) and I ended up with my loose, ripped drawstring jeans, my favorite chunky sandals and a loose white shirt. It was going to be another hot day in DC, so a pair of plastic cat eye glasses went with the outfit. I put my hair up in its usual half-topknot and grabbed Claudia’s peach lip tint to swipe over my lips. I looked into my vintage full length mirror and snapped the photo.
“Beatrice Noble: Up and ready by 10 am and I’m already working,” I typed out on the phone’s notes. “Had a back and forth conversation with one of our distributors about the Christmas line while in bed, now heading off to meet with Claudia at Petit Jolie.”
That sounded good, didn’t it? I frowned a little at myself in the mirror. I widened my eyes until I looked crazy and puffed out my cheeks. Gaze into the eyes of an underpaid, overworked, sleep-deprived self-starter!
Claudia Crowne and I quit our corporate jobs two years ago to start our baby, the Noble Crowne Paper Company. We started out with small jobs, making invites for relatives’ weddings, postcards, and notepads, that kind of thing. Then the next thing I knew, my life turned into a whirlwind of printers and paints, clients, and meetings. Suddenly my social media posts were more important than times in and out, my 9 to 5 had turned into 24/7, and the voice in my head telling me that there was something inherently wrong with doing what I loved had finally dulled into a whisper.
Was it scary? It was still, in a lot of ways. Sometimes I think that it’s all been a fluke, or a dream of some kind, but then I check my ratty old filofax and the list of things I have to do just makes me feel happy and satisfied. Sure it was stressful—the number of times I found myself lying on the couch crying over the eventual failure of my business still happened. But I tried to take each day as it came. It’s so weird.
One of the lifestyle blogs Claudia and I religiously followed finally responded to her many emails and asked for a ‘day in the life’ article from the girls of Noble Crowne. It was a big deal for us, and both Claudia and I were determined not to screw it up.
Which was why, when I arrived at Petit Jolie, I wasn’t at all surprised to see that Claudia was wearing a short, sleeveless tunic printed with orange roses, mums, and little red flowers that I used to pick from bushes as a child. Claudia made that dress from a pattern I gave her when I was first starting to paint. Now almost every piece that we produced in our little stationery company featured my hand painted flowers.
“You couldn’t be just a bit more subtle?” I teased, kissing my best friend’s cheek as we sat at our usual table in the corner cafe. Claudia and I lived within walking distance of each other on Kings’ Street in Old Town, a little neighborhood in Virginia that still had wrought iron street lamps, twinkle lights strung across the main street, small Victorian buildings, shops, and boutiques just by the Potomac River. I loved our neighborhood. It was so pretty and quaint, despite being a stone’s throw away from Washington DC. Petit Jolie was a small boulangerie in the middle of an American street and smack dab in the middle of the town. It was also where the idea for Noble Crowne was born.
“I just don’t want to waste an opportunity!” Claudia pointed out, slipping into the seat across from me and tossing her dirty blonde hair behind her. Claudia was the kind of blue-eyed beauty you only read about in fairy tales, with small pink lips and an easy smile. She was spirited to say the least, looked innocent as a rose, and was incredibly easy to get along with. I loved her like a little sister, and she did the same. Although there were times when I was jealous of her joie de vivre attitude and her long, blonde hair, I couldn’t imagine being without her. “Imagine, Noble Crowne clothing! I mean, this is the biggest feature we’ve had so far, the number of readers alone—”
“Please don’t get her started on that ‘day in the life’ article again,” a voice pleaded as it came up to us with our usual order of coffee and pastries. Claudia and I looked up just in time to see Leo, Claudia’s older brother and the owner of Petit Jolie, looking at us.
Oh god. I knew I was sitting down, but something inside of me just started melting, like warm butter on hot toast, at the sight of Leon Crowne.
Like his sister, Leo had blonde hair and blue eyes, but had thick, toned arms from all the baking he did for the shop. He also always smelled like butter and sugar, which only made women flock to his shop even more, in spite of his being gay. I’ve had a teeny tiny crush on Leo since I met him, and seeing him always makes me feel a little giddy. That feeling never really went away, despite Leo already being married with a kid whom he and his partner adopted three years ago. Leo was Claudia’s biggest cheerleader and her overprotective big brother, which only confirms my theory that all the decent men are taken or on the other bus. Typical.
Claudia lived in Leo’s guesthouse in the more suburban area of Old Town, claiming to stay as her niece’s 24/7 babysitter. “She wouldn’t stop gabbing about it last night at dinner. Not to mention she practically overturned her little hut just looking for that dress.”
Claudia rolled her eyes as I laughed. Leo loved joking about how Claudia basically lived in a shack behind his house, but we all knew that she lived there so Leo could keep an eye on her. He loved and protected his baby sister so well, ever since their father died. Claudia was constantly battling with depression, sometimes it hit her so hard that neither Leo nor I could help her. But lately with the store and everything, she’s been doing well. Leo knew it was mostly because she was always with people who loved and cared for her, so the topic of her leaving is never even discussed.
“Can you not be so mean and just take our picture?” Claudia groaned, whipping out her phone and her Noble Crowne notepad, this time decorated with the pink cherry blossom flowers I painted early that spring. “I promise we’ll mention the shop in our article!”
Never one to say no to his little sister, Leo rolled his eyes and took the phone from Claudia’s hands, aiming at us. “Now smile and say ‘success!’”
Claudia immediately curled her lips in a coquettish fake laugh, pretending to write something on the notepad while I chewed on her pain au chocolat and just looked confused. I don’t know why Claudia insisted that I be so…out there, bu
t between the two of us, she was the marketing expert so I trusted her judgment. Leo laughed at the photo.
“This is very accurate,” he said to the two of us, handing Claudia her phone back. “Now I’m off. Claudee, you up to babysit later? I was hoping to take Troy out to…dinner.”
“Yes, please! I haven’t had enough Dylan time, and your immaculate living room is due for a giant mess,” Claudia joked, shooing her brother away as I waved him a tiny goodbye, the scent of butter and sugar following him in his wake. I could probably just sniff him and be happy for the rest of my life. I glanced at Claudia and hoped she hadn’t noticed the way I inhaled the scent Leo left. Thank god it looked like she was too busy working on the photo’s caption to notice.
“10:30 am, breakfast and weekly management communication meeting with Bea. If she manages to stop ogling the owner of Petit Jolie, we can finally talk about the year’s inventory.”
“Please don’t tell the Internet about my pathetic crush on your brother, thanks,” I begged, grabbing Claudia’s phone and editing the text to say something about how we loved the food in the cafe instead. “Can we talk about work now?”
“Of course we can,” Claudia said, crossing one leg over the other and sipping her coffee. While I was all about filofaxes and multicolored sticky notes, Claudia’s entire life could be encapsulated in her phone. It was constantly up to date across all her devices (whatever that meant), and she typed on it constantly. “Aside from the article, there’s a final list of the designs we need to produce for the next six months in your email. We can go over them with Ursula when we get to the office and delegate— “
Nooooo! I loved Ursula, she’s the best creative development director ever, but when Claudia said delegate, it meant passing my work to Ursula to redesign and work into products. And that was always the best part of the job! I may have forgotten to do them a few times in the face of massive commissioned works before, but there was really no reason for Claudia to take it away from me like that.
“Don’t be such a baby, Beatrice,” Claudia chuckled, sensing my distress. “You’re supposed to be working on the art for the Petit Jolie menu, remember? Anyway, at around 1 in the afternoon, Don Franco is coming to the office to talk about an X-deal or collab or something.”
I had to blink twice to make sure I heard the name right. God, I hadn’t heard the name Don Franco in, what, three years? It sounded weird in my ears, like Claudia was speaking to me in a foreign language. Suddenly, the last few years disappeared and I was an ultra-feminist college student again forced to hang out with guys like Don. I shook my head and grew up again.
“I know, right? He just called me out of the blue, said he was coming over to the studio later and that he had a deal. I didn’t even get to ask how he got my number,” Claudia said, brushing crumbs off her skirt. "I haven’t heard from him for years. Although people have been telling me about his ‘exploits’ or whatever. I do remember he always had this catchphrase though…”
“Oh yeah, ‘Trust me, I know.’” I said, and we both started laughing. We heard it from him so often that we’d perfected his inflection.
“Ha, yeah, that’s it! Have you talked to him since college?”
“No, not really,” I confessed, pretending to sound uninterested. But honestly, this was probably one of the weirdest things I’ve heard all year. There was a reason why we never spoke to (or of) Don Franco after college, although I couldn’t’t really remember what it was. He was not exactly my favorite person in the world, but I was around him a lot back then. Funny the things you suddenly remembered.
I peered down at our dining table and abruptly stood up. My filofax with Claudia’s phone, her notes and our half-eaten breakfast would look good on Instagram, with the right filter. Snapping photos while making conversation was my forte. “I didn’t really keep up with other people from college…with one very obvious exception.”
“Oh you love it,” Claudia joked, picking up her things and tossing them into her purse once I was done. She blew me an air kiss. “Anyway, I have to take a photo of him for the day in the life article, make us look like we have dudes in our life, at least.”
I started to laugh. Our current singlehood (one year and counting!) has been a running gag between us. We worked a lot, and drawing flowers and peddling stationery was not exactly a hotbed for dude activity. Claudia was pretty determined to find someone and soon, and I was just the lucky girl she would take along for the ride whether I liked it or not.
“How is that going by the way?” I asked, resting my chin against my hand after I sat down again. As part of her crazy plan, Claudia had us signed up for a dating site and managed an account for both of us, which was kind of counter-productive, I thought. Half the guys who messaged us thought we were looking for a threesome, which, ew.
“Ugh, horrible,” Claudia confessed, taking her phone out of her bag again. “Look at this guy who I was matched with yesterday.”
“OH GOD,” I laughed, gasping and shaking my head. “Is that some dude’s butt?”
It was a butt alright. I had to admit, as far as those went, MysteryGuy69 had a pretty good one. It was one of those scroll down photos where he looked pensive and thoughtful as he stood by the window before you scroll down and realized his derriere was on full display. Like it was sexy or something.
Guys are idiots.
“It’s a butt, and I don’t think he’s showing it for reasons I’m interested in,” Claudia said, standing up to leave Petit Jolie. Days were not going to start themselves, and we had meetings to prep for. I tried to imagine her dating the butt guy. He was probably gay, so it would never last. Claudia was stronger than that.
“We should put that picture in the article,” I joked, following Claudia out of the bakery. I was almost laughing in her misery. Honestly, I was not all that bothered about finding a guy, but Claudia’s slight obsession over it was just too entertaining not to laugh over.
“Shut up,” Claudia said to me, nudging my arm as we walked to my car. “Why are you such a man-hater, anyway? The only guy you’ve ever openly been in love with in the last three years cried during last week’s episode of Marry Me, Charlotte B! I should know. I was sitting next to him and crying just as hard.”
Leo and Claudia had a weekly routine of watching the famous reality show that followed their favorite wedding planner, Charlotte Bertram, as she planned the biggest weddings in the industry. The weddings they managed to pull off always brought tears to the Crown siblings’ eyes. Beatrice was only happy that Charlotte’s assistant loved passing clients on to them to make wedding invitations.
“Hey, Leo is special, alright?” I said defensively, turning the keys and waiting for Claudia to strap her seatbelt on. “No harping on me for that. I’ve tried the whole love thing, and it didn't pan out so…let’s just drop it, okay?”
“Consider it dropped,” Claudia said, shrugging like it was no big deal. I bit my lip, glad that the conversation was over and pulled the car out of the parking space. I hadn’t thought about my own love life for years, and I wasn’t planning to start now.
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We arrived at our little store/studio in Georgetown in no time. Going there, we had to cross over Key Bridge on the Potomac river, with the beautiful view of the university on the left. Then we take the bend in the road to the right, and we were in our neighborhood on M Street. It was chic and cool, like a whole street for yuppies and small families. Most of the buildings (like ours) still featured original red brick structures from the twenties and didn’t go higher than two floors. Like Kings’ Street, street lamps were made of wrought iron, and always had baskets blooming with purple wildflowers.
We had a Dean and Deluca across the street, beside us was the extremely famous Georgetown Bakery, and when we needed to brainstorm ideas, there was a Serendipity 3 with their famous frozen hot chocolate just up the road. They were good company to keep, we thought. Each store did this thing every Christmas where they sent everyone a little gift baske
t of their goods, and Claudia and I were still rationing our frozen hot chocolate mix from Serendipity 3. Claudia and I pay a lot for our airy little 500-square foot space, but we’ve always thought it was worth it.
“Photo by the store front!” Claudia exclaimed, practically galloping out of the car and waving her phone around like she was in a rodeo. The store front did look amazing. We spent about a week cutting paper leaves in different shades of green and another week on paper flowers to place on our big store windows and draw customers in. Ursula had done a great job cutting out ‘La Vie est Belle’ in my handwriting and placing it over the green leaves. We wheeled in my old bike from college (the kind that used to have a basket in front, I’m sorry to admit) and placed it under the paper flowers, and added plants in front. It photographed well.
“11:00 am, finally made it to the store, and just in time to prep for the day’s meetings,” she typed, breezing into the shop while I took a moment to look at our names on the door. I still couldn’t wrap my head around what’s happened in the last three years. Everything from college to now has just become a big blur. I do remember the first day I met Claudia, though. There are just some things that you don’t forget.
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It took me an hour to find my Women’s History class. I wanted to avoid looking like the bumbling freshman who couldn’t find her classroom, so I left my map in the dorm. BIG mistake, because now I looked like the freshman dweeb (oh god, who says dweeb anymore?) who didn’t have her map. And because I am stubborn and also an idiot, I didn’t ask for directions.
Which was why I, Beatrice Noble, the dweeb, ended up late and seated at the back row of my first majors class. As a Women’s Studies major, I could just say that a man had caused my lateness, as some guy had taken my parking space, but now wasn’t the time for excuses when the professor was passing out her syllabus. I reached for mine, devouring it like a hungry little mouse who found its first taste of cheese. I was just about to ask the professor if she could speak a little louder, when someone huffed in front of me.
We Go Together Page 1
