by Cara Bastone
“Ah, right,” Quentin finally said, standing across the hall from her, responding to her comment about his train set. “Well.” He cleared his throat. “Gotta get to work. Have fun at the beach.”
“Hold on a sec and I’ll head down with you!” she chirped.
“Gotta run!” he said over his shoulder and took the stairs two at a time.
Chapter Two
THE THURSDAY MORNING after she’d run into Quentin in the hallway, Cat tossed her gym bag over her shoulder and headed out. By the middle of (the blessedly glorious) summer break, she would be able to sleep in. But less than a week in, she was still naturally waking up early and searching for things to fill her days with, which was why she loved New York City. There was literally always something to do. She’d gone to the beach the last few mornings, but not today. Today she was working out.
But first, pie.
This neighborhood had a pie shop that was famous city-wide. It was a cute little establishment with long, wooden communal tables and myriad pies in sparkly glass cases. There were more kinds of pie than Cat had ever even heard of before she’d first become a patron. They had the classics, of course: apple, cherry, pecan. But then there were also chocolate chess pies and salty honey streusels, black oat pies with crust as thick as the September issue of Vogue.
It was a dangerous, dangerous heaven.
In the two years that Cat had lived in this neighborhood, she’d seen plenty of employees come and go through the pie shop, and almost every single one of them quit a few pants sizes larger than when they’d been hired. Cat herself attributed her soft belly and more than a handful of ass to their lemon custard pie. She didn’t mind. She considered every pound a worthy trade for the ambrosia they were selling.
She was just polishing off her slice of pie, standing at the counter in the window of the shop, when she looked up and saw Jared and Quentin walking by, chatting to one another. Quentin was wheeling a bike as they walked, and they paused at the corner, obviously about to part ways.
Here was her chance!
Cat tossed her plate and bolted out the door, but she wasn’t three steps toward them when they waved at one another and Jared headed off in the direction of the train and Quentin started putting his bike helmet on.
Dang! She’d wanted to catch them together because Quentin was easier to talk to than Jared and if she chatted with both of them maybe Jared would see how charming she was. But it was not to be. Should she follow Jared and risk some more of their slightly awkward conversation that they’d occasionally had when they’d run into one another in the laundry room? Or should she catch up with Quentin?
“Hey, Quentin!” she said, coming up beside him on the street corner.
“Cat! Hi.” He was surprised to see her. “Um, on your way to the train?”
“Yup, just stopped by the pie shop for a morning slice.”
He laughed. “You say that like a slice of pie for breakfast is a perfectly normal thing.”
“Isn’t it?”
He laughed again and then spied her gym bag over her shoulder. “So, slice of pie and then you go work out?”
He looked cute this morning in his slacks and button-down, carefully put together for work. His coppery hair, usually very neat, was messy from where he’d put his bike helmet on and then slid it off when they’d started talking. He wasn’t as tall as Jared was, but something about seeing Quentin out in the world, standing next to this man-sized bike, made Cat realize that he was bigger than she’d thought he was. He was wide in the shoulders and probably six or seven inches taller than she was.
“Pretty much, yeah.”
“Which gym do you belong to?”
“Oh, I don’t. I don’t really work out in the traditional sense. I’m headed to a pole-dancing class.”
He went instantly, adorably, pink in the cheeks. He was obviously trying to school his features into a placid look. “I...didn’t know they offered those kinds of classes.”
“Oh, sure. They’re really popular. The dance studio where I take them offers them all day. I’ll take the nine and then probably stay for the ten o’clock as well.”
Now he couldn’t stop his eyebrows from raising even higher. “There’s something slightly, um, incongruous about a 9:00 a.m. pole-dancing class, no?”
Cat burst out laughing. “Totally. It’s kind of like taking a biology course at eleven o’clock on a Saturday night. Just doesn’t quite fit the aesthetic.”
Silence descended for a moment while he scratched at the back of his neck, obviously searching for something to say.
“You, uh, been doing it long?”
She leaned in, wanting to make him blush again for some reason. “Are you asking if I’m any good?” She waggled her eyebrows.
“No! God.” He did that cute thing he sometimes did when he was flustered where he dragged a hand down his face as if he were trying to wipe away any evidence of whatever embarrassed expression wanted to make a home there. “I was just making conversation.”
“To answer the question you didn’t ask, no, I’m not any good. It’s really freaking hard and I’m still pretty much trying to figure out how to slide around the pole without getting major pole burn.”
“Pole burn,” he repeated dimly. He looked a little dazed.
Deciding to cut him some slack, Cat changed the subject. “I’ve never seen you ride before.”
She often rode her bike to and from the elementary school where she worked a few neighborhoods south, and she was pretty sure she knew all the bike riders in their building because there was one big room in the basement where they all locked their bikes. She’d never seen Quentin down there before.
“I don’t really,” he confessed. “I’m doing it for work right now.”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, I’m working with the city on reconfiguring the bike lanes in a few key places and we needed some more hands-on experience to really be able to answer the questions we have.”
“That’s so cool!”
“In theory. In practice I’m hoarse by the time I get to work because I’ve been screaming for half an hour.”
Cat laughed again. “What, you’re not a fan of cars sideswiping you and pedestrians with strollers jumping into your path and the doors of parked cars swinging open to smash you into the pavement?”
He groaned. “I’ll be glad when I can just take the train again like a normal New Yorker. Bikers have a death wish.”
“Your roommate is the craziest biker I’ve ever seen, did you know that? I watched him cut off a semitruck on Third Ave. Like it was no big deal. Just zoom, weaving in and out of traffic.”
He blinked at her for a second and Cat realized that she was grinning at him like a crazy person. He was so easy to talk to. She could have stood on that corner and chatted with him for another hour. But he was putting his helmet on, straightening his bag over his shoulder.
“Well, I don’t want to make you late for your, uh, class,” he said after a second.
“Right. Those poles won’t slide around themselves.”
He was decidedly pink again. “Uh-huh.”
“It was nice to run into you, Quentin,” she said. “Twice in one week.”
He suddenly looked uncomfortable. “Right.”
Was it her or was he backing away from her?
“Maybe we should do it again,” she suggested. “On purpose? Hang out, I mean. I don’t have many friends in the building.”
“Right,” he repeated. “Sure. Okay. See you later.” He waved at her and hopped on his bike.
For someone who claimed to hate being on a bike, he certainly looked natural on one. He’d done that one-leg-swing thing to get on and now merged smoothly with traffic.
It was the second time in a week that he’d pretty much run away from her. Maybe she’d have to do something abou
t that.
Chapter Three
THE FOLLOWING SATURDAY night Quentin was sniffing at a container of questionably old Chinese food when someone knocked on his door. He chucked the food into the trash on his way past and tugged his door open.
“Hey, Quent—Mamma mia.” Cat was standing on the other side of the door in tight jeans and a shirt roughly the size of a handkerchief. Her brown hair was wild around her shoulders the way it had been the night of the party at his house. Her big brown eyes were popping with some sort of magical makeup trick and Quentin couldn’t help but notice that she was looking him up and down.
“What?” he asked, looking down at himself, checking for spills of some kind.
“I’ve never seen you in jeans and a T-shirt before,” she said, her face melting into an expression he wasn’t sure how to interpret. “You’re always in your work clothes.”
“Saturday,” he said by way of explanation.
“Yes. Exactly,” she replied, a smile splitting her face. “It is Saturday. Which is exactly why I’m knocking on your door right now.”
“What’s up?”
“Well, you know Clare from two floors down?”
He didn’t but she didn’t seem to register the shake of his head. She barreled on.
“She and I were gonna head out to the Jarhouse tonight to see that storytelling show they do there, but she just bailed and I’m already all dolled up.”
Dancing eyebrows accompanied her big smile and he just stared back at her until it dawned on him. “Oh. Are you asking me to go with you?”
“I don’t wanna walk by myself. I’ll buy you a drink if you play my bodyguard on the walk there?”
He inwardly sighed. He should have known better than to think, even for a second, that she was asking him on a date. He was the “cute” guy who still kept toys in his bedroom. Not exactly date material. But he didn’t blame her for wanting someone to walk her to the bar. They lived in a slightly skeevy part of the Gowanus neighborhood of Brooklyn. Half a mile over and you were in ritzy Park Slope. But in this area, the blocks were long and dark at night; most of the buildings were warehouses, not residences. The Jarhouse was the place to be on a Saturday night, but walking there alone could definitely be nerve-racking.
“Sure, lemme just grab my wallet.”
He was back from his room in a second and glancing over at her as he locked his apartment door. He couldn’t help but meet her smile with one of his own. She was one of those people whose smile you felt all the way down to your toes.
“So,” Quentin said as they started the few-block walk to the venue, “what’ve you been doing on your summer break?”
“Let’s see... I’ve been to the beach a bunch already. I’m also trying to catch up on all the movies I missed over the school year. And I’ve been brunching pretty hard.”
He laughed. “You make it sound like a contact sport.”
“The way I brunch? It kind of is. I’m like ‘pitcher of mimosas before I start flipping tables!’”
“I hope you’re not drinking those pitchers all by yourself.”
She laughed. “No. Trust me, I’m a lightweight. I don’t really drink that much at all. I’ve been told I’m kind of a party all on my own.”
He could definitely understand why someone would say that to her. She sort of sparkled under the circles of the streetlights they passed, the orange light catching on the curves of her dark hair, the rise of her cheekbones, the white flash of her teeth. She skipped along to keep up with his long strides, and as she’d attached her keys to her belt loop with a carabiner, each step she took jingled.
“You do sort of have a one-man-band thing going on,” he told her, hiding his smile and tucking his hands into his pockets.
She laughed and nudged his side with a pointy elbow. “I’m deciding to take that as a compliment.”
“Good.”
When they got to the Jarhouse, she scampered forward and grabbed the door before he could.
“After you,” he said, stepping back so that she’d go in first.
“No, no,” she insisted. “You performed your bodyguarding duties admirably—at least allow me to hold the door for you.”
He reached over her head and grabbed the door. “My mom would kick my ass if I didn’t hold the door for you.”
“It’s nice to be out with a gentleman.” She grinned up at him and ducked inside.
He was grateful for the dimly lit bar because he was pretty sure he was blushing again as he followed Cat inside. Music played over the sound system and people were milling around and ordering drinks in the front room. In the back room, they would be charged a cover for the storytelling show that would start in half an hour or so.
“Let’s get a drink!”
“You want to grab seats for the show?” Quentin asked, speaking at the same time as Cat.
“Oh.” She leaned back to catch his eye. “Are you staying for the show? I thought you were just staying for one drink.”
He reached up and flattened his hair down with the palm of his hand. “Um, I thought I would stay. If I’m invited, I mean.”
She jumped forward and squeezed his arm above the elbow. “You’re invited!” she said immediately. “I’m so stoked you want to stay! I just figured that I was disrupting your Saturday night.” Squinting her eyes, she cocked her head to one side and brought her hands to her hips. “I kind of get the feeling sometimes that I annoy you or something, so I didn’t want to assume that you were gonna spend the whole evening with me.”
Instead of standing there, gaping like a dope, he nodded toward the bar and led her through the crowd. With the same kind of magical serendipity that had won Quentin $1,650 in Atlantic City, two people vacated their bar stools right as they approached the bar. Quentin and Cat plunked into the seats and the bartender waved at them from the other side of the bar, saying she’d be over in a second.
“What do you mean you think you annoy me?”
She shrugged and gave him a much smaller smile than usual. “I thought we’d gotten along so well that night we first hung out, at the party at your house. I had such a good time that I was pretty sure we were gonna end up being really good friends. But then I got the feeling that you were avoiding me. We never really hung out again even though I sort of tried to make it happen.”
He thought guiltily of the times she’d offered to walk him to the train or caught up to him in the lobby for a quick chat. He’d dodged her almost every time.
“I know I can be a lot for some people,” she continued, but he jumped right in to stop her.
“You’re not a lot,” he insisted. He’d been standoffish on purpose, to protect himself from thinking she was even cuter than he already did. But he could see now that it had sent the wrong signals. He didn’t want her to disparage herself. “You’re...just the right amount.”
He twisted his face at how awkward that sounded, barely resisting the urge to face palm.
But she laughed delightedly and nudged him with that pointy elbow again. “Thanks. You certainly have a way with compliments.”
“Can I help you?” The bartender leaned her elbows on the bar, flipping her long braided hair back over her shoulder. Suddenly she bent toward Quentin, squinting her eyes. “Wait...”
“Sylvie?” Quentin exclaimed. He hadn’t recognized her from afar, but now he realized that he was staring at a woman he’d gone to elementary school with. She’d moved in early high school and he hadn’t seen her for probably ten years.
“Quentin? Wow!” Sylvie grinned and leaned over the bar to pull him into a hug.
As Quentin hugged her back, he looked over her shoulder and saw three different men scowling at him over their drinks. When he released Sylvie and sat back on his stool, he realized that she’d become a very attractive woman in the years since they’d last seen one another. He remembered her
as having been awkwardly tall, with a really bad short haircut and lots of dark eye makeup that was always smudging. But the Sylvie of today had gracefully aged into her height, her body rounding into curves and her natural beauty needing no embellishments.
“It’s been so long,” he said, and then winced when he was needled by an elbow he was becoming very familiar with. “Oh. Sylvie, this is my neighbor Cat. Cat, this is my friend Sylvie. We grew up together in Sleepy Hollow.”
“Old friends!” Cat exclaimed happily, looking back and forth between the two of them. “That’s so cool. I’m...not really in touch with anyone I grew up with, except for my sisters.”
Sylvie gave Quentin a chagrined smile. “I wouldn’t exactly say we were friends.”
It was true. Quentin would never have said it aloud to her, but for some reason he and Sylvie had never quite clicked. She’d always been nervous and quiet around him. He opened his mouth, unsure of what to say next, when Sylvie cut him off.
“I always had way too big of a crush on Quentin to be his friend.”
His mouth clapped closed with a hollow thunk. He stared at Sylvie. “Oh. I—Really?”
He wasn’t sure why but something about his delivery made both women laugh.
“Really,” she said with a smile. She drummed her hands on the bar top. “All right, what can I get you guys?”
They ordered and Sylvie brought their drinks with a wink before moving off to help other customers.
“Wow,” Cat said after a second. Quentin could feel her eyes on the side of his face.
“What?” he asked, turning toward her as he sipped his beer.
“I think she short-circuited you.”
“I mean...” Quentin said as he flattened his hair yet again. He searched for something to say. Something witty. Something un-dorky.
He came up with absolutely nothing and that made Cat laugh even more. “Hasn’t anyone ever told you they had a crush on you before?” she asked.
“Um. No.”
Cat’s big brown eyes widened in surprise. “Really? I find that hard to believe.”
