City of Yes (A Novella)

by M. J. Pullen

  When she looked up, Lily was hurriedly shoving her own phone under her leg. “Seriously, Lils?”

  “Just seeing where Darren is playing tonight. You know, for after…”

  “That’s illegal, not to mention… Wait. He’s stopped again. Second and Hubbard? What’s there?” Charlotte zoomed in on the map until company names appeared. “The LinkedIn headquarters? What on earth would he be doing there?”

  At a snail’s pace, they made their way toward the blue boot through creeping traffic, only to find that once they were a block away, Jared moved two blocks up the street to a spot that appeared to be a recruiting firm.

  “Is he conducting business? Maybe Brianna accepted, and now he’s introducing her to his network?” It didn’t make sense, even to Charlotte’s paranoid brain.

  “Maybe he’s out for a run,” Lily countered. “Or she said no, and he’s doing a pub-crawl to drown his sorrows.”

  Charlotte said nothing. None of those explanations made sense either. “Hang on,” she said as they passed the towering LinkedIn building. “He’s changed direction again. But he’s definitely not running—he’s moving way too fast this time.”

  The boot was blinking now, weaving quickly through the little streets in the museum district, as though carried by a veteran San Francisco cab driver. She and Lily would never be able to track him down if they had to chase a cab. Neither their navigation or driving skills were that strong. She watched Jared moving on the map, wishing she could reach into the phone and pin down the damn little boot to make it stand still.

  “He’s stopped again,” she said. “At the Wells Fargo near Union Square. Turn left.”

  “Maybe he’s stopped at the ATM?”

  “Maybe…” The light above them turned green—they were just a block away from him now. “But he’s been standing still for a while. I guess it could be a long line?”

  “Wait a second…” Lily looked thoughtful. “He’s at the Wells Fargo building? And before that he was at LinkedIn?”

  “No, before that he was at some recruiting office—something with an M?”

  “Magley and Associates?”

  Charlotte was astonished. “How did you know that? Are you living some secret corporate life I don’t know about?”

  Lily laughed. “No, but I have lots of friends who are artists. And I think I know where he’s headed next.” She pulled the car into the next open garage, where they pulled a ticket for four dollars an hour. “We can walk to Union Square.”

  “I’ll pay you back,” Charlotte promised as they exited the garage onto the sidewalk. “I know you hate paying prime parking rates.”

  But Lily just tugged her across the side street. “This way—let’s cut the corner. We won’t catch him at the bank, but at Union Square we’ve got a shot. There are three of them there.”

  “Three what?”

  “The heart sculptures!” Lily’s look of triumph was undeniable. “The Hearts in San Francisco installations. I have a friend on the artist selection committee and she’s always talking about who’s bought that year’s sculptures. There’s one at the Children’s Creativity Museum and another at LinkedIn.”

  The light was coming on in Charlotte’s foggy brain. She knew the sculptures, of course. The giant hearts, individually created in different styles by various artists, were San Francisco landmarks and a staple background for engagement proposals.

  “See?” Lily waved the phone at her as they dodged other pedestrians on the sidewalk. The blue boot was moving again. “Jared is going from heart to heart!”

  Charlotte stopped cold, putting her hand on the nearest building to steady herself. In the fervor of the chase, Lily was several paces ahead before she noticed her friend had fallen behind.

  She looked a little annoyed as she returned to Charlotte. “What is it?”

  “I know you said not to obsess about it, I’m not supposed to guess what he’s doing, but…Lily, let’s get real. There’s only one reason a man with a serious girlfriend would be touring the Hearts in San Francisco on a Saturday night. There’s only one reason a man contracts the services of a proposal planner. He’s in love with Brianna, and whatever I do next is just going to disrupt his happiness. I can’t do that to him again.”

  Lily looked exasperated. Charlotte took a half-step backward as though her friend were going to smack her. Not that she could blame her…she’d dragged Lily all over the Bay Area tonight looking for Jared and now that they knew where he was, she was chickening out.

  But her friend took a deep breath and spoke calmly. “What did you say to me, three years ago, when I told you I couldn’t do professional event photography? When I was ready to move back home to Oklahoma and work at Glamour Shots?”

  “I don’t remember. I just knew how good you were and I thought you’d be great…”

  “You said, ‘You’ll never know what you can do until you take the risk.’”

  “I said that?”

  “Those were your exact words. I remember, because I thought about them the whole time I was unpacking my duffel bag.”

  Charlotte smiled at the memory. “I am very wise, if I do say so myself.”

  “You are. So let me give you a little of your own wisdom back. You have to try, Charlotte. This isn’t about friendship or being polite or ruining someone’s special night. This is about all the rest of the nights after this one. You have to tell this guy how you feel about him, even if it doesn’t change anything.”

  “But Brianna—”

  “Forget Brianna.” Lily grabbed her hand. “If you confess your love and Jared chooses her anyway, she can spend the rest of her life crowing about it to her friends. You’ll be giving her the best wedding present ever.”

  Charlotte laughed, mirthlessly.

  “But, trust me, honey. If you let this go, you’ll regret it forever. And since I won’t be around every night with Ben & Jerry’s to weep at old movies with you, I can’t have that on my conscience.”

  Lily had a point, and in her heart, Charlotte knew that Brianna wasn’t right for Jared, even if Charlotte wasn’t right for him either. But she was terrified of causing more pain. To anyone.

  Seeing her hesitation, Lily changed tack, holding up the phone, pointing to where the blue boot was at one corner of Union Square. “Let’s put it another way. What would Lauren Bacall do if it were her man on this map?”

  “Right.” Charlotte walked ahead, hating and loving her friend in equal parts. “Let’s get this over with.”

  According to PathFinder, Jared was at the northwest corner of Union Square, but when they arrived at the colorful heart sculpture, panting with exertion, he was nowhere in sight. A small group of tourists clustered in front of the sculpture, dressed for an evening out. They were taking turns snapping pictures of one another, and Lily gamely offered to assist while Charlotte stared incredulously at the app, triple-checking that they were at the correct corner. Just in case. She exited and re-opened the app, thinking it might refresh the location of Jared’s boot, but nothing changed.

  “I don’t understand,” she whined in frustration. “He should be here.”

  “For once, I have to agree with you,” said a familiar voice behind her.

  Charlotte spun to find Owen, emerging from behind a nearby palm tree. He held up his own phone and smiled at her. “I told him the hearts were much more romantic than what he had in mind. But he insisted.”

  “What are you…?” Charlotte started, but the words failed her. It was too much to process. “Is that Jared’s phone?”

  “I wish.” Owen came closer and tapped the screen. “Have you seen that guy’s phone? Top-notch. I mean, not surprising, but still…”

  Charlotte barely had patience for her coworker on a normal day, let alone the most intensely emotional night of her life. “Owen. Explain. Now.”

  He smirked. He was
enjoying his moment of power over her. But there was also something else in his expression. Affection, maybe? Pity? Please don’t let it be pity. “My client,” he said importantly, “asked me to log into his PathFinder account for a couple of hours tonight. He had something important to do and didn’t want any casual hiking buddies to bother him. I’ve just logged off, so I bet he’ll be himself again momentarily.”

  “Casual hiking buddies?” Charlotte was wounded. Whatever she was, it wasn’t that. “Did he ask you to distract me so he could propose to Brianna in peace?” Her throat felt thick with confusion and hurt. Maybe Jared knew her better than she thought, knew that she’d end up following him. The familiar panic and humiliation threatened at the corners of her.

  “I’m just telling you what my client asked me to do,” Owen said gently. He glanced over Charlotte’s shoulder. “What he asked us to do, I should say. We’re always a team at Perfect Proposals, right, Lily?”

  Charlotte spun to face her roommate, who grinned sheepishly and backed dramatically away. “Now, honey, let’s not lose focus. I think the important thing to remember is that Owen’s logged out of the app now. Which means Jared’s real location could be available to you. Romance first, bloody revenge on your roommate second!”

  Bewildered, Charlotte lifted the phone dangling from her hand and swiped down on the screen to refresh PathFinder. The little blue hiking boot she’d been staring at for what seemed like hours disappeared from Union Square and reappeared at the corner of Taylor and Eddy.

  She glared, aghast, between the two of them. “You knew?”

  “Should I get the car?” Lily asked.

  “Faster to take a cab,” Owen suggested.

  They both had irritating, knowledgeable smiles on their faces now. Traitors. How long had this—whatever it was—been going on? Charlotte had the absurd impulse to take off running and outpace both of them for the four or five blocks it would take her to get to Jared, but her organized mind (and blistered feet) had to concede that it wasn’t the best plan.

  “Owen’s right,” she said grudgingly. “I’ll murder both of you later. For now, we’ll take a cab.”

  The Piano Bar was packed when the three of them arrived, ten minutes later. “Stage Two,” Lily yelled. “Good luck!” She and Owen melted into the crowd toward the bar, where Tina winked conspiratorially. The bartender was holding court with a big group of women who’d all ordered a purplish cocktail. Charlotte had a strange longing to join them, for this to be a normal night at her favorite bar, for her stomach not to be tied in irreparable knots with anticipation and…yes, it was there: fear.

  Her feet carried her down the crowded corridor toward the two stage rooms. The door to the larger room on the right was open, and people filed in and out while a guitar screamed on the blue-lighted stage in the distance. On the left, however, the door was closed, blocked by a very large bouncer with a goatee and arms folded menacingly. There was a sign behind him that read “Private Event” in lavish script. Charlotte recognized the bouncer but couldn’t think of his name. Obviously, he recognized her, too, because as soon as she was within a few feet of the door, he opened it and wordlessly gestured for her to enter.

  People nearby gave her odd looks, and murmured to one another. Clearly the door had been closed for a while and left them wondering what could be going on inside. Charlotte tried to smile as she picked her way among the well-dressed clubbers to the door, painfully aware of her laundry day wardrobe and cheap pink flip-flops. Lily had forced her to put on lip gloss and mascara in the cab, and knotted her disheveled hair into something slightly more presentable, but Charlotte still felt too small for this moment. Whatever it was.

  Except she knew what it was. It was her job, after all.

  But she couldn’t be sure. Her heart wouldn’t let her be sure.

  Until she saw the stage.

  The door closed behind her. She could feel the same look of bemused wonder on her own face that she’d seen on so many others in this exact moment. Free floating in that empty space between knowing and not-knowing, between hope and fear and certainty. The fact that the expression was an everyday familiarity to Charlotte did not make the feeling itself less visceral, less powerful.

  Plus, Jared was nowhere in sight.

  And, she realized, there was music. The room was dark now, except the stage, which had been transformed. The lush velvet maroon curtains she loved were covered in curtains of white fairy lights. Colorful umbrellas hung suspended from the ceiling, mixed together at various heights, and backlit so that they threw shafts of color down to the stage, and looked as vivid as a cartoon drawing of themselves. The house lights were off, and except for the fairy lights and the magical umbrellas, the only other light came from a candle in a jar on the stage, next to a picnic basket. It took a moment for her to realize that the music she heard was not from the next room, but that there was a piano in the far corner a few feet from the stage, playing a soft jazz standard she couldn’t quite recognize.

  Letting her eyes adjust, Charlotte made her way carefully around the rows of seats and up the side aisle opposite the piano. Her heart pounded in her throat. She was tempted to call out for Jared, held back by a tiny wedge of suspended disbelief. She had the idea that somehow if she broke the spell, this would all disappear and turn out to be a horrible mistake. As if there’d been a miscommunication and this was Brianna’s magical picnic, not hers.

  Doubt evaporated, however, when she heard Jared’s voice. “I told you I would know the right place when it when I saw it.”

  He stepped out from behind a side curtain, holding a bottle of wine in one hand. Casually—as if he’d just stepped out to grab it and was pleasantly surprised to see her there. As if he hadn’t spent the last several hours orchestrating this moment for her to walk in to. He grinned and looked around the set. “I know you would’ve done better. Just…try not to look with your professional eye, okay?”

  “It’s beautiful,” she said. “Breathtaking, actually.”

  “Joe helped.” Jared nodded at the pianist in the corner, whom Charlotte now recognized as the piano player from one of her favorite jazz ensembles. Joe nodded to her without stopping his playing, and she gave him a sheepish wave.

  Jared extended a hand to help her onto the stage, and she noticed that both their palms were sweaty with nerves. Otherwise, though, he looked like his usual calm self. As if this was exactly what he’d been expecting to happen when they met again at the coffee shop three days ago.

  “You made me watch this movie in college, remember?”

  “What…?” She was looking at him, trying to find her footing in this new reality. It was a confusing question. “Oh! The Umbrellas of Cherbourg.”

  “Yeah, remember? Boyd bailed and you were so upset because you didn’t want to go alone.” Jared took a step toward her. “Honestly, we both should have known right then. If a twenty-one-year-old straight dude is willing to see The Umbrellas of Cherbourg with you on a Saturday night, with absolutely no possibility of sex afterward, he’s probably in love with you.”

  His voice cracked on the last words. Charlotte felt her insides twist with elation and terror. He was in love with her. He remembered The Umbrellas of Cherbourg. It was the most romantic thing ever.

  But wait.

  “Boyd didn’t bail on me. He was sick. He had pneumonia that whole weekend. I brought him soup.”

  Jared grimaced, shaking his head. “He wanted to watch the LSU game, but didn’t want you mad at him.”

  “That rat bastard!” Charlotte said, even though she knew it was stupid. Nothing should surprise her about Boyd, after the whole “getting the hairdresser pregnant while we were living together and then marrying her” thing. Certainly, ditching out of a movie paled in comparison. Yet, the tiny betrayal still stung all these years later. And not just Boyd’s betrayal. “If you knew, why didn’t you tell me he was lying?”


  Jared set the wine down next to the basket and put a hand on her shoulder, expression still playful. “First of all, it was none of my business. He was my friend and you were my friend, and it wasn’t my place to get in the middle of it. Second, I was—as I may have mentioned—madly in love with you. Like, pathetically, gut-wrenchingly in love with you. I had a chance to sit alone with you in the dark for two hours and I wasn’t about to give that up to my good-for-nothing roommate.”

  “And third.” He kissed her on the forehead and Charlotte’s shoulders softened. “I knew it would upset you, and if I can be honest, you are absolutely freaking terrifying when you’re pissed off.”

  Indignant, she opened her mouth to respond, but he moved faster. He covered her mouth with his own, putting his hands on the side of her face, as though to physically contain her reaction. His cheeks and chin were lightly stubbled; Charlotte was surprised to find she liked the rough feel of it against her face. As he kissed her, she could feel his silent vibrating laughter pressing against her mouth. He loved getting the better of her.

  She bit his lip lightly in defiance, and the laughter stopped. Instead, he let out a low, hungry groan that echoed into her throat, through her core and down to her toes. And then she was kissing him back, hard, matching his intensity with her own. Her arms snaked under his and around his neck of their own accord, to pull him closer. All these years. She’d been blind not to see it clearly in college, a fool to let him drive away at graduation, an idiot to think she could leave her regrets behind when she moved to San Francisco.

  “Jared,” she whispered. “I’m sorry… About everything.”

  He pulled back to look at her, hands on her shoulders. “You mean Bree?”

  Oh, God. Brianna. She hadn’t thought of the poor girl in hours. “Well, yes. Her too.”

  “We weren’t right for each other. You knew it, and deep down, she and I both knew it. It just took one person to be honest. So, thank you for that. I’m sure it wasn’t easy.”