The Deal Breaker

by Cat Carmine

  With GoldLake money behind us, we could help make it something.

  I feel my resolve about tonight dissolving.

  I have time to go home before meeting Wes, so I hop in the shower and then blow-dry my long auburn hair. Emma is out at a networking event tonight, so the apartment is quiet. On the one hand I’m grateful — I still haven’t told Emma anything about seeing Wes again — but it would be nice to have the distraction of her company. Instead, I crank up the speakers on my laptop and dance around to the music.

  After my call from Joyce this morning, I’m more concerned than ever that Celia was right, and that Wes thinks this is a date, so I spend a long time deliberating my outfit choices. I don’t want anything that will give him the wrong idea.

  I settle on a black pantsuit with a red button-down shirt underneath. Nothing says business meeting like a good pantsuit, right? I twist my hair back into a neat bun and dig out a pair of very sensible black wedge heels.

  I admire the full effect in the mirror — strictly professional, that’s for sure. No mixed messages here. Even my shirt is buttoned up right to the top, with only the uppermost button left undone.

  I consider my reflection, pursing my lips. I could undo just one more button, maybe. I finger the soft skin of my neck and picture Wes’s lips grazing the hollow of my throat.

  Nope. Shut it down. I slip the top button through its corresponding hole so that I’m fully buttoned up.

  There. Let’s see Wes get any funny ideas now.

  I grab a cab to the restaurant. As soon as I step inside, a horrible wave of doubt seeps through my bones. I’ve never been to Jasmine Thai before, but I expected a bustling little ethnic place, the kind with a busy to-go counter and family-style platters. Instead, walking into Jasmine Thai is like walking into an opium den. It’s dark, and I can’t discern anything beyond the hostess stand, because everything is cloaked in swaths of deep velvet curtains — burgundy, eggplant, fuchsia, plum. The light is dim, and the scent of curry and lemongrass mixes with sandalwood and something intoxicating that I can’t place.

  “I have a reservation,” I stammer to the hostess, who smiles benevolently down at me from behind her ornate stand. “It should be under Lake?”

  “Of course.” Her demure smile doesn’t show any teeth. I feel her eyes roaming over my outfit, my oh-so sensible shoes that had seemed so smart when I was back in my apartment. “Your other party has already arrived.”

  She leads me through the restaurant and my head whips wildly around, trying to take it all in. All the tables are tucked into their own little enclaves, draped again in the same jewel-toned velvets. Flowering vines sweep up towards the ceiling, twisting between the tables. I recognize the white flowers immediately — jasmine. Of course. That was the smell I couldn’t name. My parents ran a small flower shop back in Connecticut, so I’d grown up around this same kind of heady floral scent. It feels exotic and familiar at the same time.

  Kind of like Wes, actually.

  I scramble to keep up with the hostess, until she stops so abruptly I almost crash into her. I glance around in confusion, wondering why she’s come to a halt, until I see Wes.

  He’s tucked away in another enclave, one that’s just big enough for a table and two chairs. Two gold sconces hang on the wall inside, and fat white candles glow.

  For a brief fluttering second I wish this was a date — this place is too romantic for words.

  The hostess slips away, leaving me alone with Wes. He stands up, leaning over and kissing my cheek. The gesture takes me by surprise and my fingers fly to my face, tracing the spot where his lips had pressed.

  “You look beautiful,” he says. His eyes roam my body, and I have to remind myself that I’m wearing a buttoned-up suit. The hungry way Wes is looking at me makes me feel like I pranced in wearing crotchless panties, a push-up bra and nothing else.

  I swallow. It’s the restaurant, I tell myself. It caught me off guard. Nothing I can’t recover from.

  Wes steps to the side and pulls my chair out for me. As I slide past him, my ass rubs against his hands, and my cheeks flame hot again. I flop into my seat and grab a glass of water off the table and chug it down.

  Wes chuckles as he sits down. “I guess I’ll ask for a new glass of water.”

  I stare at the empty glass in my hand, and then down at the table, where I realize, yes, I definitely took this from his side.

  “Sorry,” I manage. God, why am I so flustered right now?

  Wes, on the other hand, is cool as a freaking cucumber. He looks fantastic in a charcoal blazer and crisp white shirt. Unlike me, he’s left the top two buttons of his shirt undone. What a cowboy.

  “I hope you don’t mind, I ordered a bottle of white. I wasn’t sure what you liked these days. It’s been a while.”

  His mouth twists up into what seems like a genuine smile, and I smile back.

  “White is great,” I say. “You know, assuming they have no rock-a-berry wine coolers.”

  Wes bursts out laughing.

  “There’s a blast from the past. Jesus. I haven’t had one of those in years. Not since…”

  “High school.” I finish for him. I don’t feel like smiling anymore. Wes’s grin falls away too.

  “Yeah,” he says. “It’s been a while.”

  “Yeah.”

  Ugh. Why did I have to say that? Now things have gone back to awkward.

  We’re saved at that moment by our server, who arrives with the bottle of wine Wes ordered. He sets two glasses down on the table and uncorks the bottle, decanting a small amount into one of the glasses for Wes to sample.

  Wes, however, just waves his hand over the glass.

  “It’s fine, I’m sure. Never had a bad bottle here.”

  The server nods and fills the rest of his glass, then mine, then sets the bottle on the table and disappears back into the swath of velvet surrounding our table.

  “So, do you come here often?” I ask, trying to make conversation as I sip my wine. Flavors explode on my tongue. Delicious.

  “Why, Rori,” Wes says, his teasing grin back in place. “Are you flirting with me?”

  “No!” I stammer. “It’s just, you said you’d never had a bad bottle here, so I wondered …”

  Wes reaches across the table, putting his hand over mine. His thumb caresses the soft skin on the back of my hand, and a hot chill runs up my arm.

  For a minute I can only stare at our entwined hands, at the way they stand out against the rich dark wood of the table. At the way Wes is still stroking his thumb over my skin.

  When I lift my eyes, he’s watching me. He’s wearing a half-smile, but it’s different from his usual arrogant smirk. It’s more unsure, as if he’s as unsettled by this moment as I am.

  But as quickly as it came, the look fades from his face. He lets go of my hand and reaches underneath the table for something.

  When he comes back up, he drops a stack of file folders on the table.

  “What’s this?” I poke at the pile.

  He grins. Arrogant, again. Cocky. Back to his usual self.

  “My pitch,” he says. “This is a meeting, after all, as you so adamantly pointed out to my secretary. We can get started whenever you’d like.”

  “Right.” I wrinkle my forehead, though I don’t know why. This is what I wanted — isn’t it? Purely business. Just two professionals having a dinner meeting. “No time like the present, then.”

  For the next hour, Wes makes his case. He lays out all the details of the hiring program, presents the research their HR team has done, and outlines the projected numbers for the coming years.

  I’m impressed. I don’t want to be, but I am. The initiative is exactly the kind of community-oriented effort that Marigold prides itself on representing, and even though I don’t want to, I get excited about the possibilities.

  While we talk, Wes and I work our way through an order of duck curry, a heaping papaya salad, and a family-size platter of pad Thai. The food is deliciou
s, but I barely notice as I sit and watch Wes do what Wes does best — close a deal.

  Part way through his pitch, I’m barely listening to the words coming out of his mouth, and instead reflecting on how much he’s changed since high school. I guess we all have, but Wes is … well, he’s practically a different person. The Wes I knew was sensitive, sweet, funny. Liked by everyone, but never one of the popular kids. Just a regular kid, one of the good guys. The Wes sitting across from me now is harder, smoother, like a polished stone.

  “What do you think?” he asks, interrupting my train of thought.

  I pause, holding my fork with a bite of salad already speared on it, and think about his question.

  “I think it sounds very impressive,” I say finally.

  “Good.” He grins triumphantly. “Then you’ll really like this part. Our budget for promotions for the first year — which includes the recruitment phase as well as the ongoing promotion — is four million dollars.”

  I almost choke on the piece of papaya I’ve just popped into my mouth.

  “Four … million … dollars?”

  “I told you this is a big project. But I’m confident you’re the right firm for the job.”

  “Big? This is huge.” God. Marigold’s biggest project so far was a ten-thousand-dollar social media campaign for a paint-your-own-pottery chain. We are so not the right firm for the job.

  But Wes has already moved on, flipping open another file folder, and scanning down a column of numbers.

  “We’re projecting billable hours to come in at around a thousand or so, for each you and Kyla. I trust you’ll set your rate at around two hundred an hour?”

  I try to keep my mouth from falling open in shock. I do the math quickly in my head, and realize he’s offering us about four hundred thousand dollars in profit. That’s more than we’d expected to make in our first three years of operations. It’s also more than enough to cover all the pro-bono projects we want to take on.

  “Wes, that’s very generous, but …”

  “But what?” he says sharply. “Rori, let’s be honest here. Any marketing firm in the city would be champing at the bit to get this project. And yet I’m here pitching you. I want you.” His eyes blaze for a minute, and then he wipes his hands on a napkin. “For this project, I mean. I want you.”

  His face is set in determination. I set my fork down and study him for a minute.

  “Why this project?” I eventually say.

  “I’m sorry?” His brow furrows at the unexpected question.

  “I mean, why this project? Let’s be honest, GoldLake isn’t exactly known for their charitable outreach. So … why this project?”

  Wes reaches for his wine glass and sips from it thoughtfully before answering. That alone is enough to impress me, at least a little. I expected him to have a pat, rehearsed answer. Maybe he’ll actually give me something real instead of a bullshit line.

  “Do you know what my earliest memory is?” he asks.

  “No,” I say in surprise. “I guess I don’t.”

  He sets his wine glass down. “It’s of my mother, coming home at seven in the morning from her all-night shift at the diner. She worked two jobs back then, just to make ends meet, so after she was done at the diner, she’d go on to her next job at the taxi dispatch center. Except she’d never go straight there. She’d always come home first, even though it was miles out of her way, and she’d make me breakfast. Oatmeal. Sometimes she’d put sliced banana on it, and sometimes chopped apple, and sometimes raisins. My earliest memory is sitting at our crappy little kitchen table, eating my oatmeal while she rushed to change out of her diner uniform so that she wouldn’t be late for work.”

  “Wes …” I watch him in stunned silence. He’s never told me that before. I think back to our time together in high school and realize … I don’t think I ever even met his mother. Once, maybe, when we’d run into her at the mall. Wes had brushed off the incident, and I’d gotten the sense that they weren’t all that close, so I hadn’t pried. But now, the way he’s speaking about her ... the haunted look in his eyes … It makes me wonder why I never asked about her.

  Wes shrugs, as if bringing himself out of a distant memory. “Anyway, I guess I always felt that if there had been better opportunities for her, she might have been able to get ahead. That things might have been different if she didn’t have to work herself to the bone at two jobs like that.”

  I have so many things I want to say to him in that moment, so many questions I want to ask him. Like, how is his mother now? And why did I never meet her back then? And why didn’t he ever let on, how his family struggled? Wes was always just Wes — charming, fun, sweet. More interested in finding the best spot to watch the sunset than talking about his personal life. I had never pushed because — well, because with Wes I was always caught up in the moment. When we were together, the only thing that existed between us was … us.

  Now, even with all my burning questions, the only thing I can bring myself to say is this:

  “I accept the job.”

  Wes’s face breaks into a grin.

  “That’s great, Roar. You have no idea how happy that makes me.”

  “I still have to talk to Kyla,” I caution him, as I try to ignore his use of my old nickname. “But I think she’ll be on board. Like you said, this is a dream project for Marigold.”

  “I’m sure she’ll see the logic in it. Here, then. Take this and go over it with her. It’s the contract.”

  He slides a blue folio across the table towards me, which I shove into my bag. He grabs the wine bottle and tops off both of our glasses, then raises his own.

  “I think this deserves a toast, don’t you?”

  “Sure.” I lift my glass. “To new beginnings?”

  “And to old friends.” His smile in the candlelight is beguiling, and I shiver as I clink my glass against his.

  We polish off the rest of the bottle and chat about the project a bit while Wes settles up the bill. When our glasses are emptied and our plates have been cleared away and our server is eyeing us in a way that clearly says it’s time to give up our table, Wes looks at me and says, “Shall we?”

  He lets me go ahead of him, and then his hand goes to my lower back as he guides me out of the restaurant. The touch is light, mostly polite, but it still sends a shivery wave of longing through my body. Wes. I try not to let it distract me and as we step out of the intoxicating dark restaurant, I take a deep breath of the fresh night air.

  “Do you need a ride home?” Wes asks. “I can call my driver.”

  I shake my head. “I’m fine. I’ll just get a cab.”

  His eyes stay glued to my face. His jaw ticks. “Are you sure I can’t give you a ride? I really don’t mind.”

  “Well,” I say. And that’s the moment. The moment my resolve begins to weaken. I raise my eyes to Wes, where they land straight on his pillowy perfect lips. My own lips feel dry all of a sudden, and I run my tongue lightly over them.

  What happens next happens in less than a second. It happens in a blink. In a heartbeat. Wes pushes me up against the brick wall of the restaurant and covers my lips with his. I gasp as he does it, breathing out into him, but my entire body responds to his touch. His kiss.

  Jesus, his kiss.

  Memories flood over me as he kisses me. The way his lips press against mine, the way his tongue strokes mine, the way his hand slips to the back of my neck. It’s all so heart-achingly familiar … and yet it’s not.

  Because Wes is a man now — and he kisses like one. Commanding, forceful, powerful.

  And God help me, I like it.

  Standing there, pressed between the hard warmth of Wes’s body and the cool brick wall behind me, all rational thoughts fly from my brain. All I can think about is getting more of his kiss. Of his hands. Of his body. Of this.

  So when Wes breaks off the kiss and then trails his lips along my jaw and up towards my ear, when he grazes his tongue along my earlobe, when he whispers i
nto the shell of my ear, “Let me take you home,” I do the only thing I can bring myself to do.

  I run.

  Six

  The apartment is quiet when I unlock the front door, and I thank God that Emma The Perfect must be in bed.

  I creep into the kitchen to get a drink, running the tap as softly as I can while I fill my glass.

  “Where were you?”

  I spin around, almost dropping the glass. There’s Emma, wrapped in a light pink silk robe, rubbing sleep from her eyes.

  “I’m sorry, did I wake you up? I was trying to be quiet.” Like, seriously quiet. Apparently my sister has supersonic hearing.

  “It’s okay,” she says, waving off my concern. I was watching a movie on my laptop in bed and I fell asleep.”

  She looks me up and down, and when her nose wrinkles, I realize I must be a mess. I pat my hair self-consciously, and sure enough, it’s all frizzed up in the back. You know — the kind of hair you get when you’re pressed up against a brick wall with your ex-boyfriend’s tongue down your throat.

  “Where were you?” she asks again.

  “I had a dinner meeting.”

  She nods but doesn’t look convinced. I pull the blue folio out of my purse and wave it at her.

  “We’re thinking of taking on a new client,” I explain.

  “Oh, that’s great!” The folio must have been enough proof because now she smiles. “Who is it?”

  “Actually…” I take a deep breath. No point lying to Emma. She’d find out eventually anyway. “Do you remember Wes Lake?”

  Emma stares at me blankly.

  “From high school?” I prompt, and she shakes her head.

  “Of course I remember Wes,” she says drily. “I just can’t believe you’d consider working with him. After what he did to you, Rori?”

  I sigh, leaning against the counter. “I know. But his company is huge, and the project is really interesting, and the money he’s offering is just … whoa.”

  Emma folds her arms. “And he’s a jackass.”