It Takes Two

by Jenny Holiday

  * * *

  After the game was over and Noah had no reason to stick around in the room that was temporarily Wendy’s, he turned over and smelled his own bed. Several times, in fact, pressing his nose against various spots on the mattress and pillows and sniffing like a goddamned dog. It did kind of smell like Christmas, but not because it smelled like pine. All he could smell was a very faint cinnamon aroma. Cloves, too, maybe, or allspice. Definitely one of those Christmassy spice smells, anyway. It was the smell he associated with the mulled wine served at the office holiday party every year.

  He got up and made his way to the dresser to set down the remote, and as he walked, he rubbed his hands vigorously over his cheeks, then smelled them. Nope, still no pine. Weird. He must be immune to his own scent.

  Wendy’s toiletries were sitting on the dresser in front of the TV. A few travel-size bottles and a small round tin were arranged in a neat line.

  He really shouldn’t.

  He picked up a travel-size bottle that proclaimed itself “medium-weight moisturizer,” and took a big sniff.

  Nope. Just a barely-there, vaguely “clean” smell.

  He moved on to the next bottle, which was sunscreen. And, he discovered, unscented sunscreen at that.

  “Aha!” he said into the silence as he picked up the tin. Before even opening it, he could tell he’d discovered the source of the cinnamon scent. He pried the lid off and was hit with a blast of that mulled-wine spiciness. He had no earthly idea what the…item was, though. It was a solid red circular object that appeared to have a cinnamon stick embedded directly in it.

  “Noah!”

  Fuck. He fumbled the spicy mystery object back into its tin and struggled to close it, his hands made clumsy by the mortifying prospect of being caught going through Wendy’s things.

  “Noah, dude!”

  Ah, it was Bennett. If he hadn’t been having a minor panic attack over the prospect of being busted by Wendy as he pawed through her stuff, he would have realized the voice calling his name was a masculine one.

  It was also not coming from inside the apartment. He moved to his bedroom window. Bennett was in the habit of coming home after he left the restaurant and trying to talk Noah into grabbing a drink with him. And by “talk,” Noah meant “stand in the courtyard three stories below and yell up at Noah’s bedroom window.” The restaurateur was always hyper after a dinner shift, but, being a reformed bad boy, he avoided the drug- and booze-infested party scene that was endemic to the restaurant industry.

  “I’m staying in tonight,” he shouted down.

  “Just one drink at Birch’s,” his friend countered, naming the pub at the end of the block they frequented. Noah had spent a good chunk of his New York life on a stool at Birch’s nursing a beer while his teetotaler friend sipped iced tea.

  “Come up here instead,” Noah called. He actually wouldn’t mind having a drink with Bennett. He knew he wouldn’t sleep until Jane and Wendy were home safe, so some company would take his mind off the cinnamon mystery object. And, more to the point, would take his mind off kissing its owner, which was all he’d been able to think about for the past twenty-four hours. “I have beer, and you can BYO tea.”

  Bennett signaled his grudging agreement and disappeared into the building. Before Noah went out into the living room to unlock the door, he paused next to his bed and picked up a pillow. One more sniff to see if he could get a whiff of the alleged pine.

  All he could smell was her.

  His phone buzzed, and so did his heart. He lunged for it, not sure if he did or didn’t want it to be a text from Wendy. He’d enjoyed texting with her during the concert—she was witty, and there really was nothing more attractive than an intelligent, witty woman. But Wendy wasn’t just your garden-variety intelligent, witty woman. She was Jane’s best friend. She was practically family.

  And there he went again. He kept having to remind himself that it didn’t matter that Wendy was Jane’s best friend. It wasn’t like that was the only thing stopping him. Wendy herself was stopping him. She wasn’t looking for a relationship. She was leaving on her big trip.

  The text wasn’t from Wendy, anyway; it was from Jane.

  Concert over. We’re going out. Don’t wait up.

  Yeah, nice try, little sis. He smiled as he typed.

  You know I’m going to wait up. But have fun.

  It was a good thing Bennett was on his way up. Noah might have a few hours to kill.

  Just go to sleep. I’ll come home in a cab, I promise. I’ll have Wendy put me directly in it.

  Wait. What?

  Won’t Wendy be coming home with you?

  She didn’t answer for a long time. He went into the kitchen and grabbed a beer from the fridge, staring at his phone the whole while. Finally, Jane’s reply came.

  Doubtful. Seems like she’s going to the boneyard.

  He dropped the beer bottle. It didn’t break, just rolled until it hit the edge of the stove.

  Excuse me?

  Bumping uglies?

  Doing the horizontal tango?

  Getting some stank on the hang down?

  Oh my God. Noah closed his eyes against the onslaught of texted euphemisms. Having a young-adult novelist for a sister had its downsides, one of which was that she spent way too much time with Urban Dictionary.

  When he opened his eyes, it was to yet another unwelcome message.

  Oh, my innocent brother. Do you need it explained to you? Wendy is going to find a man to have sex with.

  Noah opened his mouth wide to stretch his jaw, which had locked. He considered his reply. Because “LIKE HELL SHE IS” probably wasn’t going to achieve his goal.

  I know, you idiot. Wendy just doesn’t seem like the type.

  Which was a lie. Maybe the old Wendy, the one he remembered from years ago, wouldn’t have been the type. But modern-day Wendy most decidedly was. She’d told him as much herself.

  Ha. Ha ha ha. Wendy is exactly the type. It’s actually her main goal for the evening. She says it’s been too long and she’s getting jumpy as a result. Says her judgement about men is off. So I’m supposed to vet her choice, make sure he’s not an ax murderer masquerading as a New Yorker, and then I’ll come home.

  Her judgement about men was off? Why did that piss Noah off so monumentally? It certainly hadn’t seemed off when she was climbing him like a tree last night. He cracked his knuckles.

  Where are you?

  In a cab.

  Yes, but where are you GOING?

  When there wasn’t an immediate reply, Noah carried the phone with him into the living room and put his shoes on.

  To some bar in the Lower East Side.

  What’s it called?

  Okay, down boy. I appreciate your concern, but I’m thirty-two years old. Do I have a curfew?

  Dammit, Jane, just tell me the name of the bar.

  There was a knocking at his door. Noah moved to answer it just as the return text came.

  Some place called Yellow.

  “Whoa,” Bennett said when Noah yanked the door open with enough force to cause it to crash against the wall in his entryway.

  “Change of plans.” Noah held out his hands to stop Bennett from entering his apartment. “I’m going out.”

  * * *

  Wendy had kind of forgotten, during her recent dry spell, how boring so many men were. That was why her friends-with-benefits stint with Christopher had been so nice. He’d been smart and funny. He’d read the news. There’d been no love connection between them, but he’d been fun to talk to—in addition to being fun to do other things with. She hadn’t really thought she would miss him once he broke it off. And really, she hadn’t—until she’d been reminded, up close and personal, how good she’d had it in the Christopher era.

  That’s why she preferred long-term casual arrangements with smart men rather than one-night stands. Because most men were boring. Finding a decent one-night stand was a lot of work for not a lot of payoff.

&nb
sp; “Can I ask you something?” She interrupted the bearded hipster dude who was droning on about the ratio of hops to malt in the beer he was drinking. When the guy got over his obvious shock at having had his monologue cut short, he nodded. “Do you live with your parents?” Because as far as she could tell, neither his job as a barista nor his novel-in-progress that was an ironic meditation on postmodern consumer culture in an era of identity politics was going to pay New York rent.

  He turned red enough that it was discernable in the dim light of the bar.

  Right. She tipped her head back and drained the remaining quarter of her beer in one go. “Look at that. Looks like I need to nip out for a refill.”

  And to find another prospect. She’d told Jane she didn’t need to come to New York to get laid, but it turned out that after everything that had gone down with Noah, she definitely needed to get laid. Tonight.

  She had a point to prove to herself.

  There was only so much self-revelation a girl could take, and last night’s detonation had her wigged out. After her texting interlude with Noah, she’d spent the rest of the concert thinking about him. Not that that was unusual these days, but she’d really let it sink in how much Noah Denning had, simply by not showing up that night, made her into the woman she was.

  She’d tried to take back her own power that night at the dance, but was it possible that she hadn’t succeeded at all? That by making him into a monster in her head, she’d stayed as under his spell as she’d always been?

  “Hurry back.” The aspiring novelist grinned at her.

  “Will do,” she lied as she headed to the bar. God, at least the downtown Toronto law party scene, dull as it was, was populated by financially independent boring men.

  She was young, single, reasonably attractive, and not looking for love. So why was this so hard?

  All of a sudden, a Josh Groban song filled the room. Jesus Christ, it was like the universe was aligned against her. Was it a sign? And if so, of what?

  As she waited for her beer, she scanned the room for Jane and found her huddled over an old-school jukebox with her new best friend, a librarian in the New York Public Library system. They’d struck up a conversation right when Wendy and Jane arrived, but once they’d started yammering about diversity as a guiding principle in collection development, Wendy had headed out into the crowd to hunt.

  So Josh was Jane’s doing. He wasn’t a sign from the universe.

  She paid for her drink, turned around—and crashed smack dab into someone and spilled her beer all over him.

  And that someone was Noah Denning.

  Whose shirt was now drenched.

  “We have to stop meeting like this.” His eyes flicked down to his beautifully tailored, probably super expensive, off-white button-down—which was now covered in wide rivers of Guinness—and then back up to meet her gaze.

  She should probably apologize, but she wanted to hit him. She wanted to pummel him, actually, to pound her fists against his chest and kick his shins with her stiletto heel.

  Well. Last night she’d been thinking about how her anger at him had disappeared. Clearly that had only been temporary.

  She had no particular reason to be angry at him right now, though. Beyond, of course, the usual: he’d broken her heart. And added to that the cherry on top that apparently her entire adult personality was his doing.

  But she had nothing specific to be angry with him about. Nothing that would stand up in court.

  “What are you doing here?” she asked.

  “I’m cock-blocking you.” He smiled as if he’d announced he was here to give her a present.

  Okay, there was a cause for her anger, a bit delayed, but hey, retroactive justification worked for her.

  “Excuse me?” She invested those two words with all the icy haughtiness she could muster. Because how dare he? Just because Mr. Control Freak Conscious Uncoupling didn’t deign to do one-night stands didn’t mean he had any jurisdiction over her. It was none of his goddamned business who she did or didn’t sleep with.

  “But probably there’s some other name for it when you’re doing it to a woman.” Noah spoke mildly, still wearing that nonchalant smile. “Pussy blocking, maybe?”

  Wendy gasped. It wasn’t like she was a prude. The girls had been right when they’d told Noah at the photo shoot that she had developed a potty mouth. You hang out with hard-bitten lawyers for enough years and it sort of changes you. Or changes your vocabulary, at least. But to hear Noah saying those words…well, it messed with her head.

  He flagged down the bartender. “I’ll ask my sister. She’s a walking Urban Dictionary.” He glanced at the empty glass Wendy was still holding, then down at his ruined shirt. “Two pints of Guinness, please. And a towel.”

  Wendy had no idea what to say. Which was not a position she was accustomed to—or appreciated—being in.

  Noah paid the bartender, pivoted to face her, and held out one of the drinks.

  “You know what, Noah? Fuck you.” There. She’d found her tongue.

  Completely unruffled—maddeningly unruffled—he leaned against the bar and surveyed the room. “I have to say, I think I would be a better prospect than most of these guys.” His gaze made a complete, unhurried circuit of the room before settling on her. “When it comes to fucking, I mean.”

  She gasped again—goddammit. She hated that he knew he’d gotten to her. But hearing Mr. I-Don’t-Do-Casual talking so nonchalantly about “fucking” was doing something to her. She put on her courtroom face and ordered herself to stop gasping even if she had to stop breathing to do so.

  His eyes danced. Apparently, this was all very amusing to him. “I’m just saying, the pickings seem pretty slim here.”

  “There are tons of guys here.” Damn, she wished she’d hung in there with the barista-slash-novelist. At least then when Mr. Ego here made his grand entrance, he’d have been greeted by the sight of her talking to another guy.

  “Yeah, if you’re into excessive facial hair and retro ironic T-shirts.” He wrinkled his nose. “How are we not in Brooklyn right now?” Seeming to realize that she wasn’t going to take the beer he’d ordered for her, he set it on the bar behind him. “And I bet this crowd isn’t winning any awards for its conversation skills. I bet it’s all community gardens and craft beer.” He scoffed. “Give me a Guinness any day.”

  She agreed with that last part. Actually, she agreed with all the parts. He’d hit on exactly her objections to the guys who’d shown interest in her this evening, but of course she wasn’t about to let him know that. “You’re forgetting that conversation skills are not the most important attributes in this context.”

  “Point taken. But beards?” His gaze fell to her crotch. “Ouch.”

  There was no mistaking his meaning. He didn’t look away, either, and he must have secretly been a comic book character with heat-vision or something, because suddenly she was wet between her legs. God, the idea that he would assume a hypothetical bearded hookup would go there. He hadn’t been kidding about not being the casual sex type. He had no idea how hookup culture worked.

  Well, hell, if he was going to come in here and get all aggressive, she could dish it right back. She picked up her beer from the bar and only when she’d taken a nice long drink did she say, carefully pitching her voice to project a nonchalance she did not feel, “Your observation is irrelevant. In my experience, a guy you pick up in a bar is not going to go down on you the first time you fuck him. In fact, no guy is going to go down on you the first time you fuck him.”

  She was actively trying to ruffle his feathers. She was sick of being the only one gasping in shock here. But damn him, was he made of stone? Because he kept lounging against the bar nodding like he was considering her argument, as calm as he would be in a low-stakes, unremarkable trial. Then he shrugged and said, “Well, that’s a missed opportunity for them, then, isn’t it?”

  Her face heated. She thought he was done and started to turn, preparing to leave�
�because why stand around torturing herself with this weird, charged conversation any longer?—but then he said, “It also proves my point.”

  Was this guy ever going to knock it off? “Which is?”

  “That I’m a better prospect—when it comes to fucking—than these hipsters.” He sneered a little as he once again surveyed the room. When his gaze returned to her, he licked his lips. He actually licked his lips.

  All right, enough. She was just going to call him on it. She set her beer down again on the bar and got right in his face. Or, right in his neck, because even with her heels, that was as far as she came. She was undaunted, though; she was used to confronting tall guys who’d overdosed on machismo. Hell, that practically described her entire professional existence. “Noah Denning, are you propositioning me?”

  “No.”

  He answered so quickly and with such decisiveness that she felt like he’d slapped her.

  Or, you know, like he’d stood her up at the prom.

  The shame was the same. It was exactly the same.

  “I was speaking hypothetically. Because this”—he waved his hand back and forth between them, mimicking exactly the motion she’d used last night—“is done. Some sort of bizarre New York vacation aberration thing? Remember?”

  “Oh, I remember.” She remembered everything. “You just sounded for a minute there like maybe you’d reconsidered your whole prudish stance on cows and milk.”

  She was trying to bait him, but it didn’t work. “Nope. I’m just here to check on my sister.” He scanned the crowd. “You know, on account of my obsession with taking care of her.”

  Wendy took a little bit of comfort in the way he referenced what she’d said about him last night. It was, at least, confirmation that some of her words had gotten to him. “She’s dancing with a librarian.” She pointed at the other end of the bar where Jane and her new bestie had moved on from Josh and were bopping around to “Uptown Girl.”