It Takes Two
Page 23
He nodded and turned serious. She clearly wasn’t kidding about this.
“Turns out it works secondhand, too.” The waitress arrived with their food, and Wendy murmured her thanks, but she didn’t make any move to eat, just kept regarding him curiously from across the table. “That last day in Vegas, and that first day back in Toronto, before I knew my aunt was going to be okay…those were the two worst days of my life.”
He wanted to lodge a protest, to point out that one of those days had also contained the best sex of his life, but it was not the time for that. This was not about him.
“Like, who had I become?” she went on. “I had my undies all in a bunch over the idea of losing Jane because she was getting married. I was trying to take that out on Cameron, to construct some kind of bullshit argument in my head for why he’s not good enough for her. But to what end? It’s not like I was ever going to stand up and object to the wedding, so what was the point of all that?” She sighed and rested her chin on her hands. “And then you.”
His heart sped up. He wasn’t sure why.
“I’m so worked up about this wedding that I have to start fighting with you? I mean, yes, we’ve always sort of done that, but Noah, I brought Jane’s bachelorette party to Vegas not for her, but because I wanted to show you up.” He opened his mouth to say something reassuring, but she wasn’t done. “I’ve been carrying this stupid grudge for years. Because of something that happened at the high school prom. How screwed up is that?”
“About that…” She still hadn’t let him apologize.
But she wasn’t done. “And it took my almost losing Mary—losing everything—to realize what an asshole I was being.”
“You’re not an asshole.” She was being way too hard on herself. Everything she said she’d done—carried a grudge against him all these years, had reservations about Jane getting married—made a certain kind of sense, if you knew where she was coming from. And he did.
She ignored him, still intent on her speech. “After Mary’s surgery, Reverend Bill and I were standing outside her room, and you could see her through the window in the door. She hadn’t woken up yet. I said to him, ‘I can’t lose her.’ He said—he’s like this weird philosophical dude; he’s always saying these maddeningly vague things that seem kind of trite initially but kind of sneak up on you with their profundity. He said, ‘Sometimes it’s better to focus on what you have rather than what you don’t have or are in danger of losing.’”
He nodded. He couldn’t argue with that perspective.
“And, honestly, Noah, it was like he’d hit me over the head with this super deep, profound truth. If I was a religious person, I would call it a revelation. Everything suddenly looked different. I still had my aunt. She was going to be okay. She’s going to face a huge amount of rehab, but she’s going to be okay. And I have Jane, the best friend a person could want. And I have Cameron. Ha!”
He raised his eyebrows.
“Who turns out to be kind of a mensch.”
“You had a revelation sparked by an Anglican priest, and now you’re calling Cameron a mensch. How ecumenical of you.”
She chuckled. “Yeah, so I’ve lost stuff, is the point. I’ve lost people. But I also have people. I always have.” She made a punching motion like she was trying to affectionately jab his shoulder, but she couldn’t reach it across the table, so she switched to pointing at him. “I had a pretty good substitute big brother back in the day, for example.”
“Except I messed up back in the day.”
“Once. You messed up once. But not even really, because I never told you that you messed up. You didn’t know how important that stupid dance was for me.”
“I am sorry,” he said. “I wish I could go back and be there for you.”
“All things considered, you were there for me. No, not all things considered. Overwhelmingly. You were overwhelmingly there for me.”
Well, shit. Why did his eyes suddenly itch? He wanted to ask her to elaborate on the sense she’d given him, in Vegas, that she’d had a crush on him as a kid. But this was her revelation. He didn’t need to insert himself. Also, he wasn’t sure if his voice would work, so instead of opening his mouth to talk, he opened it to shove some fries into it.
“Anyway,” she went on, “I just turned everything inside out. I’m appreciating what I have now, rather than what I don’t. So that’s where Happy Wendy comes from.”
He cleared his throat. “Maybe you should start a gratitude journal.” Joking was easy. Joking would get them back on more comfortable ground. “Subscribe to Oprah’s magazine. Put up some posters of aphorisms. You know, like with sunsets and kittens?”
“Hey now, I wouldn’t go that far.”
“Good. Because while I’m glad you’ve had this, uh, big insight, I gotta say, I think I kind of miss Prickly Wendy. Combative Wendy.” It was true. In some ways, he’d never felt more alive than when he was sparring with Wendy, in person or via text. It was like everything he loved about his job transferred over to…a ridiculously attractive, intelligent woman. “I’m not sure I know how to interact with you if we’re not arguing over something.”
“Oh, don’t worry. I’m sure all this agreeableness is just temporary overcompensation.” She did the Wendy cackle. “The pendulum will no doubt settle somewhere in the middle of Happy Wendy and Prickly Wendy.”
* * *
“I’m going to have to give up either Thailand or Hong Kong,” Wendy said to Gia over curry and a pile of maps and calendars that evening in Wendy’s apartment.
Wendy’s travel plans had been modified by her aunt’s accident. She was still going to take six months off work, but instead of continuously traveling, she’d decided to make twelve trips of two weeks each, and on each trip, she’d hit two countries. Then she’d come home and hang out with Mary for two weeks before starting the cycle over again.
“Why are you so calm?” Gia asked. “I would expect you to be freaking out over this disruption. You’ve been planning this trip for so long. It was your big thing.”
Wendy shrugged. “Yeah, but you know what else turns out to be my big thing? Not having my aunt dead.”
Gia lifted her glass of water. “Cheers to that.”
“Mary actually tried to convince me to go as planned. She has this squadron of people from her church to help her while she’s in rehab, so I’m kind of redundant. But I turned out to be strangely fine with changing my plans. Anyway, I think this will be fun. I’ve always tried to, like, collect places as I traveled. I’ve never spent a week in a single place. It will be kind of cool to get to know places differently, to really get the rhythm of them, you know? And, fuck me because this is going to sound like a Hallmark movie or something, but I’m looking forward just as much to hanging out with my aunt. Like, really getting to know her in a way I haven’t so far.” She lifted her own glass, which was filled with Guinness. “Liu spinsters unite.”
“Hey, don’t say that!”
“Why not? I’m not married. I have no plans to get married.”
“I have no plans to get married either.” Gia raised her glass again as if to punctuate the point. “But ‘spinster’ implies, like, dust and cobwebs.” She made a vague gesture at her body. “Ain’t nothing getting dusty here.”
“Yeah, I need to get a new Christopher,” Wendy said, because that’s what she was supposed to say. In truth, despite her big speech in the diner, the idea of sleeping with anyone but Noah anytime soon made her feel sick to her stomach. And wasn’t that an unwelcome development?
“A new fuck buddy, eh? Don’t you ever want to, like, cuddle afterward?”
What the hell? Wendy thought Gia was the one who understood. “Do you?”
“No, ma’am! Just checking.”
Wendy was strangely relieved. “No, I want to talk about case law afterward, maybe, though. That’s why Christopher was so ideal.”
“What about Noah? You guys can talk law pretty, uh, heatedly.”
Wendy had
ordered a bunch of Indian food and was halfway through her plate, but Gia hadn’t started hers. She deflected the Noah question by saying, “How come you’re not eating?” Or drinking either, now that she thought about it—Gia had opted for water, saying she was dehydrated from her flight.
Gia looked down at the plate and pursed her lips for a moment before saying, “I’m not really hungry. I ate on the plane.”
Wendy refrained from pointing out that no one ate on planes anymore and watched Gia scoop up a forkful of the stewy chicken and lift it to her mouth. But she ate it like ice cream, letting her mouth slide over the bite and lap up some of the sauce without actually fully transferring any actual food into her mouth.
“Gia, are you turning into a model with an eating disorder? Do we need to sit you down and have you watch some after-school specials?” Wendy was kidding. Kind of. Because now that she thought about it, Gia hadn’t eaten much in Vegas either.
Gia laughed. “Oh my God, no.” Then she took a regular-size bite of the curry. “Anyway, as for the Europe portion of the trip, don’t stress if Milan doesn’t make the cut.”
“Oh, Milan is making the cut.” Wendy was ridiculously excited about hanging with Gia in Milan, actually. “I’m pairing it with Vienna, so if you want to come with me there, too, you’re totally welcome. A week in Milan, then a week in Vienna.”
“Awesome. I don’t have all my bookings yet, but if you come in that week we talked about, at most I’ll have one or two more days of work before I’m free.”
“Done.” Wendy made a note in her calendar.
“But back to Noah,” Gia said.
Dammit. Wendy thought she’d deflected sufficiently that Noah had been forgotten. Forgotten by Gia. Wendy, of course, wasn’t capable of forgetting Noah for even a day. She’d meant everything she’d said at lunch. She was sorry she’d spent so long being angry at him. She was glad to have him as a friend. But…God, she wanted him. When he’d appeared in Mary’s hospital room, she’d been so happy.
She loved him. The thought was still as astonishing as it had been the night she first had it in Vegas. Even more astonishing? The follow-up question she’d been pondering. If she’d been in love with Noah when she was a kid, and if she was in love with Noah now, did that mean she’d been in love with Noah for seventeen years?
She couldn’t just turn that off.
Yet. But she’d have to learn to. Because she couldn’t just go through life feeling all this shit about someone who could never love her back.
“Hello? Earth to Wendy.”
Crap. She also couldn’t tell Gia any of this. “Sorry, I spaced out for a minute there.”
“Were you thinking about Noah?” Gia teased.
The buzzer signifying a visitor went off. Yes! Saved by the buzzer! Wendy hopped to answer it. “Yes?”
“It’s Noah.”
Well, shit. She wasn’t going to catch a break, was she? She sighed. “Come on up.”
“Wendy and Noah, sitting in a tree…” Gia sang.
“What are you?” Wendy rolled her eyes. “Twelve?”
“K-I-S-S-I-N-G,” Gia finished, then stuck her tongue out at Wendy.
“I rest my case. I told you, it was just a weird Vegas thing.” A weird fake New-York-in-Vegas thing, actually, but Gia didn’t need to know about that.
“Hey,” he said when she opened her door to let him in. “You left your pie at the diner.” He handed her a box.
“Ahhh!” Wendy brought the box over to the island she and Gia had been seated at and popped the top open. “This is a whole pie, though!” She turned to Gia. “I’d just ordered two slices.”
Noah followed her. “Well, I’m told there is a model in town with some serious lemon meringue love.” He winked at Gia. “Hi, Gia.”
“Hi, Noah.” Gia stressed his name as she got up and retrieved three plates from Wendy’s cupboard. “And this way, you can have a piece, too, you clever boy.” Then she said, “Oh, crap. I have to run out. I have a spread in the new Vogue, and I promised my agent I’d buy a bunch of copies for tear sheets for my portfolio. I totally forgot.”
“But…” Wendy had been about to call bullshit. There was no way Gia had a spread in Vogue. A spread in Vogue was huge. Wendy would know if Gia had a spread in Vogue. Wouldn’t she?
Well, shit. She wasn’t exactly winning any friend of the year awards lately. Maybe she wouldn’t know. She certainly hadn’t asked Gia anything about her career lately. “But why can’t your agent get his own—”
“I’ll just run to the corner!” Gia trilled. “Back soon.” She grabbed her phone from the counter. “Soon-ish.”
“But—”
It was no use. Gia was out the door, leaving Wendy face-to-face with Noah Denning and a lemon meringue pie.
* * *
Noah settled himself at Wendy’s kitchen island. “How’d the afternoon go for Mary?”
“Really well.” Wendy rummaged in the cutlery drawer. “They’re talking about moving her to a rehab place next week. She knew Gia was coming to town today, so she chased me off for the evening.”
“That’s good.” Wendy could use a little down time. God, what a couple of weeks she’d had, with their battling Vegas parties and her aunt’s accident. Not to mention…well, him. He was torn between an urge to laugh and a powerful impulse to do something stupid, like hug her.
“Pie?” Wendy got out a knife. “And/or curry? I also have Guinness.” She wrinkled her nose. “Lemon pie, curry, and Guinness. Three delicious things that are, together, an abomination.”
“Mmm. Lemon meringue pie and Guinness. I don’t know. I’m kind of feeling it.”
She slid the knife and plates over to him. “You slice, and I’ll get the beer.”
She did, and then she started cleaning up dinner, moving around the small kitchen and putting things to rights. She paused at one point, frowning at a plate full of some kind of curry before scraping it back into a takeout box. Then she stepped up onto a footstool to put something back in a cupboard. His first impulse was to get up and help her, but he squashed it. She wouldn’t want his help. And this way, he could check out her butt. Just because there was going to be nothing more between them didn’t mean he couldn’t admire her from afar.
She was wearing a pair of leggings and a Toronto Blue Jays T-shirt. Her feet were bare, and her hair was pulled back into a messy bun on the top of her head. He realized that, running aside, he hadn’t seen her in anything so casual since they were teenagers. Even when they’d been in New York, or at the photo shoot in Jane’s yard, Wendy’s “casual” look had been polished, pulled together. And of course, there had been the going-out looks in Vegas, featuring the infamous collarbone-concealing dresses.
She did casual well, too, not that he was surprised. He shifted on his seat. “I’m sorry I ruined your dress.”
She stepped off the stool and turned to face him. “What?”
“Your dress. That white dress. In Vegas.” She reddened as she realized what he was talking about. “I seem to be two-for-two on ruining your clothes. If you want to give it to me, I’ll take it to my guy at home and mail it back.”
“We’re not talking about that,” she said, her color still high. “Remember?”
“Ah, yes.” He used the side of his fork to cut a bite of pie. “What happens in fake New York stays in fake New York. It’s just that—”
“Noah, what part of ‘I don’t want to talk about it’ do you not understand?”
“Look, we slept together,” he said, persisting for some reason he couldn’t quite name. “It’s a little weird.”
“It’s a lot weird. And the only way to make it not weird is to stop talking about it.”
Right. He would stop pushing. He wasn’t that much of a dick. “You know what’s a good way to not talk?” He surveyed the apartment, which was immaculately ordered and impeccably decorated in a sort of modern style that managed to be spare but not cold. He did not see a TV.
“What?”
“And bookish Jane doesn’t have cable.” She did the Wendy cackle thing, and for some reason, it triggered a pooling of warmth in his chest.
“It appears neither do you.” He let his gaze pass over the living room again, looking for a cabinet or something that might be used to obscure a television. “Unless you’re hiding a giant man-cave down that hall?” he asked hopefully.
“I am not hiding a giant man-cave. But I do have a tiny den with a big-ass TV in it.”
“I knew you wouldn’t let me down, Wendy Lou Who.”
She rolled her eyes, picked up both beers, and set off down the hallway. “Bring the pie.”
A minute later, they were ensconced on a piece of furniture that was larger than a chair but smaller than a loveseat. It was like a chair on steroids. She hadn’t been kidding; the room was tiny. There was just enough room for the monster chair, the TV, and a rickety rocking chair in one corner.
The mega-chair had a matching mega-ottoman. Wendy took a stack of books off it and extended her legs out, recliner-style. He followed suit and sighed in contentment as she flipped to the game.
“Yes!” she said, taking stock of the score—they were at the top of the second inning, and the Jays were up 1–0.
Noah was indifferent about the outcome of the game. Despite Toronto being his hometown, he wasn’t a Jays fan—he hadn’t gotten into baseball until after he’d moved away, and this game wouldn’t have any bearing on the fate of his Yankees. But damn, he was a fan of watching Wendy be a Jays fan. She was knowledgeable about the game and the politics of the league, and she was into it, punching her fist into the air in excitement and hanging her head in dismay depending on what was happening. It was kind of like watching the game with a guy.
Except not. Because when he watched a game with Bennett, he generally wasn’t painfully aware of every inch of his own body. His skin didn’t feel prickly when Bennett was nearby. His mind didn’t keep slipping away from the game and back to a hotel room in Vegas a week ago.