The Flirtation

by Kayley Loring

  “What?”

  “The villa is on the Grand Bahama Island. It would take longer if you flew London to Nassau, Nassau to Freeport, for some reason.”

  “Unholy! I don’t even want to know the time difference.”

  “London’s five hours ahead. Same as if you were in New York.”

  Five hours ahead. I’d have to start working at three in the morning there, which meant I’d have to go to sleep at eight-thirty, which I’d never be able to do, so obviously I wouldn’t be getting any sleep, which meant I’d be making bad decisions, and I couldn’t afford to make bad decisions around Avery Davis, that I knew for certain. “What terrible thing did I do to deserve this?”

  “I don’t mean to speak out of turn, sir, but I would literally cut off my right arm if it meant I could go to the Bahamas for a week, all expenses paid, to stay at an exotic private villa with a champion surfer and a beautiful American lady, sir.”

  “Please don’t call me ‘sir.’” Now I felt anxious and old. I sighed and straightened myself up. “Point taken. I’ll make the best of it.”

  “Glad to hear it.”

  “But that’s two full travel days. I’ll have to reschedule an entire week.”

  “Indeed. Well, I’ll have to reschedule it for you. Should be interesting. You’ve only ever been out of town on bank holidays since I’ve been here.”

  “I haven’t taken off a day of work since I’ve been here.” I had been at this consulting firm for five years.

  “Should be very interesting! First class flight, you ought to be able to sleep for most of it.”

  “Of course, right. Okay. You win. I’m done complaining.” All of my posh mates and clients jetted off to the Caribbean all the time. I knew it was possible to get work done around there, I mean if Sir Richard Branson can run his empire from a hammock, I could service my clients from a beach for a couple of days. I didn’t know why I was so resistant. That’s not true, I knew precisely why.

  William showed me the website for Bucket’s rented villa, which was, indeed, exotic. “So you think Avery is beautiful, do you?”

  My assistant snapped out of some private little reverie. “Avery? Oh yes, Avery. Well certainly, I mean I’ve only caught glimpses of her when you’re Skyping, but her face is genuinely lovely, despite the tension in her jaw, rather tight shoulders and dark circles under her eyes from an obvious lack of sleep, but she is, without question, a very attractive woman by anyone’s standard.”

  “She is, isn’t she?”

  “Not my type, of course.”

  “Nor mine, of course.”

  “Of course.”

  William’s face scrunched up. “The only problem is…”

  “I know, I know, she lives in America.”

  “No, I mean the only problem about you going to the Bahamas is that—aren’t you meant to visit Chiara this weekend? You have Valentine’s Day plans with her on Tuesday. I suppose you could be back in time for that.”

  Chiara. Bellisima, pazzo Chiara. I hadn’t seen her in four weeks and was half-hoping it meant the end of our liaison, given that she had spent most of our last mini-break explaining how emotionally closed off I was and that I needed to live life more “through my penis.” It was a one-way argument. She certainly wasn’t wrong. I mean, what man wouldn’t want to live life more through his penis? I just had no intention of changing for her, and could see that she had no intention of not yelling at me in public. After she’d returned to Rome I hadn’t heard from her for two weeks, but then she called out of the blue to say I should join her for Valentine’s Day, which was the following Tuesday. She told me to make the dinner reservations and then described in great detail what she planned to do to me under the table during dessert. It would have been impolite to say “no.”

  Now I would have to call and cancel our plans. I covered my ears, in anticipation of the pain that would soon be inflicted upon them. It wasn’t even the yelling that I was dreading, believe it or not—it was knowing that I’d be letting a woman down. Growing up with my mother and sisters, I’d seen firsthand what happened when women’s hearts are broken and I’d rather be honest and disappoint women upfront so they know what they’re getting into rather than fool them into thinking I’m some prince who’s going to give them their Happily Ever After. I wanted to believe that I’d never make a promise that I cannot keep, and I’d managed not to cock anything up for long stretches of time, but it felt like I was now hovering at the edge of a very slippery slope. It was a slope that would begin with me sliding past a beautiful hot-blooded Italian woman and end with me crashing into Avery. I had no idea what might happen afterwards, and wasn’t sure I was ready to find out.

  Chapter 3

  Avery

  It seemed unnecessarily cold for a February, as I walked home from the office that night, and my fellow New Yorkers were especially impatient and grouchy. It was almost as if New York was trying to tell me to stop being a neurotic idiot and start getting excited about going to a tropical island to be with a man that I adore, for fuck’s sake.

  What is wrong with you?! I could hear my sister’s imagined voice echoing through my head even louder than the street noise. You can pull your sorry ass out of bed for a client meeting when you’re knocking at Death’s door with the flu, you can wrap a cashmere scarf around your neck ten different ways, but you can’t wrap your head around a last-minute all-expenses paid Bahamas trip?!

  Nope! Some people are good at working hard and playing hard, all in the same day even. Some people are good at having relationships while simultaneously pursuing a career. I didn’t have a fucking clue how they did it, I was not good at it, and smart people choose not to do things that they’re not good at. Am I right? I’m pretty sure I’m right. I passed a group of women my age—gloriously high-heeled, fake-eyelashed, Snapchatty late twentysomethings who were going clubbing on a Wednesday night, who still cared more about having fun than being right, but you know what—that’s their journey good for them. They seemed so happy it made me want to go back to the office.

  It’s not that I hadn’t tried to have fun. I’d tried dating—when you live in Manhattan you have to—this is not a town for homebodies. There’s so much to do here and so many people asking questions about your love life. I had fun for the first few years while I was an assistant. I went out with the cute baristas and waiters who were impressed by my sweater sets and my permanent job at a fancy company, and I went out with the executives who took me to fancy restaurants and didn’t pay attention to my answers when they asked how my day was. It was all fine. On Mondays I could tell people what I’d done on the weekend, and there was never a fear of getting derailed by someone that I’d fallen head over heels in love with, because I didn’t fall for any of them. I had my eye on the prize, and the prize was financial independence—for life.

  Once I’d gotten promoted to junior manager, two years ago, I became more selective about who I went out with. I had to be. I had less free time, less bandwidth to devote to anything other than my job. But when I started working with Luke a year ago, I felt so satisfied that I didn’t have the drive or the desire to flirt with anyone else. I was getting paid to flirt with a beautiful man while I worked and I didn’t even have to shave my legs and he’d be none the wiser! I just had to look good from the waist up, sound good, and write smart, witty messages. It was perfect!

  I had one brief, understated fling with a neighbor, about half a year after I’d “met” Luke, once I’d found out that the guy was moving to Brazil within a week. That fit into my schedule, and I was able to reassure myself that I could indeed have a sex life with a human male who was actually in the same room with me if I’d wanted one. When my neighbor started looking at me all misty-eyed and holding my hand while I ate a bagel, I got nervous. When he told me he was reconsidering moving to Brazil because he thought my sudden interest in him was a sign that he should stay here, I had to pull out the big guns. I did some quick Googling while he was taking a shower, and while
he was drying off, still naked and feeling vulnerable, I told him that if he was serious about us being together that it was important for him to know that I was an alien conspiracy theorist because I was abducted—twice—as a child. I told him I’d be happy to give him a pamphlet for the Transhumanist Party that I was a member of, and that he would probably really dig what my favorite philosopher, who goes by the name of Zoltan, writes about in his blog. Amazingly, he left for Brazil a day early! I decided to keep Zoltan in my back pocket for when I was really feeling emotionally cornered.

  And then there was Mr. Potter. I had introduced my older sister Jackie to my Magic Wand once, several months ago, when she had repeatedly asked me how it was possible that I wasn’t dating anyone and yet also hadn’t eaten all of the cupcakes in Manhattan or climbed the side of the Empire State Building while crushing small airplanes. In other words—how was it possible that I was still in a good mood most of the time?

  “You’re going to die alone,” she said, when I held up the unassuming white and blue device.

  “I’m not going to die alone, I’m going to die with Mr. Potter,” I told her.

  “No, you’re slowly dying inside because of Mr. Potter. Do you see the difference?”

  I plugged it in, held it up to her and turned it on the high power setting. She jumped like a startled cat. The high power setting can be felt through ski pants, and it’s like being made love to by a jackhammer with a tennis ball stuck to the end of it. It ain’t for sissies.

  “Holy shit, Ave!” she exclaimed. “You’re going to wear your clit out with this thing! Seriously—you may as well have a steel vagina—you’re never going to achieve orgasm from contact with human flesh again. You’re going to pulverize it!” She went on. “One day there will be pink dust in your panties and you’ll be all ‘what’s that?!’ and then you’ll call me crying because your clitoris has turned to sand and you did it to yourself with this…tool.”

  “You’re a tool for not using one,” I said, waving it at her.

  She swatted at it with her handbag. “I have a flesh and blood husband who pounds away at me twice a week—and we already spend way too much on electricity and batteries so trust me—I do not need another toy in my apartment!”

  I was dying to talk to Jackie, but I already knew exactly what she would say. I knew what she would say, I knew she’d be right, and I knew I’d refute everything she said even though she was right. It was our thing. As soon as I walked through the door to my glamorous, cramped little one bedroom apartment, I immediately went to the closet to grab my garment bag, which was always ready to go, with three Ann Taylor outfits that are suitable for any business occasion hanging inside of it. I got my cosmetic bag from the cabinet under the sink in the bathroom, which was also forever at the ready for emergency work trips.

  I pulled the slate grey Diane Von Furstenberg carry-on luggage out from the back of the closet. It was a gift from a client and I loved it so much I wanted to curl up inside it, but I was suddenly overcome with panic. How the hell am I supposed to pack for this trip? I felt lightheaded all of a sudden.

  Having realized that I hadn’t eaten more than a protein bar and a salad all day, I went to the fridge. I knew I wouldn’t find anything decent to eat. My refrigerator was where organic kale went to die. Approximately once a month on a Sunday, after browsing some healthy babe’s blog, I’d go to Whole Foods, determined to cook and freeze healthy meal portions for the coming week. Then by the time I got home, I’d be so tired of carrying groceries, I’d realize I’d forgotten to buy bay leaves or shallots or whatever and that I don’t own an immersion blender (whatever that is), and I’d order greasy Chinese because I was starving. I’d just shove everything into the fridge, sometimes without even removing them from the grocery bags.

  I was about to pick up my phone to call Jackie, when I received a FaceTime call from her. Jackie lives in an affordable three-bedroom apartment in Queens, with her husband and my niece and nephew. She has always had a knack for calling me exactly when I needed to talk to her but didn’t want to call and admit that I was freaking out. She’s three years older than me, and had for the most part treated me like an annoying little sister while we were growing up, but after our mother died suddenly when I was in my final year of university, she instantly became the kind of big sister I’d always longed for her to be—she gave me all the tough love and sass I needed and then some.

  I accepted the video call and bit into a floppy old carrot while being welcomed with a blurry shot of her cleavage, as she looked for something in a cupboard. She got the awesome knockers, and I got the half-off rack. It’s so unfair.

  “Hi hang on,” she muttered, then called out to her kids. “You know what just have pudding—one each!”

  “Oh that’s healthy.”

  She peered into her phone at me. “Oh I’m sorry—this from a grown woman who’s eating a limp carrot?”

  I took one last bite of the thing, then tossed it into the waste bin, and went back to my bedroom to pack. “Did your boobs get bigger?”

  “I’m retaining water and I accidentally shrunk all of my bras in the dryer. It’s been a great day. Your niece would like to speak with you.” Jackie aimed the phone’s camera at her five year-old daughter Franny. Franny was hugging a stuffed bunny rabbit that was about a foot taller than she was. The rabbit was so big it took up half the width of their kitchen. It would never fit inside Franny’s room. I knew my sister would kill me, but it was available for Same Day Delivery, and I just wanted to buy it. But Franny looked like she was madly in love with it and she was so happy she was jumping up and down and screaming—although to be honest, she was almost always jumping up and down and screaming.

  Franny looked up at the phone and screamed directly into it. “THANK YOU AUNT AVERYYYYYY! I love him I love him I love him I love him I love him!”

  I would love to love anything as much as that girl claims to love Mr. Bunny, I thought to myself, as I turned the volume down on my phone. “You are so welcome, sweetheart! I saw Mr. Bunny in a store window at lunch today and he waved at me and said ‘take me to Franny’s house, I want to live with her forever!’”

  She didn’t stop jumping as she frowned at me and said, “You did not—you got him on Amazon!”

  “I love you too, Honey, put your mom back on!”

  Franny went back to screaming and Jackie went into the living room. “I take it by the size of the gift that you won’t be attending the party on Saturday.”

  “I’m so so sorry—something came up.” I removed six pairs of my sexiest undergarments from my panty drawer and placed them in the suitcase.

  “Something always comes up.”

  “Hey man, I was just there on New Years for three hours!” I removed the sexy undergarments from the suitcase, put them back in the drawer and packed sensible cotton underwear instead.

  “Where are you off to this time?”

  “The Bahamas. It’s a nightmare.”

  “I think that’s their official slogan. Come to the Bahamas—it’s your worst nightmare!”

  I replaced the sensible undies with the sexy ones, and added an extra couple of pairs for good measure. “I have no idea how to pack for this.”

  “What are you so worked up about?”

  “I’m not worked up.”

  “Tell me.”

  “It’s nothing, shut up.”

  “Tell me.”

  “There’s nothing to tell.”

  “Tell me.”

  I sighed. “Luke Mason is going to be there.”

  My sister caught her breath and her eyes widened. “Jackson—watch your sister! I’ll be in my office for five minutes!” She retreated to the bathroom and shut the door. “This is so amazing! I mean, you said you were sad because this transatlantic deal was almost wrapped up and you might not have an excuse to Skype with him anymore.”

  “When did I say that?”

  “During the unbearable three hours you spent here on New Years.”

/>   Damn you, wine! When will you learn not to tell my sister everything?!

  “Do you have a slutty bikini?”

  I was rifling through my bathroom drawer, looking for a razor, three ounce perfume, and red lipstick. “Why would I have a bikini? I haven’t taken a vacation in ten years.”

  “A tankini? A burqini?”

  “I have no ini wear of any kind.”

  She waved her hand, dismissively. “You can get something at the airport. This is thrilling. Why are you so freaked out about seeing him?! He’s basically your best friend.”

  “You’re my best friend.”

  “I’m your sister, I have to put up with you. He answers the phone when you call him at four a.m. and sends you your favorite kind of marmalade for your birthday even though you haven’t had sex with him.”

  It was true—I had once mentioned that my local British grocery store stopped carrying my favorite brand of marmalade, and a month later I came to my office on my birthday and found a beautiful gift basket filled with jars of marmalade and crumpets and English muffins. I was able to convince myself that it was a classy business gift and a tax write-off for him, but Jackie instantly proclaimed that he was in love with me or at the very least expected and deserved a picture of my boobs. I wasn’t sure what I wanted to believe, but regardless, it was incredibly sweet and thoughtful of him.

  “You communicate with him every day.”

  “Not on weekends or holidays.”

  “He’s your best friend,” she went on. “Why are you so afraid of being in the same room as him?”

  “Well, it’s complicated. We just get along so well.”

  “Uh huh.” I was acutely aware that my sister was urinating while we discussed this, and that she was simultaneously tidying up the magazines and books around the toilet with her free hand.

  “And he’s ridiculously handsome and funny and he has an amazing English accent.”