After You

by Sam Mariano

  “Of course not,” I send back. “That’s fine, I just wanted to know.”

  “If it’s important to you, I’ll pull a half day. Maybe I can catch the reception? I really have a lot of work to do though, I can’t clear the whole weekend. I’m sorry.”

  “Totally fine,” I type back. “Don’t even worry about the reception. I’m pretty sure I won’t die if I have to do the chicken dance by myself.”

  “Will you really do the chicken dance? I’m reconsidering my refusal.”

  Smiling faintly, I roll my eyes, “Go to court and leave me alone.”

  “God, you’re irresistible.”

  “Like cuddling a cactus,” I reply.

  “A really hot cactus.”

  “Weirdo,” I shoot back.

  “All right, I’m really late. Talk to you later.”

  I send a cactus emoji and close the message. As I set my phone aside, I feel much more prepared to take on the manuscript. It’s just a story, after all. Not my story, just a story.

  Chapter Two

  I’m sitting in front of my computer with headphones on, staring intently at the screen. Too intently, I guess, because I completely miss the man who lets himself into my house until he puts a white bag full of yummy-smelling food down on my desk. Then my gaze jumps to him.

  I hit pause, taking off my headphones, then unplugging them from the laptop.

  “Ever heard of knocking?” I ask him.

  Completely unapologetic, he steals the chair from Louise’s desk and drags it over next to mine before dropping into it. “Ever heard of locking your door? You’re going to get murdered.”

  “I locked it earlier; Louise must have left it unlocked when she left. Anyway, I have a foolproof anti-murder-victim plan. If anyone ever comes into my house unexpectedly, I’ll confuse them until they leave. I’ll demand to know why they didn’t bring food, and start talking to them until they think I’m crazy. They’ll be so thrown off, they’ll go murder someone else instead.”

  He leans forward to take our food out of bags, handing me a white carton and plastic utensils. “Maybe you’ll ruin their murder routine so effectively they’ll give up murder altogether and turn over a new leaf.”

  I nod emphatically. “Especially after I invite them to have a seat and watch this TED talk with me. Which is what we are about to do, for the record. I already started it, but I’m only two minutes in so I’ll restart it for you.”

  “You’re too kind,” he says, dryly, as he leans back in his own chair and nods at the laptop. “What’s this one about?”

  “This guy is talking about what makes a life worth living.”

  Henry cocks an eyebrow at me. “Are you struggling with that?”

  “No,” I say, shrugging. “I just like to expand my mind. You know this about me.”

  “I do.” Being the observant man he is, however, he notes the white paperback on my desk. “Is that a self-help book? Is something going on I should know about?”

  “No,” I say, laughing lightly. “I’m good. I’m just doing some independent study. I’m listening to this series of philosophy lectures in my downtime.”

  “Downtime; what’s that?”

  “No kidding,” I say, planting my fork in the generous scoop of rice and leaning forward. “Ready to start?”

  “Sure.” He misses a beat. “Sorry I had to cancel dinner earlier.”

  “No problem. I had work to do anyway. You made it to the Chinese place before it closed and I still get to watch my TED talk; this is a win. Now, are you done talking for 20 minutes? Because I’ll stab you with this fork if you talk to me while I’m trying to listen to this.”

  “You’re so mean to me. Go ahead, start it.”

  I do, then I lean back in my office chair and dig in to the Chinese food he brought over. I love doing stuff like this with Henry. It’s my favorite thing about him. I’m not sure he would choose on his own to spend his last waking hours of the day sitting at a desk, watching a TED talk while eating Chinese food with a woman who isn’t going to fuck him, but he doesn’t have a problem with it, either. Henry is the greatest.

  To be honest, although we now openly refer to ourselves as girlfriend and boyfriend, I never made the decision to cross that threshold.

  Henry and I became friends by necessity. I was using him for free legal information. He knew and didn’t care. We would meet up for strictly professional (except that I wasn’t paying him) dinners or appetizers so I could ask him about various legal matters related to my business. As we spent that time together, though, I realized he was interesting. I liked his perspective on more than just legal matters. Once, I had him read a scene from a book I was editing that wasn’t working for me. I couldn’t quite put my finger on why until I gave it to him. He read through it, asked me a few questions about the hero, read over it one more time, then said simply, “He’d never do this. Doesn’t make any sense. Cut the scene.”

  I didn’t fall in love, but I did fall in like. Henry called to me like a kindred spirit, and I’ve never come across any of those before. I’ve never been a person who made many friends at all, but for whatever reason, Henry was interested in being mine.

  Well, not for whatever reason. I realized pretty early on that he wanted to snag me. Not because I’m so damn special, but because I didn’t want him to. I am the anti-girlfriend. If he expressed even the slightest romantic interest in me, instead of trying to feed it and hook him, I’d shy away. Even though he gave me his cell number, I didn’t want to talk all day. Even though we very much enjoy hanging out, I would prefer he spend his evening out with friends than bugging me. Even though we flirted shamelessly, I didn’t want to date him. If I caught sight of anything resembling a string, I would run so far and so fast in the other direction, it wouldn’t even be funny.

  But he has endured this—and me—for almost an entire year. Then last month we were going about our routine dinner and he ordered me a drink while I was in the bathroom. The problem with that was, I had already had a drink with Louise prior to going out—her sister sent her some wine she wanted to try.

  I’m not sure if I have a predisposition (my dad drinks like a fish) but I do know that I lose control of myself as soon as I get tipsy, let alone drunk. I have a one-drink limit when I go out with a guy, even if only in a friendly capacity. When Henry ordered me a drink, he assumed it was my first. But then it started hitting me a lot harder than one drink should, even for a lightweight like me. Alcohol worked its black magic on my personality, opening me up and melting away my inhibitions. I realized as I sat across the table from this charming, attractive, intelligent man who had been respectfully chasing me for the better part of a year, I was insane not to let him catch me.

  I also realized he had blue eyes. It wasn’t like I’d never looked at his eyes before, so I guess I knew that, but I’d never seen them like I was seeing them then. There was a look in his eyes that I hadn’t seen in years.

  A Derek look. He used to have this way of looking at me sometimes, and I never knew exactly what he was thinking, but it felt like adoration. It felt like tenderness. It felt like love.

  Now, in a sober state of mind, I despise all of those things. I would have kicked off my kitten heels, strapped on some running shoes, and hightailed it out of there so fast, he would have felt a light breeze.

  But I wasn’t sober. Stodgy, unbending, self-protective Nicole melted into the background and Nikki came out full-force. When Henry walked me to my car that night, he looked so handsome in the moonlight. He stood there in his sharp blue suit, that light in his familiar blue eyes like he thought I was something special, and Nikki did a really impulsive thing that Nicole would later have to pay for.

  She kissed him. Grabbed him right by the lapels, tugged him close, and brushed her lips against his.

  To say he looked shocked would be quite the understatement.

  Assuming he was only chasing me because I was the girl who couldn’t be caught, he might have backed off after that.
He’d conquered me, after all. But I backed off. I took that role. I made him chase me again—not intentionally, I just didn’t want to deal with the fallout of stupid, drunk, slutty Nikki’s dumbassery. Then he brought me breakfast one morning and cornered me in the kitchen. Drunk or not, I like being cornered. It’s a bit twisted, I guess, but I know who I am, and a man who can dominate me is a man I can look at in a different light. A man I can be impressed with. Henry did all the right things—he cornered me, he was firm and authoritative, and as he looked down into my face, he told me, “Stop being weird.”

  “I’m not being weird,” I lied.

  Then instead of answering my absurd lie, he grabbed my chin and kissed me again. It was the scariest thing I’d experienced since Derek, and somehow his ability to terrify me opened the door. I kissed him back. My blood rushed through my veins as his big, strong hands moved beneath me and he lifted my ass, putting me on the counter and planting himself between my legs. We were both fully clothed, but it was the sexiest encounter I’d had in what felt like an entire lifetime.

  To be perfectly honest, he was the first man since Derek to turn me on. There are a lot of men out there and I’ve been on quite a few dates, but most of them just don’t have it.

  In that moment, Henry had it.

  He must have sensed that, so he locked my ass down while he knew I wouldn’t object. I respond well to that kind of dominance, so from that day forward, I accepted my role as Henry’s girlfriend.

  Had he remained in that lane, he would probably be spending the night by now, but he didn’t. Once he had me locked down, he went back to being too careful, to feeling more like a friend again—just a friend who kisses me from time to time. It hasn’t been much of an issue because one of the reasons we’re so compatible is that we’re both workaholics. I’m never mad when he’s busy, and he always understands why I won’t blow off an evening of work to go out with him and his friends to some bar they’re congregating at.

  It’s the perfect relationship. All the perks of a boyfriend, none of the aggravation.

  As my TED talk ends, I look over at Henry for his opinion. “What do you think?”

  He shrugs. “I’m not a creative type, so none of that really applied to me.”

  “Yeah, I had no idea there was an emphasis on creative types. I still related to it. It almost made me want to write another book.”

  Now he sits forward, cocking an eyebrow and casting a questioning look my way. “Another book?”

  I curse myself in my head, shoving a forkful of rice in my mouth.

  “You wrote a book? I have to read it. What’s it called? What’s it about?”

  I chew the rice as slowly as humanly possible, until it’s disgusting mush in my mouth, then I finally swallow. “No, I didn’t mean…. I mean, obviously—What I meant was… I obviously publish books. That other people write.”

  Grinning at me, Henry says, “Wow, make sure I never get you on the stand. I’ll destroy you.”

  “That’s kinda hot,” I tell him.

  He regards me dryly. “Nice try. You can’t distract me. Single-minded focus. What’s your book about? Why don’t you want me to read it? Is it dirty?”

  Since I know he’s latched on now and won’t give up until I tell him something, I give him as little as possible. “Some parts are, sure. It’s not a big thing. No one knows I wrote the books. I can’t believe I just slipped up and told you.”

  His delight only grows. “Plural? There are multiple books?”

  “Dammit!”

  “Stop withholding this joy from my life. I want to read your books. I don’t care if they’re dirty. I want to know what comes from the creative mind of Nicole Harmon.”

  “Never. Literally never. I would rather die than ever let you read my books.”

  “I’ll find out,” he states. “I’m a lawyer. I have investigators at my disposal. I’ll find them one way or another, so you might as well just give me what I want.”

  “You won’t,” I state. “I used a pen name. There’s nothing tying me to that girl. You can investigate until you die, you’ll never find out.”

  “Or you could just tell me,” he suggests. “I have a theory that if you do, the world won’t end.”

  “Mine would. I would die of humiliation.”

  “Not medically possible,” he informs me. “Why would you be embarrassed, anyway?”

  “Because they’re terrible,” I inform him right back.

  His dismisses the notion immediately. “No, they’re not.”

  “How do you know?”

  “Because you would never publish a book you believed to be terrible.”

  “I didn’t publish it because I thought… It was personal. Therapeutic. I had some stuff in my head that I needed to get out, and it was most enjoyable to do it in book form. I only intended to write one book, but that book… surprisingly found an audience, and a few people said they would like more. It completely defeated the purpose of writing the book in the first place, but I decided one more book might be okay. I started writing and before I knew it, there was a second book.”

  “What was the purpose of writing it in the first place?”

  I glance up at him, but I can’t hold his gaze, so I look right back at my food. “Closure. I wanted to close a chapter of my life that ended badly, I just wanted the end to be… better.”

  “You don’t want me to read it because it’s autobiographical, then? Because I’ll find out about whatever happened to make you the way you are?”

  I wrinkle up my nose at him. “The way I am?”

  “Delightful,” he answers, immediately. “Obviously, I meant delightful.”

  “You better have,” I mutter. “No, it’s not that. I mean, a little bit, I guess…”

  “Then why?”

  “The whole reason I used a pen name was to protect myself from shit like this, Henry. My thoughts are my own. Maybe if you read it, you would get the wrong idea about me. You would think you’re seeing into my soul, and… you would think things about me that I don’t want you to think. You might have expectations of my capabilities and emotional limitations that are wrong. The book isn’t autobiographical; it’s a fantasy. An old fantasy that I only intended to write and purge, but then… I don’t know, it was fun to live there for a while. It didn’t hurt that the books actually sold well, and I needed money to get this business started. I wrote a third book and bought myself a house. Paid cash. No mortgage.”

  “Jesus,” he says, looking more than a little impressed. “If you made that kind of money, why’d you stop?”

  “I’m not a writer,” I tell him, putting my container of food on the counter, no longer hungry. “I had a single story to tell and I told it. That’s it. I help other people get their stories out there. That’s my role.”

  “I call bullshit,” he states, glancing around my living room. “No mortgage. What’d you pay for this place, 150, maybe 160? That’s gotta be after paying out the ass in self-employment taxes. So, if you made over $200,000 on your books, I’m gonna have to go ahead and disagree with you.”

  “I had passion for the project, that’s why people liked it. I’m not talented; I had some feelings to pour out and I knew good editors. My passion bled into the words and people responded. But I’m not that person, I’m not Janie, and if I let you read the books, you’d think that.”

  “Janie. What’s the hero’s name?”

  Dammit again! “Stop asking me questions. If you figure it out and read the books, I’ll stop talking to you. Don’t test me, Dillinger.”

  I feel myself looking nervous. I squirm in response to the way he watches me. After a moment, he eases back in his seat, scooping up some rice and saying casually, “Well, I’m not going to marry you until you let me read your books.”

  I choke on startled laughter. “You’ve got a deal. Before we get married, I’ll let you read my books.”

  “See, now you sound too eager. Now I think you don’t want to marry me. I feel like
you’re undervaluing the Henry Dillinger package. Want me to get a letter of reference from my boss, telling you how good I am at my job? Nah, what am I saying, you don’t need my money. Maybe I should take my shirt off. Gotta give you some kind of reminder of what I bring to the table.”

  Now I cock an eyebrow at him, but he’s letting me off the hook, so my stomach settles down. I lean forward and grab my container of food to resume eating. “I’ve never seen you without a shirt, counselor, so if you think I need a reminder, I think you’re confusing me for another woman.”

  Instead of looking remotely guilty, Henry rolls his eyes. “I couldn’t confuse another woman for you if I tried. And I have,” he states. “Doesn’t work.”

  “You tried to replace me?” I demand, grasping my heart.

  “A fool’s errand,” he assures me. “None of them are you.”

  “Not sure if sweet or creepy,” I tell him. Then I shrug. “Either way, I’m kind of into it.”

  “You know what I’m kind of into?” he asks, glancing around my living room, occupied by desks and bookshelves, but no television in sight. There is a couch shoved against the wall for when I want to read somewhere other than my desk or bed, but I seldom use it.

  “What’s that?”

  “Getting you a TV. We can watch your TED talks on the big screen like civilized people. I’m gonna buy you a Smart TV.”

  “I don’t need a TV,” I tell him. “I’ll never watch it.”

  “We will watch it,” he argues, subtly correcting me. “We won’t have to sit in office chairs and watch stuff on your laptop, because you will own a television like a normal person.”

  “Did you know in Norway you have to pay for a license just to own a television? Doesn’t make sense to buy one if you’re not going to use it.”

  “Did you know we don’t live in Norway?” he asks me.

  “I heard a rumor, but I couldn’t be sure. Thanks for ruining it for me.”

  Without missing a beat, he breaks his egg roll in half and asks, “Where do you want me to put your TV? Do you have a measuring tape? I should measure that empty corner to see what size screen will fit there.”