Natasha appeared at the table alone. “Hi, Jane! You look so beautiful.”
Here goes nothing, as the cliché goes. “Thanks, you too.” And of course, she did. She wore a gorgeous pale pink dress of the thinnest material I’d ever seen. It slightly shimmered.
“Guess what?” she asked as she sat down across from me. “I had morning sickness today!”
I laughed. “And you’re excited about that?”
“It was the first time,” she said. “The first time I really felt something physical because of the baby.” She put her hand on her tummy and smiled.
“So where’s Sam?” I asked. “I’m dying to meet him.”
Natasha glanced at the crowd. “He’s not coming.”
“Not coming?” I repeated. “Couldn’t get a flight?”
“Couldn’t care less is more like it,” Natasha said, staring at her feet. “He broke up with me weeks ago. I kept meaning to tell you, but I just couldn’t.”
I stared at her, absolutely stunned. I closed my mouth, which, as usual, had fallen open practically onto the table. “Oh, Natasha,” I said, understanding all too well. “I’m so sorry. When did this happen?”
The band was playing a Shania Twain song so loud that Natasha had to slide her chair around the table closer to mine so we could talk. “Remember that night I came over at midnight and had a breakdown in your apartment? He’d told me he met someone else, that it was over, that I was too needy and clingy.”
“But what about the baby? I thought he was happy—”
Natasha took a deep breath. “I lied to you. He was the opposite of happy. He accused me of getting pregnant on purpose, then insisted he wasn’t the father but he’d pay for an abortion anyway. Things had been pretty rocky for a while. It’s why I was glad to escape to New York for a couple of months. But I thought we’d work it out. And when I found out I was pregnant, I’d hoped it would touch something in him. But I was wrong.” Natasha’s voice broke a bit and she closed her eyes for a second. “He crushed me pretty bad. Are you mad that I lied to you? I guess I was just too scared and humiliated to say it out loud, you know?”
I knew. Boy, did I. If her broken heart and my own weren’t so painful, I’d probably be laughing my head off at the irony of it all. Plus, I felt as though I had some nerve (as Aunt Ina would say) whining about facing a wedding reception boyfriendless when she was facing motherhood husbandless, boyfriendless and parentless. But not friendless.
“So you must think I’m pretty pathetic, huh?” Natasha asked, her eyes on the empty plate in front of her.
I smiled at her. “Actually, I think you’re pretty great. I think you’re one of the strongest people I’ve ever known. I really admire you, Natasha.”
She looked up at me, biting her lip, and suddenly I knew what it was that Natasha Nutley had that made her so irresistible to everyone. The thing I’d wanted to know since I was twelve years old in Mrs. Greenman’s sixth-grade class had finally come clear.
Natasha Nutley showed her vulnerability. Through the beauty, the strength and the supposed perfection of her existence, she exuded vulnerability. Not helplessness. Not fear. Vulnerability. And that was exactly what I had been so afraid to show my entire life. Terror at appearing vulnerable had kept me on the outside looking in, set me on the defensive and ready to attack to protect myself.
“I think you’re pretty great, too,” Natasha told me, a smile on her shimmering pink lips. “So where’s the good doctor?”
“Having sex with someone else,” I admitted almost painlessly as the band began the theme song from Dirty Dancing. “He dumped me weeks ago, too.”
“Oh, no!” Natasha said. “I’m so sorry.”
My heart pinged a bit. “Aw, it’s okay. You want to know a secret? When I met you in the Blue Water Grill for lunch back in June, I didn’t even know him.”
She tilted her head. “What do you mean?”
“I wanted to impress you, so I lied and said I had this fab boyfriend who owned a brownstone. And then I had to find some guy to bring to the wedding, so I went on a bunch of blind dates and one actually worked out: Timothy the doctor. Well, he worked out until two weeks ago. And then I scrambled to find a sub, just to feel okay enough to sit at this table with you. Talk about pathetic.”
“Oh, Jane.” She bit her lip “Is that how I make you feel?”
“Past tense,” I said. “That’s how I felt back in Forest Hills years ago. But I carried it with me, I guess, until I got to know you. And then I realized you were a person, just like me, just like everyone else.” When had I realized that? Just now, perhaps. Or maybe that was what I’d hated about her all along. That with everything she had, she was just a girl, just a woman, just like me.
She smiled. “So you and Timothy clicked, and then what?”
“And then he dumped me for some redhead. I actually caught them together in a bar.”
Natasha shook her head. “Men stink, huh?”
“They sure do.”
“Too bad they’re also so damned wonderful,” Natasha added. “And irresistible and cute and you just can’t live without them.”
“Yeah, I know.” We both laughed.
Natasha sipped her ice water. There was a lemon floating in it. “In fact, that guy over there, a real cutie, has been staring at you for the past ten minutes.”
Ha. Any guy staring in our direction was staring at Natasha, not me. I glanced over where Natasha’s eyes were pointed. It was Northern Exposure Guy. Man, he was cute. And he did seem to be checking me out. His date was probably in the bathroom. No way was a guy that cute here solo. The band was now playing Hit Me Baby One More Time by Britney Spears. The dance floor was packed with guests, young and old.
I ripped off another piece of my dinner roll. “He is pretty cute,” I agreed. “Maybe I’ll get lucky and he’ll ask me to dance.”
“You could ask him,” Natasha pointed out.
“Maybe later.” Yeah, like never. I’d be ready to risk rejection sometime soon, but I’d been through enough for one wedding. “I’m sorry about Sam,” I told Natasha. “Are you okay with everything?”
“Well, I’m taking it one day at a time and just thinking about the baby, doing what’s good and right for her or him.”
“That sounds like a good idea,” I said.
“Actually, I’m lying again,” Natasha confessed. “I’m scared to death. Really scared. But I think I’m gonna be good at it, after all. Motherhood, I mean. I love this baby so much already, Jane. I can’t tell you how much.”
I smiled and believed her. “I think you’re going to be a great mother. Definitely.”
She grinned and raised her water glass. I raised mine, too. “Here’s to keeping our chins up and to figuring it all out.” We clinked.
“So are you staying in New York for good?” I asked.
She nodded. “Yeah. This is home. And I like the idea of being near my aunt Daphne and my parents, even if they hate me.”
“I think your folks will come around, Natasha. I really do. Your aunt and uncle promised to work on them, right? And, since you’re staying, maybe you’d like to come to the next Flirt Night Roundtable.”
“What’s that?” she asked.
“It’s me and Eloise—you met her at Posh that day I got promoted, remember?” Natasha nodded. “And our friend Amanda. Every Friday night we go to some bar or restaurant and talk for hours. It’s a tradition six years running.”
I could tell Natasha was touched. “I’d love to come. Speaking of invitations,” she said, “are you going to the Forest Hills High reunion in October?”
Ten-year high-school reunion. “I wasn’t planning to. Are you going?”
“I’d like to, if you’ll go. I’d be really happy to walk into that reunion with you as my friend, Jane.”
Now it was my turn to be touched. “Deal.”
I felt eyes on me again. It was Northern Exposure Guy. We locked eyes for a moment, then his attention was taken by the elderly man s
itting next to him. There were so many people blocking my view of his table that I couldn’t tell who was on his right. A date? Would he be checking me out if he was with a date?
“Ask him to dance,” Natasha prodded. “Go ahead. Take a risk.”
I gnawed my lower lip. “What if he says no?”
“What if he says yes?”
“Yeah, but what if he says no?”
Natasha laughed. “What if he says yes. Go.”
I stood up before I lost the guts. But Northern Exposure Guy apparently had had the same idea, because he was standing right next to me!
“Would you like to dance?” he asked over the blast of a Madonna song. Six feet. Tux. Brown, wavy hair. Dark brown eyes. Perfect skin. Thirty, thirty-one, maybe? Did I mention he was beyond cute?
I smiled. That was answer enough for Fleishman’s double. He took my hand and led me onto the crowded dance floor. I glanced back at Natasha and sent her a grin. She shot me a thumbs-up and was whisked onto the dance floor herself by a George Clooney look-alike.
It was too loud to talk or to even ask his name. We danced and smiled and flirted without saying a word. The band played the Backstreet Boys next, and I laughed and twirled around. And when the bandleader crooned the first note of a Frank Sinatra song, Northern Exposure Guy took my hand and put his other at my waist, and suddenly I was slow-dancing to Frank in a mini-ballroom at the Plaza Hotel. When Frank ended and Abba’s “Dancing Queen” blasted, Northern Exposure Guy held up a hand and gestured to the bar. I smiled and nodded and followed him. Just as I was about to sit down next to him at one of the five stools around the bar, Aunt Ina and Uncle Charlie left the dance floor. Abba definitely wasn’t their speed.
“Grammy’s just tickled pink,” Aunt Ina whispered in my ear. “She was going to introduce you to Ethan Miles, but you beat her to it.”
Huh? Were they still trying to push Mr. Incinerator on me? I could find my own type myself, thank you very much. “I haven’t met him.” Thank God.
“Who do you think you just danced with to three songs in a row?” Aunt Ina asked.
My mouth dropped open. Northern Exposure Guy was Ethan Miles? Grammy’s next-door neighbor? The very Ethan Miles who took out his trash in front of people and played chess with Uncle Charlie and carried Grammy’s grocery bags from the elevator to her apartment? That Ethan Miles was my Northern Exposure Guy?
The man himself turned around at the bar and handed me a glass of red wine. “So, I don’t even know your name,” he said, a slight Texas drawl making his voice as sexy as he was.
“It’s Jane,” I told him, a smile tugging at my lips.
“I’m Ethan,” he said in that drawl.
I couldn’t hold back the laugh.
“Find that funny, do you?” he asked, his brown eyes twinkling.
“I’ll tell you all about it later,” I murmured. “After this dance?”
As Ethan Miles twirled me around the dance floor in the mini-ballroom of the Plaza Hotel, I closed my eyes and lifted my face to the tiny, twinkling lights adorning the ceiling and knew that my mother and father were both watching.
Epilogue
February 14 found me at an engagement party in the arms of my beloved, wearing my Valentine’s Day gift—small, sweet diamond stud earrings from Tiffany’s. No, no, no. This wasn’t my engagement party. It was Amanda and Jeff’s. Jeff had popped the question on Christmas Eve and had given Amanda a rock. We’re talking two carats. The party was being held in a West Village restaurant. Amanda’s very tall, very blond, very Louisiana family had flown up for the occasion.
Ethan and I had very recently celebrated our sixth-month mark with a trip to Negril, Jamaica. Aunt Ina, Uncle Charlie, Dana, Larry and Grammy had been sure he’d propose there. I had a feeling Ethan and I were headed in that direction, but at six months, we were still getting to know each other, still getting to love each other. For the first time in my life, I felt as though I had all the time in the world.
Dana and Larry bought a huge house in Chappaqua, near the Clintons and the Welles; they made good use of all their France-inspired kitchen stuff by throwing barbecue after barbecue in their huge backyard. Ethan and I had attended their housewarming and two of the barbecues. Dana had joked that I’d be getting all of Great-Aunt Gertie’s money now that I was with Ethan, who Grammy still couldn’t stop raving about. I had to admit, I understood what all the fuss was about.
A very pregnant Natasha Nutley stood chatting with two other pregnant guests. Natasha had become close with Amanda. They’d bonded on that very first Flirt Night Roundtable Natasha had come to back in August. Eloise and Natasha had hit it off, too, and had become shopping friends. Natasha’s parents still hadn’t come around, but she was hopeful that when the baby was born, they might melt. I hoped so, too. Natasha’s aunt Daphne promised to attend her baby shower, and I had a feeling her mom would show up with tears in her eyes. The baby was due in less than four weeks. Natasha had thought of a thousand names, but in the end she decided that she had to clap eyes on the little munchkin in order to name him or her. She’d finished the memoir a few days before Thanksgiving, and I’d edited it and turned it in to rave reviews from Jeremy, who, by the way, had married his Vogue executive in a small, family-only ceremony at the Plaza this past December. The Stopped Starlet was due out this coming December. I had made Remke very happy by signing Natasha to the sequel he wanted so badly. It was focused on self-esteem and recovery, not “sexy rehab.” Natasha was hard at work on the outline.
Promotions had been aplenty at Posh these past six months. Right after Labor Day weekend, Eloise had finally gotten promoted from Assistant Art Associate to Assistant Art Director, which pleased her to no end. She had decided to take a break from dating and was now passionately involved with kicking the nicotine habit. She’d gone back to SmokeNoMore for her free session and was two months nicotine free. Morgan Morgan had been promoted to Assistant Editor and was as on the lookout as ever. As for Remke, he’d stopped snapping so much ever since Gwen, who’d returned from maternity leave with a vengeance, managed to sign the Backstreet Boy.
Opera Man, aka Archibald Marinelli, moved last month, much to my joy. A very quiet young woman now resided in his apartment. I hadn’t heard one oh since.
Ah, I almost forgot: Natasha and I had indeed attended our ten-year high-school reunion in October. Lisa and Lora Miner hadn’t come, nor had Jimmy Alfonzo. But Robby Evers had been there. Nope, he wasn’t bald or grossly overweight or a used-car salesman. He was better-looking than ever and the globe-trotting foreign correspondent he’d always wanted to be. And very happily married to a fellow globe-trotting foreign correspondent named Tatiana. I hadn’t asked Ethan to attend the reunion with me because I already had a date. Natasha had been the hit of the reunion, naturally, and so had I, if I do say so myself. She’d played me up as Ms. Glamorous Important New York City Editor. I’d even been voted Most Changed in the class poll that had been announced at the close of the reunion; Natasha had been voted Least Changed.
We’d shared a good laugh at our wins. Natasha had never been what anyone thought she was. And I had only begun to change.
SEE JANE DATE
A Red Dress Ink novel
ISBN: 978-1-4592-4651-5
© 2001 by Melissa Senate.
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