“Sure. I won’t say anything. But, wait, are you guys still hosting Thanksgiving?” it occurs to her then. It’s coming up in just a couple of weeks. Joslyn was going to host Ciana and their mother, along with Grady’s parents and younger brother. “You’re either going to need a really good cover story for not drinking, or…” she shrugs, not bothering to finish the sentence.
“I know,” Joslyn allows. “I’ll tell her then, I will, just...let us have another couple of weeks to figure that out.”
“Okay. I will.”
“Still, I’m glad someone knows. I don’t think I can keep this to myself for another month,” Joslyn adds, grinning widely now. It’s the first time in this conversation Ciana’s seen her looking genuinely thrilled, and she actually giggles in response.
“Let me know when I can throw you the baby shower, because it’s going to be ridiculous,” Ciana says.
“Okay, please tell me about you now,” Joslyn interrupts, blushing. “Please tell me how you’re acing all your assignments and are already best friends with the other top student in the class.”
“Okay, first of all, there are many top students, and it’s a Master’s program, it’s not even like that,” she answers, before pausing in concession. “But yes, that’s pretty much a good summary so far.”
Their food arrives then. And Ciana proceeds to tell Joslyn everything that’s happened since she last saw her in August.
*
The third thing happens another week after that, when Ciana’s getting ready for class one morning.
She’s getting ready for class and putting on a blazer she hasn’t worn in a little while when she finds Landon’s card tucked in the pocket. Smiling to herself, she decides to finally take him up on his offer to meet up. If nothing else, she’ll be able to pick his brain about more of the program and the kind of work he does. But also, she freely admits that she found him charming, he had a nice smile, and it’s been a while since she had a coffee date.
Between her courses and his travel calendar it’s early October when they do meet up, in a café not far from campus. She walks in about a half a minute after he does and when they order he picks up her check. A latte for her, dark roast - with sugar - for him.
“So, this is probably as good a time as any to admit that I don’t know very much about ballroom dance,” he admits as soon as they’ve sat down with their coffees.
In spite of herself, Ciana laughs out loud. “Ah. I’m guessing you did some reading on me?”
“I did, but I have to confess I stopped reading once I realized your trophy count. I don’t know that I’ve ever met a championship winning ballroom dancer in person before, it’s very impressive.”
She laughs again. “I realize it is a little hard to compare medals to other things,” she acknowledges. “But in other ways it’s sort of like getting a very good, very public performance review.”
“Ah, I knew I’ve been running those meetings wrong this whole time,” he says. “I’m going to report this back to my team, we need some more medals around the office, not just these ridiculous key results measures.”
Ciana takes a sip from her coffee and smiles. She likes that he has a sense of humor. “So, tell me more about what you do in the program? Or...well, your work, anything,” she asks.
“Of course,” he says. “I can tell you my role is a bit more limited at the moment. I scaled back a little last year when I knew I would be doing more international consulting in my...well, my ‘day job’, I suppose.”
“You said you work more with the undergrads, right now?”
“That’s right,” he says, taking a sip from his coffee. “I supervise their final projects, or some of them at least. They have to take what they’ve learned about business models and market demand and apply it to a real world case study in small groups.”
“That sounds amazing. So practical.”
“I agree,” he says. “I don’t think all of the students do, by the time the end of the semester rolls around, but I can tell you they do learn a lot in the process. I make sure of it,” he winks.
She laughs. “That’s good. Exactly what you should be doing.”
“I like doing it but I always wish I had more time for it. With my regular work it’s hard sometimes to find that balance with so many commitments.”
“I can understand that,” she says. “Do you enjoy your work? All the travel and the corporate consulting.”
“Actually, I do,” he answers. “It’s important work, in its way. So many companies get very good at building a product or accumulating assets, but then they forget how to properly manage themselves internally, or sustain their vision into something long-term. I go in and take them through a process to help figure that out.”
She’s smiling, listening to him. “That sounds exciting, actually.”
He smiles back at her, at first something like surprise on his face, then recognition. “Well, I rather think so. But it is always a long process, and sometimes it doesn’t go the way I would like. Luckily, I work with a good pair and I’m not usually on my own.”
“How often do you travel?”
“It varies. Sometimes it can be more than half the year. But I try to keep a handle on it, otherwise I’m not seeing any of my colleagues here, and I start to forget what my own home looks like.”
“I know that feeling. I miss competing and performing, sometimes, but it’s nice to have roots in one place now for a little while.”
He sets down his coffee and shifts a little in his seat, leaning a little more towards her. “I’d love to know more about what you do,” he asks.
So, Ciana tells him. She explains a little about the ballroom dance world she’s come from, and how it made her more curious about the world of business, especially in the last few years. She talks about the different opportunities she’s had.
She also talks about her goals for her time in the program - to learn as much as possible about applying business models to contemporary entrepreneurship, learn from real-world case examples about successes and failures, and hopefully rest some plans of her own. She’d like to use the final project as an opportunity to play with some future goal setting of her own, still thinking about something in the realm of sportswear or similar branded products.
She notices Landon nodding along as she talks, clearly listening and thinking about what she’s saying.
“Essentially you’re your own corporation,” he says, impressed. “Your own Chairman of the Board.”
“Yes,” she says, laughing a little in spite of herself. It feels good to have someone new to say these things with out loud. “In a lot of ways that’s very true.”
“Well I suspect you’ll do quite well in the program,” he says, setting aside his long-empty coffee cup. “Your real challenge might be keeping yourself to the limits of the program structure, while still developing your own longer term goals alongside it.”
Ciana nods, thinking. Somehow that hadn’t occurred to her in that way, and it starts her thinking about how she can approach new opportunities in the next couple of years. She's glad to have met with him.
Their coffees long gone, they wrap up the conversation with smiles and ‘thank you’s’. She excuses herself to use the ladies room, and he waits for her to come back again before they walk out.
“Thank you,” he says, shaking her hand in his. “It was good to get to know you a little better.”
“Likewise,” Ciana answers, smiling. She squeezes his hand gently before letting it go. “I hope we meet again sometime.”
“I’d like that,” he answers. “Please call me when you’re free,” he adds, a warm smile on his face as well.
“I will. I’ll look at my calendar.”
They both nod before stepping away from each other, leaving in opposite directions. She turns to wave back at him and sees he’s doing the same. Then he turns and looks to the curb, ready to hail a cab.
As she starts to walk away she thinks about how she trul
y does look forward to seeing him again. Her mind is full of the way he smiled at her, the way he listened to her, and how much more she still wants to know about him. She’d done so much talking about herself and hadn’t gotten the chance to learn more about his life.
Just then she stops in her tracks, deciding in a split second to turn back around again. She jogs lightly back to where she left him, where he’s just now reaching for the door of a cab that’s pulled up.
“Landon!” she shouts, waving back at him. He pauses, leaving the taxi door ajar and signaling to the driver to wait. She reaches him, only a little breathless. “By any chance are you free for dinner tomorrow night?”
He looks a little surprised, but pleased, as he thinks for a moment before answering. “Actually...yes, I am,” he says with a smile. “Can we say… seven thirty?”
“That would be perfect,” she answers, smiling broadly.
“I’ll find us a reservation,” he offers. “And I’d be happy to pick you up, if that’s alright with you.”
Ciana nods. “I’ll text you my address.”
“I look forward to it.” Landon shakes her hand again then, leaning in at the last moment to kiss her on the cheek. She breathes in the scent of his cologne as he does so, and it’s a wonderful feeling all of a sudden.
She waits as he gets into his cab, waving back at him once more as he drives off. She keeps walking on her path back towards home, unable to wipe the smile off of her face.
*
By the time October turns to November, Ciana’s dinners with Landon have become regular occurrences. They finish the first one with a kiss on the cheek, well past handshakes then. The second one ends with him kissing her cheek, and her leaning back in quickly to kiss him on the lips. He’s tall, so she has to lift up a bit on her toes to do it. She reaches up to hold on to him, too, enjoying how broad and fit his shoulders are. He kisses her back, and they part slightly breathless. She leaves with a smile on her face.
By the fourth evening she’s quite happy to do more than that, so when Landon asks her if she’d like to come back to his place, she says yes. They walk the ten minutes back to his place, her hand tucked into the corner of his elbow, his hand resting on hers.
She discovers that evening that, in bed he’s very much as he seems otherwise - attentive, kind, and very, very methodical. The first time they come together he brings her to a gasping peak first with his mouth, letting her shatter around him well before he sheathes himself in her and eventually brings them both to release at the same time. She falls asleep next to him with a contented languid feeling throughout her body. Later, she wakes a little before dawn to kiss him awake, eventually winding one leg around his. She lets him roll her onto her back, lips never leaving her body as he joins them both together for another round that has her crying out by the end.
After that they start spending a few evenings a week together, alternately at his place or hers. In their time together she learns more about him. He tells her about his family, how he’d been born and raised in Florida, the third of three children. His mother is a doctor and his father is a dentist, both still practicing. His older brother and sister had pursued medicine as well, so he in a way he was the ‘black sheep’ of the family for having gone into business instead. She laughs when he tells her that, feels heartened by it.
Ciana learns he’d relocated to Boston from Florida a few years ago because of the relationship he’d been in at the time - he’d lived with his previous girlfriend for several years before eventually parting ways. But he liked the city and decided to stay, having already put down a lot of professional roots. In turn she tells him more about the time she’s spent in Boston, and with Weldon, and the partnership they’ve had together.
She likes spending time with Landon, likes the way he listens to her and the way he values her listening to him. Although she likes being able to tell him about her progress in the courses she’s taking, eventually that becomes just one part of their conversations among many others.
Being with him makes many things easier, she realizes, and often feels better than being on her own. The next time he has to travel for an extended period of time for work and be away from her for several days at a time, she finds she misses him more than she’d expected, and she counts the days until she can see him again.
CHAPTER EIGHT
When faced with the choice between waiting until the summer holidays or using the post-Christmas holidays to take their honeymoon, Weldon and Aviana end up choosing the latter. They find a wedding venue free the third weekend of December, immediately inform their closest friends and family to save the date, and launch forward with full enthusiasm.
Weldon’s confident that he can still manage his pairs’ dance events which will all be wrapped by then - and still lean on Mervin for support - and Aviana is understanding enough about his schedule to make it work. As a result they make the most of the weeks when they can fit preparations in together and try to get as many things finished as possible.
“Are we crazy?” he says to Aviana one evening as they’re addressing invitations. He’s all but moved into her apartment at this point - she has a bit more room than he does and he’s here more evenings than not, anyway - which now makes the wedding preparation that much easier with both of them in the same place. “I mean, we might be a little bit crazy to be doing this in December, is what I’m saying.”
Aviana carries on placing stamps on the already completed envelopes, not breaking her stride in the slightest. “I think you mean ‘definitely are,’ and ‘a lot crazy,’ in fact.”
“Oh, okay. Well as long as we’re admitting it out loud, then.” He runs a hand through his hair, looking around at the piles of invitations, thinking about the sudden and ever-growing list of wedding preparation tasks that appeared on his phone two months ago.
She looks up at him and pauses, considering something. “Well, there’s a possibility we may not receive as many Christmas gifts this year. We should probably put that into consideration when we fill out the gift registry.”
Weldon looks back at her for a split second before bursting out into laughter. He smacks her on the arm with one hand, running his other over his face and trying to clear his head.
“Avia, if I ever start getting stressed out about this, please keep making me laugh, I’m going to need it.”
“Start getting stressed?”
“Fine, if I get more stressed.”
“Listen, buddy, I don’t think you realize how hard it is trying on that many wedding dresses in one afternoon and pretending you like the way you look under those terrible fluorescent lights. You should feel lucky I’m still capable of functioning right now.”
He can’t help but sympathize there. More than once he’s felt overly fortunate that his wardrobe choices boil down to getting a new tux, and making sure his tie coordinates with the color of the bridesmaids’ dresses.
“Oh, and you’re coming to the caterer’s with me tomorrow, and the baker the day after that. We are doing this fifty-fifty, future husband of mine.”
“I’m in. As long as we’re not both deciding how to decorate the church. I couldn’t tell you how to arrange flowers if my life depended on it.”
“You got it. I also know nothing about flowers, but I feel certain my combination of confidence and indifference will carry us through,” Aviana says, completely deadpan.
Weldon laughs again, this time pausing to wipe under his eyes. “Oh man. I love you, Avia. Did I tell you that today?”
“I think you told me this morning, but a girl can always hear it again.”
“I can do better than that,” he says, pulling the package of stamps out of her hand and tossing it aside on the coffee table. He leans in and kisses her, cupping her chin with one hand.
*
A little less than a month before Weldon and Aviana’s wedding, Landon asks Ciana what she thinks about him taking all four of them for dinner. They’re having a leisurely Saturday morning breakfast
at her place - a cooperative effort between the two of them resulting in poached eggs on spiced flatbread, and a buttery, curried chickpea concoction that is so good Ciana’s almost afraid to ask him for the recipe so she can make it herself.
“Really?” she asks between bites. “I mean, I’m sure they might like an evening out for a break, but fair warning they are probably going to be more than a little scattered at this point.” In the last few weeks she’s fielded multiple text messages and phone calls from both Weldon and Aviana, and had accompanied a grateful Aviana to her dress fitting the previous weekend.
“You’re probably right,” he says, “on both counts. But they’re your friends, and a big part of your life, and I’d like to meet them.”
Ciana thinks about it for just another second and then nods, agreeing. “Okay. I’ll set it up. Sometime this week?”
He nods back. “Yes. I’d like that. And...perhaps I could give them a wedding gift of some kind? If you think that would be appropriate.”
Ciana puts down her fork, smiling gently at him, at how kindly he seems to be fretting about this. She knows Landon won’t be in town for the actual wedding, so he won’t be there to escort her or offer any support on the day. Part of her is strangely fine with that, still not knowing for sure yet where or how far she and Landon are headed. But she does want him to meet her close friends, and she wants him to be a fuller part of her world.
“I think they’d like that,” she says, reaching under the table to touch her hand to his. “I can help you with that if you like.” She feels herself swallowing back a lump in her throat, suddenly very touched.
*
They meet on Thursday of the following week. It’s snowed by then, one of the first big snowfalls of the season that makes the winter suddenly feel very real. Landon and Ciana meet Weldon and Aviana at the restaurant. It’s a more casual bistro style restaurant close to Aviana’s apartment, where a reservation had been uncomplicated, and travel time was not significant.
Ciana thinks Weldon seems more frazzled than Aviana does, interestingly enough. She thinks through what she remembers about his training schedule right now and realizes the next two events are probably well behind him, but the final is still to go. She hopes he’s feeling ready.
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