The Do-Over, page 20
I chuckled dryly and implored my eyes to remain every bit as dry. “I, um . . . thought I was going to marry . . . well, someone I work with. Someone with seniority over me.”
His face remained expressionless as he sat back in his chair. “I see.”
“What does ‘I see’ mean?”
He shook his head and shrugged. “It just means . . . I don’t know. I guess it means, ‘I see.’”
I didn’t know what he thought he saw, and I didn’t even know what I wanted him to think he saw. But I could see straight through ‘I see,’ and I didn’t like what I saw.
“If you’re thinking I went off the deep end or something—”
“I didn’t say that.”
“I assure you it wasn’t anything like that, Henry.”
“I wasn’t assuming that it was.” He took a deep breath and then opened his mouth to continue, but food was placed in front of us, so he waited. Once our waiter was gone he said, “There’s just a lot we don’t know about each other.” He leaned in again, and for the life of me I could not interpret what was happening behind those eyes. It was nightfall at the Mediterranean. “McKenna, if you just canceled a wedding—”
“Oh!” Relief and frustration flooded simultaneously through every inch of me. “No. It’s not that.” I couldn’t win. There was absolutely no way to win in this scenario. “I just thought . . . but there was never really anything . . .”
What was I doing? It had been bad enough allowing Taylor to believe what she was going to believe anyway about Jeremiah. But in that case I’d never actually lied to her. Objection, Your Honor. Leading the witness. Yeah . . . sure. But sometimes you had to lead the witness just a little bit, even when you knew an objection was imminent. It’s all about setting the tone. Controlling the emotions. Priming the pump.
With Henry, I was committing perjury and was very much in danger of being held in contempt of court.
I forced myself to sit up straight rather than slip under the table and hide from his questioning eyes, as I would have given just about anything to be able to do. I put my hand on the table, palm up, and looked from it to his eyes. He looked down and then placed his hand in mine. “Can I ask you to trust me?”
“Of course I trust you—”
“No, Henry, can you just . . .” I squeezed my eyes shut. The horrible nightmare would be over soon. It would. It had to be. “There are things I can’t talk about right now. And I agree, there’s so much we don’t know about each other. And this whole leave-of-absence thing is something I’ll be able to tell you all about. I just can’t quite yet. And it probably would have been better if I hadn’t even said what I said. It’s just—”
“Of course. Take all the time you need.” He squeezed my hand gently and then brushed his thumb across my knuckles. When he smiled at me, I wanted to believe all was well, but it felt forced, and I didn’t understand why. He squeezed one more time before he released my hand and picked up his fork. “I guess we should get to eating. We don’t have a ton of time.”
I didn’t move. I just kept looking at him. “Henry . . .”
He smiled again, and it seemed as if daylight had returned to his sandy beaches. “I’m sorry I reacted the way I did. I was just surprised. But to the best of my knowledge, you haven’t done anything to intentionally hurt me since you assigned me Turkmenistan in Model UN. I trust you.”
Chapter 16
I knew the fundraiser that evening was black tie, and I had come prepared. In my trusty overnight bag, I had a very lovely black evening gown that had serviced me well at multiple galas and retirement parties and upscale weddings through the years. But as Henry and I finished lunch and began walking back toward the Plaza, I was suddenly assaulted by another round of what-if thinking. This time was different, though, and my initial analysis of the situation made it appear as if open-ended wonderings about what could happen were much more pleasant than second-guessing the past.
“Hey, so remind me what time this thing starts tonight.”
“Eight.”
I glanced at my watch. It would be tight, but I could make it work. “And it’s at the Paley Center?”
“Yeah.”
I placed my hand on his arm as we prepared to circumnavigate Sheep Meadow and head back to Fifty-Ninth, and he stopped walking and faced me. “Do you have plans for me between now and then?”
A mischievous twinkle overtook his eyes and, frankly, I was relieved to see it. We had moved past the awkwardness over lunch, and we’d had some great conversation—about everything from high-school memories to how he got each of his scars. (He had, in fact, gotten the scar on the bridge of his nose and broken it at the same time. In Pamplona in 2012. He assured me the shots he’d gotten of the running of the bulls had been well worth the inconvenience and lifelong changes to his face.) But it had felt like he’d shifted out of trying-to-impress-the-girl mode, and that only bothered me because I feared he no longer considered me worth impressing. But the mischievous twinkle seemed to take us back to pre-leave-of-absence-revelation-awkwardness levels of flirting and romance.
He placed his hands on my shoulders and then rubbed up and down my arms for a moment before pulling me in closer to him. “I can think of one or two ways we could pass the time.” He placed his hand under my chin and gently tilted my face toward his, and I melted into him. Our passionate make-out session had been filled with urgency and fun as we’d giggled our way through something new and exciting. (Okay . . . I’d giggled. Henry was not exactly a giggler. Come to think of it, I hadn’t thought I was much of a giggler either.) We really were like what I imagined two teenagers would be, steaming up the windows of a car parked at Makeout Point. (I don’t know—is Makeout Point an actual thing outside of Happy Days? I really missed so much by being an academically driven nerd in high school.)
But this . . .
His lips were exploring mine like they had all the time in the world and nowhere else they’d rather be. His hand left my chin, and his arm wrapped around me and pulled me in even closer. My neck was in the nook of his arm, and I instinctively wrapped my arms around his waist as he dipped me slightly and made up for lost time—the awkward time over lunch, yes, but also the last twenty years, it felt like.
I was still being supported by his arm when he pulled his lips away and muttered against my jaw, “Why? Do you have somewhere else to be?”
Nope. Let’s just keep doing this for the rest of the day. Thanks so much for asking.
I sighed. “Well, you’re making it difficult for me to remember anything else I could possibly need to do, but yeah. I have a couple of errands I’d like to run.”
It was his turn to sigh as he brought me back upright. “Errands. Such an unsexy word.” He kissed me gently—almost casually, which in and of itself was exciting, knowing that we were at the “casual kissing” stage—and then let his arms fall away.
“You said you have people you should meet with before the fundraiser anyway,” I reminded him.
“Wow. Thanks, Keaton. Who needs cold showers when they have you around?” He winked, and I laughed.
“So, I’ll see you there?”
“You’re leaving from here?”
I pointed back behind me. “I’m going to head out to Central Park West and grab a cab. Will you be okay on your own? Did you remember to bring your Mace?”
He smirked at me. “I’ll call you if I need rescuing.”
“So not just an, ‘Oops, that shouldn’t have happened. I got caught up in the moment’ sort of kiss, but like full-on?” Erica’s voice was so enthusiastic and elevated I knew my taxi driver was probably at least picking up tones if not words.
“Yep.” I put in as much effort as I could to keep both my volume and tone a little more muted than my sister’s. “Full-on. We were at the window for . . . I genuinely don’t know how long. And then we went and sat on the couch, and I thought that might be the end of it, but . . .” Whew, buddy, that had not been the end of it. “But I’m not even sure that was the best part.” Though it was a very, very good part. “When we were walking to lunch, he held my hand, and he told me what he loves about the park, and we danced—”
“You danced?”
“Yes. Right there in the middle of a meadow in Central Park, surrounded by hundreds of people and Henry’s favorite view of Manhattan.” My cab stopped in front of Bloomingdale’s, and I paid and stepped out onto Third Avenue. “It was really the most romantic thing I’ve ever . . .” I was about to say it was the most romantic thing I’d ever experienced, but that almost went without saying. And it just seemed so inadequate. “It was the most romantic thing ever.”
I heard her take a deep breath, and then when she spoke again, her voice was much softer in volume and tone. “McKenna . . . He’s the one, you know.”
I stepped aside from the doorway and stood in front of one of the display windows. I couldn’t stand it when people walked through a crowded department store talking at full volume on their cell phone. I was definitely a modern girl dependent upon her technology, but I could still remember the days when we used to be able to wait until we got home from shopping to have personal conversations in the privacy of our living rooms.
“The one what?” I asked, causing my sister to chuckle.
“The one. He’s who you’ve been waiting for.”
Everything in me wanted to revolt at the comment—including my digestive system that, for just a few seconds, grew so tumultuous I made sure I was within lunging distance of the nearest trash can just in case. My face grew clammy, and I attempted to keep gulping in enough air to make sure I didn’t pass out on Third Avenue. Once I was sure I could at least keep breathing, I leaned back against the Bloomingdale’s window display, featuring a mannequin dressed up in the high-collared, straitlaced wardrobe of Mary Poppins—apart from a pink boa and six-inch stilettos—as I prepared to verbally launch all of the protests building up in my mind.
There was no one—probably not for anyone, certainly not for me.
The only one I needed was myself.
I wasn’t waiting for anyone.
But then, in spite of myself, my own words gave way to hearing Erica’s in my mind again. He’s who you’ve been waiting for. Was it possible that everything I believed was true—I didn’t need a man, I didn’t have time for a man, and I was perfectly fine on my own—but that it was just as true that the entire point of spending my adult life making sure I was fine on my own was so I would be ready for Henry?
“I know,” I finally whispered.
Silence permeated the air—even as eighty school-aged children from PS 354 passed in front of me in their navy-and-white uniforms.
“Did you say, ‘I know’?” Erica asked breathlessly.
I stared into space and nodded.
“McKenna?”
I shook off the stupor in response to hearing my name through my phone. “Um, yeah. I . . . well . . . yeah. I did. I said, ‘I know.’”
Erica squealed in a high-pitched tone that I swear made her sound just like Taylor, and I pulled my phone away from my ear to avoid my eardrums bursting. I stretched out my face while quickly massaging the point of impact, and then once I was satisfied all the dogs in Raleigh had been summoned to Erica’s side by her special signal only they could hear, I returned the phone to my ear.
“Good grief, Erica. What in the world—”
“I just knew it.” She sniffed. “I knew you were going to fall in love with some great guy someday—”
“Whoa, whoa, whoa!” I shouted that a bit more loudly than I had intended, and a few children walking by in single file slowed down on the sidewalk in front of me. Their eyes were on me, as if I was about to warn them they were going to step into a manhole. “Sorry. Not you!” As one of their chaperones ushered them on and looked at me warily, I added, “You’re doing great! Thank you for your service.”
“Are you in the middle of a veterans’ parade or something?” Erica asked.
“No. Field trip.” I stepped away from the processional before I was forced to by a passing security officer or something and stood at the corner of Third and Sixtieth. “Listen, don’t get ahead of yourself. I’m not in love.” Despite my apparent openness to the idea that Henry Blumenthal was the one guy on earth I might be able to make room for in my life, the words in love still made me feel roughly the same way I felt when a former client, who was on the board of directors of the Bronx Zoo, made me meet with him to discuss his living will and testament in the Birds of Prey house.
“Okay, sure. I’ll give you that,” Erica acknowledged.
“Thank you.”
“But you are falling. You may still be in the early stages, hanging onto the edge of the cliff, but—sweet, darling sister, whom I love and adore with every fiber of my being—the fall is imminent. Which leads me to . . . the clock is ticking.”
“Oh, my gosh, Erica! Look, I haven’t even officially been on a date with the guy yet. Besides, just because I may be open to a relationship doesn’t mean I’ve changed my mind about not wanting kids.”
She laughed so hard I once again had to pull the phone away from my ear. Finally, she composed herself enough to say, “I just meant you’d better hurry and get into Bloomingdale’s if you want to have time to pick out a dress that’s going to knock his socks off.”
Oh. Cool.
I hated that I was resorting to getting all “dolled up” in order to impress a man. But at the very same time that I was beating myself down with judgmental disappointment, my heart was racing in giddy anticipation. I could already imagine the expression on his face. The one I was going for. If I did this right, he would look at me like I had looked at the view of Central Park from the window of our suite.
Nice, McKenna. Next time be sure to try and get people to compare you to the Grand Canyon too. For good measure.
I said goodbye to Erica and promised to call her after the fundraiser and then skirted my way through the throngs of people and temptations from Magnolia Bakery until I found the evening-gown department—admittedly, not a department I had spent much time in through the years. In fact, I wasn’t typically a Bloomingdale’s girl at all. The Big Brown Bag had never provided me with much temptation, and with my schedule the past few years, I did most of my shopping online through one of those personal-shopper subscription services. It was great. I provided my measurements, my preferred colors, and my preferred style—a little something I liked to call “Yes, I’m a girl. What of it?”—and I got new clothes delivered to my apartment every few weeks. My old suits got dropped off at Goodwill on a regular basis, and I always got to go to work looking like I put a lot of effort into my appearance.
“Can I help you?” A woman who appeared to be sixtyish—though her beautiful white hair was accompanied by the skin and body of a twenty-five-year-old—approached me as I wandered aimlessly.
“Um . . . I hope so. I have no idea what I’m doing, but I have about”—I glanced down at my watch—“two and a half hours to completely reinvent myself. Not that I’m trying to change who I am. I’m not. I just want to reinvent my style a little bit. And I wouldn’t even be bothering with that except I think this guy likes me as I already am. So I don’t have to change. I just . . .” I couldn’t help it. I couldn’t stop rambling. I was thinking about Henry, and all my insides were turning to goo, and I felt like one of those wooly mammoth recreations I’d seen in pictures of the La Brea Tar Pits. My wooly mammoth mate and my wooly mammoth baby were looking on helplessly, and all I could do was throw my trunk up in the air and trumpet as loud as I could as I gave in to the power of the goo. “We’ve known each other since we were kids, but I really want him to look at me with new eyes tonight, if that makes sense.”
The salesclerk—Marlene, her name tag informed me—smiled and nodded. “You’ve come to the right place.” She gestured behind her to a showroom of every style and color of evening gown and cocktail dress. And then she added with a wink, “Finding that extra little boost toward falling in love happens to be my specialty.”
Chapter 17
After I’d spent roughly the gross domestic product of some little nation I wouldn’t have been cruel enough to assign even to Henry in Model UN—like Tuvalu—I thanked Marlene, swung by the shoe department, made a quick detour to the makeup counter, and hurried to the Bloomingdale’s salon. I didn’t have an appointment, of course, but Marlene had told me to ask for Angie and tell her Marlene had sent me—and that it was “a love emergency.” I did as I was instructed and was quickly laying down my American Express card for a wash, trim, blowout, and a quick tutorial on a few elegant updo options.
Apparently, I now spent money on my apartment, clothes for work, food, Gerald, and trying to make Henry Blumenthal forget how to speak when I walked in a room.
I hailed a cab on Lexington Avenue and climbed in with my Big Brown Bag, Medium Brown Bag, and Little Brown Bag, and asked the driver to drop me off at the Plaza. And then I realized that for all the benefits of sharing a luxurious suite with Henry, attempting to get ready in secrecy could be a bit of a challenge. It seemed ridiculous to have to sort through my options, knowing we could cut through Central Park on Sixty-Sixth and be at my apartment on Seventy-Second in about fifteen minutes, but there was currently a clerk from work named Annemarie living there. I could probably offer to knock a hundred dollars off the rent for the month and she’d happily let me use my bathroom, but it sure did seem like a waste to not get ready surrounded by the twenty-four-karat gold-plated bathroom fixtures of the Plaza.
