The Space Between (9 page)

Two hours of
Bikram yoga drained enough energy from my body to temporarily forget Patrick and his abs, though it also left me sweaty and starving. After a quick shower, I headed to the winter farmers’ market with the hope of finding a co-op or CSA opening to keep me supplied with local fruits and veggies.

I preferred unconventional pastimes—reading Patrick’s thesis and yelling at DVR’d HGTV shows came to mind—and farmers’ market shopping was no exception. It’s not that I didn’t love shopping for clothes or shoes—I did—it’s that I loved heirloom greens and discovering new produce from local farmers more.

Wandering through the stalls, my cloth bags rapidly filled with an assortment of goodies. I stopped at a table advertising community dinner parties to experiment with Persian recipes and practice Farsi. New town, new job, and maybe a new opportunity to explore my heritage. I added my name to their email list.

Only a few of the Farsi words and phrases my father taught me before he died remained in my memory, along with vague stories of his family and childhood. He loved Tehran yet preferred Isfahan, and promised we’d spend an entire week exploring the bazaar there. We were going to visit the ruins of Persepolis in Shiraz, and Qeshm Island and the Hara marine forests. We were going to go just as soon as it was safe for him to return to Iran.

Everything I knew about my dad’s culture and family came from the internet—my mother stopped talking about him after a year in Maine. She said it was too painful, and I didn’t want her to suffer.

When I buried my face in a bouquet of basil, I felt a hand squeeze my shoulder.

“I’d know that hair anywhere!”

Shannon Walsh stood before me, her arm linked with a petite blonde’s, both beaming at me with bright smiles. For a moment, I struggled with her friendly familiarity, but soon remembered I now worked at a third generation family firm where only a handful of outsiders joined the ranks. Of course she was friendly outside the office. I realized I should figure out how to do that, too.

“You’re so awesome…already found the farmers’ market and everything.”

I shrugged and gestured to her long, red waves. “They call to me, and I’d know that hair anywhere.”

“Hi, I’m Lauren.” The blonde offered her hand to me.

“Andy.” Remembering to be friendly, I added, “It’s nice to meet you.”

“Andy is working with Patrick,” Shannon said to Lauren. “And Lauren is my future sister-in-law.”

It was impossible to keep their stories straight—they looked alike and talked alike, and were in and out of Patrick’s office all day long. I vaguely remember hearing about someone’s fiancée, but I couldn’t remember which one.

I forced a smile at the blonde, and my fingers closed around the bunch of basil when it dawned on me: she was probably engaged to Patrick. I was a little embarrassed—I did spend the week lusting after him and sent a few overtly flirty texts last night—but I was a lot irritated. She wasn’t right for him. I felt my eyebrow arch into my forehead while I studied her.

“Matthew,” Lauren supplied with a bright smile. “Matthew’s mine.”

A wave of relief crashed over me, and I released a breathy laugh. I looked around the market, hoping to find the source of my rapid onset possessiveness among the kale, hand-churned butter, and purple potatoes.

“We were going to grab some lunch, Andy. I’d love for you to join us,” Shannon said.

“Hm.”

I glanced between them while scanning for appropriate lunch conversation topics with my boss’s sister and my boss’s future sister-in-law. It wasn’t as if I could discuss my surging jealousy at the prospect of Patrick’s engagement or my struggle to reach a decent orgasm.

“Don’t worry, Andy. No business on the weekends, and lunch with us usually involves mimosas and a thorough examination of Shannon Walsh’s men—the ones she dates, not the ones she’s related to.”

“As long as you’re not reporting back to Patrick.” It sounded ridiculous the moment I said it—he wouldn’t care about me having lunch with Shannon and Lauren. Or would he?

This wasn’t healthy. Must get my thoughts away from Patrick.

Lauren hooked her elbow through mine and, inexplicably, I was walking through the farmers’ market with a blonde and a redhead. We must have looked like we were filming a shampoo commercial.

“He’s probably still where we left him—begging for death in Matt’s den,” Shannon said.

“He just needed some food,” Lauren replied. She looked up at me—even in flats, I was at least five inches taller. I couldn’t imagine such a small woman next to Matt. “He had a few cocktails last night—”

“A few? Honey, please, he was trying to put alcohol out of business. Between Patrick and Matt, I think they drained all the whiskey in Boston.”

Lauren shrugged and steered us across the street toward a bakery cafe. “You were no better, and if anyone stumbled away with the first place medal, it was Sam. Besides, those boys have been drinking whiskey since they were two. As soon as they get him a new phone, I’m sure he’ll be barking orders in no time.”

“What happened to Patrick’s phone?”

Did he remember texting me? Or see my response?

Shannon nibbled her lip while scanning the menu, her shoulders bouncing back and forth. “He smashed it.”

“Smashed?”

“I think he was trying to put it down and, being the ogre he is, accidentally smashed it into a table, and then it flew across the room and hit the wall.” Lauren layered her menu over Shannon’s before looking at me. “So Matthew went out with him to get a new phone. I’m getting the brie and arugula with red peppers.”

“Chicken with jicama and avocado,” Shannon said.

They glanced at me expectantly, and I scrambled to skim the menu as the waitress arrived to collect our orders. “Grilled portobello and pesto.”

Our mimosas appeared within minutes, and when our glasses clinked together, I noticed an enormous diamond ring on Lauren’s hand. “Oh my God,” I yelped, grabbing her hand and gazing at the sparkling stone.

“Right? It’s a headlight. Isn’t it amazing?” Shannon laughed. “That bastard didn’t even ask for my help. I want to be insulted but…he did good.”

Lauren blushed and acknowledged my outburst with a gracious nod. “Do you have a date set?”

“We do,” she replied, an undeniably gleeful smile pulling at her lips. “Late May.”

“And she’s not pregnant!” Shannon stage-whispered. “We all thought it.”

“Hm.” Not knowing how to handle Shannon’s comment, I sipped my mimosa and contemplated my reaction to Lauren’s ring. In all of my twenty-four years, I never expressed more than obligatory politeness at weddings and babies. I went so far as debating the purpose of engagement rings in a day and age where a man’s proof of possession over a woman was illogical, and marriage no longer required down payments or dowries.

“Is it all planned?”

Lauren lifted a shoulder and paused to sip her mimosa. “We’re taking a laid-back approach to the whole wedding planning thing. We just want friends and family on the beach and some good food and music. Nothing elaborate or formal.”

It sounded glorious, and completely void of all bridezilla tendencies to which otherwise intelligent, levelheaded women fell prey.

“They also needed to get married as soon as humanly possible,” Shannon snorted.

“We wanted to get married before things got crazy at my school, and yes,” she sighed, “we want to be married soon.”

“Are you a teacher?” Lauren looked like a teacher. Not in an ugly sweater, chalk on the seat of her pants way, but in a kind, patient way that she’d listen attentively to your story about shadow monsters in the library, then plot ways to scare them off.

“I used to be,” Lauren said. “I taught third grade for six years, and I’m opening a school in September.”

“Wow.” I was officially finished hating her. Lauren was genuinely warm and sweet, and I felt drawn to her.

“Yeah, yeah, Lauren’s amazing and incredible. Let me tell you about Hunter. Ohmigod. Disastrousness. Why do I think these guys are worth my time?”

“Where did you meet him again?”

“The Genius Bar at the Apple store.” Shannon rolled her eyes and groaned.

“Was he a Genius?” Lauren asked skeptically.

“No. Just a dude who was there, waiting in line, but that boy had no personality, and—get this—he expected me to pay. Not ‘hey, let’s split this’ but ‘hey, you’re picking this up, right?’ He was just rude about it.” She shook her head. “Then he decides to reconfigure my phone to optimize the memory or whatever. I told him I was pleased with its performance, and would like to hear more about him, and he said I would be really impressed with the difference.”

“Are you?” I asked.

“No,” she answered. “No. And I wouldn’t be shocked to discover some pervy surveillance app on here. I ended up sitting there for half an hour while he dicked around with my phone. I couldn’t even text Sam to call me with a fake emergency.”

“Shannon,” Lauren sighed. “No more boys for you. No more hook-ups. You’ve met every weirdo in Boston. You need to let the universe take over now. Accept that there is a plan for you and surrender.”

Shannon opened her mouth to speak but paused when our lunches arrived. Once the waitress left, she removed all the avocado from her chicken, jicama, and avocado salad. She noticed me staring, and offered the plate of discarded avocado. “I like a tiny bit of avocado flavor but I don’t like biting into avocados. The texture is weird.”

“Sure,” I murmured, accepting the plate. Getting used to that level of friendly familiarity would take some time.

Shannon pointed at Lauren with her fork. “I don’t feel like I need a relationship to be happy. By no means. I’m totally happy in my skin right now. I like my independence. I don’t want to get on a daily call-text-email program with some guy, and I really don’t want him getting miffed when I can’t hold up my end of that bargain. I don’t have time for the off-the-deep-end kind of relationship you and Matt have.” She sent a horrified look in Lauren’s direction and shook her head. “But I don’t want to miss out on someone really great because I’m not looking.”

As the words slipped from Shannon’s mouth, I wondered whether she hacked into my psyche to find them. Eating the avocado she picked out of her salad didn’t seem quite as weird anymore.

“Well…neither was I,” Lauren replied. “I certainly attempted to send him on his merry way a couple of times, regardless of whether it made any sense.”

“Yeah. That. I don’t have time for dramatic shit, or obsessing about the random things some guy said or did, or didn’t do. I can’t even start with that. And I don’t want to wake up with fourteen cats when I’m forty-eight.”

“I wouldn’t let that happen to you, Shan. I’d intervene after two cats. Hell, we’d have a come-to-Jesus when the first one showed up.” Lauren shook her head. “And let me remind you of something you said not too long ago—it just happens when you stop looking for it.”

“You’re saying I need to stop looking so I don’t start hoarding cats.”

“Yes,” Lauren said.

“I can’t make any promises, but…I’ll see what I can do.”

“So Andy, we were going to hit a few boutiques around town if you’d like to come along. We have a wedding dress to find. We are
choosing
to be happy today, and not letting anything drag us down.” Lauren directed a pointed stare at Shannon, and she nodded in response. “I don’t want a poufy dress, and not necessarily a white dress, so we’re looking for something a little different.”

“As if you could wear white anyway,” Shannon laughed. “We’re skipping the bridal boutiques, Andy, so this is the end of our champagne, and I doubt we’re going to find any sparkly tiaras.”

“Somehow I think I’ll survive.”

“Good,” Shannon barked. “You’re part of the family now, and you have a vagina so you’re obligated to look at dresses with us. Sam’s the unofficial vagina that we usually drag along and he’s busy hating the world these days so we really need you.”

I always knew I wanted to work at Walsh Associates as an architect, but it wasn’t until they welcomed my vagina into their makeshift sisterhood that I knew I wanted to be part of their family.

PATRICK

R
esting my chin
on my clasped hands, I glared at her text messages for the twentieth time that morning.

02:35 Andy:
thanks. I appreciate this. I like learning from you. Consider it a mutually beneficial arrangement.

02:35 Andy:
But as a friend: you’re drunk. Go home.

02:37 Andy:
give me a call if you need someone to put you to bed.

I remembered everything about Friday night at Matt and Lauren’s place. The paella. The whiskey. The will. Sam’s freak-out. Shan and Riley crashing a frat party. Passing out next to Sam. Waking up clutching a pink velvet pillow. Everything except texting Andy and destroying my phone in typical Neanderthal fashion.

There were an infinite number of ways to interpret Andy’s texts and my weekend was devoted to analyzing each one. I read her responses so many times that the words stopped sounding like words and all I could hear was her saying “hm.”

I knew how I wanted to interpret her messages. I also knew I was an idiot for thinking she’d want those things, and a bastard for twisting her words into something very, very dirty. If she only knew the kind of mutually beneficial arrangement I was thinking about, she’d run fast and far.

Or maybe that spine of steel would stay.

“When did you get here?” Shannon asked.

Lifting my head from my hands, I glanced over my shoulder as Shannon rounded the corner from the attic staircase.

“Six thirty.” At her surprised expression, I continued, “I’m in the field most of the day. Needed to wrap my head around a few projects. And I’ll be damned if this meeting doesn’t start on time.”

I failed to mention I was camping out in the attic conference room to avoid Andy. It was easier to fantasize about her lips around my cock when she wasn’t staring at me.

“Right, well…since I have you here, I’m going to pull the payoff amount for the note on this place today. I think it’s in the mid to low fours. I’ll need your signature to make the distribution from the estate once all the affidavits are filed.”