Wallbanger (31 page)

...

Simon
: Shit, the Bay Bridge. We’re almost home, and I have no idea how this is going to go with Caroline. We’ve barely said anything the entire way—although I’m glad to be almost home. I smell like beef jerky, and I need to jerk off like you wouldn’t believe…

...

Mimi
: Yay! The Bay Bridge! I wonder if Ryan would mind spending the night at my place!

...

Ryan
: Thank fuck, the Bay Bridge. We’re almost home. I wonder if Mimi knows I’m spending the night at her place—and planning on making her call in sick tomorrow? Little girl, the things I plan to do to you…But I’m never eating that much beef jerky again. This has been the quietest road trip ever.

We dropped off the new couple at Mimi’s—not that they particularly noticed—they were in their own bubble gum world—and continued on to our apartments. Though we’d mostly just been lost in our thoughts, the tension had grown during the drive, and it was even more noticeable now that we were alone in the car. Simon and I had always had things to talk about, but now that we had so much to discuss, we were silent. I didn’t want things to be weird, and I knew I’d have to be the one to make sure he knew I was okay now. He’d already done his part to have a mature conversation, and once again my bull-in-a-china-shop delivery seemed to have taken care of that.

A vision of me announcing on the deck, at full volume, that I’d made a pass at Simon flashed across my mind, and while my cheeks certainly heated in embarrassment, I also had a mental chuckle at how odd I must have looked, arms flailing, mouth set as though I could spit nails. And then barking at frightened Simon to follow me to the beach. He must have wondered if I was going to thrash him and dump his body in the lake.

Looking at his hands on the steering wheel, the very hands that were on me in a very pronounced way the night before, I marveled at his ability to stop himself, because I know for a fact he had been in to it. Or his body had been, at least, if not his head.

The thing is, though, I
did
think his head was in it, at least until he thought about it too much. I glanced over at him once more, noticing we were pulling down our street. As we stopped at the curb, he looked over at me, biting down on the same lower lip that less than twenty-four hours ago I’d had the good fortune to be biting on.

He sprang from the car and ran around to my side before I even had my seatbelt unbuckled.

“Um, I’m just gonna…get the bags,” he stammered, and I studied him closely. He ran his left hand through his hair while his right drummed against the side of the car. Was he nervous?

“So, yeah,” he stammered again, disappearing around the back.

Yep, he was nervous, just as nervous as I was. He worried my bag out of the car, and we slogged up the three flights of stairs to our apartments. We were still not talking, so the only sound was our keys jangling in the locks. I couldn’t leave it like this. I had to square with him. I took a deep breath, and turned. “Simon, I—”

“Look, Caroline—”

We both laughed a little.

“You go.”

“No, you go,” he said.

“Nope. What were you gonna say?”

“What were
you
gonna say?”

“Hey, spit it out, bucko. I got a pussy to rescue from two queens downstairs,” I instructed, hearing Clive call to me from the apartment below.

Simon snorted and leaned against his door. “I guess I just wanted to say I had a really great time this weekend.”

“Until last night, right?” I leaned against my own door, watching him flinch as I addressed the elephant in the hot tub.

“Caroline,” he breathed, closing his eyes and letting his head fall back.

He looked like he was in actual pain as his face twisted. I took pity. I shouldn’t have, but I did.

“Hey, can we just forget it happened?” I said. “I mean, I know we can’t, but can we pretend to forget it? I know people say things won’t get weird all the time, but then it always does. How can we make sure things don’t get weird?”

He opened his eyes and looked hard at me. “I guess we just don’t let it. We make sure it doesn’t get weird. Okay?”

“Okay.” I nodded and was rewarded with the first real smile I’d seen since I unwrapped my sweater back in Tahoe. He gathered up his bag.

“Play me something good tonight, ’kay?” I asked as I headed inside.

“You got it,” he answered, and we shut our doors.

But he didn’t play me big band that night.

And we didn’t speak again that week.

“Who peed in your chili?”

I looked up from my desk to see Jillian, composed as always with her casually elegant chignon, black pencil trousers, white silk blouse, and raspberry cashmere sweater wrap. How did I know it was cashmere from across the room? Because it was Jillian.

I selected one of the five pencils currently stuck in my twisted hair bun and returned my attention to the mess that was my desk. It was Wednesday, and this week was both flying by and dragging simultaneously. No word from Simon. No texts from Simon. No songs from Simon.

But I hadn’t reached out to him either.

I was consumed with finishing the last few details on the Nicholson house, ordering expensive knickknacks for James’s condo, and starting the sketches for a commercial design project I had lined up for next month. It
looked
like chaos, but sometimes it was the only way I could get work done. There were days that I needed neat and orderly, and days when I needed the mess on my desk to reflect the mess in my head. This was that day.

“What’s up, Jillian?” I barked, knocking over my cup of colored pencils as I grabbed for my coffee.

“How much coffee have you had today, Miss Caroline?” She laughed, taking the seat opposite me and handing me the pencils that had spilled on the floor.

“Hard to say…how many cups are in a pot and a half?” I answered, restacking some papers to clear a space for her teacup. The woman walked around drinking tea out of a bone china cup, but it worked for her.

“Wow, I take it you aren’t seeing any clients today?” she asked, leaning over the desk and casually removing my coffee cup. I hissed at her, and she wisely put it back.

“Nope, no clients,” I answered, shoving the new sketches into color-coordinated folders and stuffing them into their appropriate drawers.

“Okay, sister, what’s up?”

“What do you mean? I’m working—what you pay me to do, remember?” I snapped, grabbing for a ring of fabric swatches and knocking my flower vase over. I’d picked out dark purple, almost black tulips for this week, and they were now all over the floor. I sighed heavily and forced myself to slow down. My hands shook from the caffeine arguing through my system, and as I sat and surveyed the state of affairs in my office I felt two fat tears forming in my eyes.

“Damn,” I muttered and covered my face with my hands. I sat for a minute, listening to the tick of the retro clock on the wall, and waited for Jillian to say something. When she didn’t, I peeked through my hands at her. She was standing by the door with my jacket and purse in her hands.

“Are you throwing me out?” I whispered as the tears launched themselves down my face. She waved her arm and beckoned me toward the door. Grudgingly I stood, and she draped my sweater around my shoulders and handed me my purse.

“Come on, dearie. You’re buying me lunch.” She winked and pulled me down the hallway.

Twenty minutes later she had me ensconced in an ornate red booth hidden partially behind two gold curtains. She’d brought me to her favorite restaurant in Chinatown, ordered me chamomile tea, and waited in silence for me to explain my semi breakdown. Actually, it was not entirely silent; we’d ordered the sizzling rice soup.

“So, you must’ve had a helluva weekend in Tahoe, huh?” she finally asked.

I laughed into my sizzle. “You could say that.”

“What happened?”

“Well, Sophia and Neil finally got together and—”

“Wait a minute, Sophia and
Neil?
I thought Sophia was with
Ryan?”

“She was, she was, but truthfully she was always meant to be with Neil, so it all worked out in the end.”

“Poor Mimi and Ryan. That must’ve been weird for them.”

“Ha! Oh yes, poor Mimi and Ryan. They got it on in the pool house, for God’s sake.” I snorted.

Jillian’s eyes grew wide. “In the pool house…wow,” she breathed, and I nodded.

We sizzled.

“So, Simon went to Tahoe, right?” she asked a few minutes later, looking everywhere but at me. I cracked a small smile at her imagined stealth. Jillian was many, many things, but subtle was not one.

“Yep, Simon was there.”

“And how was that?”

“It was great, and then it wasn’t, and now it’s weird,” I admitted, setting aside my soup to drink my tea. It was soothing and non-caffeinated, which Jillian had insisted on.

“So, no pool house for you two?” she asked, still glancing around the restaurant as though she weren’t asking me anything of importance.

“No, Jillian, no pool house. We hot tubbed, but we did not pool house,” I said emphatically, and then I spilled my guts and told her the entire ridiculous story.

She listened, she hmm’d and groaned in the right places, and she got indignant in the right places too. By the time I was finished, I was in tears again, which was really pissing me off.

“And the stink of it all, I shouldn’t have been doing it, but
he
is the one who stopped it, and I don’t really think he wanted to!” I huffed, angrily wiping tears away with my napkin.

“So why do you think he did?”

“He’s gay?” I offered, and she smiled. I took a deep breath and got control.

Jillian looked at me thoughtfully and then finally leaned in. “You realize we are two smart women who are not acting very smart right now,” she said.

“Huh?”

“We know better than to try to figure out what a man is up to. This’ll get worked out when it’s supposed to. And your tears? These are tension tears, frustration tears—nothing more. I’ll tell you one thing, though.”

“What’s that?”

“As long as I’ve known Simon, I’ve never heard of him inviting someone on a shoot with him, ever. I mean, inviting you to Spain? That’s very unlike Simon.”