Page 4 of Rules in Love
Ouch. That hit a little close to the bone, so I ignored it, stole Teddy’s drink, and focused on the tequila, rum, and chill E.D.M. infusing into my blood. With each sip, I sighed, breathed in the saffron, garlic, and paprika wafting from the kitchen, and resigned myself to the fact that we weren’t leaving anytime soon. Teddy seemed to lose interest in my love life, instead becoming obsessed with the hair of the lady sitting beside us. But chasing the day’s lingering warmth, she and her beehive moved to an outdoor table, and his attention returned to me.
“Lonely death jokes aside, Scarlett. You deserve to be happy, and Finn McHunk seems like a nice, massive guy…which, ipso facto, you could confirm if you actually spoke to him.”
“Christ on a bike! I have spoken to him!” I hadn’t. But I still protested and sprayed Teddy’s face in the process.
“Asking him where the loo is, then running away faster than Usain Bolt is hardly talking. I’ve shared more substantive conversations with that weird cat lady that lives next door.”
“Damn it, Digby! I’ve told you a hundred times. Mrs. Horowitz is adorable.”
“And…?”
“Aaand…” I shrugged, looking out the window for beehive lady. “I will converse with Finn at some point. But I must build up my nerve…and vocabulary.”
“Pfft. Please.”
My eyes snapped back to the warranted disbeliever. “Don’t scoff at me, Teddy. Any thought that’s ever existed within my scatterbrain dies the minute I look at him. I have no idea what to say or do. It’s horrible.” I finished my drink, pictured Finn opening his blinds, and continued complaining without waiting for a reply. “He’s just so…so…intimidatingly gorgeous and totally out of my league. Why would he be interested in someone like me?”
Ideology #2: NEVER date a man more than twice your level of hotness. It’s inequitable, unsustainable, and undeniably doomed.
“Someone like you?” Teddy choked, “Excuse me, Adele, I adore you. You’re fucking gorgeous, utterly brilliant, and the sweetest, strongest person I have ever met. You are totally in his league. If anything, Finn should be intimidated by you. I have said it before, and I will say it again: Scarlett Grant, if I had the slightest interest in people with breasts, I’d be all over you like a rash.”
I bit my lip and giggled, “I thought you liked breasts. What about your boy Quincy?”
Teddy tutted, clumsily dipped his fingers into the empty glass, and reclaimed the lime wedge. “Ha ha, very funny. You know I’m a sucker for a bear. And as fun as it is to talk about hairy men and their moobs, this is about you.” He sucked the lime with a smirk bordering on evil, then swept my hand into his and kissed it ever so softly. “The fact that my lips are the only ones kissing you regularly is a crime to humanity. One I will never understand.”
There it is!That was the hit I was looking for. I knew Teddy and his loving barbs would soothe my soul. Biased affection and brutally honest support had been a constant in our friendship from the start.
Within weeks of our meeting, life threw me a massive curveball. I discovered I was pregnant, and the father was a cute, six-foot-two, greasy-haired brunette I barely knew named Brett. Hot, bad, and soon to be leaving the country, Brett was everything the shy, eighteen-year-old me craved. He’d recently graduated from our university, Cambridge, and was helping as a tour guide during orientation week. The private tour Bretty-boy gave me later that night was a tad more personal than the brochures specified and mainly centered around the backseat of his Mini Cooper.
My unexpected news didn’t sit well with my new roomie, Alisha, or her parents, who owned the off-campus house we shared. Unimpressed by the influence I may have had on their darling daughter, and my vomiting on their Persian rug three mornings in a row, they politely asked me to leave. With no family to turn to, Teddy took me into his home and made it ours. His generosity, heartfelt commitment, and mercy were overwhelming and only increased my already unhealthy adoration and dependency.
As for Brett, he had already returned to the States by this point. I had no idea where he lived or how to contact him. But aided by the sympathetic and rule-breaking women of the university well-being services, I tracked him down in New York. He wasn’t such a bad guy after all, and he supported me in what felt like an impossible decision—to keep or not to keep the baby.
Benjamin Grant was born seven and a bit months later, and Brett and his family became as involved as they could be in our odd transatlantic scenario, even coming to visit him several times. But as grateful as I was to have Brett be a part of Benjamin’s life, it couldn’t compare to my gratitude for Teddy. He could be an interfering sass-pot, but not a single shred of my success or good fortune would have been possible without him. He saved me from me, and for that, the family we created, my home, and the daily vitamin D, I would be forever indebted.
Way too much natural light and semi-controlled chaos greeted me at the office the next morning. I still felt unworthy of the place after a year and a half. It was everything I was not. So expensive, fancy, and cultured. And no matter the state of the New York air, trash day or not, it always smelled like lilies or roses and was so clean you could eat off the floors.
The first and only other firm I had worked for was in England, and it was more my pace. But it was also filled to the brim with balding, middle-aged men in tweed and brown corduroy, who constantly regurgitated age-old sex-etary and mother-in-law jokes. Their notion of finery was, coincidentally, their and the building’s scent—boiled eggs and kippers. Here in my New York office, it was Prada, Chanel, Jimmy Choo, or nothing. Lunch was a bike-courier-delivered Bento box, or poke bowl, and maybe a gourmet sandwich if you dared bread.
Despite the lack of complex carbohydrates, my newish firm was generally a place of calm. Just not today.
“What the hell’s going on?” I asked Jan, our HR rep, who happened to be scooting past me as I entered the kitchen.
“I’ll tell you what’s going on,” inserted the grouchy voice of Arthur, our surly, long-haired IT guy. “While you architect and HR ladies slept, our computer system up and crashed. Everything’s dead. No doubt because someone downloaded virus-ridden porn again.”
“Don’t look at me,” Jan said as she continued on her way, blushing.
In a modern-day architecture firm, an outage like that spelled disaster. With two pitches for high-profile clients scheduled for that day and three later in the week, it was all hands on deck. While I knew my design program inside out, it was one of the few computer literacy claims I could make. Luckily, another was how to run a backup.
I rushed to my desk, dropped my laptop amongst the mess of papers and stolen pens, and checked. “Thank fuck.” All my work was safe, and because it wasn’t connected to our office server, everything was accessible. Daring to approach Arthur again, I offered my useless services. “Ready and willing to pitch in, Arthur. What do you need?”
His expression read:I need you to go away. His mouth said, “Can you access anything remotely finished on that prehistoric brick of a laptop you refuse to upgrade?”
“Yes. I think so, anyway. My Hudson River House pitch is pretty much done and backed up on the brick…I mean laptop.”
“Congratulations. You’re brilliant,” he quipped with a distinct pitch of sarcasm. He began to speak again, then paused and smiled menacingly. “The Hudson River project, hey. Fancy that.” Leaning back in his chair, he cracked his knuckles and took the evilness up a notch. “As of this moment, only you and one other brainiac can retrieve anything. Get a presentation together amidst this shitshow, and you’ll be the hero of the day and running the place in a week.” He nodded in the direction of my desk and whistled in a way not dissimilar to a farmer directing a sheepdog.
Slinking away, I was suddenly overcome with the scent of mothballs.Here we go.“Good morning, Mr. Wise,” I chimed before I’d even seen the face. Herman Wise was our senior partner in both age and rank. He was also a sexist creep, who thankfully came with a built-in stench that alerted you to his presence. It was a lifesaver, often giving you enough time to hide or at least cover your boobs. Wise was the only thing I hated about this firm.
