Page 3 of One Night Only
I feel his silent laughter under my hand. I stop touching him and open the door.
He steps out into the hall, turning to face me. God, he’s good-looking. I’m shallow, I know. But a part of me is very pleased I managed to snag him.
“I had a great time last night,” he says.
“I’m glad. Me too.”
“A lot of chemistry.”
“A lot of tequila,” I correct.
He nods, looking serious. “Also, true. Now, it might just be me, but itfeelslike you’re trying to stop whatever’s happening here.”
“Nothing’s happening. I’m kicking you out of my apartment.”
“I get that. Or you could—”
“Goodbye,” I say firmly and shut the door in his face.
Done.
I turn triumphantly back to the room but Claire only frowns. “I have never been more disappointed in you.”
“What?”
“What?” she mimics. “Did you seehim? Better yet, did youhearhim?”
“I saw him. I heard him. And now I’m taking a shower.”
“For someone so smart, you can be extremely dumb sometimes,” she calls after me. “And you owe me a run!”
* * *
It’s a beautiful summer’s morning in New York. Blue-skies, green-trees, glittering-skyscrapers beautiful. The weather app on my phone says it’s sixty-five degrees and I barely last five minutes outside before I’m shrugging off my jacket. In a few hours the temperature and humidity will creep up but for now it’s perfect and I hurry through the city, the soothing tones of an NPR podcast murmuring in my ears as I join the throngs of people on their way to work.
It’s a twenty-minute walk from my apartment in the East Village to the offices of Baxter & Sons Architects, located just off Union Square.Officesmight be the wrong word. We take up half a floor of a midsized, glass-walled building that sits above a Chipotle and a nail salon that never seems to be open. And it’s not so much Baxter &Sonsas it is just Baxter. Harvey’s kids left years ago to start their own firms but he kept the name so he wouldn’t have to change all our branding.
Despite the delay to my morning, I arrive a good thirty minutes before I’m supposed to, only slightly out of breath. The place is mostly empty but my cubicle buddy, Will, is already there, halfway through a fruit cup. Not a morning person, he barely gives me a grunt as I sweep in. Normally, I wouldn’t say a word to him for at least another hour, but as I tug out my earphones, I spy a large takeout coffee next to my keyboard.
“What’s this?”
“A latte,” Will says, spearing a strawberry with a small plastic fork.
“Why?”
“Do I need a reason to get my co-worker a coffee in the morning?”
I dump my purse on my desk. “What do you want?”
“Nothing.”
“Nothing?”
“Harvey came by.”
Ah. So that’s what the coffee is for. Not a bribe but a commiseration.
I pick up the tall cardboard cup and take a sip.
