She has until tomorrow to call me, because I’m not going to sleep well until I know she’s all right.
CHAPTER TWELVE
NATALIE
I read the note for the umpteenth time. Call me.
Is he even serious? I feel like there’s some hidden message in the seven words on the page. Maybe it’s an anagram for “You’re the craziest loon I’ve ever met. Stay away.”
My mind is sluggish today. Oliver called Dr. Terrance, who ordered me a whole new cocktail of drugs and put off any attempts of mine to go outside for another couple of weeks. After Dr. Terrance chewed me out for opening the door to a stranger, someone he hadn’t met and approved of, Oliver showed up with the new prescriptions and wouldn’t leave until I’d taken my recommended dosage. Poor Oliver. He tries his best to cope with me, not calling Dr. Terrance until the last minute. Even Oliver grapples with Dr. Terrance’s need to vet everyone in my life and every action I take, as evidenced by Oliver hiring Jake without preapproval.
I’m not even sure what my biggest fear is anymore. Is it really breaking down in the middle of the subway or is it never being able to leave my apartment again?
I haven’t written in two days, just sat on the couch or laid on the floor near the French doors, looking outside without the lights on. Last night a dark car slid into a parking space and sat there for a long time. I stared at it, wondering who was inside, wishing it was Jake. But eventually it drove away. Probably a tourist—few people in the city own cars.
I probably should have been freaked out by it, but I was mostly sad it left. I’d felt like there was at least one person in the city still awake other than me.
Daphne has sent me a dozen unhappy emails about my lack of progress on the manuscript. I don’t need her to remind me of my looming, already-missed-once deadline, but my creativity is stifled when I take the drugs.
I can’t write emotion if I don’t feel it.
Call me.
The note is the only thing that interests me and really, what do I have to lose by calling him? He’s already seen me at my dismal worst. If he acts embarrassed and unhappy, I’ll hang up and that will be one more thing I’ve sacrificed at the altar of my anxiety. It’s eaten everything else that is decent and good. Why not Jake?
The phone rings so many times I nearly hang up.
“Tanner here.”
The sharp bite of his tone throws me, but I’ve called and he answered so I might as well plunge ahead.
“Beck here,” I mimic.
“Natalie.” His voice drops into a low, rumbly tenor. Comforting and sexy. I want to wrap myself up in that voice. “How are you doing?”
“Hungry,” I joke. Although it’s not entirely a joke. Now that I think about it, I haven’t eaten anything in a while. I lower the phone from my ear to check the time. Holy crap. I haven’t eaten anything in seven hours. I’ve just sat on my ass staring at the blank wall across from my sofa. “I’m sorry I missed our dinner date. I could be eating Chinese leftovers right now.”
“Maybe I would’ve taken the rest home with me,” he laughingly suggests. “I like leftovers too.”
“I don’t believe you would have. If you bring it to my house, you have to leave it here.”
“Is that a Natalie Beck rule?”
“I think Emily Post says it. If you are visiting, bring lots of food and leave it.”
“I’m taking notes.”
I love talking to him. Love it so much. I could talk to him forever. I stretch out on the sofa and pull a throw over myself. Snuggling down, I pretend he’s in the room and we’re having that date—just two normal people hanging out after dinner. Would he allow me to put my feet in his lap? Some guys are adamantly against feet. My last boyfriend, if I could really call him that, had an anti-foot fetish. He didn’t even like to see toes and was freaked out whenever I’d run my feet along his calf. Suffice it to say, we never played footsie. Not that that was what turned me on, but his aversion to my bare piggies kind of hurt my feelings.
And like I’d turn Jake down if he was anti-foot. I’ve already concluded that he must have some terrible personality trait that has not yet revealed itself to me. Like maybe he has bad personal hygiene and he smells terrible. Maybe he clips his toenails in bed.
Whatever it is, I am down with it. Because he wanted me to call him even after I freaked out about the clown. And it wasn’t just a courtesy gesture, because he could have made an excuse to hang up by now, but instead he’s talking to me, joking about our missed date.
He can have bad breath, leave the toilet seat up, and I’ll buy lots of paper towels to place under his feet. Hell, I’ll give him pedicures.
“I was worried when I didn’t hear from you,” he says softly.
“I’m drugged up,” I admit. “Oliver called Dr. Terrance. He was cursing because he told you to do it and you refused.”
“He said you had a love/hate relationship with your therapist. I wasn’t going to call someone to your place you didn’t fully want there.”
“What else did you look at while you were here?” I ask. He’d seen it all except for my overly froufrou bedroom. I wait for him to remark about the girliness. It’s emasculating, Oliver told me once.
“Your bedroom is very pink,” he admits.
“Would that turn you off? Affect your performance negatively?” I tease.
He chuckles, though, apparently not offended or turned off by my question. “My manhood can withstand a little pink. I grunted a lot this morning.”
“That’s nice to know.” My cheeks are pink to match the decor, part in embarrassment over the other night and part delight. I burrow under the covers, where I can pretend that we’re talking in person. His next sentence surprises me.
“We need to reschedule our dinner.”
It’s a joke. It’s so clearly a joke so I respond in kind. “Yeah, tomorrow night.” I force a light laugh.
“I can do tomorrow.”
“It’s too bad you can’t come. Wait, what?” Did he just say tomorrow?
“How about tomorrow night?” he repeats.
“I, uh, I don’t know.” I can’t process his question right now because the thought of opening the door again, not knowing what is on the other side, is terrifying so I avoid it, but I can’t have him hang up on me. I change the topic hastily. “What’s your office like?”
He accepts my avoidance, just like he accepts every weird thing about me. “It’s very boring. White walls, gray carpet. It’s on the bottom of my townhouse, the garden level and the main level. I live in the top three with one of my sisters, Sabrina, who will be graduating from Columbia this year.”
“What’s your other sister’s name?” I want to know everything about him.
“Megan. She’s thirty-two. My parents had Megan and me a couple years apart. Sabrina was a late-in-life surprise for them. You?”
He’s thirty-four or thirty-five then. Nearly a decade older than me.
“Oliver’s like a brother to me. My parents died in a twenty-car pileup when I was five. The roads were icy and a truck on the interstate did a three-sixty, took a bunch of cars out, and caused a huge accident. They were coming home from a lecture at the university. My dad’s sister took me and raised Oliver and me together. He’s only two years older than me.”
“So you’re twenty-six?”