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 Jill ian, 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 Jill ian.
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, Jill ian?” 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 Jill ian 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 hell uva 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.
Jill ian’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. Jill ian 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 Jill ian 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, Jill ian, 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.
Jill ian 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.”
“Well, who knows if I’m even invited anymore.” I sighed dramatically.
“You’re still friends, right?” she asked, raising an eyebrow at me. “Why don’t you just ask him?” When I didn’t respond she added, “Stick that in your pipe and suck it.”