Chasing your tail, p.10
Chasing Your Tail, page 10
“It takes some practice.”
“Don’t sell yourself short. And you know a lot about, I dunno, how to make carrot cake without the moisture from the carrots making it gummy. And how to make meat cookies cats will eat. Even your dad has to admit that meat cookies are pretty butch.”
He laughed. He hated talking about the garbage with his father, but letting some of it out now had been a relief in a way. He knew, intellectually, that nothing his father said mattered, that he didn’t need to live up to whatever standard for manliness his father wanted to impose. Brad was comfortable with who he was most of the time. It had taken some work to get here, though, and back during his first post-school job, getting the perfect swirl on top of a cupcake had felt like a failure, somehow.
He savored holding Lindsay and the soft feel of her skin under his fingertips and pushed the rest of it away. He didn’t want to wallow in his darker emotions when Lindsay was here.
He sighed. Just lying in bed with her chatting was satisfying in a way. He was a little afraid to ask her to spend the night, because he figured she’d freak and say no or start a discussion with him about where this was going, and he didn’t want to talk anymore. He just wanted to hold on to this moment for as long as it lasted.
***
As Brad started to drift off to sleep, Lindsay wondered if she should stay or go. It felt unfair to just sneak out without saying anything, so she lay there for a moment to see if Brad might wake back up. When he started to snore, she realized he probably wanted her to spend the night.
Lindsay’s stomach rolled over. This was all wrong. She hadn’t come here intending to sleep with Brad. It had happened, and it was good, but that was all that this could be. She wasn’t getting back together with him. They hadn’t worked the first time, and there was no reason to think they could now.
Before she’d dated him, he’d had a reputation as kind of a ladies’ man. He was good-looking and charming and flirted with everyone, even after he and Lindsay were in a committed relationship. He’d always insisted the flirting was innocent. It probably was. That hadn’t made Lindsay less jealous.
That moment when she’d seen Phoebe kissing him had seared itself on her mind. Lindsay had been hurt by that, which wasn’t exactly a state secret. Hearing Brad’s side had mostly convinced her that he hadn’t meant anything by what happened. But it had still happened. Phoebe had set them both up, probably with the aim of getting Lindsay to dump Brad so she could have him to herself. And, bottom line, Brad hadn’t said no. He hadn’t pushed Phoebe away or told her to back off. He’d kissed her.
But that was all water under the bridge. It was in the past. The problem for Lindsay now was that getting over Brad had been one of the hardest things she’d ever done—and she knew, deep down, she hadn’t been completely successful. No matter how handsome and charming and affectionate Brad was, no matter how many times he said the right thing or asked for them to get back together, she could not put herself through that again.
She sat up, which made Brad wake up.
“Huh?”
“I’m going home,” she said, swinging her legs out of bed.
“No, come on. Just go to sleep.”
“I want to walk home before it gets much later.”
“You can spend the night. I want you to spend the night. I’ll make you pain perdu in the morning.”
Leave it to the pastry chef to say “French toast” in the fancy way. And tempting as it was, she knew staying for breakfast would lead to spending more time together, and this had to be a one and done. “No, I need to get home. I–I need some time to think.” She nearly smacked her forehead. That was giving him too much.
Brad flopped onto his back and threw an arm over his eyes. “You’re freaking out.”
She sighed. He’d asked her for honesty, right? “Well, yeah. This is not what I came here for.”
“I will point out again that you came on to me.”
She pulled on her panties and bra. His gaze kept raking over her body, so he was a little distracted. But she sighed. “If your plan is to make me fall in love with you again, it won’t work. I can’t. I’m not putting myself through that again.”
His eyebrows shot up. “Is that what you think I’m doing?”
“I don’t know what you’re doing.”
“I sincerely only wanted to talk tonight. Great sex was a bonus. You’re hot, and I like you a lot despite the fact that you are the most stubborn, cynical woman I have ever met. I had no ulterior motive here. Don’t put one on me.”
“You want to get back together, though.”
“The thought crossed my mind.”
Lindsay shook her head.
“Do you disagree that the sex was good?”
Lindsay grunted and pulled on her jeans. “Sex was never the problem with us.”
Brad got out of bed, seemingly unaware that he was naked. He crossed the room just as she was pulling on her shirt. “I’m not asking you for anything,” he said, “except to maybe stop avoiding me.”
“I’m not avoiding you.”
“You are 100 percent avoiding me. Monique at the café told me you were a regular, but you haven’t come by at all since I started working there, except for the interviews and tonight.”
She slid her feet into her shoes. “What’s your point?”
“You don’t want to get back together, fine. I respect that. But even you have to admit we have fun together sometimes, and for a few minutes there, you actually seemed to like me, so maybe you could turn down your ire a couple of notches and trust that we can be in the same space every now and then without stabbing each other.”
“Or fucking each other.”
He had the balls to grin at that. “Or that.”
“Don’t look so smug.”
He walked past her out of the bedroom. She glanced at the street-facing windows, which all had heavy curtains hanging from them. Lindsay could picture Brad walking around this space naked all the time. She hated that she found the image so exciting.
He slipped into the bathroom for a moment, then emerged wearing a robe. He grabbed her handbag from where she’d left it near the sofa and handed it to her.
“Go ahead and think about things,” he said. “I’m here if you want to talk.”
Ugh. Why was he so stupid perfect? She heard in his tone that he was being genuine. It wasn’t so much that she wanted to go as that she didn’t trust herself if she stayed. “I’m going,” she said. “Tonight was not completely terrible.”
Then she made herself leave before Brad’s open, earnest face made her change her mind.
Chapter 10
Lindsay sat at a table near the front window of Pop and ordered a martini as the waitress walked by. Pop was best known for its extensive martini menu, and most of the drinks were really just sugary ingredients with a splash of alcohol, but they were all tasty. Her personal favorite was called the Dirrrty Martini, which was, well, a dirty martini, but with a little citrus added to brighten up the brininess of the olive juice.
Lauren and Paige were both working the late shift at the café, so they wouldn’t be along for a bit. Evan had texted that he was running late because something had gone terribly awry on the subway. So Lindsay sat alone and nursed her martini and played a puzzle game on her phone while she waited.
And who should walk in but Brad.
He looked around, spotted her, walked to her table, and helped himself to a seat.
“What are you doing here?”
He grinned, which was unnerving. “I brought Hamilton home yesterday and realized I forgot to get his immunization records from Lauren, but I need them before his vet appointment Saturday. Lauren and I are working opposite shifts the rest of the week, so she offered to meet me here tonight to give me the paperwork. She said you’d be here.”
“You’re early. She won’t get here for another hour, probably. I’m waiting for Evan.”
“Uh-huh.”
“You already knew that, didn’t you?”
He shrugged.
“Did you come here to see me?”
“Do you see anyone else here?”
Lindsay was not happy to see him. She wasn’t ready to talk to him yet. If she ever would be. This was ridiculous. Why did he keep popping up in her life? She sipped her martini and looked around, trying to find something to focus her attention on.
“So you don’t want to talk about what happened?” he asked.
“What, the sexy bits?”
“And you freaking out afterward.”
Lindsay sighed. No, she didn’t want to talk about any of this, not at all. She ground out, “We’re not getting back together.”
“No?”
“No. The sex was good and all, but as far as I can tell, you’re still the same charming, flirty mess I broke up with five years ago.”
He had the good grace to look mildly offended, but his eyes sparkled as if he were laughing at her. “Good? The sex was great.”
She rolled her eyes. “Sex was never our problem.”
He nodded. “So you said the other night.” When the waitress slid a basket of chips onto the table, he took one and popped it in his mouth, a gesture that looked casual and relaxed. “So what was our problem? That you are so jaded from your parents’ divorce that you don’t trust yourself to be vulnerable with anyone, and that you used Phoebe making out with me as an excuse to end the good thing you and I had going?” He popped another chip in his mouth.
Lauren stared at him for a long moment and then realized her jaw was hanging open. She closed her mouth hard, her teeth clacking together. She must have looked like a cartoon character.
How dare he? How could he just sit there and casually psychoanalyze her, think he knew her so well and spit out a proclamation like that?
But also, she was shocked at how well he’d nailed her.
She realized, then, that despite his casual demeanor, he was mad. She’d been within her rights to walk out on him the other night; she wasn’t ready for anything more with him than that one dumb night. But he was mad that she’d bailed with him.
He should have understood. She knew that being the child of an acrimonious divorce did not make her unique, but she’d confessed that much to Brad one night when they’d been dating. Her mother had been a mess emotionally for a lot of Lindsay’s childhood, and Lindsay had always been reluctant to put herself in the position to be that vulnerable. Enough of her friends were in good relationships now that obviously love and happiness were achievable, but Lindsay often wondered if they were really in the cards for her.
Lindsay’s father and Brad had a lot in common. Brad was far kinder, but like Lindsay’s dad, he was an incorrigible flirt and women seemed to gravitate to him. Brad knew all this because Lindsay had told him, partly to confess something about herself and partly to explain why she had trust issues. She’d seen firsthand how much her mother had been destroyed by her father’s philandering, and Lindsay didn’t want to repeat that old pattern. Brad had acted sympathetic at the time. He’d even told her he was glad she’d told him because he understood her better.
Lindsay’s father often partook of what was offered. She hadn’t thought Brad had ever done that…until the night she caught him with Phoebe.
“What I was going to say,” Lindsay said, recovering, “was that you flirt with anything in a skirt and don’t know when to rein it in.”
“We’ve had this conversation before. We had a variation on it the other night. We figured out that we don’t trust each other. You don’t trust me because I’m an unrepentant flirt, and I don’t trust you because you don’t trust anyone.”
“That’s not true. I trust my friends.”
“Have you ever been in a romantic relationship in which you trusted the guy you were dating?”
Lindsay crossed her arms because he probably already knew the answer to that question. Clearly it was no. It was why she wasn’t involved with anyone right now. The fact that he kept bringing it up pissed her off.
“In my defense,” said Brad, “I am a functional adult now in a way I was not five years ago. You may have noticed that I have my own place now.”
“The only art on your walls is a Star Wars poster.”
“That I put in a frame. See? Adult.”
Lindsay tried to decide what she really wanted here. She sensed that Brad was trying to woo her in his own very Brad way. She couldn’t quite understand why.
“Anyway,” he said after he ate another chip, “you agreed you could spend time in the same room as me without us stabbing each other, so I partly just came by to say hi while I wait for Lauren. So, hi.”
“Hi.”
Brad ate another chip. “These are good. What do you usually drink here?”
“We come here for the martinis.”
Brad picked up the drink menu and grimaced. Lindsay suddenly remembered that, though he had a sweet tooth, Brad hated sugary drinks. When the waitress came by again, he ordered a scotch on the rocks.
They’d known each other inside and out once. How much of that knowledge had changed over time?
Some things probably hadn’t changed. Brad had a tattoo of two rolling pins that formed an X on the inside of his forearm now—that had definitely been added in the last five years—but she suspected a lot of other things were the same. He hated green olives but liked black ones. He added milk but not sugar to coffee. He had an allergy to horseradish he didn’t know about until he ate some one day in culinary school and then broke out in hives. He loved sci-fi movies and watching baseball games while snoozing on his sofa and reading thrillers. She assumed little of that had changed.
She sipped her martini and eyed him.
“What are you thinking now?” he asked.
“That I know you but I don’t. I was just mentally cataloging the things I remember about you.”
“Was one of those things my huge penis?”
Lindsay laughed despite herself. “No. I guess I’ll put that on the list. I was thinking more how you like your coffee, what foods you’re allergic to, which kind of movies you like.”
“Ah, okay. You like your coffee light and sweet, like, why even bother with the coffee? You’re allergic to pineapple, as we learned during the upside-down cake incident. And you like froufrou rom-coms but will never admit it. There. Did I pass?”
“Yeah, I guess so. What makes you think I like rom-coms?”
“Because despite your aversion to love and commitment, you teared up at the end of every one we watched together. You, my dear ex, are a sap.”
“That is not true.”
He shrugged.
“These are all superficial things anyway,” she said. “Me being allergic to pineapple doesn’t tell you anything about my personality.”
“No, it doesn’t. What does, however, is something I’ve always admired about you, which is that you are fiercely loyal to your friends, but as soon as someone does anything to cross you or them, that person is dead to you. I know this because I was on the wrong side of that once. And I’d like to be alive to you again.”
***
Brad knew he was running out of time. Evan would get here any minute, and although Brad and Lindsay were not exactly in private as they spoke in the middle of a crowded bar, none of her friends were here to overhear this conversation.
“What does that even mean?” Lindsay asked after a long pause.
“I think you should go out with me again.”
“Brad.”
“Hear me out. I think you should go out with me again. Not commit to anything, just go on a date or something, so that I can demonstrate to you that I am a good person and that we could be good together once we figure out that whole trust thing.”
“This thing with us didn’t work out the first time. What makes you think it will now?”
That was the million-dollar question, wasn’t it? “We’ve learned and grown as people?”
She grunted and crossed her arms.
“We’ll never know if we don’t try.”
“I guess.” She shot him a sidelong glance. “You got another cliché for me?”
Brad laughed. “Fake it ’til you make it? Eyes on the prize? Go for the gold?”
Lindsay rolled her eyes.
“Just think about it, all right? And, look, if you just want to use me for my hot body, I’m okay with that, too.” Brad wasn’t entirely sure why he was throwing himself at Lindsay so hard. Well, he did want her back. No one had ever fit with him or made him laugh or eased the old wounds in him the way Lindsay had, and he’d regretted every moment of his life since she’d walked away from him the first time. Oh, he’d dated other women—he was a man with a pulse, after all—but none of them measured up.
Her mouth twisted in a way that showed she was amused but didn’t want to be, a suppressed smile for the ages. He thought he almost had her when Evan walked in.
Lindsay, Evan, and Lauren had been friends since their undergrad days. Brad’s understanding of the situation was that Evan and Lauren were very close, but since Lindsay had moved to Brooklyn after culinary school, the three of them and Paige had started spending a lot of time together. It had been clear from their rapport at the adoption party that they were all close now in a way they hadn’t quite been five years ago.
Another clue was that Evan sat down and gave Brad the stink eye.
“I’m just waiting for Lauren,” said Brad. “She has some paperwork for me. She made me get a cat.”
“She does that,” said Evan.
“He dropped by to say hi to me, too,” said Lindsay.
“Did you guys kiss and make up or what?” asked Evan.
Lindsay looked horrified, so Brad decided not to betray anything. “No, no. She still hates me. Not for lack of effort on my part.”
