No. I bet he doesn’t even eat pizza.
Mmm, pizza.
I love pizza.
Hauling my tipsy ass off the ground, I
gave up on work and went into the
kitchen, where I found a French bread
pizza in the freezer. I debated using the
oven, since frozen pizza nuked in the
microwave always turns out a bit soggy
and flaccid, but decided I was too
hungry to be picky. While it cooked, I
studied the box. “French bread” was a
bit of a stretch, and I wondered if it had
been a marketing idea. (“I know!” I
imagined someone saying in an
advertising meeting. “Let’s call it
French, that sounds fancier. Maybe they
can make the one edge a bit bullet-
shaped so it vaguely resembles a
baguette, but make it wider, like a
baguette after a piano was dropped on
it.”)
When the microwave dinged, I took
my dinner back to my desk—along with
another glass of wine…OK, the rest of
the bottle—and while I ate, I researched
the history of French bread pizza.
According to the Internet, where all
Great Truths are discovered, Stouffer’s
bought (or maybe copied) the idea from
a guy who ran a food truck at Cornell
University, starting in 1960. I filed that
interesting yet useless maybe-fact away
in my brain, which housed an entire
library of those things, and tried focusing
on my client again.
Needless to say, after that much
wine, I ended up back on Instagram, and
was rabidly scrolling through Quinn’s
account (Jesus, did the guy
ever
take a
bad pic? And did he get to keep all the
little underpants he wore in these photo
shoots or did he have to give them back?
Like, if I snooped in his underwear
drawer, would it be full of colorful
banana hammocks or just plain old boxer
briefs?) when my phone vibrated. I
glanced down and saw a text from
Claire, one of my two closest friends.
I need one of you to put ORC into
motion.
Got it
, I typed back.
Let me know if you need me
,
Margot responded.
ORC stood for Operation Rescue
Claire. It meant I had to call her in five
minutes with some reason she needed to
leave the terrible date she was on,
immediately. We’d set it up two years
ago among our friends after it became
clear that NO is not in Claire’s
vocabulary, so she says yes to all dates.
She doesn’t like to hurt people’s
feelings, and besides that, she genuinely
believes that her soul mate is out there,
poor thing. She’s the kind of girl who
thinks love at first sight is possible,
people always mean what they say, and
Jack somehow survived freezing in the
Atlantic after the ship went down in
Titanic. (“They didn’t have anyone
confirm his death and there was no
funeral! I think he survived and found
her and she kept it a secret!”)
After a while I stopped arguing with
her, although not only did I believe he
was dead, I thought there was enough
room on that door/raft that Rose could
have saved him, but whatever. Pretty
sure Claire believes in unicorns, too.
Honestly, I had no idea how we
were such close friends, but we’d been
together since grade school. Margot, the
third member of our trio, had gone to
private school up until ninth grade, when
she finally convinced her parents that
she couldn’t catch New Moneyitis by
attending public schools. We’d each
gone to different colleges but had moved
back to the area after grad school, and
we had standing GNO dates every week.
I waited the five minutes and called
Claire, claiming to be her mother with
an emergency at home. “I’ll be right
there, Mom,” she promised in an
unnaturally loud voice. “Fifteen minutes
at most. Don’t move.”
We hung up, and she called me from
the car ten minutes later. “Thanks. I was
dying.”
“Good thing you drove yourself.” I
carried my empty plate and glass into the
kitchen and set them in the sink.
“Always. Especially this time. I had
a feeling.”
“What went wrong?”
“He spent the first thirty minutes of
our date talking about his ex. He was in
tears by the time my second glass of
wine arrived. I took my entrée to go.”
“What is it?”
“Veal piccata.”
“Nice. Why is he even dating if he’s
not over his ex?”
“Who knows?” She sighed. “He was
sort of cute, though. Great hair. It’s a
bummer. All the good ones are taken, I
swear. Or gay. Or both.”
“Speaking of cute, you’ll never guess
who just moved in downstairs.” I turned
around and leaned back against the sink,
eyeing the fridge where he near-kissed
me.
“Who?”
“Quinn Rusek.” I lowered my voice.
I didn’t want him to hear me talking
about him.
“
Quinn Rusek
just moved in
downstairs from you?
Why
?”
“Because my brother told him he
could.”
“Your brother,” she said wistfully.
“A perfect example of cute, taken, and
gay.”
“We are talking about
me
,” I
reminded her peevishly. “And I have not
heard the proper amount of outrage from
you on my behalf that my cute, gay, and
taken brother is subjecting me to this
cruel and unusual punishment!”
“I’m sorry. It
is
cruel and unusual.
What’s he doing here?”
I filled her in on the details while I
rinsed my dishes, put them in the
dishwasher, and hunted around in my
pantry for something sweet. “And then
when I saw him, he had the nerve to act
like nothing was wrong. Like he hadn’t
been such an asshole to me that night.”
“Well, it
was
ten years ago, Jaims.”
“That doesn’t matter! My humiliation
is still fresh! It rose right to the surface
the moment he brought up the thing I
said.”
She gasped. “The ‘I love you’
thing?”
Spying a can of Duncan Hines
frosting at the back, I pulled it out, took
off the cap, and peeled back the foil lid.
“Yes. Turns out he still remembers that.
I’d been hoping he forgot.” I dragged a
finger through the thick chocolate sludge
and licked it off. “It was so horrible. He
teased me about it. Made me feel
seventeen years old and ridiculous
again.”
“What an asshole,” she said, finally
giving me what I wanted. “How did he
look?”
I groaned and dug back into the
frosting. “Good. Too good. You can’t
trust people that good-looking. He’s
probably an alien or something. He’s
just here trying to charm women back to
the mother ship to breed his ridiculously
beautiful alien babies.” I sucked the
chocolate off my finger.
Claire laughed. “OK, don’t follow
him to any spaceships, but maybe you
can try the whole bikini seduction again.
Bet he’d go for you now.”
“
Wrong
. He came up here, and I’m
so stupid and gullible, I invited him in
for a glass of wine. Talked about myself.
Tried to get him to kiss me.”
“Omigod! Why?”
I squeezed my eyes shut. “I have no
idea. I swear to God, it came out of
nowhere! One minute I’m telling him I
won’t go on a date with him, and the
next, I’m puckering up! He’s got some
sort of weird spell on me or something!”
“Wait, he asked you for a date?”
“Yes. No. You know what? I don’t
even know.” I stabbed the frosting.
“He’s so damn cagey, somehow I don’t
even know what he’s saying. Plus I get
distracted by his face.” I shoved the
frosting-coated finger in my mouth. “And
his body.”
“Dang. So did he kiss you?”
“Nope.”
“Why not?”
“Who knows? To torment me? I
mean…I thought he wanted to kiss me.
He was flirting with me, I think.”
“You couldn’t tell?”
“No. And I hate when I can’t read
people. It makes it impossible to keep
the upper hand.”
“Ah,” Claire said knowingly. “The
old upper hand.”
“I have to have it,” I insisted,
wondering how many calories were in a
can of frosting and deciding not to look.
Instead I put the cap back on and stuck it
in the fridge.
“I know you do. You are the master
of the upper hand.”
“The mistress,” I corrected, and the
thought of myself as a dominatrix made
me giggle. “I need a whip.”
“Totally. Maybe you could tie him up
and punish him for turning you down
again.”
“Ha! He would deserve it.” I thought
for a moment as I stared at the
refrigerator where he’d pinned me
without actually touching me. “Problem
is, I think he’s the upper hand type too.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know. I just feel like he’s
good at taking control, at getting people
right where he wants them.”
She laughed again. “And where does
he want you?”
“He
says
he wants to be friends.”
“Friends?”
“Friends. But fuck that. I’m not going
to be his friend,” I said stubbornly.
“OK.”
“I’m going to ignore him until he
goes away.”
“Good plan. That always works
when you have a crush on someone.”
“I don’t have a crush on him!”
“No, no. I’m sorry, sweetie. Of
course you don’t.”
I sighed as I turned off the kitchen
light and headed down the hall to my
bedroom. “But I can’t stop thinking
about him. Why is that?”
“Well, what if it’s fate? I mean, what
if there’s even an underlying reason he
came back to town? What if it was his
destiny to live in your house? What if
he’s your soul mate, your one tr—”
“Claire,” I interrupted loudly.
“Repeat after me. There is no such thing
as a soul mate. Or destiny. Or one true
love. I just want to bang him, not ride off
into the sunset on his horse. And I’m
annoyed he’s not cooperating.”
She clucked her tongue. “You have
zero sense of romance.”
“What’s the point? Even in books,
all great love stories end in tragedy.
Why should real life be any different?”
Now it was Claire’s turn to sigh.
“You know what? I’m beginning to think
you might be right.”
It should have made me feel good
that she’d finally agreed with me, that I
was right, that I was good at my job—
selling ideas to people—but somehow it
didn’t.
It took me a long time to fall asleep
that night, imagining him beneath me.
(And I do mean
right
beneath me.)
Even a realist has to dream
sometimes.
SIX
JAIME
THE NEXT MORNING I heard the
front door open and shut at an absurdly
early hour for a Saturday. For one foggy
moment, I was concerned about an
intruder until I remembered Quinn.
I bet
he gets up early and goes to the gym
, I
thought, snuggling deeper under the
covers.
Fuck that noise.
But I couldn’t get back to sleep.
Instead, I lay there thinking about his
sweaty body, muscles flexing, breathing
hard, until I finally couldn’t stand it,
grabbed my vibrator, and got myself off.
Afterward, I craved him more than
ever.
What the hell was I going to do?
My pride would not allow for a third
attempt at seduction, not after I’d failed
so miserably the first two times. What
was wrong with him, anyway? Had I not
made it clear that I don’t want a
boyfriend, but I do want sex? What kind
of guy turns down an offer like that?
It got me thinking. Who was Quinn
Rusek, anyway? Maybe there was more
to him than meets the eye (not that there
was anything wrong with what met the
eye, mind you).
I needed to focus.
I needed to figure him out.
Then I needed a strategy to make him
want me.
I’d get my fill of him—literally—
and then he could be on his way. Out of
my house, out of my head, out of my life.
OVER THE NEXT TEN DAYS, I
carefully avoided talking to Quinn while
at the same time paying close attention to
everything he did. I even made a list:
Works out early Tuesday,
Thursday, Saturday mornings.
Goes to class MWF mornings,
must work out later those afternoons.
Late classes Tuesday and
Thursday evenings.
Cooks his own dinners (have
smelled Italian things, chicken things,
possibly steak after getting home at
night).
Binge watches Game of Thrones
and House of Cards.
Takes out the trash and recycling