The Girls' Guide to Love and Supper Clubs (21 page)

“Hello?”

“So you’re playing hard to get, huh?”

My heartbeat quickens. “Who is this?”

“Who do you think? It’s Jacob.”

“How did you get this number?”

“It’s in your e-mail signature.”

“Oh. Right.” I really need to change that.

“Anyway, I saw the article in the
Post
today. Now that you’re an unnamed minicelebrity, you’re too good to go on a date with me?”

“No—I didn’t mean … it’s just …”

Jacob chuckles into the phone. “Relax. I’m kidding. I totally understand if you already have plans tonight. But I’d love to see you, and I’d rather not wait until Tuesday if I don’t have to.”

I cup my hand over my mouth and the phone, not wanting everyone else on the eighth floor to bear witness to my social ineptitude. “Well … um … the thing is … this is kind of short notice. For me to bake, I mean.”

He laughs. “You know what? I’ll give you a free pass on the baking. We can just hang out.”

“Right. Okay. But … it’s still a little … complicated.”

“Listen, if you’re not interested—”

“No!” I shout into the phone. “Sorry, no, it’s not that. I am interested. It’s that … well …”
I haven’t showered today and look like a greaseball
.

“How about this,” he says. “I have to work a little later than normal tonight, so why don’t you meet me on the corner of Fifteenth and F at eight o’clock? We’ll have one drink, and if you decide I’m totally lame, you can leave, and I’ll never call you again. Does that sound reasonable?”

“Um … okay …”

“Good. See you soon.”

Jacob hangs up, and I scurry to get myself organized so that I can leave work early because, apparently, I have a date tonight.

For the first time in many years, I am early. Well, not early in the sense that I’ve arrived before eight o’clock, because I haven’t. But I’ve arrived before Jacob, so I am early in a relative sense. I stand on the corner of Fifteenth and F in front of the W Hotel, facing the Treasury Building on the other side of Fifteenth Street. The vast Ionic columns shine brightly up and down the street, regal white pillars set against the darkness of the evening sky. The building towers over the sidewalk, as if an ancient Greek temple fell from the sky and landed smack in the middle of a city block.

I check my watch and cell phone for the twentieth time, and when I look up I see Jacob crossing the street toward me. He wears dark gray pants, a white button-down, and a narrow black tie, with a black messenger bag slung across his body, and his face is again covered with a smattering of stubble. He struts across the street with a cool confidence, gripping the strap of his bag with one hand and offering a nonchalant wave with the other. I wave back, pleased I had time to shower and change after work. Rather than wearing a pair of matronly wool slacks and a shirt with a mustard stain on it, I am now wearing a pair of skinny black pants, flats, and a silky jade tunic. I also managed to whip up and scarf down a small
fines herbes
omelet, since I wasn’t sure if tonight’s date would involve food and, as always, am perpetually afraid of missing a meal.

“Hey,” he says as he reaches my side of the street. “Sorry I’m late. My editor needed me to file one more blog post before I left for the day.”

“Don’t worry about it. I’m never on time anyway. I just got here.”

He points up to the large
W
sticking out from the hotel behind me. “Shall we?”

“Oh—is this where we’re going?”

He laughs. “Yeah, is that okay with you?”

“Of course. I’m surprised, that’s all. I assumed we were going to Old Ebbitt Grill or something.”

“Nope, I got us a reservation at the POV Lounge.” He winks. “I know people in high places.”

Whatever that means. I follow Jacob through the lobby, treading along the black-and-white checkered floor until we reach an elevator, in front of which stands an enormous bald man wearing a black suit. He holds a clipboard and wears an earpiece and looks completely out of place.

“Name?” he asks.

“Jacob Reaser. Eight o’clock reservation for the POV Lounge.”

The man utters something into his jacket sleeve, as if he is a member of the Secret Service, and then he checks off something on his clipboard and ushers us into the elevator. The doors close, and we ascend to the top floor.

“Talk about taking yourself too seriously …”

Jacob furrows his brow. “What do you mean?”

“This place is located in Washington, not New York or LA. What’s with the clipboard and the earpiece? Washington isn’t that cool.”

“What? Washington is totally cool!”

“My boss’s briefcase has wheels. My colleagues regularly wear tweed and sweater vests. My landlord talks like a pirate. Washington is not cool.”

The elevator doors open, and we walk into the bar’s reception area. “You live in Washington, and I think you’re pretty cool,” he says with a smile. “Very cool, actually.”

And I decide there’s nothing I can do with that but giggle stupidly and shrug my shoulders and try my hardest not to wet myself.

The POV Lounge pulses with a chic Euro-trash soundtrack, administered by a man in the corner wearing oversize headphones and a very tight T-shirt. The room is dark and sultry, with bright red couches and zebra-striped chairs and a bar that glows like a light box. Jacob and I sit down on one of the red couches in the middle of the room.

“What do you think of the view?” he asks. He points over my shoulder toward the window, and I turn around to see the Washington Monument looming so close I swear I could touch it.

“Wow. I mean,
wow
.” I jump up from my seat, and Jacob trails behind me as I walk over to the window, from which I can see the monument, the Treasury Building, and the East Wing of the White House. I can even see the snipers on the White House roof. “This is insane. I could spy on the treasury secretary from here. Or the president.”

“Pretty cool, right?” He rests his hand on my shoulder. “What can I get you to drink?”

I turn around quickly to shake his hand off me because touching, I don’t know what to do with touching yet. “Um, not sure. Let me look at the cocktail menu.”

We head back to our big red couch, and I scan the menu of overpriced cocktails and choose one involving elderflower liqueur. At fifteen dollars a pop, it’s a good thing he’s buying. Jacob flags the waitress and orders, and soon she returns with thirty dollars’ worth of alcohol, which apparently includes fancy glasses and custom-crafted ice cubes, specially shaped and designed for each cocktail on the menu. Jacob’s ice is fashioned into large cubes, whereas mine is shaped into small spheres.

“Cheers,” Jacob says as he clinks his glass against mine.

“Thanks for the drink,” I say as I take a sip. “Do you come here a lot?”

He shakes his head. “Not really. I’ve been here once, I guess. Maybe twice.”

“I figured you for more of a U Street guy. Or Columbia Heights. Not so much the downtown scene.”

“What, I don’t look like a connoisseur of the power lunch?”

“Not really. No offense.”

He smiles, his pearlescent teeth shining in the glow from the bar across the room. “None taken. And you’re right. This isn’t my usual scene. But it’s more private here. We can actually talk, instead of being shoved into a corner and having to shout over a crowd.”

Jacob and I plow through the first-date basics: where he went to college and when he graduated (Tufts, three years ahead of me), where he grew up (Ohio), how long he’s been in DC (three months) and where he lived before this (Brooklyn then Boston). He worked for the
Village Voice
and then the
Boston Globe
, but after the
Globe
went through some “restructuring,” he lost his job. He eventually got an offer from
Reason
magazine and jumped at it, even though he didn’t want to move to DC. Apparently these days journalists can’t afford to be picky.

I tell Jacob about my job and my interest in food, and though I catch his eyes wandering every now and again and can’t always tell if he’s actually listening, he keeps finding an excuse to brush up against my leg or touch my arm, so I must not be boring him too much.

Jacob knocks back the rest of his drink and flags the waitress for another round. How he can afford sixty dollars’ worth of drinks on a journalist’s salary is beyond me.

“So who was that guy standing with you at CVS a few weeks back?” he asks. “Adam or something?”

I take a long, slow gulp of my drink as I nod my head. Do we have to talk about Adam? Really?

“Yep, Adam, that’s right,” I say as I put my empty glass on the table. “My ex-boyfriend.”

Jacob nods knowingly. “Ah, I thought the vibe was a little off. Got it. Was this a recent thing?”

“We broke up two and a half months ago. So yeah, pretty recent.”

“Well he’s the one who lost out,” Jacob says, grabbing his fresh cocktail off the table.

“It’s never black and white.” I roll the ice cubes around in my glass. “Relationships are complicated.”

Jacob follows his drink with his eyes as he brings it to his lips. “Tell me about it …”

“Were you dating someone in Boston?”

“Something like that,” he says. “It was a long time ago, actually.”

“Then you know how messy it can get.”

“That I do.” He stares into the bottom of his glass. “Anyway, enough talk about ex-boyfriends and girlfriends. Kind of a downer.”

“Agreed.”

Jacob scans the room and pauses as he lays eyes on someone or something at the bar. I follow his stare, but with all of the up-lighting and down-lighting, I can’t make out who or what he is looking at. “Sorry,” he says. “I can’t get over that bar. The lighting is cool, right?”

“Very.”

He lays his hand on my knee. “Want to go outside and check out the view from the roof deck?”

“Sure,” I say.

He grabs his drink and his jacket, and we walk outside together and spend the rest of the night chatting and drinking in the glow of the U.S. Treasury.

“No,” I say, swatting Jacob’s hand away from his back pocket. “I’ve got this. You paid for the drinks.”

“Are you sure?”

An eight-dollar cab ride versus sixty dollars in drinks? “Yeah, I’m sure.”

I pay the cabdriver and stumble out of the cab onto Seventeenth Street. Jacob grabs my elbow to keep me from falling to the ground. “Easy, girl.”

I’m still a little tipsy from my fancy elderflower drinks, and whereas earlier I would have rebuffed Jacob’s advances, I now welcome them, the way he holds me up and presses his fingers into my arm. His fingers are slender but strong, like a rock climber’s, and suddenly I want nothing more than to be touched by them, to have them run along my lips and shoulders and the inside of my thigh. I lean into him, rubbing my arm against his as we walk down Church Street.

I slow my step as we reach the front of Blake’s house. “This is me.”

“Let me walk you to your door,” he says, rubbing my shoulder.

Jacob begins walking up Blake’s front steps, but I grab his arm before he reaches the top. “Wait.”

I contemplate making up some elaborate story as to why we need to enter the house through the basement, but I decide there’s no point. I don’t know where we’re headed, Jacob and I, and I would hate to start a relationship on a lie. And as I’ve established over the past few months, my lies lack both plausibility and common sense.

“I actually live in the basement,” I say.

“The basement? My memory is a little fuzzy these days, but I’m pretty sure I ate dinner upstairs about a week and a half ago.”

“You did.” Jacob rumples his eyebrows together beneath his side-swept bangs. “I borrowed my landlord’s house for the supper club.”

“Borrowed?”

“Yes, borrowed.” I look into Jacob’s eyes, hoping this explanation will be enough, praying he doesn’t ask me to what extent my landlord was complicit in this “borrowing.”

Jacob shrugs. “Okay. Then let me walk you to the basement.”

Jacob wraps his arm around me and walks me down the steps, and when I get to the bottom, he grabs me by the waist and presses me into the door and kisses me. His mouth tastes like whiskey, and he kisses with intensity and desire, his hands running along my hips and up my back. I feel myself begin to sweat beneath my jacket.

“Maybe we should take this inside?” he whispers into my ear.

My initial instinct is to say
yes, yes, yes
, but then I realize taking things inside will involve making out on my Aerobed, the mechanics of which are far beyond anything I can probably handle.

I pull away and bite my bottom lip. “I’m not sure that’s the best idea.”

“What? It’s a great idea,” he says, nibbling at my neck. “A genius idea. The best I’ve had all week.”

“Right. Except my apartment isn’t exactly … set up for that sort of thing.”

“You’d rather stay out here?”

“Well, no, but …”

“Because that might be kind of kinky. Getting it on in a basement entryway.”