CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

It takes a while to erase the image of my sister and Nick wrapped up in each other, even if it was just a prank, but I manage.

Thanks to my new obsession.

This photo. I can’t stop thinking about what Harper said about Charlotte, and I can’t stop looking at that picture on Page Six like it holds all the clues to the universe in it.

I stare at it as I head into the Columbus Circle station, having dropped my bat and glove at Nick’s apartment near the park. My head is bent over my phone as I trot down the stairs, then slip inside the downtown train. I wrap my hand around a pole while a hipster girl in green skinny pants shoves her way onto the car, sliding past the doors just before they close. She carries bags on each arm.

“Whew,” she says, relieved to have made it. But the edge of a cloth bag is caught in the door, so she yanks it free and turns in a tangle, spinning around.

Something whacks my funny bone, and I cringe. “Ow.”

Her hand flies to her mouth. “Are you okay? Is it my mayonnaise?”

“Mayonnaise?” I ask, as I rub my palm over my elbow while the train slaloms around a curve in the tunnel. What is it about funny bones that hurt so damn much?

“I have jars of pesto mayonnaise in this bag. I made it myself. I’m giving it to friends. Is it okay?” There’s terror in her eyes as she roots around in the straw bag on her shoulder.

Pain radiates through my lower arm while she ascertains the state of her condiments. “Don’t worry about me. Your mayo just attacked me, but I won’t file charges,” I mumble under my breath as I wince.

She looks up, realization dawning on her. “Are you okay?”

I nod. “Yes. Elbow matches my toe now.”

“You got hit with mayo on your toe?”

“No. A baseball bat attacked my foot earlier. Apparently, inanimate objects are out to get me today,” I say as the sharpness subsides. “Is your mayonnaise going to make it?”

She nods and beams as we chug into the next stop. “It will live. Sorry I hit you.”

“It’s okay. Hazard of big city living.”

She peers at my hand. I’m clutching my phone still. The picture is splashed across the screen. “Cute couple.”

“Oh. Right,” I say, raising my phone.

“They look really happy together,” Mayo Girl adds.

“Do they?”

She nods. “Definitely.”

“What do you think he should tell her?”

She cocks her head. “What do you mean?”

“So she knows how he feels?”

She shrugs and smiles wide. “He should just tell her how he feels. If he likes her as much as pesto mayo, he should let her know that.”

“I’ll tell him to consider that,” I say when the train reaches its midtown stop.

As I climb up the steps and exit into the early evening, I know this situation with Charlotte isn’t as simple as mayonnaise, and that’s not only because mayonnaise is my least favorite food.

* * *

The Lucky Spot is a zoo. There’s no time to think. No time to plan. And certainly no time to figure out what to do with the strange new notions that are implanting themselves in my head.

I need to strategize this, but I don’t even know what this is.

Being more than friends?

Feeling something real?

Finding out if she feels the same?

What is the word for this feeling? It’s like my chest is a trampoline, and my heart is doing backflips on it. Only, I’ve never practiced them before, and if I do them again I could land on my head.

Or my ass.

Or even my face.

So yeah. With a packed bar on a Friday night, I’m not so sure I can figure out what to do with the pesto mayo feelings.

During the evening rush, I alternate between catching up on purchase orders on my laptop, telling Charlotte about the train attack, and helping out behind the bar, while in the back office Charlotte works on ideas for a new marketing campaign.

“Out of Belvedere,” Jenny remarks from the counter as she waggles an empty bottle.

“I’ll grab one,” I say and head to the office, where Charlotte is perched on a reclining chair, wearing jeans, and a white strappy top. When I see her, I freeze-frame through images—the photo of us, the moment on the corner of Forty-third, the pesto mayo, the toothpaste, the words she said to Abe the other night. My heart slams against my rib cage, and I wonder if this crazy overtime beating is why there are books, movies, songs, poetry about people falling—

“Hey you,” she says, and the softness in her tone wafts over me. But it’s the sweetness that hooks me. That sweetness feels personal, and just for me.

Yes.

This is why there are books, movies, songs and poetry about falling for someone. I roam my eyes over her, and even though we haven’t christened this office or the bar yet, and even though I want to, my thoughts aren’t on sex. They’re on her, and on this jumble of words like alphabet soup inside my head.

“Hey you back,” I say softly. I point at the cabinet behind her. “I need a Belvedere.”

“I’ll grab it.” She sets her iPad on the chair, stands, and reaches for the cabinet handle. As she stretches, her shirt rides up, revealing a small sliver of her back.

“You look gorgeous,” I say.

She glances back at me and smiles. “So do you. Your house later? Mine?”

Maybe this is just sex for her. Maybe that’s all she wants. But even so, I need to know.

“Yes. Either,” I say as she opens the cupboard, and I inch closer to plant a kiss on her bare neck.

Then pain slices through me with a thunk as the cabinet door connects with my skull. It reverberates. It takes over my head, my body, every single cell.

I curse up a motherfucking storm, because this hurts like hell.

“Oh my God, oh my God. Are you okay?” she says in a panic, her hands on my shoulder.

My right palm covers my eye, my head roaring as the thump echoes in my skull, epicentered in my temple.

“I think you hit my head,” I say, because the whack has turned me into Captain Obvious.

“Oh God.” This time she whispers the words, and she’s staring at me like I’ve lost an eye.

“What is it?” I ask, and while I’m pretty sure I’m not down to one eye, since I can still see, I suspect my face isn’t pretty.

“That’s the biggest goose egg I’ve ever seen.”