Caught Up In Us Read online

  My heart sank. That could only mean business was still slow. If there were customers, she wouldn’t be spending her time prettying up the windows. She’d be at the cash register, working the counter, ringing up little sundries and gifts for all the tourists who streamed in.

  The very same counter where I was standing five years ago when Bryan asked me out on our first date.

  Blinders, Kat. Put your blinders on.

  We talked more about her day, then I told my mom I loved her and said goodbye.

  As I left the building, I nearly dropped my phone when I saw Bryan waiting for me. The image I had wanted most to see all those months after he left me.

  Chapter Three

  He was framed by Washington Square Park and late afternoon clouds behind him.

  “Fancy meeting you here,” he said as I neared him. His friendly manner made the coil of anger rise perilously close to the surface. But I wouldn’t give him the satisfaction of knowing he could set off fifty different emotions in me with one look. Impervious would be my new watchword.

  “Who would have thought,” I replied, keeping a distance in my tone. I reached for the movie charm, touched it once, as if it brought me power and strength. Nearby, a mime walked an imaginary dog and a grown woman in a Glinda dress created giant bubbles with a wand, to the delight of a few toddlers chasing them.

  “So I was thinking,” he said. “What do you say we start over? Just forget the past, and move on, and we’ve got a clean slate. We just met today.”

  “Easy for you to say,” I muttered under my breath.

  He raised an eyebrow. He hadn’t heard me and I chose not to repeat myself. Crossing my arms, I waited for him to make the next move. So he tipped his forehead to an open bench. “Want to chat for a bit?”

  No. I don’t want to chat with you. I don’t want to be near you. I don’t want to let you close to me again in any way, shape or form.

  Except, I might have no choice but to be civil with him. I’d do my damndest tomorrow to switch mentors, but if I couldn’t pull it off, then I’d have to be cordial. Sure, a clean slate seemed as good a ruse as anything. I could pretend he’d meant nothing to me. After all, I’d been over him for a long time. Seeing him again had simply stirred old memories, like dust in an unused room. You cough a few times, then leave.

  I played along. The past was gone, and I’d just met him today. I smiled the kind that didn’t reach my eyes, and I extended a hand. “Nice to meet you. I’m Kat Harper. I’m an aspiring jewelry designer.”

  He shook my hand. “Bryan Leighton. I run Made Here. We make things like this,” he said, and fingered the onyx cufflinks on his sleeves. “Nice to meet you too.”

  We walked to the bench. It was long enough that we didn’t have to be too close. I sat on the far end, hoping he’d take the hint. But he barely left any room between us when he joined me. With him so close I couldn’t think straight. I could only wander over to the part of my brain that remembered how we couldn’t keep our hands off each other that summer. He was always touching my back, my legs, my waist. If hands had any sort of permanent memory, mine surely recalled the lines of his flat stomach, his firm chest, his sculpted arms.

  Stop!

  I pictured profit and loss statements. The array of numbers erased the images of us.

  He leaned an arm against the back of the bench. “So tell me about your jewelry designs, Kat,” he said, then looked down at my necklace.

  I thought about how I’d answer anyone else who’d asked the question. I’d say: I always loved dressing up as a kid and rooting through my mom’s jewelry box to find bangles and necklaces and rings. But they hardly fit so I began making my own jewelry, playing around with designs and styles. I started with necklace-making kits for kids, stringing together beads and baubles and little charms on wire. In junior high I even sold some of my necklaces at local craft fairs, then moved onto heart pendants in high school. After I turned eighteen I had the idea of making a charm necklace. But one that meant something. One that celebrated the mistakes we made as we moved past them.

  Instead, I kept my reply clinical. “They’re charms that mean something to the wearer.”

  “My Favorite Mistakes,” he said.

  “How did you know?” I was surprised he knew the name of my line.

  He gave me a sheepish grin. “I like to stay on top of things. Know who’s up and coming,” he said. I wasn’t sure if this was personal, if he’d been researching me because of our past, or simply because he was a smart businessman. I reminded myself not to read anything into it. This was business, purely business. Then he moved his hand towards my neck. “May I?”

  “Do you want me to take it off?” I asked, tripping on the unintended double entendre. I wanted to kick myself.

  “I like it on.” Running a finger against a miniature skyscraper charm, he grazed my skin and a spark shot through me. I looked away, so he couldn’t read my eyes, and see what I’d felt. I stared at the sky instead. The clouds had become grayer. There was a heaviness to them that spelled rain soon.

  “What’s this one?”

  “A friend of mine in college had a lead on a super cheap sub-lease on the upper east side that I almost moved into before I started the MBA program. I didn’t get the apartment, and I was devastated at the time.”

  “So you made a charm?”

  “It all worked out for the best. Because now I have a great roommate and an amazing place in Chelsea,” I said giving him another sanitized answer. If I’d wanted to let him in, I’d have told him the full story. That it was a good thing I didn’t move into that building, because then I went to see an odd little musical theater showcase in Hell’s Kitchen. I wound up hanging out with the cast afterwards, including the lead actress, an amazing girl named Jill who had just nabbed a rent-controlled apartment in Chelsea that was handed down to her from her aunt. She needed a roommate; I needed a place. Now she’s my best friend, and we also have the one cheap and cool apartment in all of Manhattan. Plus, she practiced her audition songs in our living room for an off-Broadway modernized version of Les Mis that she’s in starting this week. She landed the part of Eponine and she’s awesome.

  “Chelsea is great. Very eclectic. Perfect for you,” he said.

  I stared at him sharply. I resented the assumption that he thought he still knew me. “How would you know?”

  “Know what?”

  “What’s perfect for me. How would you know?”

  “It just seems very you. Chelsea, that is,” he answered, stumbling on his words as I dug in.

  “But you don’t know me anymore. You don’t know a thing about me.”

  He nodded once, taking my brusqueness on the chin. “I didn’t mean anything by it. I’m sorry.”

  “For what? What are you sorry for, Bryan?”

  “For…” he started, but then the Glinda-clad woman ran past us, a giant bubble trailing behind her that the children chased.

  I took a quick breath, reminding myself to let go of all these warring emotions. To feel nothing.

  “Chelsea is great,” I said, like a robot. Then I took the reins of the conversation, pointing to another charm, this one a silver book with the pages open. “I almost majored in English when I started college. I wasn’t sure I was going to study business as an undergrad. But at the end of my freshman year when a shopowner started carrying my necklaces, I switched to business. So my almost-major is another favorite mistake,” I said, and this time he got the whole tale because everyone did. This was a true story, and it was also the backstory on the Web site for My Favorite Mistakes.

  He nodded. “I like that. Very smart decision, and a good way to acknowledge the road not taken. And this one?” He fingered the movie camera, his hand resting on the space just above my breasts. My chest rose and fell, and I tried to steady my breathing.

  I called up my recollection of a risk management class lecture so I could deliver an offhand answer. “Oh, that one. I just made that to remind myself not to spe
nd too much time watching movies.”

  Because movies had been our thing. Our first kiss had been in a movie theater.

  He was still touching the camera, but he was looking straight at me. As if he could read the lie.

  I shifted the focus away from me. “And you? What about your business, Mr. Leighton?” I asked, as if I were a curious reporter.

  He let the charm drop, and the metal he’d touched felt warm against me. He held out his arm, showing me the cuffs of his sleeves. “These bad boys. Women seem to love to give them as gifts.” He nodded to his cufflinks, as if to say it was okay to touch them. I resisted, banishing all thoughts of unbuttoning the black onyx, of taking off his shirt, of watching the fabric fall away from him to reveal his smooth chest, his firm stomach, his trim arms. Instead, I rewound to the morning, trying to remember if I’d dropped an umbrella into my purse, because the sky was about to split open.

  “We make them at a factory near Philly, along with tie clips and money holders. But the cufflinks especially have taken off like crazy in the last few years. Especially with those books that have them on the cover. American-made, and a perfect gift from a girl to a guy. Or a guy to a guy, in some cases.”

  “Right. Perfect gift.” I stood up and brushed my hand over my skirt, then gestured to the clouds. “I better go.”

  He rose too. “You going back to Chelsea?”

  “Yes.”

  “I’ll give you a ride. I have my car.”

  “I’m fine. I’ll walk or take the subway.”

  “Kat. It’s about to pour any second.”

  I patted my purse. “I have an umbrella in here.”

  “Wouldn’t it just be easier not to fight for a cab, not to get soaked, and not to have to take the subway?”

  Before I could say no again, he was giving his driver our exact location as the first drops hit my head. We walked quickly to the curb while the rain picked up speed. Moments later, Bryan held open the door to his town car for me. A drop fell in my eye. I blinked it out, then bonked my head on the top of the door as I got into the car. “Ouch!”

  A sharp pain radiated across my forehead.

  “You okay?” Bryan asked, as he slid in next to me. The windows were tinted, but the partition was down, so I could hear the faint strains of music from the satellite radio, and I could just make out the words to Jack White’s cover of Love is Blindness. I almost wanted to ask the driver to change the channel because the lyrics turned my heart in knots with dark wanting.

  I pressed my palm against my head where it smarted. “I just don’t know how that door got in the way of my head,” I said, and Bryan laughed.

  Then he gently placed a palm on my forehead. “Does it hurt?”

  “A little,” I whispered, letting down my guard for a moment. Brushing my dark brown bangs from my face, he held my gaze in a way that chipped away at all the walls I’d rebuilt with him in the last hour. I flashed back to the movie theater in Mystic, to our first kiss, to how I’d had no need for barriers then.

  “Do you need ice for it?”

  “Do you have ice?”

  “Of course. Fully stocked.”

  “I think I’ll be okay.”

  “Then let me just give you a kiss to make it better,” he said, and moved towards me. I closed my eyes and breathed out, slipping away into the feel of his tender lips on me. He stayed there for many more seconds than he needed to. He was inches from me, and I could feel the warmth from his body, as I let myself enjoy his kiss on my forehead.

  He pulled away. “All better now?”

  I nodded.

  “What’s your address?”

  I gave it to him, and he told the driver, then he looked back at me again. His green eyes were darker, more intense. “It’s really good to see you again, Kat.”

  I grasped mentally at numbers, at logic, at images of my parent’s store, at the sound of my mom’s voice. But they were all wisps in my hands, falling through fingers, as my double-crossing heart longed to whisper it’s good to see you too. His gaze stayed on me, and his eyes said so many things, all the things I’d wanted to hear.

  I could feel the whole back of the car grow smaller and bigger at the same time. Everything faded away, the din of the music from the radio, the strangers on the street ducking under awnings and opening umbrellas as they sought cover. He was all I saw, sitting next to me, looking in my eyes. I wished I could say I was thinking of business, of my jewelry line, or even of mundane things like where I’d left the quarters for the next load of laundry, because that would all prove I was as impervious as I’d aimed to be. But when your first love tells you how good it is to see you again, you don’t think at all. You just feel.

  I felt my traitorous heart jumping, my belly flipping.

  Stupid body trying to trick me.

  Somewhere, I caught the dangling end of the anger still in me, and held on tight so I wouldn’t fall into his arms. “This is a nice car,” I said crisply, by way of changing the subject.

  He cleared his throat. “Yeah. Thanks. So, I was thinking it would be a good start to this mentor thing if I show you the factory. Can you go with me on Friday?”

  “Let me just check my schedule and get back to you.”

  Then I turned away, and stared out the window, as if the rain-soaked New York streets were endlessly fascinating, high-fiving myself for playing it cool.

  Chapter Four

  I first met Bryan in my driveway one summer day when I was seventeen. I’d heard of him; my older brother Nate had roomed with him through most of college at NYU and into business school there too. But I’d never met Bryan myself. He grew up near Buffalo and went home for school breaks. Then, the summer after I’d graduated from high school, Bryan stayed with us for a few weeks to help run Mystic Landing.

  My parents rarely vacationed and hardly ever took time off. My mother had spent most of my high school years recuperating from a devastating car accident that had required multiple surgeries and countless physical therapy sessions. She was finally herself again and to celebrate, my mom’s sister had convinced my parents to spend a few weeks at her lake house in Maine. Nate and I would watch the store while they relaxed by cool blue waters and underneath crystal skies.

  They packed up, hopped in the car and drove north, and hours later, I met the man who’d become my first love. From the moment he arrived, I was a done deal. I swung open the front door, ran to the car, and gave Nate a huge hug. Then Bryan got out of the passenger side, wearing a white tee-shirt and worn jeans, which is near about the sexiest thing a man can wear. When he slung his duffel bag on his shoulder his shirt rose up, revealing a sliver of his firm and flat stomach. I tried to look elsewhere because otherwise I’d only think about the way his blue jeans hung just so on his hips, and where the cut lines of his abdomen led to.

  So I checked out his arms instead. I’ve always thought one of the reasons some men work so hard on their arms is because of what women think when they encounter nicely sculpted ones. You picture the man above you. You imagine running your hands up and down those arms as he moves in you.

  But he wasn’t just a beautiful body. He was the whole package. He had a trace of stubble on his boyish face, and the softest-looking dark brown hair I’d ever seen. His eyes drew me in, those forest green eyes with flecks of gold. Eyes you could gaze into, eyes that invited long simmering looks as they saw inside you.

  Nate introduced us, and Bryan put his bag down and gave me a sturdy hug, rather than a handshake. I was wearing one of my own necklace designs, a silver chain strung with a lone heart pendant in midnight blue. His chest pressed into the pendant, and I could easily have let my thoughts run away right there.

  Then he spoke to me. “I feel like I know you already. Nate says you’re a huge movie fan. That when you’re not making necklaces you’re at the local theater. I’ve always said there’s nothing better than skipping class for a matinee.” Then the grin came, the lopsided smile I’d fall hard for.

  “Matin
ee and popcorn. Doesn’t get any better than that,” I said, and I was sure the words came out all bumpy and clunky, out of sync with what I was saying silently — How did my brother have such a ridiculously good-looking best friend?

  The three of us hung out that night, ordered pizza, and lounged on old plastic chairs on the deck, under the stars. I listened as they talked about school, and what was next for them both on the work front. Nate planned to look for a job in the technology industry at the end of the summer, and Bryan had scored a gig in Manhattan that started in a month. They weren’t college boys anymore since they both had MBAs, but they weren’t working men yet either. They were in this sort of in-between time.

  I was in an in-between time too. Only I was five years younger, so I figured I should get out of the way of their guy talk.

  “I better go to sleep. Since I’ve got the Mystic Landing morning shift and all,” I said, and then went to my room and pulled on a pair of loose shorts and a gray tank top with a pink Hello Kitty across the chest. I brushed my teeth, washed my face, and walked back down the hall to my bedroom when I bumped into Bryan.

  “Sorry,” he said, then glanced at my tank top, and lingered with his eyes a little longer than he should. I didn’t mind, but when he realized what he was doing, he looked up. “You like Hello Kitty?”

  “Uh, yeah,” I said, thrown off by his remark.

  “That’s really cute.” His lips quirked up.

  “Really?” I couldn’t tell if he was putting me on.

  He nodded. “Yeah. Definitely. Hello Kitty is totally adorable.”

  “Wow. Nate never told me his best friend was such a huge fan of cartoon cats.”

  “I’m personally a bigger fan of Bucky from the comic Get Fuzzy.”

  “I love that crazy Siamese.”

  “I defy anyone who doesn’t find cats amusing to read that comic.”

  “That is an awesome challenge. Let’s make posters and start a campaign.”

  “I’m so on it.”