Meet Me in Manhattan (True Vows) (3 page)

"I work at East River Marketing."

"Doing what?"

He gave her a smug grin and lifted his beer. "I'm a vice president," he said before drinking.

A warm bouquet of emotions flowered inside her. Delight that
he'd achieved so much, because back in high school he hadn't
been all that ambitious. Pride that he'd risen so high without-at
least, the last she'd heard-a college degree. Relief that he
wouldn't find her own fancy title intimidating. Bewilderment
that she should feel relieved.

"Are you still doing art?" she asked.

"Well, there's some art involved. I'm in charge of design and
production. I design environments that reflect the clients' brands.
We try to find intuitive ways to brand the client, subliminal ways
to communicate what the client is all about to the customers
they're trying to reach. It's pretty creative."

"You were always such a talented artist."

At that he scoffed modestly. "I drew cartoons."

"Wonderful cartoons. And other things, too. Gorgeous stuff."
She almost blurted out that she'd saved every drawing he'd ever
given her. But she wasn't entirely sure why she'd saved them, and
she decided it was best to avoid that subject. "You were very talented," she assured him. "Obviously, you still are."

He shrugged. "I finally found a job that can hold my interest.
It's fun. Every day I'm doing something different. I can't get
bored. They throw money at me and treat me like a god."

"Really." It was her turn to scoff.

"Well, they put up with me."

"They must be very tolerant."

He accepted her ribbing with a good-natured grin. "It's a great
job. All these years, I finally found what I was meant to do."

"I knew you weren't meant to pump gas," she said, then bit her
lip. She shouldn't have mentioned his old summer job. He might
think she was condescending or contemptuous of the work he'd
done. He might think back to that romantic summer after high
school, and how it had ended, how they had ended.

If her comment bothered him, he didn't let on. "You're looking great, Erika," he said. He leaned toward her and an odd shiver
of excitement seized her, but then she realized he was only reaching for his beer. His eyes never leaving her, he took a sip and lowered his glass. "It's obvious life is treating you well."

"I can't complain."

"Do you still ride?"

"Horses?" She sighed. "Not often. I just don't have the time to
commit to it."

He opened his mouth and then shut it without speaking. What
had he been about to say? Something about time, perhaps?
Something about commitment?

She might have explained that she was a perfectionist, that to
ride the way she'd ridden during her competitive days would
entail more effort than she could devote to the sport. As a child
and a teenager, she'd spent every spare minute she wasn't doing
schoolwork at the stables, training. She'd been good. Better than
good. Her parents still had all her ribbons and trophies stored in
their house-enough ribbons and trophies to fill several shelves.
She'd qualified for Nationals. She'd ridden in the Meadowlands
and at Madison Square Garden. For her, riding hadn't been just a
girlie thing. It had been her life, her one true passion ... until
she'd started dating Ted.

Now, she was doing other things, pursuing other passions ...
although, for the life of her, she wasn't sure what those passions
might be. The job she'd just landed was a major score, but it
wasn't her passion. How could high-stress paper-pushing at a
financial company be anybody's passion?

"So," he said with disconcerting nonchalance, "are you seeing
anyone?"

She imitated his casual tone when she replied, "I'm seeing lots
of people." Which was both true and false. In Fanelli's alone, she
could see several dozen people.

She knew what Ted was asking, of course. And sure, she was
seeing people. No one for whom the word passion would be relevant. She'd pretty much given up on finding her soul mate; she
no longer believed such a person existed. And she was all right
with that.

Dating was fun. Sex could be, on occasion, even more fun.
She'd like to have a child someday, and she supposed she'd need
a man for that. Or a sperm bank. She could easily imagine herself
feeling passionate about motherhood.

"No one serious, huh," Ted said.

She shook her head. "How about you?"

He hesitated, and she felt a sudden, painful spasm in the vicinity of her heart. It shouldn't bother her that Ted was involved
with someone-just as she shouldn't have been nervous about
seeing him at all. They were old friends, she reminded herself. Old
friends rejoiced in one another's good fortune when one of them
found true love.

The tiny pang of regret, or envy, or whatever it was she was
experiencing was just a vestigial thing, a remnant of nostalgic
memory of their long-dead romance.

"I'm sort of ... well, yeah," he said.

Curiosity mixed with the regret, envy, and other unidentifiable
emotions spinning through her. Who was he seeing? What was
she like? Gorgeous? Blond? Blessed with big boobs?

She smothered her curiosity. Honestly, she'd rather not know.
"Good," she said with what she hoped was a friendly smile. An
old friends smile.

"I don't know where she and I are headed," he went on, then
shrugged. "But we've been together a while, so ..."

"You're a great catch," Erika said, meaning it. "She's a lucky
woman.

He flashed her another bright smile. "Thanks."

"Girls always loved you. You were so adorable."

"Oh, yeah." He laughed. "That's me. Adorable." His smile
faded and he took several long swallows of beer, draining his
glass. "This has been great, Fred, but I'm afraid I've got to hit the
road."

That he'd called her "Fred"-his old nickname for her, a play
on her last name-touched her. That he so abruptly announced
that he had to leave touched her in a different, colder way. She
would have been happy to sit talking with him some more. Not
about the lucky woman who'd snared him, but about other
things. About how he'd spent the last sixteen years of his life.
About whether he valued the same things now that he did then,
whether he still listened to Phish and Fleetwood Mac, whether he
still thought donkeys were cuter than horses.

Her glass was nearly half full, but this encounter was over. It
was good-bye time. A few long swallows drained the last of the
beer from the glass. "This has been great," she said as she lowered
her glass. "Thanks so much for the drink."

"My pleasure."

"I'm glad you got in touch." Shut up, Erika. It's good-bye time.

"I'm glad I did, too." He caught the bartender's eye, and he
hustled over and asked if they wanted to order another round.
Ted declined, placed a few bills on the bar next to his empty glass,
and stood. "Maybe we can do this again sometime," he said.

"That would be nice." Erika wondered if he would have stayed
longer if they hadn't ventured onto the subject of seeing other
people. She wondered if his sudden desire to leave had to do with
his current lover. She wondered why she was wondering. She
wondered why she even cared. She wondered if old friends no
longer described what they were to each other. Former friends
might be more accurate. Former more-than friends.

"I'm glad you were free," he added once he'd escorted her
through the crowd and out onto Prince Street. "Both of us working in Manhattan now ... how could we not get together?"

"Absolutely." The rain was coming down a little harder now,
cool drops dancing across her cheeks and settling into her hair.

"It was good seeing you."

"You, too," she said, convinced at that moment that she meant
it. It was good seeing how he'd turned out. That long-ago summer they'd been together, he'd seemed so aimless, so unmotivated. No plans for college. No career goals. He'd wanted only
one thing in life back then: her.

And he couldn't have her. As rhapsodic as their relationship
had been, she couldn't stand to be the one single goal in an eighteen-year-old boy's life. She'd wanted so many other things: a college degree, travel, adventures, experience. To have given up all
her dreams and ambitions because Ted loved her and wanted her
to be his wife would have killed her.

Killed them both, probably. Or, like so many ill-prepared
teenagers who'd married too young, they might well have wound
up wanting to kill each other.

Prince Street was even more crowded than when she'd arrived
at Fanelli's. Despite the summer rain, people filled the sidewalks,
strolling, pub-crawling, flirting, on their way to a restaurant or an
off-off Broadway performance or a gallery opening. Or they were
just hanging out, gossiping, grabbing a smoke, gazing at one
another with invitations in their eyes.

Erika was on her way nowhere and extending no invitations.
She just wanted to leave, get away, go home. She felt a headache
taking shape behind her eyes, blossoming in her temples.

"So," Ted said.

"Thanks again for the drink," she said. "And for getting in
touch. This was lovely." She'd never been a good liar, and she
worried that he'd be able to see right through her words to the
truth, which was that it hadn't been lovely at all.

If he guessed she was lying, he didn't call her on it. He appeared
pensive, lost in his own thoughts. "Yeah, well." He smiled, a
crooked, tentative curve of his lips, then wrapped her in a quick
hug. She caught a whiff of his scent-clean, spicy, irrefutably
male-and felt the warmth of his embrace for a moment too brief
to measure. And then he released her. "Take care, Erika," he said.

"You, too." She managed one more bright, cheery, utterly
phony old friends smile for him, then pivoted on her heel and
strolled down the sidewalk, weaving among the milling pedestrians, picking her way around the puddles, refusing to look back.

She made it all the way around the corner with her head held
high and that fake smile frozen on her lips. Then, in the shadow
of a brownstone, her smile collapsed. The sky wept on her, big,
cool raindrops. And she started to sob.

SIXTEEN YEARS EARLIER

You think it's going to be just another day. It starts out normal:
pounding on the bathroom door because your sister Nancy is in
there and-hello!-she is not the only person in the family with a
bladder that needs emptying, but she sees nothing wrong in tying up
the room for what seems like hours while she fusses with her hair or
curls her eyelashes or whatever the hell she does when she's beaten
everyone else to the bathroom and locked herself inside. Then a hike
across the yard to the barn to feed the animals, who live there in
pairs like the creatures of Noah's Ark and who are fortunate enough
not to have an obnoxious younger sister hogging the bathroom, but
who instead use the barn as their bathroom, so there's inevitably a
mess or two to clean up. Back to the house to make your bed, which
is marginally easier now that a couple of your older brothers have
left home and you're no longer fighting for access to your berth in
one of the two bunk beds in the cramped bedroom all four of you
have shared for most of your childhood-and is also marginally
easier because said older brothers aren't thumping you on the head
or hauling you out of their way so they can gain access to the closet.
Then breakfast-invariably healthy, nutritious stuff, eggs or oatmeal, because when you're a wrestler you don't want to gain weight consuming the empty calories provided by doughnuts or sugary cereal.

You check your watch, grab your jacket and your backpack, race
outside for the bus and wish you were one of the rich kids with a car
of your own, because riding the bus to school is dorky, especially
when you're a senior. You don't even want to be in school, but hey,
it's the law, and at least your friends are there, and no one dares to
thump you or shove you because everyone knows that, thanks to
your training as a wrestler, you can flip and pin them in no time flat.
And you've got art to look forward to, if you can manage to survive
trig and biology and health, which it's practically impossible to sit
through without snickering because the teacher acts as if no one
knows what a condom is and she's got to explain it to you four different ways. And after school, wrestling practice, and after that a
detour to Country Coffee Shop for a cheese steak with some of the
guys from the team.