Now a Major Motion Picture (7 page)

“Helloooo? Noah Bradley? Geez, are you always this spaced out? I’d thought it was just me,” Erin said, tugging out the earbuds attached to her iPod and flashing him a curious, lopsided grin.

“Erin!” The word came out high-pitched, and he hoped it wasn’t obvious he’d just been thinking about her.

Unable to help himself, his eyes flashed down to give her a quick once-over. She looked different than she had last night—better, he decided, more natural. Her dark hair was swept back into an untidy ponytail, several wavy strands flying loose around her face. Her wide-set eyes had no trace of makeup, and her form and attire suggested she was more than a casual jogger.

She studied him too, openly, her eyes drinking in his tall frame, his tanned arms, his slim, but muscular build. She glanced down at Amos, now sitting at Noah’s side, and knelt to rub his head.

“Hey, there.” She laughed as Amos strained his head around to give her wrist a lick.

“No, Amos.” Noah laughed, too, thankful to have her attention off him for a moment. He hadn’t figured out yet where to take this conversation—he certainly hadn’t planned on it happening so soon.

“He likes you,” he said, watching her. She was crouched next to Amos, stroking behind his ears and cooing to him in that soft way women had.

“Smart dog.” She looked up and flashed a teasing smile. “How about his owner?”

She rose slowly, eyebrows arched, and gave him a speculative glance. His eyes widened. Wow, Erin was…forward. This wasn’t something he was used to and not a quality he was sure he could handle. The last time he’d dealt with an aggressive woman, he’d landed smack dab on a collision course with disaster.

He wasn’t sure what emotions his face betrayed in the three seconds it took to think these thoughts, but she obviously saw something because her own eyes widened in response.

“Kidding—relax,” she said, one corner of her mouth twisting into a wry smile. “I know, I know. We just met. I’m not
that
girl.”

He stared at her in surprise—it was as if she’d read his thoughts. What was with this woman? She was totally messing with his head.

“I’m a little blunt, maybe.” She shrugged. “I had fun last night. I wondered if you did, too.” That signature smile of hers appeared on her lips again, and she waited.

“I did, actually.” His voice was hesitant. “When I said we should do it again, I meant it.”

“I’m glad. And I’m glad I ran into you. Literally.” She smirked. “Call me.”

She studied him for a couple of seconds, her head tilted to one side.

“I can tell somebody did a number on you. We’ve got to work on that. Us women, we’re not all bad.” She winked. Then she popped one earbud back in and prepared to replace the other one, pausing just long enough to say, “I’m holding you to that call.”

Shooting him a meaningful glance, she spun on her heel and picked back up with her morning run. Dazed, he just stared after her, wondering what the hell he was getting himself into.

* * *

After completing his and Amos’s circle beneath the park’s canopy of shade trees, Noah headed for home. All morning, he wavered back and forth on whether or not to make the call, an internal war raging between the part of him that wanted to hang on to the past and the part that wanted to move forward.

Erin Crawford was intriguing. That was one point in favor of calling. Plus, it was obvious she wasn’t going to let this thing that was brewing between them drop. That was point number two: the fact that if
he
didn’t call, she would. But the idea of opening himself up to vulnerability, that was a strong point in favor of not calling. It might outweigh the others. And that was the part he couldn’t figure out.

It wasn’t that he was worried about getting hurt again, or hurting someone else…again. If he was honest with himself, the problem was that the more he thought about dating Erin—or anyone—the more he thought about Amelia.

It had been so long since he’d allowed his mind to travel down that path. After their breakup, he’d thought of nothing else for weeks that dragged into months that dragged into two staggeringly miserable years. He had no idea what to do with the fact that his entire life, his entire future, had come crashing down around him. Amelia had been the key to the life he’d wanted. He hadn’t wanted the rest of it without her.

That was why he’d left school. The last time he’d seen Amelia, he’d been so numb with grief and regret he could barely drag himself to class, let alone concentrate on the exhaustive senior studio project required for him to graduate. He’d been trudging across campus, still trying to will himself to get through the semester, when he’d spotted her not twenty yards from him across a courtyard, on her way to class. He’d been calling for weeks, but she wouldn’t answer. He’d shown up at her apartment fifteen times at least, but she was either never there or she never answered the door.

Seeing her that day had been his last straw. She was a wreck: dark, purplish circles ringing her eyes, her long, straight chestnut hair shoved into an unkempt ponytail, her shoulders slumped under an invisible weight. He saw that she saw him, and her shoulders sagged even lower as she swerved from her path to avoid him. He knew he deserved it. He deserved one hundred percent of the blame for putting her in that wretched state, for breaking her heart.

After that encounter, he didn’t leave his house for three days. When he did finally drag himself outside, it was to walk to the administration building on campus to withdraw from all his classes. He couldn’t face her again.

He also couldn’t face Ashley—the one person more repulsive to him in those days than himself. She’d called him nonstop since he returned to campus, even though he’d made it more than clear that he didn’t want to see her again.

On the third day of his self-imposed isolation, she showed up at his door.

He didn’t budge from the couch when he heard the knock. He just kept staring at the TV, tuned to whatever was on ESPN, the volume so low it was barely audible. After a five-minute attempt to ignore the knocking didn’t make it go away, he dragged himself off the couch and to the door—a brief, improbable glimmer of hope that it was Amelia the one thing that finally made him move.

His face contorted when he saw Ashley on the other side of the threshold.

“Noah, I—” she said before he shut the door.

More knocking.

He hesitated behind the door and then reopened it with a violent heave.

“What? What the hell do you want, Ashley?” She recoiled slightly, as if she was afraid he might physically push her from the doorstep. “I have nothing else to say to you. Please just leave me alone.” His voice broke on the last word.

“I just wanted to explain,” she said. “Apologize—”

Apologize?
He stared at her as if she had six heads, her words making no sense. They’d both been there that night. No matter what had happened—and the details were still fuzzy—no apology could change it, and no explanation could fix the hell it had made out of his life.

“I don’t want an apology from you, Ashley. I just want you to go.” He met her eyes. “And this time, don’t come back.”

He shut the door softer this time, but with a definitive snap.

He never saw her again.

The next day, he made the excruciatingly long drive home to drop the double whammy on his family that not only had he left school, but the wedding was off. He never gave his parents the details, but he knew they’d surmised what had happened. They lived in a small town. There were no secrets.

He knew he’d let them down, too.

They didn’t say a word about his decision to drop out of school, probably because he didn’t look as if he could take it. Misery was etched across his haggard face, grief palpable in his blood-shot eyes. Even then, in the midst of his pain, he realized what a blessing it was to have supportive parents.

His mom tolerated his misery until it ran its course, not protesting when he stayed shut up inside his room for the better part of two weeks. His youngest sister, Nicki, still in high school, rolled her eyes a lot, but didn’t hassle him, so he knew things looked as bad as they felt.

Just before his would-be graduation date rolled around, his dad sat him down and delivered the speech that ultimately got him back on his feet.

“Son,” he said, “I know how things seem. I might know it a little better than you think.”

His father’s story shocked Noah with its frankness. His parents had been high school sweethearts, the classic love story. Growing up with their example, he’d never doubted he and Amelia would make it through college, through life, grow old together. He’d witnessed, in Geoff Bradley, a more mature version of himself.

But in his most vulnerable moment, his dad told him something he’d never known and never would have suspected. His parents’ marriage almost hadn’t happened. In their case, it was Melanie, his mom, who’d self-destructed. After she’d agreed to marry Geoff and as the date of their wedding neared, she’d gotten cold feet. She’d called the wedding off, left town. She’d even started dating someone else.

“I waited, Noah,” Geoff said, his eyes wistful. “I knew, I always knew, that we were right. It didn’t matter what she did or what I did. When things settled down and she was ready to come back, I was here, waiting for her.

“If things are right, Amelia will wait for you, too. Have faith in that. But whether that happens or not, you can’t destroy your life. If she comes back, son, you’ve got to give her someone to come back to.”

It was hard to argue with that, even knowing as he did that Amelia wasn’t coming back. He didn’t exactly find a renewed zeal for life at that moment, but he did start figuring out how to put one foot in front of the other again.

Noah sighed, his mind flashing back to Erin, back to the present.

I’ve waited long enough
, he thought.

He’d make the call.

* * *

He still waited until Sunday night to dial the number he’d saved in his phone. He wasn’t really up on the rules of relationships, but he knew he didn’t want to appear too eager. As he clicked “send,” his fingers shook.
Seriously? Grow a pair, Noah.
Where the hell had he been all these years?

He steeled himself as the phone began to ring.

“Hello?”

“Hi, Erin. It’s Noah Bradley.”

“Well, hey, Noah,” she said, a hint of surprise in her voice. “You actually called. I was pretty sure I was going to have to make good on my threat.”

“Yeah, well, I was kind of scared to cross you.” He laughed, his tension ebbing.

She laughed, too. “I don’t bite. I guess I need to work on my first impressions.”

“I don’t know. You gave me a pretty good first impression.” His flirtatious tone surprised even him.

“Hmm. I think we’re on the same page then.”

Well, this conversation was on a path to something, he thought. He took the next step.

“Are you busy later this week?”

“I’ve got a night or two open. What’d you have in mind?”

“How about dinner? My pick this time. And I’ll pick you up?”

“Consider it a date.”

After working out the details, he snapped his phone shut and stared at it for a couple of seconds.
He’d
just made a second date. For him, that was a first.

Get a Life

By the next morning, Noah had pushed all thoughts of Erin to the back of his mind. The comforting, habitual buzz of the impending workweek returned his attention to more pressing matters: his hotel project.

As he navigated the familiar route to his office, Noah’s mind traveled over space plans and specifications. His firm occupied the fourth floor of a seven-story, glass-plated commercial building in the heart of Uptown’s business center. The postmodern structure looked out of place amidst the squat brick and yellowed stone commercial buildings that surrounded it, and Noah liked that about it. He steered his white, compact hybrid SUV around the building and into the parking garage, blinking a few times to help his eyes adjust to the switch from dazzling sunlight to underground blackness. He opened the door to the familiar, dank odor of the garage and hurried from his car to the building, sidestepping a trail of water that oozed from a mysterious hole in the concrete block walls. The ID mechanism beside the door flashed green and beeped as he waved the card on his keychain in front of the electronic pad. He hurried through the door, bypassed the elevators, and ran the five flights up to his office.

Mindy, the administrative assistant, raised her head and smiled at him as he breezed through the frosted glass doors at the firm’s entry.

As usual, he didn’t notice the way her eyes traveled over him as he passed by the reception desk and rounded the corner to his office—an open space he shared with two other architects and an AutoCAD technician.

Also as usual, he was the first one there. Most of his co-workers rolled in around nine, but Noah was almost always in at eight, itching to get to work, especially when he was getting started with a new project. He always hand-drew first, slaving over his renderings until he’d fleshed out his ideas.

He barely looked up from his workspace until after noon, when he felt someone’s presence behind him. He swung his chair around to find Mark Bialik, a junior designer who worked one set of offices over, staring over his shoulder.

“Nice,” Mark said, eyeing his sketches.

“Thanks.”

“Want to grab some lunch?”

He noted Mark’s odd expression—a mix of curiosity and amusement—and groaned inwardly. Oh, yeah. Mark was the one who’d set him up with Erin.
He wants details.
And Noah didn’t feel like divulging any.

But he didn’t see any way around it. He had to eat.

“Sure…be ready in a minute. I’ll meet you out front.” He turned to flip off his task light and did a quick check of his email before leaving his desk.

They walked to a nearby deli. To his relief, Mark didn’t talk much about Erin, but Noah did glean that he already knew about the impending second date. He also learned Erin was Mark’s girlfriend’s best friend.