Chapter 2
Chapter two
Hayden
THE BEST LAID PLANS
I scrub my hands over my face, my reflection in the window of the small cafe below my apartment mirroring back to me just how much the way I feel is projected in my appearance.
My hair sticks out at all angles, and I try to push it back into some sort of style, but there are more than a few strands that refuse to stay down.
“Hayden, one black coffee and one triple shot pumpkin spice latte with an extra pump and cinnamon sugar topping,” the barista calls, and my face goes immediately warm as I rush to grab my order before she calls it again. Like seriously, a name isn’t enough anymore?
“Thanks,” I say with a curt nod.
“Have a merry Christmas, Harvey,” she replies, and I shouldn’t be surprised she’s forgotten my name already. In the three years I’ve lived in this building and coming here, she hasn’t caught on yet.
It’s a busy cafe, I get that, but I miss the way it used to be when people took the time to actually learn who you were because you were more than a customer to them, you were a person, you mattered.
Or at least it felt that way. Unless I’m just remembering a time that never existed, at least for me.
A time only shown in old television shows and movies. Yeah. It’s probably that.
Either way, though, I can’t remember the last time I actually felt that.
Like I was actually seen. I guess my job kind of expects me to blend in.
The second a business knows you’re a critic reviewing them, the true customer experience flies right out the window.
I’m not reviewing this place, but if I were, it would be five stars for the coffee and location, and a three for service.
She’s polite, sure, but doesn’t often make eye contact, and that’s probably why she hasn’t bothered to remember my name in three years.
“Sorry I’m late,” Wendy, my downstairs neighbor and best friend, says, grabbing her black coffee and holding it close to her chest. “Ahh, is there anything more perfect?”
“Every other kind of coffee besides that tar you drink.” I laugh, sipping my sweet deliciousness.
“Bitch, please, you might as well be sucking it through a sugar straw with the way you order coffee.”
“You can get those, you know,” I say, and she rolls her eyes and links her arm in mine.
“Come on, I want to hear about your date last week.”
“Nothing to tell, the guy had serious serial killer vibes, so I left.”
“You think everyone is a secret serial killer.”
“I do not.”
“Yes, you do. You even thought sweet Terry from down the hall was a mass murderer when he moved in.”
“He had three boxes of heavy-duty garbage bags delivered to his door the day after he got here,” I say, passing her my coffee to pull my thick coat around myself, before pushing through the heavy glass door.
We step into the bitter winter chill, and the noise of New York floods my ears.
Horns, sirens, a bike bell, and people talking all meld into a familiar haze.
Our apartment building has its own entrance, only a few steps to the right of the cafe below, and we take the internal stairs, that creak like they’ll give out any second with each step we take, up to the fourth floor, not wanting to risk it in the old cage elevator that’s even less trustworthy.
Scary thing stalls at least once a week.
“He crochets blankets,” Wendy wheezes beside me as we make it about halfway there.
“What?”
“Terry, he crochets blankets and uses the garbage bags to wrap them up and protect them for shipping. He sells them online,” she says, gripping the rail and trying to help pull her along.
“Sure, he does. Are you okay? You’d better hold on tight, cause if you let go, you’ll probably roll your ass back down the three flights and have to start over.”
“Fucking…ass…hole. I’m just…not good…at cardio,” she replies, and I jog the rest of the way up and then wait for her leaning on my doorframe. She’s red-faced and shoves by me through my apartment door.
“Show-off,” she says as she passes.
“Maybe you can come to the gym with me when I get back. Make it a New Year’s resolution type thing.”
“Is that your best friend way of saying I’m fat?” she asks, and I laugh.
“Fuck no, if anything, you could afford to put on a few pounds. You’ve got like no ass, Wen.”
“I have an ass, it’s just small,” she says, twisting her head over her shoulder to try to look at her butt. At least she’s starting to breathe better now.
“Seriously, though, when was the last time you exercised?”
“I walked up four flights of stairs just now.” Her gaze moves to the empty suitcase on the floor and the seven tiny stacks of neatly piled, folded clothes on my couch. “You’re not even packed?”
“I’m in the planning stages.”
“What planning? Just grab a bunch of stuff and toss it in. What you don’t have, you either don’t need or can probably pick up when you get there.”
“And that style of packing is why you now own seven pairs of black trainers and nine beach towels.”
She shrugs and flops down on the couch in the only section not covered in a stack of clothes, but it jostles the piles and sends one stack toppling into the suitcase below.
“Watch it,” I say, and she nudges some more over.
“I’m helping, look, you’ve actually started packing now.”
She’s in a particularly bitchy mood today. Something’s up.
“Okay, what’s going on?” I ask, kneeling beside the suitcase and refolding the toppled clothes.
“Greg is history,” she sighs, and I nod. “No, like this time it’s for real.”
“Sure it is,” I reply, trying my best to sound genuine even though I am ninety percent sure she’ll be back with him in a matter of weeks.
Greg and Wen have been doing this on-and-off dance with each other for years.
He complains about her going out with her girlfriends all the time, and she complains about his video games, and then they spend a few weeks apart, realize they both missed each other too much to stay away, and pick right back up again, swearing this time will be different.
Personally, I think Greg is a controlling dick, but the last time I said that to Wen, we didn’t talk for a week.
So now I keep my opinions to myself. One day, maybe she will see she deserves better than that douchebag.
“And my sister’s got the new baby, so Mom and Dad are flying over to spend the holidays with her, so…”
“Are you going, too?” I ask, and she shakes her head.
“I was supposed to go with Greg to his parents’ place, and now it’s too late to get a ticket on a flight, so it looks like I’ll be here all alone.”
“That’ll be nice and quiet for you,” I say, reaching past her to grab one of the stacks and putting it into the case.
I know where this is going, and as mean as it might seem, I actually kind of love watching her squirm a little.
Wen and I have been best friends since she moved in about two years ago.
I got home after picking up takeout from a new Italian restaurant about five blocks over that I needed to review, and I found her stuck in the cage elevator with it totally filled to the brim with her moving boxes.
I was actually pretty impressed by how much she managed to Tetris in.
Though if she had taken more trips, she might not have shorted out the elevator in the first place and gotten stuck.
It took me and the super about ten minutes to wedge the door open to free her, and to show me her thanks, she invited herself to my place to eat the take-out.
“Hayden.”
“What?” I ask, looking up at her. She’s got her platinum blonde hair strung up in the highest ponytail I think I’ve ever seen, and her perfectly shaped brows raised in my direction.
“You’re supposed to offer for me to come with you.”
“I am?” I ask, faking ignorance.
She shoves my shoulder playfully.
“Okay, Wen, do you want to come on my work trip?”
“Depends, where is it?” she asks, sipping her tar.
“Seriously, you’re going to be picky about a free trip now?” I ask.
“No. I don’t actually care.” She chuckles, and I toss a pair of socks at her. She bats them back at me far too easily. “I thought you were supposed to be done with work for the year. What happened?”
“Yeah, I wasn’t supposed to have any more assignments this year, but Franklin, the travel reviewer for the site, had to fly over to Greece to see his sick mother, so his assignment was reassigned to me.”
“I mean, it’s better that you’re filling in for Franklin and not Suzie, with her column on everything you need to buy for baby this Christmas. How would you know if a breast pump was any good or not?”
“I have breasts.” I laugh, and she shakes her head before tossing a shirt at me from the top of one of the piles.
It would normally irritate me to no end that she’s messing with them, but I had already planned to refold them before packing them into the case, so my brain isn’t really giving a shit about her messing them up too badly.
Well, not as much as it would if I had planned to transfer them straight in as they were.
I can get that way about some stuff. I like things to be neat and organized and clean.
Not like washing your hands three times before eating, clean, but neat, tidy, and lined up is usually how I like everything in my life.
I am also pretty picky with my food and with how things are done.
Not that I am a perfectionist, but if there is a right way to do things, then why not just do it the right way?
It’s why my work for the website is a good fit. I don’t have to share an office with a bunch of people leaving things all over, and I get to critique the places I go and the food that I eat, and get paid to offer my honest opinions.
“So Franklin is off to Greece and you’re covering his travel assignment.”
“Yep.”
Normally, I review restaurants, cafes, pubs, clubs, and bars in New York and the surrounding areas.
Basically, if I can drive there in under three hours, it’s on my list to review.
While I once reviewed a bed and breakfast, I was there for the incredible omelet their chef made for each guest tableside, not really the quality of the sheets, though they were okay, too.
Being the only person on the staff who doesn’t have any family to spend the holidays with was the other reason this was assigned to me.
My parents were in their forties when they had me, and both passed within two months of each other when I was nineteen.
Mom first, a sudden heart attack. Then Dad died two months later in his sleep.
I sometimes wonder if it was living without her that was his true end.
They’d been together since school and never thought they’d have kids.
They tried for years, all through their twenties and early thirties, and had completely given up, then boom, me.
Dad joked it was the night they spent camped beside the Hayden River, which is the reason for my name.
I guess I should just be glad they didn’t name me Schodack after the state park they were in.
I had hoped to have met a guy and started my own family before now, but that, too, hasn’t been quite what I expected.
I dated a copy editor at the paper for a while, but it didn’t really work out.
He only ever wanted to go out when I had an assignment to review a new place, and it became pretty clear to me that he was more interested in my job than me.
I want a guy who is happy just curling up on the couch and watching a movie, or listening to me read, lying with my head in his lap, like in that old movie.
“So what should I pack? Where are we going?”
I pull out my phone and bring up the email again.
“Beaker Brothers Ranch,” I say, and her smile grows wide.
“So cool. I always wanted to be a cowgirl when I grew up.”
I always wanted to be a published author. Not published in the way that I am with the website. I never wanted to be a journalist. I wanted to be a novelist. I started writing a book a few years ago, but I’d get about twenty or so pages in and scrap the whole thing and start over.
“If you’re coming, you’d better go pack.”
“Ohh, do you think we have time to stop and pick up some cowboy boots and those ass out chap things?”
“All chaps are assless; you wear jeans under them. At least you’re supposed to. From what you just said, I am guessing you were hoping otherwise. What kind of ranch do you think we’re going to?”
“Hopefully, the kind with a bunch of hot cowboys I can seduce with my feminine wiles,” she says, climbing from the couch and heading toward the door. She pauses, one hand on the handle and turns back toward me. “I really needed this, Hayden. So, thanks.”
“There’s no one else in this world I’d rather spend a Cowboy Christmas with.”
Her grin grows. “Hayden and Wen’s Cowboy Christmas. I like the sound of that.”
She leaves, and I start refolding the remaining piles, satisfied that Wen has no clue exactly how much I am not looking forward to this trip.
I don’t like small country towns, or ranches, animals, and dirt.
I like things clean and organized and predictable.
I like having my coffee made at the place that I like, even though they never remember my name.
I like that I know what my day will mostly consist of, and I really have no desire to spend two weeks taking part in their Christmas Experience.
I’ve always just been more comfortable with the known.
My mom always called me an old soul, whatever that is.
Urgh. I should probably take at least one pair of denim jeans.
I think I still have the pair I wore in college before I knew how to actually dress with style.
Okay, pull yourself out of this funk. Maybe it won’t be that bad. The noise of the city hasn’t helped get that book done, so maybe while Wen is busy partaking in all the activities, I can curl up with my laptop in the clean and cozy cabin and finally get something down that doesn’t totally suck.
My nerves about the trip settle as each positive that could come out of it starts to pop into my mind, and by the time every piece of clothing that was stacked on the couch is folded neatly inside my suitcase, I’m actually feeling pretty good about the whole thing.
I flip the suitcase top over and zip the sides closed.
“Okay, Beaker Brothers, ready or not, here I come.