19. Paisley
“Why are you smiling like that?”
It takes me a moment to realize Paloma’s addressing me. Is it the sound of restaurant cutlery and exuberant lunchtime chatter from the tables around us that have made it hard for me to hear? Perhaps it’s the video of ice Klein sent that I was watching for the seventh time.
We’re at our favorite lunch place after a morning of meetings, but I couldn’t resist peeking at the message Klein sent an hour ago.
A video to cool you down in case you’re hot. Have a good day, Ace.
A link to an ice-making video followed.
Ace.
I love the nickname. Adore it.
Stowing my phone in my purse, I drop kick the upturned position of my lips and lift my gaze with its freshly applied poker face. Paloma and Cecily’s curious expressions stare back at me.
“I’m not smiling.”
“You were,” Paloma insists. “Like a stranger who sees a bulldog puppy in a Trader Joe’s and wants to pet it but doesn’t want to seem weird so they leer at it with heart eyes instead.”
I lean away, giving her an exaggerated head to toe look of concern. “That was oddly specific.”
She waves halfheartedly. “It’s me, hi. I’m the heart-eye woman at Trader Joe’s.”
Just when I think I’ve cleared the hurdle of admitting what had me gooey smiling at my screen, Paloma firmly bats at my open menu. “So, why were you smiling?”
I jab in her direction with the thick plastic. There’s no point lying. Paloma’s bullshit detector is top-notch. “Klein sent me an interesting video.”
“Word Daddy?” Cecily peeks out from behind her menu, eyebrows raised.
I frown. “What kind of nickname is that?”
“The accurate kind,” Paloma not-at-all helpfully adds. “What kind of interesting video did Klein send you?”
I sip my sparkling water and look away. “Ice.”
“Ice?”
I nod.
“Wow,” Cecily deadpans. “Don’t get too wild. Ice is dangerous. Frostbite. Hypothermia. Whatever the fuck else.”
Paloma frowns. “I expect more creativity from a writer. Maybe he’s washed up before he got out of the gate.”
“He has plenty of creativity,” I defend. “He only sent me that video because I told him I like to watch different types of ice being made.”
“Hold up,” Cecily raises a hand. “We’ll come back to your weird ice fetish later. For now, let’s discuss him sending you something he thought you’d enjoy.”
I shrug. “He came across it and sent it to me. What’s the big deal? It’s not like he offered a kidney.”
“He didn’t come across it,” Paloma says, running her finger underneath every item on the menu as she reads. She’ll have the salmon, as she does every time, and still, she’ll read the whole menu. “He went looking for it.”
“Oh wow.” Placing the back of my hand on my forehead, I pretend to swoon. “He typed three words in a search bar?” My hands dramatically drop to my chest. “Be still my heart.”
“Downplay it all you want,” Cecily says as she locks eyes with the server, nodding when he gives her the universal ‘are you ready to order?’ facial expression. “In today’s dating landscape that’s like trudging uphill both ways in the snow to deliver a single rose to your beloved.”
Paloma gives her a withering look. “It’s not that bad out there.”
“Correct,” Cecily nods. “It’s worse.”
The server arrives to take our order. Cecily and I order the bacon and tomato grilled cheese with a side of tomato basil soup.
“I’ll have the salmon,” Paloma announces with gusto, like she’s going out on a limb and trying something new.
“Surprise, surprise,” Cecily mutters, gathering our menus and handing them over. “Let’s talk more about Klein.”
“I really don’t want to.”
“Why not?”
“There’s nothing to say. We’ve been doing what we need to do to get to know each other as much as we need to.”
“Klein the writer would vomit all over that jumbled sentence.”
“Not my best,” I admit. “Our relationship is professional. We’re not even friends.”
“Dumb,” Paloma says bluntly. “You might want to be friends with the guy you’re flying across the country and staying on a secluded island with.”
“There will be lots of people on this island. Family, friends, and strangers.”
“And Word Daddy.” Cecily pops her eyebrows, just once, while the rest of her face remains impassive. This is all I need to see to know that Cecily thinks well of Klein. “You know,” she says slowly, like the idea is occurring to her in real time. “You’re kind of checking the same boxes of people who are really dating.”
“How’s that?”
“Getting to know each other, meeting his family.” She counts off on two fingers, unfurling a third finger and adding, “texting videos you think the other might enjoy.”
“Well, yeah,” I defend. “This farce needs to be believable.”
“Cecily’s right,” Paloma cuts in. “Why don’t you two date for real?”
“His ex wants him back.” Removing a cut lime from the little dish in the center of the table, I squeeze it into my drink. I’m wearing a solid mask of nonchalance on the outside, but my insides are a swirling mass. Standing in his kitchen, still reeling from our near-kiss, I’d had to listen to his ex shoot her shot. I detested each second of it, too. At first I felt bad for her, the way her voice wavered. But that stopped when Klein told me what happened between them. My sympathy ground to a halt.
“Does he want her back?” Paloma asks patronizingly.
“It doesn’t appear so.”
Paloma gives me an exasperated look, so I add pointedly, “It’s none of my business.”
“You know,” Paloma says, pulling a lip gloss from her purse. “For someone so intelligent, you can be a real idiota.”
“No translation needed for that one,” Cecily says with far too much enthusiasm.
Ok. Time to steer away from the topic of me with Klein.
“You’ve been working with him, right?” I ask Cecily. “Getting his social media set up and all that?”
Cecily sips her hot tea. “I’ve already put time on your calendar to go over the set up and our approach.”
I nod, slipping out my phone and pulling up my work calendar. Angling my screen away, I try to sneak a peek and see if Klein was invited to the meeting Cecily set up.
I haven’t seen him since the night of our near-kiss. He’s been working more shifts at the restaurant to make up for the week he’ll be on the island, but we’ve managed to talk enough through text messages that if I scrolled through our history, I would have to keep going and going.
It’s not that I miss him, because I totally don’t, but I’m wondering if his hair is still the same. Did he get a haircut? Does he have a five o’clock shadow? How about his thighs? Are they still obnoxiously well-defined?
“I sent Klein a meeting invite,” Cecily says.
“Oh, that’s nice,” I respond airily. Nothing to see here. The information means nothing to me.
Cecily narrows her gaze. “You have the worst poker face.”
The server approaches with our food.
“Saved by the soup,” I say, digging in with an inappropriate amount of fervor.
Two days later,Klein appears in the conference room at P Squared Marketing.
He wears a tan shirt, black shorts, and to my great relief, his thighs are as defined as ever.
“Royce,” he says, a head nod accompanying his greeting. He says my last name formally, as if we haven’t maintained a steady stream of text messages the past three weeks. As if I haven’t met the three most important people in his life. As if he hasn’t sent me half a dozen ice-making videos, to which I responded with my own dog temper tantrum videos.
As if he didn’t give me a nickname. Hello?! The name’sAce!
As if he didn’t almost kiss me the last time we saw each other after I spilled my guts about my parent’s marriage and divorce.
“Madigan,” I say cooly, my gaze locked onto him as he settles in a chair opposite me at the table. He looks at the ceiling, the tabletop, the artwork, his gaze finally resting on something out the window.
Cecily breezes in, her dark hair flowing behind her. “Hello.”
“Hi,” Klein replies, his voice all puppies and kittens.
I frown. I got mangy alley cat. What the hell?
Twisting my hair up on my head, I secure it with a pen and wait for Cecily to cast her screen onto the monitor on the wall.
Hurt darts through me, but I’ll never show it. Hell, I’ll barely let myself feel it.
Maybe it’s good he’s acting this way. We are two people whose paths are crossing a second time. We’re not friends, we’re not lovers. We’re little more than business partners with a not-legal contract signed on a paper napkin. There’s no need for me to feel hurt by his cool response to me.
For the next twenty minutes I sit and listen as Klein and Cecily volley conversation and ideas. Klein appears to be far less uncomfortable than he was when we first started this process.
“Posts began two days ago,” Cecily says, biting on the end of her pen. “As Klein requested, we started with utmost honesty. I drafted the captions with Klein’s help, keeping in mind that he is a storyteller at heart, and we want each caption to feel like a story.” Cecily scrolls on her trackpad, bringing up the social media account. The first photo is of Klein sitting on a couch, leaning forward with a laptop open on a rustic wood table.
“Nice picture,” I comment, careful to keep any emotion from my voice. “Earthy, moody, it’s giving me academia vibes.”
“I got coffee with Eden last weekend,” Klein explains. “She took it.”
He says it carefully, like he wants me to know who took the photo. Who he was with. It doesn’t fit with how aloof he was when he walked in here.
Cecily continues. “Here is this morning’s post. Klein’s home bookshelves.”
I recognize them immediately, though I’ve seen them only once. Organized by author, the books are mostly hardbacks, except for a section of leather-bound journals. The caption reads Trading in books for the beach. See you in paradise.
“He already has a hundred followers,” I comment. Grabbing my phone, I press and swipe the screen until I am one of KleinTheWriter’s followers. The number on the screen on the wall increases to a hundred and one.
Cecily nods. “The response has been more than I’d hoped for. To be fair, I’ve been pulling some strings. Sending his account to my friends and asking them to follow and interact. They’ve sent it on to their friends, even though I didn’t ask it of them. It’s because, like I told both of you”—her gaze flits between us parentally—“people are interested in what you’re doing. Your authenticity and honesty caught their attention.”
“Is this where I say you were right all along and I shouldn’t have argued?” Klein asks.
“Sure,” Cecily responds, looking at her screen and logging in to her content planner. She opens a folder to show fifty stock photos, mostly books and bookish flat lays. “Here’s what I have for filler until you leave. What I need from both of you are photos while you’re on the island. I set up a shared album and added you both to it. You don’t have to do faces, but I want beachy goodness. Think sand on Paisley’s shoulder while she gazes out at the ocean.” Cecily eyes Klein meaningfully. “We’re telling a story.” She snaps her laptop closed. “I have a call in five minutes, so if you don’t need anything else from me...?”
I shake my head.
“Take photos,” she repeats firmly. “Copious amounts. When you think you’ve taken too many, take more.” Addressing Klein only, she says, “Have a safe flight. Enjoy your trip.”
And then she’s gone, the conference door closing softly behind her.
Silence descends. It’s so unlike our recent interactions that I’m starting to panic. My mind hurtles twenty different directions, but mainly it’s screaming out how are you going to fly across the country with this guy when he’s pulled a one-eighty?
A deal is a deal, and my alternatives are none. In a brittle voice, I say, “I guess I’ll see you at the airport on Saturday morning.”
Reaching up, I yank the pen from my makeshift updo. My hair tumbles down around my shoulders.
Klein stares.
“Do you have something to say, Madigan?”
“You used to wear your hair like that in class.”
I clear my throat. “I never remember a hair tie.”
“Are we good, Ace?”
I bristle at the name I love. “Why do we keep having to ask that question?”
“Because we keep doing awkward shit.”
“You were so weird when you walked in here.”
“I was nervous.”
His honesty knocks me sideways. Relief floods me. He was nervous. It takes a few seconds for me to regain my train of thought. “What were you nervous about?”
“Seeing you.”
“But we’ve been talking nonstop for three weeks.”
“I know. That’s why I was nervous. I’m far better in written word than I am in person.”
“That’s a matter of opinion.”
“And? What’s your opinion?”
I stare at him, my stubbornness a stronghold, before shrugging one-shouldered. “The jury is still out.”
A glint shimmers in his green eyes. “Pretty soon we have a whole week to tip the scales.”
I stride to the door and open it, gripping it with one hand and placing my other hand on my jutted out hip. I am all sass, and judging by Klein’s appreciative expression, it’s hitting just right. “Ahh, but which way will they tip?”
An amused smirk broadens his cheeks. “I’m competitive, Ace. Be careful.”
“Good to know. I like my opponents qualified, Wordsmith.”
I strut away, leaving him to see himself out.