Chapter 22 Martini with a Twist
Martini with a Twist
Six weeks later
Jack went to the airport to surprise Blair. He wasn’t sure why. She’d told him he didn’t need to pick her up. She was a Hollywood producer here on business. She probably had a car rented.
But there he was, waiting at luggage carousel number eight. When she’d picked him up at LAX, she’d said she always checked a bag, and he was counting on that being the case today.
The bags started appearing before the humans did.
He eyed a giant pink suitcase making the rounds and went over to inspect the tag on it. It read “Barb Tybee.” He smiled and grabbed it.
Another, smaller pink case appeared, and he retrieved it, too.
Then he started fretting. The last time they’d seen each other in person, they’d basically had sex. Some people would argue that since there hadn’t been penetration, it didn’t count, and she herself had referred to it as making out. To his mind, they’d both had orgasms, so it counted.
They had talked about a lot of stuff surrounding the way they’d parted—about his harsh words, about her disappearance.
But they hadn’t talked about the sex.
Were they just going to pretend it hadn’t happened?
Based on their recent interactions, it seemed the answer was yes. As they’d discussed the logistics of her visit, neither had mentioned it. Which had been fine, over text. But now she was here. Probably already off the plane. Breathing the same air.
He should have at least told her he was coming, like a normal, sane person would do. He should have—
There she was. Approaching with her hair tucked up into a baseball cap and wearing big sunglasses.
He froze. He felt like the prey in a nature documentary. See how the human Minnesotan freezes, hoping the Californian female will fail to notice him, thus sparing him to live another day.
She was wearing the wide-legged white jeans she’d been wearing the other first time he’d seen her, at LAX. On top she wore a jean jacket with the collar turned up. She looked like the poster girl for a preppy fashion brand.
She was walking toward the carousel and looking around surreptitiously. Suddenly she changed course and headed toward a man holding an iPad. Jack cranked his neck to read the iPad. “Barb Tybee.”
He could still leave.
But he had her bags.
He was such a fucking idiot.
Time to man up.
“Bl… Barb,” he said, striding toward her. At least his voice sounded normal. He wasn’t betraying any of the inner turmoil he felt. “Hey, Barb.”
That she didn’t answer to the name tickled his funny bone.
The driver, who was doing his job well, moved so he was standing between Jack and Blair, no doubt mistaking Jack for a fan.
He was a fan, was the thing. As unlikely as that was. Blair Kellermoon was here and he was happy about it. Thrilled.
He didn’t know how to get her attention without using her name.
“Your suitcases are the same color as your car,” he tried.
That did it. She looked up, past the driver, and eff him if her entire face didn’t light up like a God damn Christmas tree.
“Jack! What are you doing here?”
“Surprise?” he said, and he wasn’t sure, from this vantage point, why he’d been so nervous. He opened his arms, and she stepped into them, and they hugged like they were in one of her old rom-coms. Hell, he even picked her up and twirled her around for good measure.
“Why didn’t you tell me you were coming?” She swatted him.
He went with the truth. “I don’t know.”
She stared at him for a long time. “Yeah.” Finally she broke with his gaze and started digging around in a big shoulder bag she was carrying. She produced a Ziploc bag. “Here are your crow treasures. Let me settle things with the driver I apparently don’t need.”
Oh no. Just when he thought he’d hit peak sentiment.
It was the same junk she’d sent pictures of: a key, a marble, and a ball of foil.
But the fact that these had been brought to him, even in his absence, by his crow army.
The fact that she had kept feeding them to begin with, despite their falling out.
That she had saved their offerings and was hand-delivering them.
It was doing something to him.
They didn’t talk in the car. Well, they didn’t talk about anything real.
Blair talked a lot. She conducted one of her monologues that didn’t need a response, telling him about how delighted she’d been to learn there was a Prince store in the Minneapolis airport.
About how wide open the sky was here. Her drawl came out when she got excited.
He had missed that. She moved on to musing about how if Allie’s cabin turned out to be the one, they would need to decide if they could shoot the exteriors there.
More specifically, was there a dock on the opposite side of the lake?
And if not, could they install one? Or maybe she could CGI it in.
“You know I don’t know,” he said when she paused.
She shot him a smile he was fairly certain was fond.
“Don’t you have people who do this stuff for you?” he asked. “Cinematographers and effects people and such?”
“Yeah,” she said, the fond smile sticking around.
“But this project is your baby,” he said. It was why she was here doing the location scouting herself.
She looked at her lap, still smiling but suddenly seeming kind of… bashful? “Something like that.”
“I don’t know if you’re planning to rent a car,” he said when they pulled into the garage at his building. “But there are guest spots I can reserve for you.” He paused. “How long do you think you’ll be staying?”
“I don’t know. I’m not in a hurry.”
He found he liked that answer.
“If I wear out my welcome, I’ll get a hotel.”
He had to tamp down a smile. Not to mention a fluttery feeling in his chest that he was pretty sure was some kind of embarrassment-tinged pleasure. “You’re not going to wear out your welcome.
“But,” he said a few minutes later as he was unlocking his door, “you might want to get a hotel after you see what a comedown this place is from Chez Blair.”
“I can’t wait to see it. This is the place the big In Time advance bought, right?”
“Yes, but ‘big’ is relative.” He showed her around. “See?” he said when they got to “her” room, formerly his office. “It’s tiny.”
He had to say, it looked pretty good for something that had been hastily IKEA-ed together.
He’d painted the walls the same yellow-tinged cream as her living room at home and bought a bunch of impractical throw pillows to cover the bed, which was itself made with a fluffy down duvet—he’d been thinking about how she was always cold.
“It’s perfect,” she said, with a vehemence that seemed disproportionate to being introduced to some furniture named with Swedish nonsense words. She laid her hand on his forearm. “Thank you.”
“No problem,” he said. According to his dad, No problem was the way illiterate people said You’re welcome. Did it follow that Blair made him illiterate? He was beginning to think so. He cleared his throat. “I thought we could hit my local bistro for dinner? Unless you want to order in?”
“Is this the place you refused to divulge the name of to The New Yorker?”
Oh shit. “I guess it is.”
“I definitely want to go there.”
Blair didn’t know how strange it was for him to take her to Maud’s. It somehow signified the merging of two different worlds—his comfort space, his home away from home and… her.
They sat at the bar. When he pulled her stool out, his arms felt a bit off, as if they were only working at 80 percent.
Oh. Oh no. He suddenly realized what was wrong. His body thought this was a date. He’d had this feeling once before, the sensation of his limbs not being fully connected to his brain, in the early days with Emily, his only serious girlfriend.
Once he got Blair situated, he shook out his right arm.
“Everything OK?” she asked, and she looked up at him with her sparkly hazel eyes, her face illuminated by the tea lights on the bar.
“Yes,” he said tersely. Everything was OK.
Everything was not OK.
“How’s your back?”
“Fine,” he said automatically, but it was a lie. It wasn’t as bad as it had been last fall, but the final stretch of work had tweaked it again.
“Hey, Jack.” Oliver appeared and set a dish of spiced nuts in front of them. “Martini?” He glanced at Blair and Jack saw him register who she was.
“Martini would be great, thanks. This is my friend Blair. Blair, this is Oliver, who owns the place.”
They exchanged pleasantries, Blair complimenting Oliver on the beauty of the space and Oliver telling her it was his mother, the place’s namesake, who had the good taste. Jack appreciated that Oliver hadn’t said a word about Blair’s… Blairness.
And Blair’s Blairness was something today. Maybe they should have sat at a table, with some distance between them. They were shoulder to shoulder on their stools, and it felt like he was sitting next to a giant magnet. He had to concentrate on maintaining the six or so inches of space between them.
“Martiniwise, is it a twist day or an olive day?” Oliver asked as he poured the sauvignon blanc Blair had ordered.
“Do you like both?” Blair turned to Jack with an outsize reaction. “Most martini people are strictly in one camp or the other.” She turned to Oliver. “I’ve served him a lot of martinis, but always with olives.”
“It’s a seasonal thing for me, I think,” Jack said.
“No, no.” Oliver turned to Blair. “He has a lemon twist when things are going well, when he’s happy. Otherwise it’s an olive.”
“So it’s an olive ninety percent of the time,” Blair said.
“I think it’s probably closer to ninety-five,” Oliver said.
“Hey!” Jack protested. “And I’ll have a twist.” He hated to prove them right, but… he also kind of wanted to prove them right. He was happy, mostly due to the fact that Blair was here, and he didn’t mind her knowing.