Chapter 9 Accidents #2
“I have some. Prescription strength. I should be okay.”
“Good. There’s everything you need in the bathroom. Sleep well.”
“Thank you,” he says quietly. He is watching me.
“You want me to get the light?” I ask.
“Nah, I’ve got it.”
The atmosphere between us feels heated.
“You still seeing that guy who dresses like a golfer?”
“More or less,” I reply.
“The sex is great, or…?”
“Do you really want an answer to that?”
“No,” says Nick. “I’m sorry. Thank you for letting me stay. I wanted to see Hannah.”
“She wanted to see you.”
I look at him once and then leave him. Back in my room, I have a mental conversation with my mother.
“Unlike you, Mom, I did not sleep with Nick. You would have slept with him, but I did not.”
I can almost hear my mother speaking to me. “You didn’t manage to sleep with Ollie, either, did you?”
At lunch on Monday, I explain to Vivi that Nick is now back on my sofa.
“Just as well you aren’t involved with Ollie if you’re busy giving sponge baths to your ex-husband.”
“I am not giving him sponge baths. I helped him get his shirt off once.”
Vivi rolls her eyes at me. “And you don’t think Nick is pretending to be less capable than he is to get back in?”
“He would choose a rock tour over me any day.”
“You should kick Nick off your sofa and tell him to get a hotel. You know that, right?”
“Which I would love to do, but he spends so little time with Hannah, I can’t justify it to my kid. Oh, and speaking of Ollie, his ex-girlfriend is back in town and wants to dance with him again. And she’s gorgeous.”
“But he’s not dating, right? While he goes through his whole personal growth thing?”
I shrug. “Dancing with her wouldn’t be the same as dating, I guess.”
“So you’re screwed.”
I nod slowly.
“I don’t know. I still think Ollie is into you. What’s this I hear about Ollie jumping into the ocean to rescue you?”
“He jumped in to rescue a teenager.”
“Well, all the women on Katy’s floor are enraged. They think you jumped in on purpose so he would rescue you. You’re on some kind of hitlist up there. Watch your back, the female lawyers probably own dart guns.”
Did Ollie really jump into the ocean for me? I cling to the thought like it’s a life preserver.
Brant walks up to me shortly before the end of the day. “So Ollie’s heroics on the boat tour are the talk of the office.”
I frown. Brant has become especially hard to read since we’ve been serving on the committee together, and I keep suspecting that he knows more about me and Ollie than he’s saying.
“It was nice of him to save that boy.”
Brant leans against my desk. “I don’t think he went into the Long Island Sound for a random teenager.”
“I told you that we’re friends.” The further I get into this lie, the harder it will be to back out of it, I realize.
He sighs. “Laura, as someone who knows men, I think his intentions are a little different than friendship.”
“I appreciate the warning, but nothing is going on.”
He shrugs. “I’m just saying, I don’t want you to be blindsided.”
“My ex-husband is currently staying on my sofa for a couple of weeks, so that is plenty for me to deal with right now.” That part is true, at least.
Brant’s frown grows deeper. “I thought you said things were over with him.”
“They are. He’s just recovering from an injury.”
Brant doesn’t seem appeased. “You’re not moving to Atlanta on me again, are you?”
“No. Definitely not. I promise. My plans here are permanent and long-term.”
He nods slowly. “Just remember there’s a reason you split up with him in the first place.”
“I am aware, Brant. Thank you.”
On Tuesday, I get a call from Jody on my walk home from the subway.
“Have you heard from Ben?”
It takes me a moment to process whom she means: our young blond friend from class. “No, I don’t have his phone number. Why? His wedding is coming up soon, right?”
“Yeah, but…oh right, you weren’t in class on Sunday,” she goes on. “Apparently the wedding is on thin ice.”
“What? Why?”
“The fiancée’s parents are trying to get her to ditch him.”
“Our sweet little investment banker? Why would anyone ditch him?”
“The usual rich person insanity. Speaking of ditching people, why weren’t you in class on Sunday?”
“Family drama.” I barely remembered I even had swing class, to be honest.
“I was hoping it wasn’t because of Ollie,” Jody says, and I can feel her eyeroll over the phone.
“No, it wasn’t because of Ollie.”
“Good. I was worried you were upset about him being partners with Eliana again.”
It hits harder than it should. “He is? When did you hear that?”
“It’s what the instructors were talking about on Sunday. Anyway, I know you started dancing because of him. I was worried you were one of those people who starts something because of a man and then quits as soon as he’s not available anymore.”
It takes me a moment to answer. If Jody hadn’t called, I might not have come back to class at all. And now Ollie is back with his old dance partner?
Jody absorbs my long silence. “Is that a yes?”
“No, sorry, it’s just… My ex-husband got injured and he’s on my sofa for the next two weeks and I have a lot to deal with.”
“Okay.” I can hear Jody considering this. “So what I’m hearing is that you have free babysitting for the next couple of weeks and can come to as many swing dancing practices as you want?”
I laugh in spite of myself. “You’re right.” And she is. I don’t want to be someone who quits dance because a guy hurt my feelings. “I’ll be there for the Friday evening social for practice and for class. And let me know if you hear from Ben. I hope he comes back to us,” I say.
“Yeah, me, too.”
That evening, I tell Nick that if I’m going to buy him clothes that are easy for him to wear, bring him soup, and help him order taxis to get to a physical therapist, then he can watch Hannah for me for a few hours while I go dancing.
“Dancing?” he asks. “Is this like, electronica, or…”
“It’s swing dancing.”
“Swing dancing.” He is smirking.
“What?”
He shrugs. “Do people wear newsboy caps to these events?”
“Am I hearing this correctly? Is a forty-three-year-old man taunting me for not being cool?”
Nick rolls his eyes. “Sorry. I just wondered if this was because of him. The dance teacher.”
Now is my opportunity to lie, but I don’t want to. “His name is Oliver MacCormack if you want to look him up. He had a dance to a Bruno Mars song that went viral a few years ago.”
“A Bruno Mars song?”
“Yeah. It’s West Coast Swing. A lot of it is to rock music. Anyway, Hannah is really happy to have you here, Nick. So you guys can have fun together while I go practice.”
I leave the room because I don’t want to know if Nick looks up Ollie. I should be above making Nick jealous, but not if he’s going to tell me that Ollie dresses like a golfer.
The next day, I receive an email from Destiny: Can you and Ollie have a meeting to go over the language in my draft report? You’re the best writers on the team. Use track changes.
I write back at once, then email Ollie and offer to book us a conference room. He replies: I think my office should work. Of course he has his own office. I have twelve square feet in a cubicle sea, and he probably has custom window shades and a view of the Hudson.
“Hey,” he says to me as I enter. His tone is friendly but polite.
He is wearing a blue pinstripe suit that looks tailored and vaguely British; the jacket is hung neatly on a coat hanger behind the door.
His office is unreasonably large and lined with bookcases and a framed photograph of startling orange and grey cliffs above a cool blue ocean.
I gaze at the photo for a moment as he steps beside me.
“Australia?”
“My brother took it,” he replies quietly. “He was always a good photographer. That’s around Wilsons Promontory. We went there a few times growing up.”
“And you put it up even though you’re upset with him?”
Ollie smiles. “Well, sometimes I imagine shoving him off the cliffs, so there’s that.”
I turn to face him. “Listen, Nick and I—”
“It’s okay.”
“I don’t want you to think there’s anything going on. Hannah is so desperate for time with her dad, she insisted he stay.”
“Laura, it’s fine. Just tell me when he’s gone.”
“Okay.” I wonder if he’s going to bring up Eliana; I wonder if I have the courage to ask. “So anything new with you?”
He looks at me, then looks away, shrugs. “Not really.”
Cool. Nothing to see here, right? Not like he is dancing again with his ex-girlfriend. “So,” I begin, “shall we talk through this document together?”
He catches something odd in my tone and looks at me for a long moment. “Yeah, of course.” He turns to his own computer and clicks on a file. “Let’s start with page one.”
For the next forty-five minutes we are completely professional. My inner rebel Laura keeps making wildly inappropriate remarks in my head, and I keep batting her away successfully. The topic we’re discussing doesn’t help.
“So I guess we’re saying that office relationships are complicated, and we recommend but don’t require disclosure?” I ask.
“Right. Right.” He gives me a sharp look and then looks down and coughs. “I can finish this. I’ll just summarize it for Destiny and send it back to her.”
“Great.”
I stand up. He walks to the door with me.
“Wait,” he says. “Wait a second.”
I turn to him. His hazel-green eyes look unusually dark. I wait for him to speak and he doesn’t.
“Well,” I say brightly, “at least I know that if you break my heart, we’ll both be professional about it.”
His eyes flash with something, and I see something that looks surprisingly like longing in his expression.
Then he pushes me gently against the wall and looks at me for a moment before he gives me a long, lingering kiss, his whole body against mine, hot and close.
One of his hands drifts up to caress my neck.
My knees seem to melt, but the warning light is flashing again; I wonder if this is the kiss you give someone if you’re never expecting to kiss them again.