Chapter Twenty-One
Zero day: Greenblatt New York meeting
Wedding minus six days
He had done his best to try and keep calm, but as he moved closer to this meeting, he started to get nervous.
Really nervous.
His father arrived from Michigan the night before, reminding him of the location, the need to be punctual, and that he was loved no matter what he did.
His brother sent him recipes that he wanted to make together; cooking had always been their love language, and if anybody knew he needed recipes, it would be his brother.
And then there was Naomi.
“You don’t have to come,” he’d told her. “Really.”
Most likely because the last thing he wanted was for her to get caught up in whatever nonsense the New York family genuinely had planned behind the facade of this meeting. He’d fall on a sword for his brother if he needed to, but he’d planned to do his best.
And yet the night before, she’d insisted on staying at his apartment, bringing a garment bag along with her.
“No arguing with me,” she said. “Not at all. I’m your emotional support girlfriend.”
He liked hearing her call herself his girlfriend so much, that the rest didn’t matter, not really.
And the morning of, when the sun rose, he went to shower, leaving her behind as he made coffee. He tried to go through his presentation, but the words weren’t sticking.
“Make it you.”
He turned around, only to see a vision.
Naomi had emerged from the bedroom like Venus from the water. The suit she wore accentuated her curves and made her look like the goddess you’d want organizing your life. She carried a briefcase…
“You,” he said, “are gorgeous.”
“And so is this business plan,” she said. “We…you have enough information to convince anybody of your perfect, businesslike intentions.”
“Heck,” he said with a laugh. “I’m sold. But how do you suggest I get myself through this presentation to begin with?”
“If you can’t remember the speech word for word,” she said as she walked into the room and poured herself a cup of coffee, “think about what you want to do with this business of yours. Charity work. Entertainment on-set private catering. Consultation. Public events and mentorships that drive them all.”
He nodded. The branches of his business. “And how I’m pairing myself with a brilliant events coordinator, giving them first right of refusal on my catering services.”
“I say you have a winner.”
“From your mouth,” he managed. He paused and pulled her close. “I love you.”
*
As she’d gotten closer to him over the years, even as their relationship morphed into something beyond friendship and settled into love, there were things about Jason that Naomi had noticed.
Like how sometimes his ‘I love you’s,’ though no less a gesture of love, were also ways of changing the subject.
She could tell them from the tone of his voice, and how focused he was on her shoulder. Not on her face.
“So,” she said, answering this one with the question he was actually asking. “Where is this meeting?”
“Listen,” he said. “You don’t have to come. Really. You don’t. It’s fine.”
And like clockwork, the conversation started once more, the nerves she could see radiating from him suddenly ruled the center of the conversation. They set boundaries he didn’t actually believe he needed.
He was too transparent for her to think otherwise.
And that meant she had to be clearer about her options, ideas and motives. “I said I’d support you.”
He sighed. “Support and guide are two different things, and I think you can’t support me without guiding, especially if I start to fumble.
I might fumble and I need…in front of them, I need to be able to fumble and to be able to pick myself up off the floor.
” He shook his head. “Wouldn’t look good for the family if I needed you to pick me up. ”
A slightly more dramatic scenario than she’d expected, but she’d take it. “So, I’ll sit demurely in the back of the room, take notes and say not a word. And if they ask me, I’m your secretary or something. I don’t know.”
He laughed, not exactly the jovial, excited laugh she was used to from him, but she would take that one too. “You’re a kick-ass event planner, and the woman I love,” he replied. “You never need to introduce yourself as my secretary.”
“Your relatives are old-school,” she reminded him, showing him the notes she’d taken in preparation for the meeting, not telling or reminding him where or how she’d found the time to do said research or why she found it important.
“If anything, the men at the center of the New York family will see me as your secretary and not much else.”
“Not much else, huh,” he said with another laugh.
“Well,” she said, going along with whatever joke he thought he was telling, creating the scenario she expected to confront in order to get him out of the nervous funk he was in.
“I suspect that at most, they’ll think you believe I’m flexible enough to do fun things under your work station during a work day. ”
When he got the message or reality in his head chopped through the scenario she was creating, his expression changed from amusement to disbelief. “I don’t think they’re as bad as that.”
“Oh, they are,” she replied, standing firm despite her lack of desire to argue with him. “Bank on it.”
“You think they expect you to stand still, and look pretty, huh?”
She nodded. “They’re members of a dynasty that’s been in business for almost a century; they’re insulated and powerful, and definitely not in possession of attitudes toward business that were new after 1951.”
Jason snorted. “I love you,” he said as he pulled her close.
“I love you, too,” she told him this time, before brushing her lips against his.
But instead of being sated with a light kiss this time, she fell into the deeper kiss, the way his hands settled in her hair, the way he tasted.
Because deep in her gut, something felt funny. Whether it was anxiety or something else, she was absolutely convinced that things were going to go wrong.
For once in her life, she hoped it was her instincts that were wrong and not this meeting. And as they left his apartment, she wondered if they’d ever come back.
*
The rideshare was waiting downstairs when they arrived; the driver was skilled, and the car smelled like coffee.
The man even knew the perfect way to get to their intended destination, avoiding the traffic and other pitfalls of driving uptown in Manhattan during rush hour.
Of course, the building they were heading to was just south of Central Park, an otherwise unassuming office building that contained more wealth than he knew what to do with. The doorman ushered them into the elevator, where an elevator operator was waiting to bring them upstairs.
This was posh.
But, he observed, all of it had been nothing compared to the marble on the walls and the mosaics on the floor. The gold leaf on the door that led to the center of the heavily carpeted space was…austere. Heck, he was scared to breathe in the space lest he break something.
But as he looked closer into the space, it was…a waiting room. Huge wooden doors separated the family photos and books and couches, as well as the fireplace, from the other room on the other side.
All of it seemed like it had been dropped in this space from another era; heck, a fainting couch wouldn’t be out of place as far as he was concerned. Because yeah, it was history.
Someone else’s history—not his own.
These people, the New York relatives, had taken almost a century, and had turned knishes-dough and filling, into an empire.
“You okay?”
His brother stood in a suit; he hadn’t seen his brother in a suit since Yom Kippur. The man looked more comfortable in chef’s clothing, or sweatpants.
“No,” he said. Because there was something about this situation that screamed for honesty he didn’t feel comfortable delivering.
“You prepared?”
He nodded, lifted the large red folder, filled fit to bursting, tied tightly, that he held. “I have copies of a business plan; I have lists of my references and potential jobs.”
“And you have your backup,” he said.
His brother probably meant himself, but Jason’s first thought was, as per usual, Naomi. Who sat on the couch, working on something on her computer. Notes? Something for him? Something else?
Didn’t matter because he took the moment to really admire her; the fact of the matter was that she was gorgeous. The more he looked at her, the more he wanted to look at her. With the suit, she’d put her hair up, and there wasn’t one strand that would defy her.
Unlike him. Yes, he wore a suit that fit him well, dress shoes; but it felt like a costume.
Him and his brother, two peas in a culinary pod.
Waiting to be shucked.
And then there was a sound that signified the doors were being opened…to a space that could have been twice the size of the waiting room.
The conference room itself looked like a combination between a courtroom and a normal conference room; the large black…thing that looked like a judge’s bench, sat in front of a long table with a bunch of chairs. The chairs were all facing the judge’s bench.
There wasn’t a projector, but his father, who clearly had been sitting in front of the table, stood, arms wide, welcoming him and his brother.
He didn’t look awkward in a suit: glasses, beard, and moustache matched his hair.
“Come, come,” Michael Greenblatt said, as if he were speaking for the New York family, and not them. Not him and his brother. “We were just having a chat.”
A chat, huh? The kind of chat that would affect the rest of his sons’ lives, not just his.
He caught his brother’s glance. He nodded.
The sound of clicking heels made him turn, only to see the gorgeousness that was Naomi as she entered the room. She held both her computer and tote bag, following his instructions, his silent partner and the woman who meant more to him than anything in the world.