Chapter Eight
I pushed my way through the throngs of tourists and street performers in Times Square, and there was Leo, holding a small potted succulent in front of Madame Tussauds, waiting for me.
“Right on time.” He grinned. “I had the under/over at fifteen minutes. Elliot Standard Time, right?”
“Look, Leo, I—”
“Here, this is for you,” he said, handing me the desert plant.
“Um. Thank you? But, uhh, why are you giving this to me exactly?”
“I’m well acquainted with your argument that,” he said, clearing his throat dramatically and raising his hands as if to make air quotes, “‘the gift of flowers is a pox on our overly capitalistic society.’ So instead I chose something more practical. A cactus. It requires little care, little water, and they say having greenery in your office can be beneficial.”
“Beneficial for whom? Never mind. Listen, you seem like a really nice guy and everything, but I can’t . . .”
Just as I was about to finish the rest of my sentence ending whatever this was between us, a taxi came speeding around the corner, and in the blink of an eye, Leo pulled me in close so I didn’t get splashed when the car hit a flooded pothole right next to where I’d been standing.
Pressed up to his chest, I sucked in a quick breath.
Whoa. Why did he smell so damn amazing?!
A fresh and clean contrast to the rank odors that saturated this overcrowded part of Midtown.
His biceps were flexed as he held me upright, and it was almost like I’d forgotten the way his touch could ground me, even in the chaos of the city. Like it had in Greece.
“Are you okay?” he asked, easing me back just enough to scan my face. “The cab didn’t get you, did it?”
I turned my head to examine my coat. “No, I don’t think so.”
“What do you say then?” he said, offering the crook of his elbow. “Shall we?”
Reluctantly, I slipped my arm through his and followed him farther down the sidewalk, surprised when we didn’t turn into Madame Tussauds and instead kept walking.
“But I thought—”
“What? That I was taking you to Madame Tussauds for Valentine’s Day?” He laughed. “I think I know you a little better than that. I just needed a meeting spot to throw you off track, and it seems like my evil plan worked.”
He looked so proud of himself. It almost would have been downright adorable if this was a real Valentine’s Day date, which, of course, it wasn’t.
“Okaaay, so then, where are we going?” I asked.
“You’ll see, my dancing queen.”
“Your what?”
“Patience, young grasshoppah,” he said as he spun me around with an impromptu move. Though caught off guard, my feet seemed to know what to do, and I twirled easily under his outstretched arm as an actual giggle escaped past my lips.
“How was brunch with your mother?” he asked, pulling me back to his side.
Before I could stop myself, the unrestrained truth fell out of my mouth. “How it always is with her, stressful and disappointing.”
Though logic told me to keep my distance since he was practically a stranger, something deeper kept nudging me to open up, to let him see more than I usually allowed.
“Why disappointing?” Leo asked.
Another question. I fought to swallow down the words of everything pressing on me, but all the frustrations I’d been biting back came pouring out.
“Three different husbands, and every single one cheated, walked away, and left her as a shell of her former self, and now she wants to take her chances with number four after knowing him for less than six months?!”
“Look at us, though? You and I only knew each other for what, like two weeks before we agreed to meet up again in Paris. I have to admit I wasn’t sure you’d come.
But then when I saw you coming through the crowd that day in December, my heart practically exploded out of my chest. When you find a connection like ours, you’ll move heaven and earth, and even all the way from South Africa to Manhattan, to chase it.
Protect it. Make sure it doesn’t slip through your fingers. And now look at us.”
But why, in this new timeline or whatever the hell this was, had I taken the chance on him?
Maybe, though, by coercing him even further down memory lane, he could help me piece together what actually had happened?
“Yes, that’s all true,” I faux-conceded in an attempted fishing expedition. “It was quite the whirlwind. Sometimes I can barely recall the exact details . . .”
“Really? ’Cause I remember it all so vividly. You telling me that before we met, you thought love was nothing more than an illusion. That you’d convinced yourself it wasn’t real, that it was just a fairy tale people told themselves to fill the emptiness in their life.”
“That sounds like me.”
“Then you told me I was your safe harbor. That I made love feel possible again, like something you could finally believe in.”
I blinked. “Well, that does not sound like me at all.”
Leo studied me with a puzzled expression.
For a second, I thought he might push the issue, but instead, he just shook his head and kept walking until he abruptly stopped in front of Studio 54, the legendary 1970s discotheque, transformed into a Broadway theater sometime in the nineties, and said, “Here we are. End of the line. Hope you’re ready for your Valentine’s Day surprise. ”
I stared up at the marquee, but my mind was already thousands of miles away, back on the island of Mykonos, to the night Leo and I had our first real date. Through a mix of persistence and undeniable charm, he eventually convinced me to give him a chance.
I suggested we meet at a neon foam party thrown by Le Ciroc on Super Paradise Beach, an event I’d been invited to by the brand.
I still needed to grab a few last interviews for the show and figured it was the perfect place to blend work with a little fun.
Dressed in a Day-Glo tangerine crochet dress with a black bikini underneath, I met up with him at the bustling beachside bar.
He looked incredible in fitted white linen pants and a matching button-down, the top few buttons undone to reveal his toned chest. The crisp whiteness of the fabric only further emphasized his rich tan and striking light eyes.
Between collecting interviews and sound bites, I found myself being surprisingly drawn back to Leo, who shared bits of personal history between sips of ouzo.
He was the youngest of four, raised by older sisters who treated him like their personal dress-up doll and involuntary guinea pig for their homemade DIY beauty treatments.
He worked in private equity, consulting for McKinsey, specializing in advising investors on major deals, a detail he’d clarified after catching my confused expression when he’d given his job title.
He explained that though the hours were relentless, he thrived on the constant movement and the way no two days ever looked the same.
His parents, married for over forty years, had recently retired to Pringle Bay, a quiet coastal village near Cape Town, where he’d grown up.
As for him, the nature of his job meant relationships rarely had time to take root, but he confessed that, whether it was the overwhelming influence of his sisters, or his parents, who still ogled each other and snuck in pinches, pokes, and other playful reminders of their unrelenting love, Leo was a hopeless romantic at heart.
His revelation had stopped me dead in my tracks.
Until that moment, he’d been the ultimate vacation fantasy.
No strings, no expectations, just the thrill of the moment.
Besides, weren’t we all forever chasing the high of a fun flirtation in a foreign city?
That’s what this had been . . . at least for me.
But after spending more and more time together, I wasn’t so sure whether Leo and I were on the same page.
However, before I could process it any further, the DJ kicked up the energy, spinning electrifying mash-ups of eighties classics with current-day hits.
The sound of Wham!’s “Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go” collided with Chappell Roan’s “Pink Pony Club,” making it nearly impossible to hear Leo above the beat.
My body rocked to the rhythm, and I allowed myself to be taken away for a moment by the swell of the music, the neon lights, and the saccharine smell of the fog machine.
“Hey,” Leo called out to me. “What do you say we go somewhere where we can actually hear ourselves think?”
“Why would we want to do that when not thinking is so much more fun?” I twirled in place, spotting a Le Ciroc brand rep circulating with shots of their newest vodka.
Grabbing one off her tray, I punctuated my point to Leo by throwing it right down the hatch before snagging another shot for good measure.
I offered it to him, but he shook his head and gestured for me to go for it.
So I did and then, after handing the glass back to the server, I tugged Leo by the hand onto the dance floor.
Pulling him up against me, his hips swaying in time with mine, I relished in the delirium, in the muggy warmth that blurred the edges of the moment, and in the way his hands roamed up and down my body until they settled around my waist.
And then I knew I wanted him to kiss me. Needed him to kiss me. I pressed up on my toes and arched my neck as an invitation. Threading my fingers through his hair, I drew him closer and closed my eyes in anticipation.
Finally, his lips swept over mine. Gently, almost chastely, which was sweet but not exactly what I was aiming for. I leaned in harder, pressing myself forward to let him know it was okay to amp things up a bit.
“Hey, now,” he said, stepping back to put some space between us. “Why don’t we take a beat here.”
I narrowed my gaze, studying him like an endangered species at the zoo. Never in the history of men had a guy “taken a beat” when situated in the fast lane to getting lucky. “What do you mean?” was the first thing that came to me amid my obvious puzzlement.