Holding Her Breath (Indigo) (8 page)

After his shower, Chace walked into the living room wearing one of the large fluffy white towels Kelly had bought at a white sale. He was surprised she hadn’t taken her precious linens and stuff with her, considering her obsession with that Martha Stewart kind of crap.

He flipped on the television, going for the satellite radio stations, when he noticed something lying on the floor by the front door. He walked over and discovered it was a cell phone. He peered down at it, furrowing his brow. He then picked up the slim, metallic flip phone and opened the shell. It must belong to Whitney. It sure wasn’t Kelly’s.

He flipped through the contacts, noticing that she had ICE, or In Case of Emergency, numbers in her phone. He scrolled down to the one labeled “Mom” and pressed “send”.

After two rings, a woman answered in a deep yet feminine voice. “Hello?”

“Hi, my name is Chace. I’m calling from Whitney’s cell phone, I think? Are you her mom?”

“Yes, I am. Misses Jones, but call me Jo. Oh, you angel. She’s been carrying on about that phone since she woke up this morning. Hold on a minute. I’ll go get her for you.”

Chace heard Jo set the phone down. He heard her calling for Whitney. Thinking of the way he’d acted the night before, he started to worry about whether she would want to see him again. He shifted the phone from one ear to the other. While he waited for her to come to the phone, he tapped his fingers against the back of his couch. There were some shuffling noises in the background, and then he heard the phone being picked up again.

“Hello?” Whitney’s voice came through the phone.

He grinned, her voice warming him all over. “Hi. This is Chace. I think I have your phone.”

“Yeah, that’s what Mom said. And from the caller ID, it looks like you do. Thank goodness. I was so worried it was gone forever and I’d have to get a new one. I don’t know what I would have done about all the phone numbers I would have lost. Who keeps a paper address book anymore?”

He nodded even though she couldn’t see him. “Yeah. Exactly.”

“So how should I go about getting it back from you?”

His grin widened as the perfect answer to her question popped into his head. “I’ll bring it to you. Just as soon as you tell me where you want to meet for lunch.”

After a brief pause, Whitney said, “Lunch?”

“Sure. That is…unless you have plans already?” he said, silently asking her not to say that yes she did, and with her boyfriend.

“Not really. Just some after-Christmas shopping, but we’re not going until this afternoon because my sister can’t seem to get her lazy butt out of the bed today. Um, so I guess. I guess that would be fine. Where do you want to go?”

“That’s what I asked you,” he said with a chuckle. “Any place is fine with me.”

“How about It’s Just Coffee?” Whitney said.

“Sure. You want to meet…” he looked around his apartment for the time and realized Kelly had taken the clock that had been in the living room. He picked up the remote and hit the channel info button to bring up the heading at the top of the screen that listed the time. It was almost eleven. “At noon?”

“I’ll be there,” Whitney said.

“I’ll see you soon,” he said.

She said, “I’ll see you in a little bit, Chace.”

He liked the way she said his name. He smiled. “Bye, Whitney.”

“Not ‘Beautiful Whitney?’ ” she teased.

He laughed, his face burning at the thought of his behavior the night before. “Bye, Beautiful Whitney.”

“Bye.”

He hung up the phone. Thoughts of Whitney danced in his head.

After throwing on a pair of jeans, a beige sweater, and his favorite brown flip-flops, Chace walked over to his computer. He decided to try to get Ethan on Skype to pass the time since he couldn’t leave yet. If he did, he’d be sitting at the coffeehouse, which was a five minute walk away, alone for almost an hour and looking like a loser. But he couldn’t just sit around and wait for it to be noon. Besides, he hadn’t called his best friend for Christmas yet.

Chace logged in and looked for Ethan’s name in his contact list. Ethan wasn’t online. Then Chace realized it was five-thirty tomorrow morning in New Zealand. He sighed and sent Ethan an email telling him to Skype him later that day. Really, it was just as well. Chace didn’t feel up to talking about Kelly yet, and if he talked to Ethan, he knew it would come up. Right now, he wanted to focus on good things. Like lunch with Whitney.

After that, he decided to play around on the internet to kill time and occupy his mind until it was time to go. After Kelly tried to call him twice more, he put his phone on silent and slipped it into the opposite jeans pocket from the one where he was keeping Whitney’s phone.

Whitney didn’t know why she was so jittery as she pulled her car into one of the spots in the small parking lot of It’s Just Coffee. She was just meeting this guy to get her phone back. He was just a guy. Who had her phone.

So what if she’d worn her most flattering jeans—an indigo boot-cut pair that fit her curvy form well. And she had chosen to wear her gray sweater, the one that was perfectly snug without being too tight. And she’d taken the time to curl her hair so that the haircut she’d recently gotten at her favorite Dominican hair salon in Silver Spring, Maryland did what it was supposed to do. She just wanted to look nice, that was all.

She walked into It’s Just Coffee and saw him right away. He was sitting at a booth near the back. A pair of brown flip-flops rested on the floor, but he had crossed his legs one over the other so that his feet were tucked under them, and were between his thighs and the dark cushion of the booth seat. She suppressed a smile and walked over to him. She dropped her purse into the booth seat across from him and slid in next to it.

She grabbed a menu and looked up at him. “Hi.”

He grinned, flashing white, perfect teeth. Even his pale blue eyes seemed to smile, and she wondered again how he could make eyes that were such a cold color seem so warm. “Hi.”

She took a sip of water from the glass that had been waiting for her on the table. Condensation had started to pool around the glass and on the dark surface of the table.

“I asked for water for us. I hope you don’t mind,” Chace said.

“That was nice. Thank you.” Whitney set the glass back down.

“Should I go order for us?”

“Sure,” Whitney said, thinking about how different he was sober. He was convincing her more and more she’d been right about him the night before. He’d just had a bad night.

After she gave him her order, he slipped his flip-flops back on and went up to the bar. He talked to a tall, thin black man wearing black skinny jeans and a slim-fitting gray T-shirt with the It’s Just Coffee logo in the upper left hand corner. The man nodded and punched some numbers into a cash register. Chace said something with a grin and they both laughed. When he came back to the table, he was holding two muffins.

He held one out to her. “He just gave me these. You like blueberry?” He sat down across from her.

“Sure.” She smiled, taking the muffin. “You, uh, wear flip-flops in December?”

He shrugged. “Yeah. I wear flip-flops any time I can get away with it. Unless there’s snow on the ground or a really good chance I’ll get frostbite, the flip-flops come out.”

“Okay.” She laughed.

“Oh. Before I forget.” Chace reached into his jeans pocket and pulled out her cell phone. He slid it across the table to her.

“Thanks so much.” Whitney picked up the phone and put it in her purse.

“No problem. I’m kind of glad you lost it at my place, actually.”

“Why is that?”

Chace looked at her in a way that made the rest of the coffeehouse fade away. “Because I was wondering how I’d see you again.”

“Oh.” Whitney nearly knocked her glass over when she reached for it so that she could take a sip of water.

Chace smiled, dropping his eyes to the table. “I mean, I didn’t want your only, lasting impression of me to be as a stumbling, drunken fool.”

“Well, it won’t be now. You really saved my life.” Whitney patted her bag, which now contained her cell phone.

“Good.” Chace’s eyes burned into hers again.

She gave him an awkward smile and looked around the coffeehouse at their surroundings. Focusing in on a landscape portrait by a local artist, she said to Chace, “Who’s that girl? In the picture on your nightstand? She’s really pretty.”

“Someone from my past,” Chace said, and his voice seemed to lose a little of its warmth.

She turned her attention back to the table, but focused on Chace’s hands instead of his face. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to pry.”

“It’s okay. You didn’t. It’s a legit question. I’m not seeing anybody.” Chace’s voice was quiet, yet it demanded that she look up at him. The sound of it drew her eyes to his face. “Not since the day before yesterday.”

He looked so sad for a moment that Whitney wanted to reach across the table and hug him. Then he put a smile back on his face. His eyes were no longer smiling, though.

Just then, their number was called, and Chace went to get their food. He came back to the table balancing two cups of coffee and their food expertly.

“Wow, you’re good at that.” Whitney reached for her plate, and he set it in front of her. “I should have probably offered to help you, though.”

“Thanks.” Chace winked at her. “And it’s okay. I used to be a server. I know a few things.”

She nodded, grabbed a spoon, and started idly stirring her coffee. Just what else did he know?

Chace had ordered a veggie spinach wrap and espresso. Whitney decided on an egg salad sandwich and her normal caramel latté. Wherever she went, she got that coffee place’s variation on it, but It’s Just Coffee made the best she’d ever had in River Run.

“I love this place. I come here every time I’m home,” Whitney said, breathing in the smell of coffee and listening to the whir of the espresso machine.

“Yeah,” Chace said. He’d picked up his wrap, but hadn’t taken a bite yet. “Kelly turned me on to this place.”

“That the girl from the picture?”

He nodded, looking at his food instead of at Whitney. “She left the day before yesterday. On Christmas Eve. Said she…well, it’s not important what she said.” Chace put down his wrap.

“How long were you two together?”

“Two years.”

“That’s a long time,” Whitney said, feeling that had been stupidly obvious to say, but she hadn’t been able to think of anything better, and the silence was too awkward.

“Yeah. I thought we were happy.” Chace put his wrap back onto his plate without taking a bite and gripped his coffee mug between his hands. “It’s not a good feeling. Having your heart broken.” He tapped the mug against the table.

Whitney knew nothing about that. She guessed there were some benefits from moving too quickly through life to pay attention to things like romance.

“I don’t think I’d ever really been in love before her,” he said. “I cared about other girls, but it wasn’t the way—it wasn’t like with Kelly. You know?”

Whitney slowly shook her head, twirling her spoon between her fingers. “I’ve never been in love.”

“Never? Not once? The guys have to be all over you.”

Strangely, coming from Chace, that didn’t sound like empty pick-up line type flattery. She gave him a small smile. “Not even once. I’ve never even been in a serious relationship.”

“Really?”

“Never found time. I mean, I was in a million clubs and organizations and sports and stuff in high school. I was really involved in college, too. President of the College Democrats, on the debate team, I started my involvement with Big Sisters back then, and I had a lot of other stuff going on, too. Then, law school and more of the same. And now, I’m working at Gibson and Grey and I do pro bono work and I’m still a Big Sister. I work over sixty hours a week at the firm and on a good week I keep it under eighty. I’m trying to impress the partners so I can become one myself.”

“Wow, I can’t imagine that. Never finding time for love.” Chace truly did look perplexed. “Love is so important. How can you have a truly happy life without it? I mean, even the crappy parts like fights and break-ups—they’re worth it.”

“There’ll be time after I make partner to find a husband and have kids and all that.”

“You didn’t mention falling in love.”

“That’s implied, isn’t it?” She said without looking directly at him.

Chace shrugged and gave her a smile before picking up his wrap again. “Just throw it in with the rest of your purchases, huh?”

Whitney laughed. “Something like that.”

Chace took a bite of his wrap and swallowed. Then he said, “Enough of the heavy talk. Let’s talk about something less depressing and serious.”

“Like what?”

“Anything as long as it’s about you. I just want to know more about you.”

His words sent a thrill through her that she wasn’t expecting, but it was nice. A little too nice.

Whitney told him about life at the firm, about D.C. and her friends, and everything else she could think of. They spent the rest of the afternoon in the coffeehouse. Whitney called her mom, telling her she’d be home late that night. Her mom had said she would see her in the morning. Jo was still worn out from Christmas and was probably going to bed early.